This Year's Women's Retreat

First day of women's retreat was great. Speakers were good and the food was too. The scenery as always was beautiful. God is great. It's always good to get away into the mountains, even Jesus did that to reconnect with God. We should as well.

Our first speaker was Bev and she gave a great lesson in "What's in your purse?" More pictures and details to follow as its lights out soon at the lodge here and I'm worn out. Night everyone.

Here are the more pictures I promised you. It was a great women's retreat as the three speakers: Bev Campbell, Cathy Koch and Carol Sheldon talked about being well dressed spiritually as Christian Women as we walk out into the world and witness for Christ.

Bev had us look into our purses to see what we are carrying around in there. Is it full of things like thankfulness, praise, love, forgiveness, kindness, goodness, faith, trust, and all the other qualities of Christ. Or is your purse loaded down like a bag of heavy rocks with things like bitterness, unforgiveness, jealousy, greed, anger, uncontrolled tongue, resentment, and other things that weigh us down rather than lighten our load.

Carol and Cathy gave us a good demonstration about well-dressed feet and a custom creation. They talked about what different things such as flat shoes, pumps, work boots, infinity scarfs and other things can represent to us as we get properly dressed for God's kingdom.

Each year as we attend the retreat it is so wonderful getting in touch with our other sisters in Christ that we only get to see once a year. The fun we have playing games, making crafts together, singing, hiking to Frog Lake and fellowshipping is priceless. 

Speaking of "frog." I just learned something from my friend in Chicago who told me what her grandmother taught her. Frog stands for Fully Rely On God. F.R.O.G. That is what we need to strive to be as Christian women, women who are fully relying on God and that is what the goal of our annual Christian Women Fellowship of Central Oregon retreat is  all about becoming FROG Christians.

Rhonda, Nyla and Aubrey

Nyla and her service dog Grace

The lodge

Smile ladies :)

Brooke and Aubrey trying out the paddle boat

Bev looking into what's in our purses

 

Speaker Carol Sheldon demonstrating various shoes

Speaker Cathy Koch

Karen and her granddaughter's Brooke and Aubrey

View of Round Lake

View of the swing and picnic table area

A look down from the lodge balcony

Coordinator Joan Anderson. Rosie in the chair

Bonnie looking like she is getting all tangled up

 

Craft time of crocheting purses out of grocery bags. Another craft was scented bath crystals, foot massage powder and others. Also there was a table for those who wanted to try and make jewelry.

Thanks to our cook Kristie and her parents Dick and Claire we were well fed

 

Closer look at the homemade swing set with the basketball court in the background

Thank you Lord for Your presence with us at retreat. For the wonderful weather and the chance to fellowship with one another while we learned more of what we can do to enhance our walk with You.

In love W.I.T.H. Jesus,

Karen J. Gillett

Fighting Stress with Scriptures~~~Flawless Ways, Perfect Choices

2 Samuel 22:33 God is my strength and power, makes my way perfect

This scripture from 2 Samuel was extremely helpful to me when I had epilepsy and was fighting my stress seizures. It reminded me that God was my strength and power. I didn’t need my own to see me through. I had God. I was like a battery operated toy that when the batteries ran low I was no longer able to function. Thanks to God I didn’t need to get to that point as I so often did.

The way God was making my way perfect was the fact that He was there for me. I was still having seizures, I was still disabled. What was so perfect about that? Nothing! Except the fact that through my epilepsy I was learning to lean on God for my day to day ability to function as I made Him my perfect choice.

Sounds wimpy, doesn’t it? That’s our problem today we have it in our heads that if we have to rely on God to be our crutch, backbone, strength, or power then we must be some kind of wimpy weak weirdo. From the beginning of time starting with Adam and Eve in the garden we think we can do it on our own. There is pride in showing the world that we can make it on our own. We don’t need God. I’m not some kind of windup battery operated toy that needs power from a different source!

Can you hear it? More important is the fact you can see it. You can see what that kind of attitude does for us in the behavior of our society today. We have moved away from our true source of strength and power and it hasn’t proven a thing. When I did it I had more stress seizures, when others do it their “stress seizures” are the anger they display, the bad choices they are making, and their destructive attitude they carry with them that hurts rather than heals.

Perfect ways? What’s that! In reality there is no perfect way. Our idea of a perfect way is one that is pain free, loaded with free money to spend, everything we ever asked for or wanted without doing anything to get it. Indeed a life free of stress, worries and other people sticking their nose in our business. Nice try but have you ever seen such a thing? No.

The perfect way God has to offer is one paved with not only His power and strength leading to eternal life with Him but His love, mercy and grace as well. Yes there will be pain and suffering along the way, stressful times and hard lessons to be learned but that’s okay when you’re traveling with Jesus. The flawless way, the perfect choice.

© 2013 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing

Catchy Saying #2 in the fight against stress

Catchy Saying #2 Self makes a good servant but a horrible master

As much as we would like to believe the lie that we make wonderful masters of ourselves it just isn’t true. We act like a young teenage who just graduated from High School. We think the world is ours. We are our own masters now and suddenly reality hits. We learn there are just as many open and closed doors out in the real world as there were at home and we aren’t the ones who are ultimately in control. There are still bosses to answer to, landlords to please, laws to be obedient to, and God to obey.

It doesn’t matter how good we have it down at being our own boss there is still other outside elements affecting us. Being a good servant or steward of our-selves is a task we all need to master with the awareness that God is our ultimate master. He is the one with the final say, the one in vital control. When I was fighting stress seizures this catchy saying helped to remind me that I wasn’t in ultimate control. I made a lousy master and because of poor choices I wasn’t doing well in being a good steward of myself either and I had the stress seizures to prove it. I needed to remember it’s God who is in ultimate control and it was His lead I was to follow not the other way around.

The task of being a good steward of our selves still falls on our shoulders to do and do well. However, if you think about it we were designed to be good servants to others. Where would we be if we had all masters running around and no servants? Who would donate money to charity, feed the poor, help the crippled get out of their chair, and come to the rescue of someone’s dog or cat and so much more. There is no shame in being a servant or having a servant’s heart. With God as our master, the one in control He doesn’t look down upon us as His servants.

To Him we are not people who are in a low life position to give Him what He wants at the snap of His fingers. He is a loving Master who cares about those who are willing to be a part of His family. A family we enter by choice not by force. As a young child is comforted knowing mom and dad are there to watch over them it’s comforting to know God is in the same position. He is the one in charge and knowing that reduced a lot of the affects stress was having on me. Praise the Lord.

Fight Stress with Scriptures Closing the Cracks

Due 6:5  Love God with ALL your heart, soul, mind, strength

 

How in the world does loving the Lord your God with ALL your heart, soul, mind, and strength help us to fight stress? It helps because it gets our mind where it needs to be. Any time we hold back a piece for ourselves that leaves a crack for things to come along that we don’t want or need brought in by stress.

 

The important thing to know is that “stress” happens. We can’t do a thing in life where we will never be struck by stress again. The issue is what we do it. How long we linger in it and allow it to run our lives. Do we add to it or take away from its desire to sting us.

 

When I stopped having stress seizures it wasn’t because I was at last living in a stress-free environment and it never came around again. Yeah right! And if you believe that I have oceanfront property in Arizona I want to sell you. Just teasing but that is how crazy of a thought that is to think we can live in a stress-free environment. Some get pretty close and others couldn’t be surrounded more by it. The issue is dealing with it and not allowing it to affect our lives.

 

A good start to that is remembering the fact that we need to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Don’t leave room for stress to have its affects on us. Yeah, I know you “have the right to get mad at someone for doing something to you” but is it really worth it holding back that chunk of your heart, soul, mind and strength to be mad at someone.

 

When I found out about my stress seizures the first thing that had to go was my anger towards the girl who initially caused my head injury that would lead up to my seizures. I chose to hold back that part of me and it showed in the amount of stress seizures I was having. If I truly loved God with all that was in me then it was time to show it by not worrying or getting upset over things, or being pre-occupied with things that were eventually going to lead to a stress seizure.

 

As I told a couple the other day, during the time of battling with my stress seizures I couldn’t even worry about what I was going to fix for dinner. If I did, I wound up having a stress seizure. It’s one thing to “think about” what you are going to fix for dinner and another to “worry” about it to the excess of having a stress seizure.

 

Looking to the “all” in loving God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength was a good focus point to measure the distance between what I was doing and where I needed to be and the stress seizure I just had in between the two points. Sometimes it was clear I loved God with my all and had a seizure anyway but there were times that evidence proved otherwise. It was then up to me to figure out what I wanted to do with the data I just collected from the last seizure. It was because I chose to learn from each seizure that future stress seizure eventually would be eliminated and victory was just around the corner.

 

Stress seizures or not it is a command from God for us to follow. An act not set up for God himself to profit from. However, it’s for the benefit of us for the by-product that comes from it.  It’s how God loves us and it does us well to do the same back to Him as we close the cracks to the things that don’t need to be.

DEES funny~~~~~~~There's a Train Coming!

One day as my husband and I were on our way home I was feeling a little tired from our journey. Sitting there quietly in my seat giving up my position as the “back seat driver” I drifted in and out of sleep. Once when I was half awake I noticed my husband acting like a train was coming that he failed to see before starting across the multiple tracks crisscrossing the road. At the sign of his nervousness I began to be a little fearful myself out of fear of being hurt. Next thing I knew I heard the sound of the tracks below us rattle. Sure enough we weren’t the only ones on the tracks and we were about to be hit. However, the impact didn’t happen. Instead what happened was a car full of impatient teenagers passing us on the tracks using the shoulder of the road. I was relieved it wasn’t a train but wow did that scare me!

 

 LESSON: Often in life’s journey we feel like the light at the end of the tunnel just has to be a train. Fearful of what we anticipate happening we feel like at any time we expect to be hit and sent flying into orbit. We become scared as our imagination soars. However, what we think is a train coming could be just someone else crossing the tracks we are on in the journey of life. Something that causes a chain reaction that rattles the tracks below us momentarily. We need to remember that we are not the only ones on the road and we need to rely on God and His driving to see us through our journeys. Later after our railroad incident I found out my husband wasn’t acting “nervous” as he knew there wasn’t a train coming. No, what he was doing was paying attention to the herd of deer in the nearby field. I needed to trust his driving skills and go back to sleep and get some rest.

 

Same thing in our spiritual life, we need sit back and get some rest as we put our trust in God’s driving skills. No matter the length of the journey, the rattling of the tracks, the delays we encounter we can have confidence in our chauffeur, Jesus Christ. Our part is to make sure we allow Him to be the one in charge of driving us to where we need to be. He sees the trains, He’s not afraid of the tracks, and He knows where He’s going. You can’t get any better than that.

 

Suddenly it’s no longer “There’s a train coming!” but its “Jesus is driving, I am safe.”

 

© 2013 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing         Funny DEES

Think I'm Having Stress~~~~~Breaking out in Praise

Instead of breaking out in a sweat over situations we need to break out in praise to the Lord. “Praise? You expect me to praise God at a time like this, I don’t feel like it!” We are not to do it simply because we “feel” like it but because it’s the right thing to do.

 

Praise moves us from the clouds to sunshine from doubt to faith. Once when I was feeling down an elder at our church saw me and told me, “Chin up Karen and praise the Lord.” Praise the Lord? What in the world was he talking about he must not understand my current situation and what I’m dealing with. I knew better, I knew he was well aware of what I was dealing with in life. And most importantly I knew in my heart he was right about praising God.

 

Years ago I had already learned the lesson that it’s not for the situation itself we are praising the Lord but praising God for who He is and what He can help us with and for the little things in life. In every situation we find ourselves in if we take the time to look we can find something there we can praise the Lord for. If all we can do is praise the Lord for toilet paper, colorful paint, door handles, crawling ants or anything it gets our mind going in the right direction.

 

When sucked into depression it’s very difficult to find things to praise God for and that’s when we need to start looking at all we see and think about and praise God. It’s a process that un-sticks our praise searcher button that is temporarily blocked from working properly. It’s a way of getting it going again and to beat the stress that has moved in on us.

 

To help out any whose praise searcher button is currently stuck, I will start by praising God naming the things I current see around me, things directly in front of my face. As I go around the room I will leave out on purpose the things that remind me of the bad in life like my cancer, issues with other people, headaches, and worries about my parents wellbeing.

 

Here we go: Praise the Lord for electricity, for lamps it lights up, the computer it keeps running, the TV it makes come alive. Praise you Lord for our black lab sleeping at my feet, the sound of the rooster crowing outside, and the cow bawling for her breakfast to be served. Praise you Lord for warm socks on my feet, pictures of love ones to remind me of the good times in life. Praise you for calendars and the pictures they display. Praise you Lord for the carpet that is soft on my feet and the hardwood floor that still have the skid marks on it from my grandson making a game out of sliding on it. Praise you Lord for the artwork you created just outside my window for me to see as the wind blows the branches on the trees. Praise you for comfortable furniture to sit upon and curtains draping from the windows. Praise you for the sound of a clock chiming, the coffee pot brewing, and the heater running. Praise you Lord that in spite of what I have to deal with in life I have blessings to count and the number one blessing on the list is You, Lord God. Praise you Lord for today and the use of it. Praise you Lord I’m alive to live it, it didn’t have to be me. Praise you that I can live my life to Your glory no matter what. Praise you for loving me.

 

There you go, I went first now it’s your turn to get your praise searcher button unstuck. Bypass the bad and start to praise the Lord anyway no matter what. As you can see there are plenty of things we can praise the Lord for whether we “feel” like it or not. Making the choice to wait until we feel like it is bad for us and good for our enemy so start today for tomorrow will be too late.

 

© 2013 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing for COCWF

I think I'm Having Stress~~~~~ Time to Apply

Along with all the other difficulties stress creates another hard part of it is dealing with it when it’s caused or created by someone else’s behavior. For example, the spouse of an alcoholic, gambler, drug addict, or controller daily their lives can be filled with all sorts of stress. We can either use those situations as excuses to engage in our own bad behavior or stepping stones to a better behavior on our part.

Just because the spouse is sleeping off their beer on the couch or down gambling the family’s money away doesn’t give the spouse the right to do wrong themselves. In these situations this is exactly what it can make you feel like. “Well if they can do it, I might as well too.” As much as that makes sense in our minds it’s not the way it works in God’s eyes.

These moments are thorns in our flesh that like to dig in deeper and deeper but we need to use these times as a classroom for ourselves to learn what we need to learn. God uses our thorns to teach us what we need to learn, to humble us, to show us what faith, trust, and patience is all about.

Therefore we need to get rid of our desire for revenge or our want for pity and pay attention to our teacher Jesus Christ and what He has to say to us. Not all lessons have to be learnt in the school of hard-knocks, many can come straight from God’s word if we would only take the time to study it and apply it to our daily living. Indeed a good technique and great preparation for future thorns and lessons that may be taught in a much harsher way.

I Think I'm Having Stress ~~~~~ Don't Worry

Mt 6:25, 27, 32, 33,34 Therefore I say to you do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, or what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? For your heavenly Father knows you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be add to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

 

It has been said if you are going to worry then don’t pray and if you are going to pray then don’t worry. Like anything else we can’t have it both ways. We can’t have our cake and eat it too as they say. When God tells us to not worry about tomorrow then we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow.

 

The hard part about not worrying is not worrying. That makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? But it’s true. From a person who has the tendency to worry it’s hard not to when you have been in situations before and you know what is coming. For example, the wife waiting for her drunk husband to come home. She knows his abusive behavior and therefore anticipates what is to come. She worries about what degree of cruelty his behavior will be that particular night.

 

In such a case it’s hard not to worry. To her I guess you’d have to say, “just trust in the Lord. That no matter what degree of severity your husband’s behavior is the Lord will be watching over you.” You could also look at it in the aspect that worrying is not going to change what is to come. Worrying about how he will behave won’t change his behavior. We can anticipate perhaps what is to come but keep our eyes on Jesus instead of what we fear are approaching.

 

Perhaps together we can figure out what we can do to avoid worrying about something like this and prepare ourselves in a better way. We may not know what we should be doing but we definitely know what we shouldn’t do and that is 1) worry 2) Get mad 3) run from it 4) Hide from it 5) Give in. Just making up our minds before the return of the alcoholic spouse that we are not going to do any of these things gets us ahead on the behavior we are after in Christ.

 

Have you ever heard, “I’m sorry I can’t help but worry about it?” Often we look at worrying as our sacred right or duty. That if we don’t worry about something then we don’t care. These are lies from Satan we need to stay away from. It takes us out of the healthy balance we need to maintain in our lives.

 

We may worry about our child who is driving over the mountain pass for the first time or about grandma who was diagnosed with cancer. These are things that are natural for us to worry about or be concerned over. It’s when we take it too far and stop trusting in Jesus as we try to borrow from tomorrow even more worries then we’ve gone too far. We just need to make up our minds that we are going to pray and leave it all in the hands of the Lord and trust Him to deal with it as He sees fit.

 

“Well what if my alcoholic husband hits me or grandma’s cancer gets worse?” We still are required to trust. Worry about these situations will not change them one bit but trusting God will. God may not see fit to stop the alcoholic husband or cure the cancerous grandma but we need to know in our hearts He knows best. Being concerned is great but worrying beyond our ability to trust in God is not a good thing.

 

We need to exercise our faith instead of allowing our worries to flop us around like a flag whipping in the wind that becomes tattered and torn. Worry doesn’t add anything to the situation but usually more trouble and each day has enough trouble of its own! Amen? Amen!!

 

 

**When I had epilepsy and had to deal with my stress seizures I couldn’t worry about anything without having a seizure. If I wanted to overcome my stress seizures and possibly be cured of my seizures I couldn’t worry about nothing. Everything had to go straight into the hands of God without me playing with it first for days and weeks on end. I had to immediately hand it over to God and allow Him to take care of things. It took five years of practice but I managed to get it done and the cure for my epilepsy came as a reward for my efforts.

 

© 2012 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing for COCWF

Message from God

As I stood in church enjoying the morning worship music my physical body finally gave in long before my spirit was ready to sit down. Edging myself down to the seat I placed my Bible on my lap and proceeded to sing with the crowd around me. In the middle of the song my Bible vibrated as if it was my cellphone telling me a message had come in.

 

For a split second I thought maybe I did have my phone sitting under my Bible causing it to vibrate. Looking around I found my phone in my purse on the floor near my feet. Several times the Bible vibrated before I finally figured out what it was. Due to the sound system in the church and the volume in which they were running it, whenever they started to sing it created a vibration in my Bible.

 

The more I thought about it the more I looked down at the Bible in my hand. There it was before me larger than my cellphone smaller than my computer loaded with more messages than either of the other two could ever handle. As a smile came upon my face my imagination took flight as I thought about what it would be like if it too vibrated every time it had a message to send. It would never stop as it would be set on permanent vibrate.

 

The sad difference between the Bible and the cellphone and computer is our response to them. Whenever our phone goes off we instantly reach for it to check what the message would be. We excuse ourselves from the table, we leave the office room, and we stop in the middle of a conversation just to check our messages. We can't seem to get to them quick enough. We panic when we can’t find our phone; we need it beside us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When there is a pause in life we instantly bring out our phones to check or send messages, to play games, or to entertain us in some ways.

 

However, with our Bible we don't respond that quickly at all. We ignore all messages. We don't carry it around with us in our hip pocket like we do our phone. The chances of us “butt dialing” someone thru it is rare. We seem to be able to live without it on a daily basis. It’s the last thing we think about when we have a pause in life. It’s something that collects dust on the shelf quicker than the family photo. A necessity in life that isn’t needed 24/7 but on Sunday’s only if that. You will never see someone panic that they “can’t find their Bible!”

 

Bringing my imagination back to the scene of the crime I began to wonder what message God had for me today. Was I going to sit there and stare at my cellphone or was I going to open up God’s word and hear what He had to say. I opened God’s word. Often opening up your Bible and randomly letting your eyes fall where they may doesn’t always work but it works enough to give us our messages from God.

 

For this Sunday morning the message that had come in thru my Bible was the message the Preacher was talking about that very day. He talked about the various reasons why people just don’t get the message of God. His reasons were totally different than my cellphone analogy but we were both pretty much traveling down the same path.

 

His reasons were: 1) the lack of information 2) a hard heart 3) lack of desire to hear and learn 4) Unwilling to accept a new reality 5) Fear of “if I let go of my truth how do I know God’s truth will save me.” 6) The fact that we love our sin more than we do the thought of a “new life” without it.

 

 

The message of the day was to believe. Believing is something we do and keep on doing. It’s a choice that is involved in all other choices. Believing that God will see us thru anything in life, whether it is cancer, troubled relationships, work, our daily desires and passions, grandchildren issues, or anything else we need to believe.

 

We need to put our trust in the one that has everything in control. As much as it doesn’t feel like that in certain moments we come upon it’s the truth and it’s what we have to hold on to. Our message, our strength, our guiding light in a darken world. It’s time to take our Bibles off “vibrate” and turn the volume up in order to hear, listen to, and learn. When we let the dust settle on our Bibles we allow it to settle in our hearts as well.

 

1 John 4:4 “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them (the spirit of the Antichrist), because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”

 

There’s our message. There’s our truth.

 

 

© 2012 Karen J. Gillett at Pencil Marks and Recipes         for  COCWF