Kay in 2011

My 2011 story:

This story actually begins in 2010. That summer I had taken 2 seasonal jobs, one at a farmer's market and the other at a college bookstore. One night at the HOP in August, I felt God speaking to me about what I should do when these temporary jobs ended in October. I felt Him so strongly tell me that I should just work my Mary Kay business for the next two months (Nov-Dec) and then do a worship internship called Night Watch in January at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. I needed about $2000 for the internship and airfare, and I planned it all out how I could save up that much by January.

At the end of October I went to the Voice of the Apostles conference in Baltimore and had the time of my life!! God spoke to me SO much, and while I was there, one of my life-long dreams came true - I've always wanted to go to the Walter Hoving Home, a women's rehab center that had inspired me since I was 12, and volunteer there. I'd sent in my application in 2009, and it had gotten shoved in a file and been forgotten, but they had just rediscovered it and sent me an email, saying they needed a Mary Kay consultant to teach the women about skin care! Wow! What God had told me in August about focusing on Mary Kay was right on! I wouldn't be making money from this, but I had a chance to see firsthand how the kind of girls' home I want to run someday works.

For whatever reason, I wasn't able to save up $2000 by Christmas 2010. I was like, 'God, what are you doing?' But then I found out - Resting Place was starting up its own Night Watch internship in January! Whoa!! What perfect timing. I just didn't know where I would be interning because I didn't know this program was about to start up in my home state.

I took the job at the bookstore again in the beginning of January (I was short on cash), and by the end of the month, I was ready to do the internship here at home full-time.

That whole situation taught me that I could really trust God's voice, that I can hear Him, that He loves me, and that He loves to let me in on His plans for my life.

Now, about a month before I started Night Watch, I met this kid... Jason, I think his name was. Yeah, Jason Roe, that was his name. He started hanging around and coming to our Wednesday sets. But that's another story....

From Night Watch, to dating Jason, to starting J & Kay, to beginning work at a tutoring company called Brainstorm Tutoring, to working full-time at the tutoring center AND holding 10 private clients, to quitting the Center and working J & Kay pretty much full-time, 2011 has been the best year of my life... so far! There have been ups and downs, but the ups have FAR exceeded the downs, and God has been very faithful to me. I will follow Him wherever He directs me, because He has proven time and time again to be the perfect, loving Father who knows what's best for me and cares for me and my life better than I ever could on my own!

You can trust Him with your life, too. Just take it from me :)

- Kay

Listening

Listening is so important to God. He listens to us constantly, and wants us to listen to Him, too.

Tonight, J and I spent some time "soaking." We haven't done that together in a long time. There are a bunch of different things you can do to soak, but what we did tonight was put on some worship music (www.ihop.org/prayerroom/), sat on a couch, and took out our laptops in case we wanted to journal. We mostly sat and rested in God's presence, and listened for God's voice. He spoke to both of us.

Tonight He confirmed to me that He cares less about what we actually do and more about our motivation for doing it, and how it affects our relationship with Him. Sometimes, we feel unsettled about a situation not necessarily for the situation's sake, but because God is trying to get our attention and telling us to listen. There might be nothing wrong, but He just wants to reassure us of that by telling us Himself, because that helps build our trust in Him and teaches us how to hear better. How often do we forget to listen to Him, when He is always speaking to our hearts! He cares more about us and our well-being than we do, yet we absently forget about Him. Even though He's always with us, it's important to take time out of our days and focus our full attention on Him - like J & I did tonight. It's so healthy! It makes me feel whole.

I also realized something else tonight, which I shared with J: Sometimes I get lost in my thoughts and don't know where I went. I'm not an absent-minded person, at all, and I'll know I had been thinking something profound, but it's gone in an instant. I realize now that it's God speaking to my spirit things that I should know, just between me and Him. He goes past my mind and just communicates them to my heart. It's kinda cool! It changes me and makes me a stronger person. If that sounds weird to you, just take it or leave it, I won't be offended ;-)

Keep a listening ear out for God today!

- Kay

By Beholding, We Are Changed

I used to be a bossy, strict, know-it-all. Ask anyone who used to know me! Now I'm gentle and patient and kind... most of the time. What changed?

Spending time with Jesus. How cliche does that sound? But it's true. I started going to Resting Place House of Prayer and a little seed inside of me that God had planted there started to grow. I instantly felt connected to God in a way that I hadn't felt very often before - I won't say never felt before, because there have always been little snapshots of heaven that wove in and out of my life and would appear briefly when I least expected them. But here was a place where heaven met earth; where the supernatural and natural both became apparent simultaneously. This was new to me.

I went to HOP every week I could, mostly just to sit quietly in a back corner on the floor somewhere. Why? Because God was touching my spirit in that place. I don't know what He did or how He did it; I never had to figure it out with my head to make something happen; I never had to feel like I "learned" something for it to be a productive night, because every night I knew I was sitting at Jesus' feet, like Mary of Bethany in Luke 10. It wasn't about "learning" it was about "being." Jesus said "one thing is needful," and my spirit and soul confirmed that this was that One Thing.

This is called “soaking.” It’s just sitting and soaking in a God-filled atmosphere like a little sponge. I’ll probably be using this term in future blogs, so that’s what I mean when I say, “I was soaking yesterday, when…” Lol.

It was this soaking time that changed me. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says:

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

I remember in the sequel to Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian’s wife, Christiana, learned this lesson, and it became a mantra for them: “By beholding, we are changed.” The more we are with someone, the more they rub off on us. The more time we spend with Jesus, the more He rubs off on us. The more we look at Jesus, the more we begin to look like Him.

This is a very powerful lesson. How does this affect us practically? What does it mean to “soak”? I’ll talk about that subject another time.... :)

- Kay

It's All Psychological

What is in our mind can affect what is real, but it doesn't have to.

I was just watching The Twilight Zone with my family. Almost all of the old TV episodes teach awesome moral lessons... but sometimes they also leave you with an edgy, creepy feeling. We were just watching the Twilight Zone movie from the 60s or 70s, and man, the 3rd story is freaky!! I mean, when I think about it, it's totally not; it's about a boy whose every wish comes true. If he wishes to eat ice cream for dinner, he gets his way; if he wishes his sister would shut up, she literally becomes mouthless. Everyone around him is terrified of displeasing him. The main character, a kind young school teacher he befriended, eventually convinces him to let her teach him only to use it for good. Moral of the story? Be careful what you wish for. So true! - let God be God, He's the only one who could ever handle it!

But that's not what's forefront on my mind tonight. I was mostly thinking about the icky, creepy feeling that story gave me; it wasn't the story itself as much as how it was done. Everything from the music to the crooked angle shots to the storyline was trying to make you feel fear.

Let's talk about fear. It can be amusing to scare ourselves - that's the draw of rollercoasters and horror films. But we all have our own limitations. Sometimes we let ourselves go further than we would like to be scared, if we really thought about it. There's being startled, and real terror, and several feelings in between.

Sometimes I feel so afraid when there’s absolutely nothing to be scared of. After I got up from the couch tonight, I didn’t particularly want to be alone in the dark! What made tonight different from any other night? My emotions. My thoughts.

Thoughts can affect our reality. But they don’t have to. My thoughts totally affected how I felt tonight, and made my environment entirely different than they could have been if I had watched an episode of the Flintstones instead. But my thoughts don’t create monsters where there are none… they only seem to. And that makes them, in a sense, “real” to my mind. My psyche – and my body tension – react to these perceptions.

I believe in the supernatural. I believe negative forces can take advantage of my susceptible brain and cause fear in my heart to exponentially increase where, before, I felt none. But I also believe that there are positive forces – angels, and the Holy Spirit – that are way more powerful, and by speaking the TRUTH over my life (see a previous post, Never Fear), speaking the Word of God aloud, especially, the lies will totally lose any power they would otherwise have had over me. My heart is instantly calmed when I really dwell on verses like, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1) and “I will not fear, for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies (I feast and they gaze on powerless!)” from Psalm 23. “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because He trusts in You.” (Isaiah 40 something, I think.)

What do you fear? Are you letting ungrounded fears affect your reality? They don’t need to. Discover the Truth for yourself, and don’t let negative influences or emotions affect your life!

- Kay

Our Job

Being a musician takes a lot of work! J and I always have more on our schedule than we have time to do - or maybe it's because it's the holidays and there are too many distractions - but we are both hard workers and will make it all happen.

It was kind of depressing me tonight... Not many people who look at us think we can be who we see ourselves being - and I think it's because they've forgotten to dream themselves. We are going to be famous for making a difference in people's lives; we are going to be role models cooler and realer than the people you look up to on TV, cooler than the crew in Ocean's Eleven, because we are Real and they are fictional characters. We are going to lead worship for Creation Conference and for the coming revival and write songs to inspire thousands of people, Christian and non-Christian alike. We are going to run a chain of homes and shelters for runaways and prostitutes and raise awareness of the sex slave trade and its evils. We are going to write books - fiction and non-fiction, for children and adults - to proclaim the Good News of the finished work of the Cross. We are going to show the world what it's like to live lives fully committed to following the Holy Spirit's leading and walking in His fruits. We are going to show people how to listen to God's voice.

This is a high calling - an extremely high calling. I don't want to take it lightly. A lot of good people give us a lot of good advice, but we have to decide which directions to go and what constitutes "good" advice and what will side track us from our main goals. We need to understand marketing concepts; we need to look at our long-term goals and short-term goals, constantly re-evaluating our progress, making our deadlines, and creating new daily agendas; we need to be constantly advertising ourselves, who we are and what we do; we need to keep sharpening our skills and being sure we have the best "product" we possibly can; we need to keep writing songs, practicing our instruments, exercising our voices, getting ourselves in the public eye; we need to keep writing inspirational blogs, doing research on many different topics, keeping up with YouTube and podcasts and blogging and the fads within them; and, most importantly, we need to be the best "J" and the best "Kay" we can possibly be. We need to work on our relationship and our communication with each other every day, and on our walk with Jesus.

There's a lot to get done, but a lot more of it is working on who we are; we are, in effect, "selling ourselves" as we let the public into our personal lives.

Following Jesus isn't supposed to be "easy"... but on the other hand, it is, because He carries the load of the stress and tells us simply to follow His leadership. Just do what the Boss says and it will all go perfectly! He is the best Boss we could possibly have - He loves us more than anyone ever could and wants us to succeed more than we do! He has us doing what we love and being who He created us to be every second of every day.

Who could ask for more than that?

- Kay

Dependence

Admitting I need help can be the hardest thing in the world for me. I'm very independent and self-sufficient; I'm usually the one people go to when they need help. But for the past few months, God has been teaching me to let others help me - whether I like it or not! I need to be ok with letting other people serve me, and remember that it makes them feel good when I let them serve me. God has been using J in my life to teach me this, along with several other friends and loved ones.

Another lesson I've been learning from J is that it's very important to take care of myself. "It's like what they say before every flight in an airplane - you need to put on your oxygen mask first and then help those you are with second, or else you might pass out before you can help those who need you!"

I have a tendency to neglect myself and my needs in the name of selflessness, but that isn't right; it's not proving that I'm "tough" or "strong" - it's being careless. I need to take care of myself and "be the best Kay I can be" so that I can fulfill the roles God has made me to fill in the lives of those around me.
Whether it's taking my vitamins, getting enough sleep, or taking time out to think and pray and journal, I need to bring my "A game" to all the situations around me. Being the best "me" I can be is a gift I can give to everyone around me.

Does this sound familiar to any of you? I hope you'll think about how you can really be the best "you" that you can be so you can fulfill the roles God has for you, too!

- Kay

A Christmas Miracle

'Twas the night after Christmas, when J was preparing
For bed at the place where he's watching and caring
for Mishka, a husky, and her friend the cat;
It's a very nice house, I assure you of that!

He called me while getting all ready for bed,
when suddenly realizing something, he said,
that he left all his contact stuff back in his room -
in his house that he won't be at any time soon!

In vain did he look for some saline solution
to moisten the lenses without much dilution,
but all he could find was some old nasal spray,
"Don't use that, I beg you," I started to say,

When then came a memory, smack in my head!
A vision, "The bottle!" I happily said,
"You have what you need in your jeep, look and see,
the cup holder has it, just take it from me!"

-------------------------

On Christmas Eve, I remembered seeing a random travel bottle of contact solution in the cup holder of J's jeep. "That's odd," I thought, "he must've just bought some from the store because he doesn't usually keep it in there." There was a case, too, on the passenger seat, so I threw it into the cup holder next to the bottle.

I totally forgot about it, even as I was helping J think of where to look for contact solution and a case in the place he's house sitting/pet sitting at this week. It wasn't until he mentioned looking for some shot glasses or something to put them in that I remembered - he had what he needed right in his jeep! He had NO CLUE how it got there, hadn't even noticed it at all! He was dubious when I told him to go check in his car, and incredulous when he found it all just as I said!

I went and looked into my purse, and, lo and behold, my contact solution was missing! It must've fallen out of my purse - along with my spare case that I keep there, too - right into the cup holder! I have no clue how they both "just randomly" fell out, and ONLY the two objects that J needed! Now THAT shows me that there are angels watching over us and that God has even the minutest details under control.

It also shows me that J and I make a very good team - I'm good at remembering details and he's good at looking forward to the end goal.

Happy Birthday, Jesus! Thanks for Christmas surprises :)

- Kay