Who Am I?

I know, I know...my blog title is verbose. But it perfectly states who I am--and I too, am verbose.  Exactly how does "Daily and Deliberately with Delight" state who I am?  Thank you for asking! :-)

Daily:  I am a God-follower.  I am not only a born again believer in Jesus Christ, though that certainly was the beginning of my journey.  That was just step one.  For years I stayed as a born again believer, and that was great.  It was just enough to get me to Heaven and be able to spend an eternity with Him.  A much more pleasant place than the alternative.  But that was not my motivation in becoming a child of God.  Not to escape hell. And not to earn a spot in heaven, though that is a lovely side benefit.  No, my motivation in following God is I am in awe of WHO HE IS.  I'm crazy about Him. Head over heels in love with my Savior! I realized one day that my walk with God didn't match up with my talk about God and that was not a pretty thing to face.  So I started on a journey of finding out what it means to follow Him daily.  In my opinion, that means my Monday-Saturdays should look remarkably similar to my Sundays. It means I make time each day with Him and look for opportunities to serve Him. And that gets me to...

Deliberately:  Loving God, serving Him, walking with Him on a daily basis does not happen naturally for me.  So I have found myself over the years enamored with words like "deliberate" and "intentional", because I long to live every aspect of my life in this way, and especially my spiritual journey.  I want to be deliberate in the time I spend with my kids, with my husband, with my friends. I want to be deliberate in the way I home school, in the activities I choose to participate in, in the way I serve others.  I want to be intentional about my schedules, my grocery shopping, my homemaking.  You get the picture.  I don't want to wake up near the end of my life, or even at the end of a week, and realize life "happened" to me and I let it slip by without deliberation on how I lived it.  I want to live every moment that I possibly can deliberately for God.  When I accepted Christ as my Savior, He left me on this earth for a reason-to glorify Him with my life.  The BSU I attended at Mississippi State said it the most succinctly I've ever heard: "To know Him and make Him known".

With delight: How does that fit in? I. love. to. laugh.  I laugh alot.  God has blessed me with four kids that laugh alot, and that I can laugh AT alot. ;-)  I think I have a God-given ability to find humor in things that might seem mundane to another observer.  So...if you were to observe me in my home, I might be chuckling about something I heard my kids say, something I (or they) did that was goofy, or just some way that I have inwardly tickled my own funny bone.  It's kind of hard to explain, but I don't think I could describe myself without somehow including laughter.

Before I go on, I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm doing all of this well.  If that's what you thought I was saying, forgive me for misrepresenting myself.  I am a woman on a journey to BECOME more Christ-like, but the road is narrow and actually pretty bumpy and often times I find myself on some crazy detour that I never meant to take.  That's where grace comes in--God forgives me, I forgive myself, and I start fresh day after day.  Some days I get it much better than others. Some days I want to throw the covers back over my head and yell "DO OVER" before 9 a.m.  Most of the time, I'm somewhere in-between.

Okay, so I've put off creating a blog for years because what in the world do I have to say that someone else hasn't already said? I mean, there is nothing new under the sun, right? After years of debating with myself over this same question, I've come to the conclusion that I LONG to write, I have a NEED to write,  and I'm tired of trying to make my Facebook status updates into a blog.  I'm not trying to pretend like I have all the answers, but I do have lots of questions.  Authenticity is incredibly important to me--if you read my blog you will read about the good, the bad, and the ugly.  My hope and prayer is that what you will find on here is a woman who is on a journey toward the God I absolutely adore and seek desperately to serve.  I am also pretty regular about falling short and seeking and receiving His forgiveness.  And then, with God's mercy that is fresh every morning (Lam. 3:22-23), starting over again with a clean slate.

D,D, &D,
Lori