Jesus died for us over burnt biscuits… and other stupid stuff.

BB’s, WHAT is our problem? What is our major malfunction?  We are such dumb dumbs.  Had a little discussion and realization about this today. My little girl has been lying this week. Nothing major. And you KNOW this BB had busted her on every single thing. She was testing the waters. And I let her.  

I tried not to scold too much. I didn’t call her out and embarrass her even when she said lied to my face over stupid stuff. (Y'all, like spraying perfume.  HELLO, I have a nose for crying out loud). Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to!  I wanted to jump all over her like a rabid spider monkey. But I chose to wait it out.  

You might think I was being lenient, but I pretty much gave birth to myself. I pay for it daily. I look in a 4 foot tall mirror and see all my mess ups. I try to learn about myself, but that’s part of me too. I have to mess up a few times to get through to this stubborn brain of mine. I knew eventually it would happen… the mess up that led to tears and repentance. No point pushing it until she was ready. I knew she would finally "burn the biscuits"…or something like that.

One thing we all know is that where there is smoke there is fire… and biscuits in the microwave for 2 minutes will lead to enough smoke to fill a tiny house quickly. And fanning the door will not help… so I hear, because surely my smart child wouldn’t think it would help with that much smoke. And I KNOW my smart child wouldn’t think throwing a burning biscuit in the trash would cover her tracks. And I’m SURE this mom, that knew this was coming, wouldn’t roll her eyes so far back in her head that my body thought I did a back flip.

After a deep breath, so that I wouldn’t ship my child to Timbuktu in disbelief that we had a whole week… spring break mind you… of stupid nonsense, we talked. And I prayed God would allow me to treat and see her as He sees her… and as He sees me.  Cause at the moment all I saw was a bratty child that had made a week at home borderline unbearable. And we cried. You know why BB’s??  It’s almost Easter and she burned the biscuits. 

Stay with me a second…

The Lord and Savior of the Universe was lied to by his friends. They tried to sneak things past Him. They didn’t trust Him. They questioned Him. They were jealous of His affection for others. They questioned why He slept when they thought He should be moving and why He traveled when He should have been sleeping and why He ate when they thought He should have been fasting and why and why and why…  They get on my nerves. And then it makes ME get on my nerves. We try to hide burnt biscuits from our God!! Have we LOST our brains???

Our Healer

Our Provider

Our Counselor

Our Creator

Our Deliverer

OUR SAVIOR!!

In three weeks, we are going to spend a day praising God for raising Jesus from the dead. But BB’s, we need to spend time daily realizing something…

Jesus, Son of God and our Savior was

Tortured

Beaten

Mocked

Bruised

Battered

Humiliated

Crucified

He suffered unbelievable torture and a long, painful death

Over your and my burnt biscuits.

For God so loved the world (that’s you and me peeps!!), that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.  John 3:16

Just like my baby girl couldn’t hide a burning ball of yeast from me, I can’t hide from my Lord and Savior!!! I pray that over the next few weeks that you’ll soak that in. It sounds trite, but it’s not. Jesus was slayed like an animal over our stupid things. For us! So that we can be forgiven and live eternally with Him… IF you are Christian.  And IF you confess and make that realization of GRACE.  

By grace (something given to you that you didn’t deserve), you are saved.  If you aren’t a Christian or maybe you think you are, but aren’t sure, will you message us and let us pray for you?  We aren’t pastors or ministers or whatevs, but we know plenty.  We’d love to help you. 

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  Ephesians 2:8-9

Eat, Drink, and be Merry??

Eat, Drink, and be Merry...

Ok BB's...get your press pause buttons out and SMACK them! What up BB's!? It’s your blonde BB here and I am going way off the path with a subject God literally smacked me with last night. Ever have those moments where you wake up thinking about something and cant get back to bed cause you just cant get it outta your head? Yeppers. That’s a God Bubble. Think Bit Strip Bubble Thoughts...that’s my God!

So here we go- many of you know that I am a fitness trainer. I work with people everyday on changing their bodies and working towards their goal. We sweat, we work, we giggle, and for a few moments we get to talk. And throughout those talks I am consistently reminded that we ALL have a story.

Something that makes us who we are.

            Something that drives us to better ourselves.

Something that may cripple us.

Something that we may be coping with.

 And that’s what I want to talk about today..coping. We have all heard that peppy little phrase "Eat, Drink, and be Merry", right? I want to share with you a little about my not so merriment. If I were a betting woman, I'd bet there are a lot of you out there who share in my story.
 
Short of the long of it, I have daddy issues. I grew up hearing, and eventually believing in my utter lack of self worth. I do not know the gentle hand of a Father, at least an earthly one. I know what a belt looks and feels like. I wont go into the details, but that nasty little whisper of "you aren’t good enough" and the scars on my body have derailed me my entire life and manipulated me into making some really bad choices. In my early twenties I completely blocked out my childhood. Because it was too difficult to deal with, I completely blocked out all that abuse and (Say this in your best super hero voice)… I took control! Well so I thought.  Like all things we bury without actually allowing Christ to put an end to, they eventually rise up again in our thoughts and slowly draw us away from our Creator and his wonderful love.
 
I began to cope by attempting to take control...there were so many things I could NOT control in my life but the one thing I could was FOOD....hence, EAT…or for me, don’t! I began to limit what I consumed to a point where I became sick. On the other hand I also coped when the memories were just too hurtful by escaping and LOSING control, hence DRINK. On a Saturday night I would drown my sorrows to forget the hurt and just...fall...asleep.

Wanna know how MERRY that got me?

My hair started to fall out

My body started to revolt and I had to have my gallbladder removed

Nightmares

Divorce

Panic attacks

Fear

Sorrow

Depression

Well that’s a big ole list of pretty right?!! Here's the point bb's: We ALL have a story. And I am quite certain that we are ALL dealing with something that is not so pretty. Here's the joy and hope I want to share with you:

In Christ, and Christ alone, 

can you find peace from whatever you are dealing with.

John 6:54 begins "Whoever feeds of my flesh and drinks of my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him".

Sounds a bit gross when you first ready it but hear what The Father is saying:

"Be full from my love. Drink in what I have done for you. I went to the cross for you. I took on all you have, are, and ever will be going through because I care for you. So much so that I give you an ABIDING, all encompassing, never ending, never failing, I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU LOVE."

BB's, give it over!  He is big enough to take care of whatever your need is. You, quite simply, are not. We are weak and frail. He is strong and righteous. Eat of His flesh, DRINK IN HIS WORD, POUR it into your souls. Let the great physician fix those hurt places and give up your attempts at coping and controlling. And watch the JOY that springs from you. He has and still is freeing me from those chains...wanna know what Merry looks like to me NOW?!?

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His 

wonderful face...
 

And the things of earth   
will grow

           strangely dim

           In the light of His 

           glory and GRACE.."

   

Be Kind Peeps!

So you’ll never believe what I, the brunettish BB, have been dealing with for the past several months… cyber bullying.  A mild version…So mild, in fact, that I’d like to say it’s not bullying at all.  For months now, I’ve had some other women (in a local group that I’m in) posting pictures, comments, and posts in order to stir my BB emotions.  Every time I’d pull up Facebook, it would happen again… another post or comment or picture purposefully trying to stir up the red in my brunette! 

Now, I must interject that I’m not a narcissist, nor am I so self centered that I thought that every post was meant to hurt me; BUT, we’ve all been there.  It’s so easy on social media sites to say something seemingly benign, but purposefully hurtful.  We can mask the comments with “facebook’s not real” and “that was just a general thought that had NOTHING to do with you.”  Isn’t that convenient?  We write anything…FREE SPEECH…under the guise that it’s “not real” and then blame oversensitivity when we hurt someone.  Does anyone else have a problem with this?? I think that’s what bothers me.  I’m embarrassed for saying that it’s bullying.  I mean, I’m nigh on forty years old!  How in the world could I be bullied on the internet, right??

BB’s, let’s get real!  When a female BB’s estrogen is flowing and we are backed in a corner; we are meaner than a rattlesnake chewing bubble gum.  Boy BB’s… you ain’t no better, so don’t walk away too soon.  It’s so easy to pick away at enemies, post by passive aggressive post, to make yourself feel better.  It is way too easy to hide behind the laptop or super duper smart phone and be unkind in this day and age. 

Even if you aren’t all out being a mean girl (or boy), it can be interpreted as if you are.  Now, I have a secret about which I must come clean.  I love Gossip Girl.  There I said it.  I do.  One thing that is really talked about (quite surprisingly) in one of the last seasons is perception.  (Please insert here my sheer embarrassment about the next few sentences and how much I know about this trashy little show).  The original gossip girl prided herself in being truthful.  Now she was still exposing horrible secrets, but they were fact.  Then someone takes over for her and starts posting untrue gossip.  The original GG takes the site back over because of how askewed perception already is when reading anything on a social media site…much less untrue posts. 

Now this is an extreme tv show, but it’s true in our lives today.  One picture, one comment, one post can be perceived as so much more. It is SO easy to take things out of context and jump to conclusions.  Now we do have to remember that sites like Facebook and Twitter are not giving us a clear glimpse of a person’s life, BUT we also have to remember that we have a responsibility to be KIND!  Boasting or taunting or venting is not OK if you are, even slightly in the back of your BB head doing it to be hurtful or because you are jealous, or because you’ve been hurt. 

It can be even more benign.  Single woman posts a comment on a married man’s picture.  They are church friends…the woman, the man, the man’s wife.  No biggie right?  What does the wife think when single girl posts that the guy looks “amazing” in his new profile picture?  What if the couple were already having problems?  Now one argument is that the girl would have no idea, so no responsibility right?  I say wrong.  We don’t ever want to be a stumbling block.  We have to think before we post.  Are we on a path that might hurt… even innocently?  Are we posting that picture because it was a great day and that’s it?  Or are we bragging about the event, the people with whom we were with, etc.?

You KNOW that Satan just LOVES social media.  Not only can it stir up all kinds of mischief through messaging and what people perceive from posts, but also the time it takes away from the One with whom we should be conversing.  I am…write this second…committing to thinking about others when posting on Facebook and Twitter.  Am I being kind?  Am I posting with even the SLIGHTEST motive other than being kind?  And most importantly, am I spending more time on posting or reading posts than I am in the Word of God?  I saw this post the other day and its author gave me permission to share.  I’ve never met her, but she may be our new BBF.

Facebook post by Cheri Brorson

I'm a christian.
I mean, I love Jesus. I try to follow His commands.

I'm conservative.

I own a .40 and will use it.

I believe the bible...
all of it...
even the maps.

I like to cook and bake and to take pictures of it...
and I am not above a selfie.

I love the ocean.
and summer.
and salty air.
and jimmy buffett.

I run.
and walk.
and try to be better.

I've been fat...
and I've been thinner than I am now...

I'm snarky...
and sarcastic...
and have used my words
for good
and
bad.

I've been divorced
and disappointed...
and felt like a failure.

I've made birthdays a national holiday...or tried.

I've been that woman...in Target...leaning in and whispering ... just.you.wait.till.we.get.home....
and the mom that is daily amazed by these kids that call her mom ...

I've fallen and failed and entertained thoughts
most unbecoming....

I've spoken too soon...
said too much...
pushed boundaries. ...

I am the model of a perfect mess...

but yall, really, Facebook has made it ok to be unkind...
even if I disagree with you...about....everything... there is still
still
STILL
the ability to be kind.

BB’s help me in this.  I’ve been hurt.  I’m not embarrassed to admit it anymore.  I don’t want to retaliate; I want to be a better person in all this.  I didn’t write this to even speak to those women.  They aren’t my Facebook friends and will probably never see this blog.  I want to be kind and that dang sneaky snake tempter wants me to be mean. WE are the start of this.  Imagine what our teens are going through??  WE are the ones that can teach our children to communicate when they have issues instead of hurting each other in a passive aggressive social media post.  Share this blog and show that you are committing to being kind with me.  Commit to spending 5 minutes to every one minute on Facebook.  Call me out if I fail!  Pretty sure we could rock the BB world if we got behind the wheel of this sinking ship!!!

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Col 3:12-14 ESV

 

XOXO,
Anna

Matching Scars

Matching Scars

Well it’s been a while, BB’s.  Brunettish BB has had a hard few months.  I had girlie issues “down there” and had to have the ole uterus (AKA “Stella”) taken right on out.  I was pretty miserable.  And I’ll be honest… cause that what we BB’s do… I was mad at God a little.  Yeppers.  This girl of total blind faith was a little... or a lot (since we are being honest) peeved.  I wanted him to step in and save the day… relieve the pain and make me better.  That wasn’t His plan and in the moment of pain and discomfort and missing out on the world, this BB got mad.  And of course felt guilty because of it.  Can I get an “Amen” if you’ve ever been there??

It wasn’t until a day that a friend sent a video of Martin Luther King, Jr., that my heart changed.  I ignored it all day long.  I didn’t want to hear it (although I did ask God to soften my heart).  Finally I listened.  Funny enough, what my friend heard and thought I’d take to heart was not what God planned.  Sometimes God tells us to do stuff and we think we know why, but God has a WHOLE different plan.  Story of my life.  One line, out of the twenty-minute sermon, stuck out…  “Though you slay me, I will hope (trust) in you.”  This wasn’t the first time I heard this verse from Job, and this is exactly why it stuck out.

My blonde BB had introduced this phrase from Job to me in a song… quite randomly.  It is a wonderful song, but I struggled with saying, “though you slay me,” when talking to God.  I thought my God was a kind, loving God that wouldn’t hurt me.  I thought my God wouldn’t put me in the floor of the bathroom in pain.  I thought my God wouldn’t make me feel depressed and anxious.  I thought my God wouldn’t take my momma away far too soon.  I thought my God wouldn’t slay me.  This BB was as confused as a snow monkey in the rainforest.   

Then ole Junior lays it out there with conviction and eloquence.  WOW, what a speaker.  “Though you slay me” isn’t an accusation… It’s a declaration!  It’s giving God total control.  It is saying that “Hey God, you created this BB, do with me what you will!!  I know you didn’t say you’d not tempt or harm me beyond what I can bear; you said you WILL provide a way out when tempted!!  And You never said this world would be a sweet little charming place full of fairy wings and tutus even though Your beloved BB's would try to make it that way.  You said we were not made for this world!" 

HOLLA-LUJAH BBs!!!

It is a declaration that 

NO.  MATTER. WHAT.

I will praise and trust and hope in Him.

He deserves it, doesn’t he?  He created us.  He died for us!  I look down at the scars from the hysterectomy… yes, this BB is more concerned about the scars on my belly than being able to have more babies.  I’m too old for that mess….babies, that is.  The scars weren’t an issue, cosmetically speaking, but it reminded me of the horrible months I had in pain and isolation.  Funny enough, my blonde BB has the SAME scars… from a gall bladder “evacuation”.  That made it better.  But still, every time I looked down (especially as they healed), I cringed. 

Then I thought, “ya know BB (talking to myself of course), I bet Jesus sees me doing that and looks at His hands and feet and thinks about the holes that had been there.  I bet He thinks about his back striped with scars, and the punctures in His brow and the pain His momma and friends felt as they saw what He went through.  I bet He weeps.  Not in regret, mind you, in remembrance.  I’m betting He would never tell us to 'do this in remembrance' without remembering Himself.  He weeps for me when I’m at my lowest.”

I didn’t go through what He went through, but many of us have physically.  Can you fathom how special we are?  At our lowest low… Jesus went through pain and agony and heartache, so we could live forever with Him.  I looked once more at my scars, and heard a voice, “I never have forsaken you.”  BBs, when I thought my God wouldn’t put me in the floor of the bathroom in pain, HE didn't forsake me.   When I thought my God wouldn’t make me feel depressed and anxious, He DID NOT forsake me.   When I thought my God wouldn’t take my momma away, He didn't forsake ME!

BB’s, know this today…

He is our

Creator,

Provider,

Healer,

Father.

He has never, ever forsaken us.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, BB's!

Though he slay me, I will hope in him.  Job 13:15

XOXO!!
Anna (with Jenny in spirit)

Picture Perfekt

Picture Perfekt 

So hang in there peeps.  Both BBs are writing this one.  Sometimes together and sometimes we are just throwing in our two cents!  We’ll put (J) and (A) as we start throwing in our thoughts.  Just bear with us.  Our brains are quite a hot mess, but we love being transparent and honest with the BB Army.

(J/A) So I’m sure after the weekend, we are ready for the week! Our hearts have been lit up from the wonderfulness of the weekend and then… enter screeching halt… MONDAY comes and reality sets in… and it only goes down hill for there.

Remember those truths we talked about in Picture Perfect? How quickly has the world stolen our attention from them?

The tempter is one sneaky pete. He will do what ever it takes to make sure you forget these promises ASAP. He will use time, work, family, friends, and all sorts of things to cloud your mind so those promises we talked about are just a cloudy memory.

(J) So come close: Ill let you in on one of my secrets...Wanna know his favorite way to cloud this blonde BB's mind? Worry. Guilt. Shame. Anxiety. A voice from the past that says "You.are.nothing. No one loves you."

 

(A) Now this is brunettish BB, so you’ll have to come even clooooooser for my secret of how that sneaky snake messes with my BB brain.  Anxiety.  Illogical panic that reached my core and haunts me about things that happened in my past.

(J/A) Not everyday of course, but there are days he hits us pretty hard. Yep, that’s our thorn BB's. If you know us, you are asking yourself right now WHAT??!!??? Because most of the time you see us smiling and giggling about something or usually nothing. HAPPY.

(A) Let’s be clear, though, it’s not fake smiles or laughter or joy.  (J) It’s not a picture of what we WANT the world to see peeps, its a picture of what CHRIST has done with our brokenness...He has given us a NEW life as a NEW creation and by grace, it just makes us plain JOYFUL.

(A) Now stop and let that truth sink in.  He has given YOU new heart, a new life, and had made YOU a new creation by grace.  He chose to live in YOU! LIVE in you BB.  He is that close all the time if you have accepted Him into your heart!

(J) We will go into our testimonies in the near future, but for now just press pause and know that when He says "I will turn your sorrow into JOY" He means it...and He surely meant it in this little life. I LOVE my brokenness...It makes me LIVING PROOF of His love for me...

(A) It is LIVING PROOF of His grace!! And that, again, we are not made for this world!!  God sees the bigger picture!

(J) So for now lets stick with this: take a moment and make a mental picture of yourself. Your first images are probably like mine...what the WORLD will tell you.

Now read those sweet verses from earlier and add THIS most powerful truth:

"I am fearfully and wonderfully made". Psalm 139:14

An original.

Uniquely made and uniquely loved.

Bought at a price by a PICTURE PERFECT Savior because we could never be.

Whatever road you are on, whatever storm you are in, or whatever mountain you have been raised up on remember:

Jeremiah 29:11 "I have PLANS for you declares The Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a HOPE and a FUTURE."

(A) Now this BB has an issue with the word “perfect”.  A dear friend change the spelling for me, and the grace of God poured over my soul.  I know the spelling shouldn’t matter, but it just took the weight off of having to be perfect… the perfect mom, the perfect employer, the perfect worshiper, the perfect friend, the perfect daughter.  Now when we talk, we spell it “perfekt”.  Isn’t that true though?  God sees us as perfekt.  He sees our flaws, our doubts, our weaknesses and loves us anyway.  He takes that thorn and makes us boast all the more joyfully through our brokenness! Our light shines even brighter in the dark of night!

(J) Doesn't matter what picture the world has of you, or what picture you have of yourself. You have a KING that loves you dearly, uniquely made you for a PURPOSE, gave His very LIFE for you to set you FREE!

(J/A) So take another picture BB's...A perfekt and grace-filled picture of HOPE IN CHRIST. It’s there for you...Just snap the pic :)

Wanna know how to find this hope in Christ? We are ALWAYS here for you! Send us a Facebook message and let us start praying for you now! 

XOXO,

Jenny and Anna

Picture Perfect

PICTURE PERFECT

After taking this picture, Josephine said, "You and Jenny are starting to LOOK like each other!"  This sweet little quote from la petite bb Josephine, after taking yet ANOTHER picture of BB1 and BB2, got our BB brains thinking...

We ARE kinda starting to look like each other! We joke regularly about our fun little language that we have formed, how we now finish each others sentences, how we have non-verbal codes for all sorts of things (enter BLINK BLINK), even how we are ever so slightly stepping out of our proverbial boxes. Anna is ROCKING out dresses with boots and I am TOTALLY into the convenience and cuteness of hats and piggy tails....

This is where we first noticed it…

See… Kinda hard to see who is who…  We honestly confused ourselves in this one!

You see it all the time: spouses that sort of "look" like each other, friends that we lovingly call "Twins" or "Twinkies" as we BB's say it. Heck, some of us BB's are so close our flipping HORMONES like to hang out once a month!

We have, unbeknownst to us, become so close from transparently spending time with each other, that we have LITERALLY taken on certain characteristics and personality traits of one another. A sort of merging or TRANSFORMATION of who we are and what we, not only on the outside look like, but what our HEARTS look like on the inside. We have shared so many stories, prayed for each other so often, giggled at just life in general in the most inappropriate circumstances, shared so many passions that...well, voila! Beautifully Broken was created!

Brunettish BB would like to interject something here… If I had read this a couple of years ago, I’d be sobbing or vomiting.  I LONGED for a friend.  Don’t get me wrong!  I have some of the most beautiful woman that allow me to run to them whenever I need to, but I longed for a day to day friend.  You’ll hear more about our leap of faith friendship when we share our testimonies.  This friendship… like anything… took TONS of prayer…YEARS of prayer.  Ok blonde BB, carry on…

Anyway, there is something much bigger here we would like to address...lets label this one PICTURE PERFECT...(We SO hope the Michael W. Smith song from the 90’s is running through your head right now).

We always want to look perfect for pictures, right? For some of us we want to look perfect for our spouse, our friends, the world...and for this BB, well, I have learned it takes WAY too much energy for all that jazz. What we SHOULD be doing is NOT focusing on the perfect…cause lets face it: we will NEVER BE...We should be focusing on the ONE who IS… and can make all our mess simply beautiful....

Lets start with that word from earlier: TRANSFORMATION. Here’s what the Bible says about how we should and should not look and how our Savior knows STRAIGHT UP we can’t make it happen, so he gracefully helps us out with these sweet promises straight from his saving lips:

I chose the Message translation for these verses because it really stuck to me:

Galations 5:19-26

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all of the time: repetitive, loveless sex, a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage, frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness, trinket gods, magic show religion, paranoid loneliness, cutthroat competition, all consuming yet never satisfied wants, a brutal temper, an impotence to love or be loved, divided homes and divided lives, small minded and lopsided pursuit, the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival, uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions, ugly parodies of community...

Yikes...that’s not good stuff huh? How many of these do I see in my OWN life…

But now go on to verse 22:

THIS is the kind of life we thirst for!

But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard: things like affection for others, exuberance about life, SERENITY. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion IN THE HEART, a conviction that a basic holiness PERMEATES things and people. We find ourselves involved in LOYAL commitments, not needing for force our way in life, and able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Don't miss this peeps: the translation for verse 26 via the Message says this:

Each of us is an ORIGINAL

Then Scripture goes on to say (because He KNEW we were gonna be a hot mess):

2 Cor 5:17  

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a NEW creation (holla!!) The old has passed away, behold the new has come!

Galations 2:20 

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live  by the faith of the Son of God, who LOVED me and gave His LIFE for me.

Did you get that!!? Did you hear those words? Yep, he knew we would never be picture perfect. He knew we would try, and we would fail…He also made us for a purpose, because we are all ORIGINALS, not a photo copy of someone the tempter says we are supposed to be. And thank GOD He loves us so much He gave HIS PERFECT LIFE FOR US!!!

So BB's don't miss this precious truth:

We ARE a new creation in Christ!

The past is GONE!

We have HOPE in Him!

Hope that TRUMPS shame, guilt, and sin!

We have a helper that is CHANGING us

Little by Little

Mistake by Mistake

Struggle by Struggle,

Burden by Burden,

and Blessing by Blessing...

How beautiful are these promises? Does your heart SING when you read these words! These promises make us picture perfect to Him, so we can SHINE to those around us!!

 XOXO,

Jen

Mini-Blog: Everyone has lost their brains

August 26th, 2013

Have you ever been standing there and realized everyone you knew had lost their brains?  That solitary moment where you think perhaps its a full moon or invasion of the body snatchers, because everyone has LOST THEIR BRAINS??  One of the hardest parts of being a BB is this very moment.  The moment when I'm literally talking out loud to imaginary people saying, "I have NO idea why you did this.  You have fo sho lost it!  What you did didn't make sense and the entire world...every single person... has lost. their. last. braincell."  Then I realize perhaps I'm losing my last braincell because I'm talking to peeps that aren't there with terrible grammar and made up BB words.

I'm a black and white kind of girl and when my world gets inundated with grey I go spider monkey crazy.  We all mess up...over and over and over.  Some of us are more prone to find the more pungent things in which to step than other BBs.  We are all BBs, none the less.  Then someone yells, "you have lost your brain!"  And the hard part begins... the forgiving part.  Forgiving for a BB is spiritual.  It is ALL God.  Our broken bodies and broken minds and broken hearts couldn't do it alone.  And then the other side of the coin is turning away from the sin that caused the other BB to LOSE.  HER.  BRAIN!  Then there's the forgetting.  I think that's the hardest, because sometimes our feeble minds want a reminder that can serve as a red flag in the future.  It's tough!  Being broken is hard.

God commands us to forgive BBs.  His character is the ultimate example of forgiveness.

He tells us to forgive each other...  Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.  Ephesians 4:32.

How much?  Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.  Matthew 18:21-22

Pretty sure God has forgiven us more than seventy times seven times a million and two.  He loved us SO much that he promised this...  As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.  Psalm 103:12 

And this!  Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.  Isaiah 1:18

And how did he do it?  We all need to go back and remember OR learn that through his grace we were saved!  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  John 3:16-17

Remember that you were forgiven by our Father and Lord and Creator and Healer and Provider.  In His image... therefore our hearts must forgive.  Let the words of this song be your prayer today.  And remember the undeserved forgiveness you were given.  GRACE!  And if you want to talk more about forgiveness, please send us a Facebook message!  We'll chat with you or meet with you.  We love you and so does our great, big, loving, and forgiving God.

Oh the Blood of Jesus

by Kari Jobe

O the blood
Crimson love
Price of life's demand
Shameful sin
Placed on Him
The Hope of every man  

O the blood of Jesus washes me
O the blood of Jesus shed for me
What a sacrifice that saved my life
Yes, the blood, it is my victory
 

Savior Son
Holy One
Slain so I can live
See the Lamb
The great I Am
Who takes away my sin
O what love
No greater love
Grace, how can it be  
That in my sin
Yes, even then
He shed His blood for me

XOXO,
Jenny and Anna