Greetings!
This month, we're taking a closer look at our topic: New Beginnings Part of growing, means starting with basics like risk. When we risk things, we step out of our comfort zone. You've never been here before..you're never done this before. You're stretching, you're growing....it's a new beginning. About 3 weeks ago, I was getting ready to go out to my gazebo and pray. As Ben, my dog, raced out in front of me, he began to bark furiously. I couldn't figure out what in the world was wrong with him. Then I stopped and looked...I looked closely. There on the bushes in the grove were literally a hundred or more monarch butterflies. They had their wings closed and so they blended into the foliage. As Ben began to spin and dance around, barking profusely, I watched the butterflies take to flight. Beautiful swirling and spinning colors of blacks and oranges flew by my head, and I began to spin and dance as well. Ben barked. I laughed. I felt a freedom in my spirit that allowed me to set my mind at ease and cry out to God...because of You...I'm free. I have a new beginning. Farmer Dean explained that the monarchs were ready to migrate for the winter...they just happened to stop at Kathy's for a short break. Praise God! About 5 days later, as I headed into church, I saw my 10 year old friend, Danielle. She was wishing me God's blessings as I set a course to fly out of the Land of Worship...into the great unknown...the Land of Women's Ministries. She handed me a beautiful plastic jug with a caterpillar, and then something I'd never seen before, a twig with a chrysalis connected. One of our Best Life staff, Kandy, is a science teacher, and she explained to me that butterflies have a chrysalis, and that moths have cocoons. I have been watching each and everyday, expectantly waiting for the beautiful black swallow tail to emerge. Kandy told me something very interesting: You cannot help the butterfly. It has to do the work itself. Those words stuck in my brain. The butterfly will work its way out of this dark, grey hard crusty shell. It will stretch its sticky wings and prepare for a flight. It will be his flight. The flight of his life. He will have a new beginning.  | | Isaiah 55:9 For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.. |
Risk taking isn't always easy. Finding the motivation to get to where you want to go, isn't always easy. But asking God for your hopes and dreams to become realities, is just a prayer away. And how you work with God to get there, is the exciting part of the journey. Only YOU can do it. This past month marked the first month of my new career as Founder and Executive Director of Best Life Ministries. I have loved and lived in WorshipLand for over 20 years, but God has called me out to fly to another place in this journey called life. There are days that I feel confident, and days when I wish I knew what I was doing. But the days where I see God's pleasure...those keep me going. Let me encourage you today to take the following steps and break out of your cocoon. Cocoons are a nice place to grow up in, they're safe....but you can't stay in them...or you don't become the beautiful creature God wants you to become. Here are my step suggestions: -
Discover what's in the doors and closets of your heart and bring those desires out to the light. Seek God if this is His will in your life's journey. -
Write them down in a journal. -
Pray, meditate and seek God for how He's going to accomplish this in your life. -
Make tangible steps to attain those dreams.
What I realized is that God has given us hopes and dreams to fit with our personality. What we do with these, how we set out to reach these dreams, is up to us and God. But we have to know that He wants the very best for us, and His plans and ways are higher than ours. For what He will do in your life and in mine, I praise Him today, again and again. In the words of our team member, Kathleen, "Spread your wings...you beautiful things!" the trip....LIFE IS SHORT.....GET DREAMiNG!! | 
