hot

Have you ever gone through a hard time? No one is immune to problems & struggles. Sometimes they can be waiting around every corner you turn! Attitude determines a lot of how you handle what is happening around you, or to you. We have to look for the good in everything. If we can’t find anything good about a situation, then it’s still okay. We just need to be patient. It is necessary, that we all understand, nothing stays the same. If things are not to your liking, if they are going really bad, & I mean REALLY. BAD, it will pass. Nothing will stay the same forever. Just as if things are going wonderful & over the top. Enjoy it. It won’t last.

So, what do you do? Problems are tough. No one enjoys going through difficult things. However, here are a list of things, to hopefully help keep on your mind, as you push through to get to the other side.

God is Good. (Matthew 19:7)
God’s got this. (Proverbs 3:5)
Jesus loves me. (Romans 5:8)
Not today Satan. (James 4:7)
The Lord is able. (II Corinthians 9:8)
At the end of the day, God’s in control. (James 4:15)
God will provide. (Hebrews 11:40)
God is going to sort it all out. (Romans 8:28)
God is faithful. (I Corinthians 1:9)
There’s nothing that’s going to happen today, that me & the Lord can’t handle. (I Peter 5: 7)

When things go wrong, it is so important to do our best, to keep things in perspective, It’s easy to let things get the best of us. Sometimes it’s easy to get down & think things are stuck & never going to get better. That’s just not true. Everything changes. So what do you do in the mean time?

Pray
Count your blessings.
Talk to someone, you trust, about what’s going on.
Put things into perspective, by remembering one of the above phrases.
Press on, don’t stop, & know things will get better.

Something that helps me, more than anything is to remember what I am thankful for. It keeps me humble & grounded. And remember, what the Lord promises us:

Psalms 34:19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
But the Lord delivers him out of them all. (NKJV)

If you focus on the Lord’s truths, you will always be on the right track. He will never leave us with it all to deal with.

Hebrews 13:5 Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (NKJV)

I also love some advice a dear friend gave me one time. I was going through a rough patch and confided in her. I asked her how she made it through some of the things that happened to her in life. She just laughed & said, “A lot of prayer & a lot of Paxil.” I love this advice. No, I’m not advocating taking drugs. I’m just saying sometimes we need help. And if we have to take a pill, to cope with life, for a time, well, so be it. There’s worse things we could do. Don’t forget, in the end, everything is going to be alright. If it’s not alright, it’s not the end.

Y’all. Whoever said, “Oh, I can’t wait for summer!”, back when it was cold, all I can say is here you are. Summer is yours to love & enjoy & make your dreams come true. I hope it is just delightful wherever you are. Because when I say, I will take winter any day over this hot, humid, mess, nobody is rolling their eyes now, are they? Y’all, it’s not even the dead of summer, yet. I kid you not, we have a heat advisory out until 8pm tonight. 8:00 at night. It’s so hot, the kids can’t go out and play. It’s so hot, you melt in a puddle, walking from your house to your car. It’s so hot, that we, as Southerners, remember at this time of the year, why we are working so hard to get to heaven. Hopefully, where there is air conditioning. Because we have heard tell the other place does not. And we ain’t in on such as that. Until next time, I will be going, because I should be washing clothes.

I am so proud of these young ladies for teaching at Vacation Bible School this year. They are some pretty good kids!

This sweet lady turned 90 years young yesterday. She has been my neighbor, the one I sit beside at church, & my friend, for a long time. As Miss Neenee would say, she’s our girl. We love her so much!

Two boys & a bucket of water

It’s funny. We know summer comes every year. But when it starts getting scorching hot, ya’ll, we act so shocked. Like,

“Lord have mercy, where in the WORLD did this come from?”

The heat, the humidity is just atrocious. Thank the Lord, I have lived in the south all my life & ya’ll, I will tell you, you never get used to the heat. You just survive it. Just today I talked to a man, that lives in Texas. He said OUR heat was stifling. And he’s from Texas! Is Texas not hot?? And we DID say after all of the cold this winter we would not say a WORD, a WORD, I tell you, when it got hot. But, here we are.

I love the church sign I saw once, in the dead of summer, that simply stated

“You think it’s hot here…..”

What would we do without the temperature showing up in our cars?

Well, that’s true. There is a place that’s going to be hotter than Northeast Mississippi (Yes, we are from the North. And we are o.k. with that.) in June that’s why we do everything we can to avoid it.

Galatians 5 talks about the fruit of the spirit. Not fruits, plural but fruit singular as in meaning one. It means you have to be ALL of it. Not just a part.

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. ²⁴And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. ²⁶Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. (NKJV)

Let’s back up a little & see what we can do to avoid an eternity of “hotter than a $2.00 pistol” surroundings:

Galatians 5:19-21

¹⁹Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery,^[c] fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, ²⁰idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, ²¹envy, murders,^[d] drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (NKJV)

When my all my kids were still at home, I had all of these listed & posted on the front of the refrigerator. Since our most sensitive & highly classified topics came up in the kitchen, of all places, one of them would bring up a situation. It could be from what was being worn to school, to how someone was handling a certain situation, or maybe how someone was acting. I would point to the refrigerator & say ,

“Do you see it on this list?”

With that, they would know the rest of the story. Lots of good conversations came from having that list out where we could see it all the time.

I am so glad you stopped by to visit with me today. Don’t forget this weekend is Father’s Day. If your daddy is still living, make sure to visit or call him. It’s the right thing to do. We will be having Sunday lunch at my house for our Daddys. I will be sure to post some pictures later. Also, see below for my pet peeve of the week. Until then, I have to be going because I should be washing clothes.