Today was one of those days where I sensed God’s blessing more than ever. In big ways and small, I felt His presence in my day.

• Last night during praise and worship at our leader meeting at The City Church, I asked God for a healing breakthrough in many areas of my body. I’ve had issues with my neck, back, and knees. Today my neck is feeling really good! Thanks God!

• Last week I began a healthy eating plan after meeting with a dietician. I started out with a detoxification program to clear out the unhealthy toxins that are likely causing my joint pain because of inflammation. Guess what! For the first time my joints didn’t feel achy when I rolled out of bed today. My physical therapy appointment felt so good. Glory Hallelujah!

• I started a Wii Fit program tonight. That little guy on the program had a few words with me since I haven’t been on the Wii in a long time. I knew I had gained weight and he reminded me of just how many pounds since he kept track from my last workout. Man! He didn’t give me a break at all. But after a half-hour of working out, I felt great. I’m on the road to recovery. Yes, Lord!

• I had a surprise package in the mail from my sister Marilyn. She sent me a beautiful HOPE ornament. Just because. I love it! Love my family!

• The final typeset of Gabe’s book came to my inbox today. I read through the changes and everything looks great. It is FINISHED! Let the fun begin!

• A picture book I created about Gabe was delivered today. This is filled with photos and will be for the younger reader. It is titled “Growing Up Gabe –Touching Lives with My Three-Inch Arms.” More ways to share our story!

• We redesigned our Gabriel’s Foundation of HOPE brochure and that was in my inbox too. Things are moving along for our nonprofit organization and I sense a new momentum shifting. I am grateful God!

• Lights, Camera, Action! When I came home from work today, Gabe was being interviewed on camera for our book trailer. He also worked on his promotional speaking video. It warmed my heart to watch him go through the takes and share his desire to change lives. Can’t wait to see the video!

• I think the most important kiss on the cheek from God today was an email Gabe received from a young girl he spoke to last week. Her story breaks my heart. But I have HOPE in Christ that He will make a way for this young girl and her family. And I just know Gabriel’s Foundation of HOPE will have something to do with it. Dear Jesus, help us help her. She needs our care.

Holy Momentum.

Pastor Judah talked about it last night. I feel it with all of my heart. God is faithful.

He loves you. He wants to bless you too. So tonight I pray He will show His glory.

God Bless your heart with Holy Momentum!

Gigi

I hope you are faring well and are staying warm.

In spite of the epic storm that hit the Seattle region this week, I stayed warm and comfy.

I hope you did too.

Snow in Seattle January 2012

My job allows me to work from home so I didn’t skip a beat.

While house bound, I was also able to take care of some final work on Gabe’s book.

I am happy to say it is finished! And I hope that is the final word.

Last night I uploaded a few minor changes to my publisher’s website.

The next step is to agree on the back cover. Then it is off to the printer!

YES and AMEN!

During the week, I also had plenty of time to format the e-book and upload it to Kindle and NOOK.

E-Book Cover!

It wasn’t as difficult as I thought. I learned a lot and I’ll share what I learned in a future blog. I sent the ebook to a couple of reviewers and so far everything looks good.

I get so nervous when I picture you reading Gabe’s book. It tells a wonderful story of courage and hope but it was an emotional process to tell it all.

I want you to fall in love with Gabe. He is one incredible young man! I cry every time I read it.

We really appreciate your patience and support in this long process of getting the book published.

I guess when the authors share the entire journey, the readers get a better feel for how long it really takes to get a book from the idea to print.

For me and Gabe, this has been almost a six year process!

So you understand I’m like a pregnant mom just weeks from her due date, anxiously waiting to see her baby.

It is hard to wait and wonder, isn’t it?

I don’t know what you are waiting for.

But I want to encourage you that God sees you while you wait. He knows the desires of your heart.

Just like we waited for snow plows this week to move the deep snow out of our path, God is moving obstacles to make your way clear.

He knows the perfect time to say, “It’s time to move forward.”

I pray for peace and patience in the process.

God Bless Your waiting heart. Please tell me what you are waiting for so I can pray for you.

Gigi

PS – When I get the go-ahead from the publisher I want you to be the first to know. So I set up an email list for people who want to hear it from me first. If you’d like to receive an email when the book is released, please sign up below by entering your email address.

Join Our Email List Email:

I shared about TRUST from one of my favorite verses in Proverbs 3:5-6.

Have you ever ignored the voice on your GPS system, only to find yourself at a dead end when you went your own way?

GPS Directions

This happened to us when we were trying to find a restaurant while on a trip to Disneyland a few years ago.

“Maggie”, the nickname we gave our GPS system, knew that the road ended about a mile down the road and started up a few blocks later. The illogical turn she recommended was actually necessary to get around the dead end.

After we hit the dead end, our attempt to find the restaurant on our own caused much frustration and made us later for the dinner.

Sometimes we don’t listen to God’s direction either, and end up wasting time and energy on the wrong road.

At the NCWA meeting, I shared my story of how my publishing goals changed once I stopped working on my own plan and sought God for His plan.

I had just completed a Writer’s Digest University critique review of 35,000 words of my Hope in the Aftermath memoir. One day I was praying about the next step for my book and I strongly felt I needed to put this book on hold.

I strongly sensed that my story wasn’t finished yet and it was not time to tell it.

What? But Lord, I’ve just completed this 35,000 word review! I worked so hard on rewriting what the editor suggested. It’s a story that brings You glory! What do you mean it’s not time?

After much prayer and counsel, I exited the road to publishing that book and went a different route.

Remember that when it comes to direction, there is one “GPS” that is most accurate. For me, GPS now means God’s Plan Succeeds.

The book I wrote with my son is now in the final typeset review at our publisher. It was loaded up to Amazon’s Kindle for review the other night. Tonight I’ll get it loaded on Barnes and Noble’s Nook.

Once the book is reviewed we’ll make it available for purchase.

Trust me when I say we are chomping at the bit! But we know God’s timing is perfect.

May God bless you plans with His clear direction.

Gigi

Read more about it here at the blog for NCWA. You’ll see that I’m sure God’s plan was a better choice.

http://nwchristianwriters.wordpress.com/

The women from Lifepoint Foursquare Church will be celebrating Beautiful Things.

I’m excited to share my testimony of how God has made beauty from the ashes of the “stuff” of life.

The theme is based on the song by Gungor – Beautiful Things.

Check out the song on iTunes. Click the photo of the album and it will take you to the iTunes list of songs. Click on Beautiful Things for a short preview of the song.

Album Cover for Gungor's Beautiful Things

Come back and I’ll share photos later this week!

God Bless you with Beautiful Things

Gigi

We took a spur of the moment road trip to comfort her after her son Max died earlier this week.

So we end this year on a rather sad note – yet my thoughts are on eternity where Max will suffer no more.

He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer in November and he took his last breath on Tuesday, December 27th.

My son Zane with Cousin Max Krakenberg

Max was larger than life.

His voice boomed loud and strong.

His smile was wide and beautiful.

He served his country in Vietnam.

Max will be missed by his family who loved him.

Nancy, Kathy, Dennis and Max

As we say “Goodbye” to 2011 we also say “See you on the other side” to cousin Max Krakenberg.

I look forward to celebrating Max’s life with our family on January 13, 2012 where we will share memories of a man who lived a BIG life and will be missed.

I think about this Scripture tonight as I pray for all who are grieving the loss of a loved one this year. For all of us who look forward to when Jesus returns.

As I contemplate 2012, I look forward to the New Year when the book I co-wrote with my son, Gabe, is released. (My Message is C.L.E.A.R. – Hope and Strength in the Face of Life’s Greatest Adversities – see www.GabesHOPE.org for updates on the release date.)

I look forward to a continued season of personal growth and change.

Growth of my faith and love for God through the study of His Word.

Growth in my marriage and family relationships by continuing to seek God’s best in all areas of my family life.

Change of my body as I try to get back in shape and take better care of myself!

As you say goodbye to 2011, what are you looking forward to in 2012?

I pray you will achieve your goals in the New Year and that the Spirit of the Living God will set you on the path of God’s will.

God's Blessing on Your 2012

God Bless Your New Year!

Gigi

So in God’s perfect timing, I received this message today.

I’m sharing a devotional from Dr. Charles Stanley – one of my favorites!

Jesus spoke these amazing words just hours before His crucifixion. His peace isn’t dependent upon external circumstances, but rather, it transcends them. Although He gives His peace to every believer as a gift, our experience of it is related to our faith in the following truths:

God is in control of everything. Without this assurance, the world is a scary place.

He loves me and will see me through every circumstance, no matter how difficult or painful it may be.

 To have Christ’s peace, I must surrender my life to Him. When I hold onto my ways and plans, I’ll experience turmoil.

 I have a limited perspective and understanding of my circumstances and God’s purposes for allowing them. His goals for me are greater than my immediate comfort.

 The Lord promises to work all things out for my good. He is continually working to transform my character into Christ’s image.

 I must live in sync with God, walking in the Spirit and promptly confessing and repenting of sin.

Scripture is my foundation for peace. It increases my trust in the Lord’s goodness, assures me that He keeps His promises, and reminds me of His sovereignty over every situation.

Sadly, many Christians live their whole lives without consistently experiencing this incomprehensible peace.

Perhaps faith and submission are the most challenging issues.

But only as we surrender control of our lives to Christ and trust in His plans for us will we discover tranquil rest for our souls.

My HOPE Tree

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

May the God of HOPE fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him.

I love the lights on our Christmas tree.

We have two trees in our home but I’ve especially enjoyed my HOPE tree.

After we established Gabriel’s Foundation of HOPE (www.GabesHOPE.org), we let people know of our desire to bring HOPE to individuals and families living with the effects of disability.

As a kind gesture of support, we began to receive ornaments and other gifts displaying the word HOPE.

I created this tree to display the gifts and it remains in my formal living room all year long.

I also decorated my cubicle at work with the overflow of gifts.

Now, four years later, we have quite a collection of HOPE objects.

Why HOPE?

Because HOPE gets me through the difficult times in my life.

Of all the forces that make for a better world, none is so powerful as hope. With hope, one can think, one can work, one can dream. If you have hope, you have everything.” Sloan Kettering Memorial

My hope is found in Jesus.

• the one we are celebrating each Christmas.
• the one who came as a baby
• the one who broke the chains that held me bondage to ugly sin
• the one who gives me life everlasting
• the one and only

Hope lights up the horizon in my dark nights.

Where would I be without HOPE?

I took photos of the ornaments on my HOPE tree as well as the gifts I have displayed throughout my home and at work too.

I added them to my photo share site. Enjoy!

Click here to view these pictures larger

HOPE reigns in my heart. HOPE shines in my home. HOPE defines my eternal destiny.

God Bless your heart with HOPE

Gigi

Why? Because I found the most amazing scarf created from a painting by Joni Eareckson Tada! www.JoniandFriends.org

It reminded me of why I love tulips.

My first official outing after our son Gabe was born was a trip to Mount Vernon to see the tulips. Oh so beautiful!

Around the same time, my mother-in-law shared a clipping from Ann Landers that contained a story written by Emily Pearl Kingsley. It was her explanation of what it is like to raise a child with disabilities. I share it often when I speak to groups about how we can change our perspective and survive surprises that come our way.

Tonight I made a card on Shutterfly.com sharing Emily’s story, a photo of Joni’s scarf and a photo of Gabe smelling the tulips a few years ago.

Here is a link to the card on Shutterfly. I have way too much fun making gifts on Shutterfly!:

5×7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

On the inside of the card you’ll find the story that warmed my anxious heart twenty-one years ago and helped me change my perspective.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. 

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.

But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.

I pray that whatever you might be facing today, God will help you see tulips and find your way through your unfamiliar place.

I’m so glad I landed where I did. I’ve learned to love the tulips in my life.

God Bless Your heart.

Gigi

http://www.thespiritualmom.com/default.asp?id=10857

Come on over and read the story of a Thanksgiving – Christmas holiday season of long ago where an entire community came together to bless my family.

May the Spirit of Christ live in your heart this season as you choose to bless someone else!

God Bless Your Heart

Gigi

Of course I’ve been thinking of the yummy turkey and stuffing I ate on Thanksgiving at my sister Shelley’s house.

But today, a different kind of stuffing came to mind. This kind of stuffing isn’t edible but it affects every area of my life.

It is stuffed emotion.

As my husband, Steve, and I work through our How We Love book, many different issues have have been exposed and we are both working toward revealing them, feeling them, dealing with them and experiencing healing from them.

Our eight weeks of group meetings with our How We Love small group ended last Tuesday. I’m sad we won’t be gathering every Tuesday with an incredible group of people who started out as strangers and quickly became friends.

We all learned about feelings we never dealt with in our youth and how they affect all of our relationships as adults. We shared our stories and encouraged each other in the journey of discovering the love imprints that harm our marriages, friendships, family and work relationships. It is such a blessing to watch the healing begin.

There are so many emotions we experience in a lifetime but today I’m thinking about one in particular.

GRIEF

Grief is one of my stuffed emotions that came to the surface about the second week of our How We Love group meetings.

I realized today when I wrote the date in my journal that this grief had been buried deep in my soul for the last forty-six years.

On November 27, 1965, at 2:20 a.m., my dad took his last breath in a hard-fought battle lost with lung cancer.

We were all gathered in Helena, MT for Thanksgiving. Dad was in the VA Hospital. I had not been allowed in the hospital room where my dad was dying. So none of it was real to my little seven year old mind. I was confused but had no one to answer my questions.

Early Saturday morning, I suspected he had died because I overheard my Aunt Jo on the telephone telling someone “The angels took him home about 2:20 this morning.” But when I asked my brother Bob about it, he told me I was wrong and that I should never again say that dad was dead.

No one talked about it. We packed our bags and headed home to Anaconda. There was a buzz of activity but nobody sat me down to tell me the details.

I actually heard the truth that my dad had died that day when I overheard my sister LeAnne’s friend tell her she was sorry to hear our dad had died.

I never saw my mom cry about dad’s death. I’m sure she did, but not in front of me. The way my family dealt with this grief was to stuff it, pull up our bootstraps, and move forward with that Devine smile hiding the pain.

I had cried privately many times throughout my life, missing my dad. But I know now I had never really processed the grief in a healthy way.

My dad 9-19-17 to 11-27-65

That is until eight weeks ago when, while working through the How We Love homework,  I got an email from my cousin Howie Devine. It contained the words penned by my uncle Howard (Howie’s father and my dad’s brother) where he shared the detailed account of the last hours of my dad’s life. He described the church packed with family and friends and the meaningful military funeral with a twenty-one gun salute and taps played in the distance.

He told the story of how when he got home to Illinois, the clock in his bedroom has stopped at 2:20 a.m., the hour of dad’s death.

Suddenly it became real to me. After reading this letter, I could not stop crying. Forty-six years of stuffed tears flowed. I wondered if they would ever stop.

Thankfully I was able to share this with my siblings who had similar responses to the email. And I finally felt it was okay to let the tears flow. Then at small group later that night, I shared what happened and received the comfort and support that was missing so many years before.

Back in 1965, the amount of comfort I had received from an overwhelmed mom of ten kids who had just lost her husband, was the best my mom could give. But it taught me to stuff my pain and not ask for comfort in many other areas of my life.

Not any more. I can’t tell you how this process is changing my life. I’m letting go of things that have been buried for way too long.

Now I am using tools I learned in How We Love. I came up with four easy steps to work through the process of healing from past hurts that affect present relationships.

• Reveal: Speak up when I feel the need for comfort. I’m talking about what is going on in my heart. No more buried feelings.
• Feel: Use words from the feeling word list available in the book. (A great tool to help you explain what you are feeling.) Let the emotions flow.
• Deal:  I’m asking questions when I need answers. I’m sharing feelings and thoughts with Steve that I never shared with him in the thirty-five years we’ve known each other. I’m getting help from my counselor in the areas I feel stuck.
• Heal: I’m allowing Jesus to heal those broken places. My relationships are improving and we are learning a new love imprint of the secure connector.

No more stuffing for me! I’m free!

How about you? Do you have stuffed emotions you need to share with someone?

I hope you will share your story in the comment section of this blog. Maybe we can give one another comfort in the “stuff” of life that keeps us down.

Come back to my blog where I will continue to share the discoveries we are making in our journey to love the way God intended. It is an exciting journey! We are always learning something new.

God Bless Your Heart!

Gigi

Learn more about this helpful tool we are using to discover our love imprint at www.HowWeLove.com Steve and I plan to continue to spend our Tuesday nights working through the chapters and workbook questions in more detail. We have so much to learn about each other. It is going to be an amazing journey.