ENJOY.

Ok.  So, this song may not fit your music style.  But listen to the words.  It's pretty powerful.  Well...at least I think so.  :)  Enjoy!

A GLIMPSE.

Recently, I had to confront someone really high up at my organization about his attitude and actions toward me.  He has deeply hurt my feelings and impacted my relationship with God.  It took me three weeks to come up with the final email draft to send him.  As I've been praying and contemplating on what to write the last couple of weeks, I caught just a little glimpse of the people that my organization helps.  Lately, we've been hearing stories from the field about Christians being accused of blasphemy and quickly sentenced without a chance to speak their side of the story.  Although, I don't think my situation is anywhere close to the persecution of these people, it struck me how even free Christians are suppressed to speak up at times.  We either sweep it under the rug or with our best intention, pray and try to forgive others.  Yes, that's what we are called to do, but at the same time, if the other party hurts you and are truly in the wrong, whether they are a leader or not, there is an accountability and responsibility on our part to confront them in love.

I am tired of leaders getting away with things because they "think" they hold all the power.  In reality, God does.  Trust me, I've gone back and forth about confronting this man because of fear of being fired and other things that may be stirred up.  I wanted to just put things aside and go on with life, but I couldn't just let it go.  If I work for an organization that preaches to speak up for those who cannot, and I'm sitting in my cubicle not speaking up when I can, I would be a hypocrite.  As one Christian to another, we should all feel the freedom to talk through things.  

Please know that this step to move forward wasn't an easy one.  I've talked to God over and over about this, but in order to restore the relationship and trust, I had to say something.  I would not want this to happen to anyone else in the office.  It would not be fair or right for me to sit back and let it happen again.  The problem needed to be addressed and fixed, so I did it.  At the end, God is in control and I've done my part.  Now I can only trust the He will take care of the rest.  

CHANGES.

For awhile now, I've been feeling a huge tug on my heart to change the way I live.  The "tug" wouldn't go away until I did something about it.  It was like having an annoying song played over and over in your head and until you hear another song, it won't go away.  I felt like that with the "tug." I needed to just make the change right then instead of trying to rationalize.  

First change:  Two months ago, I started to live on a certain percentage of my paycheck, put a huge percentage into savings and donate the rest.  It is not easy living on a certain amount, but it has been the most freeing feeling ever!  Also, the money that I've put away came in handy after some unexpected events happened and I needed the money to pay for it.  If I didn't store that chunk of money away, I wouldn't have had the means to pay!  

Second change:  After weeks of feeling nauseous whenever I log on to Facebook, I finally deactivated my account.  And so far, I don't even miss it and once again, I feel FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!  

Next:  Changing my phone number.