Favor

This is what favor looks like:

Weather forecast calling for 3-5 inches of snow, but I’m able to travel home on dry roads without a flake in sight yet.

Waking up from a warm and cozy bed— ready to shovel those 4+ inches of snow; grateful for a day in the sun just hours previously.

Hot tea on a cold morning. Watching birds at the feeder.

Children on their life’s journey, blessed and mostly happy, healthy, and enjoying their way on the road.

Smart and beautiful grandchildren.

A loving husband, whose main goal is to be a blessing in the world, even though he is blind.

All the bills paid.

Food in the house.

Water running, electricity working.

Two closets full of more clothes than any one person would ever need.

Knowing, that I am held in the palm of Papa’s hand and He will never drop me!

Memories of hard times that have made me resilient, strong, and capable.

Good health.

Joy that is so full, it bubbles out and splashes on those around me.

Being healed of an orphan spirit, once and for all!

Knowing and living in gratitude.

I could go on, but this is what God’s favor looks like for me. How about you?

Learning to Live Loved

What does it mean to live loved?

I have been working on this for the past two years. Papa has put me in a holding pattern and told me to “wait on Him.” Never having mastered the art of patience, this has been a difficult, but oh so subtle, lesson for me.

When I asked what I am to do in the waiting, I heard, “learn to live loved.”

I thought I knew what that meant, but the reality is, I didn’t. I still don’t.

I have been healed of so many childhood wounds, but every now and then, that orphan spirit pops its insidious head again into my thoughts. The old, ugly, wrong beliefs become fresh in my thoughts when I believed them to have been long buried. You know the ones:

            “You aren’t good enough”

            “Others can do this better than you.”

            “You will never be enough.”

            “God doesn’t really love you as much as he loves ______”(fill in the blank with

 twenty other names)

            “Your life doesn’t really matter”

            “You don’t deserve His gifts and favor”

You get the gist – blah, blah, blah….

So, I am finally letting go (after two years of knowing these next steps of learning to live loved).

I have been results driven all of my life. I was carefully taught from childhood that nothing is more important than achievements and reached goals—accomplishments that bring the accolades from others. This was the legacy handed down from my parents to my siblings and me. Only, I never could measure up. I watched my two brothers achieve and receive the praise I so desired. The deeply ingrained lesson was two-fold: praise was most important, and this was a prize for others, but always out of reach for me.

Getting to the core of the lie is necessary to be fully healed, so here it is:

There is nothing I can do to earn the unconditional love of the Father.

Any other thinking is based on lies. What this means is that no achievement, no milestone, no accomplishment on the face of the earth causes more favor. It has nothing to do with what I do to prove my worthiness. Only the blood of Jesus makes me worthy. Period, end of story.

2 Corinthians 6:2 tells us that now is the time of God’s favor, which is poured out on all of His children. I have a choice. I can walk in this truth or dismiss it through the wrong thinking embedded in childhood wounding. I can allow what God wrought through Jesus on the cross to heal the scars, or I can continue to strive.

Learning to live loved means to let go of striving and trying to prove my worth. That has already been taken care of through the shed blood of Christ. There is nothing more I can do. No more proof needed.

So, learning to live loved means letting go.

I think I’m finally beginning to get it.