There is so much going on in my heart right now, it’s hard to know how to express all of it.  Healing is so interesting, and when we think we’re doing fairly well there is something else that comes up.  Last week I wrote a friend because I realized I was holding a grudge against her for something I didn’t even realize until I thought about it, but truthfully I was avoiding her!  How awful… so I wrote her and expressed my thoughts, we are now on the same page, and I was totally right about the fact that she didn’t even know there was something wrong, and so it was really good we were able to deal with that together and move on.  It was part of the process in healing from the loss of my little girl.  As I walked through restoration in an area of my life that was closely connected with Nola, I then began to miss Nola and felt desperately sad to not be with her.  How can we miss people we don’t even know?  I’m not sure, but honestly it felt good to miss her again, to remember her again… does that make sense?  I love Friendships and I love restoration because it means that both sides are valuable and that we can move forward in relationship with each other and with God.

moving on…
I am not one who enjoys conflict, I guess most people don’t… I don’t really know.  When there is conflict my heart is to resolve it, and my heart is that the other person and I would come out better than we were before because of what we have been through together, and that we can better know the Lord because HE is the king of restoring.  But sometimes it takes conflict in someone’s own heart to truly bring them to a right place before God.  Sometimes people don’t see God until they have experienced the deep places of sorrow without him before seeing that they truly need him.  This process is painful and hard to watch.  How do we move forward?  We pray.  We probably pray for them harder than we’ve ever prayed for them before… and in this moment I pray that God will protect them in their rebellion until they come back to him, while praying all the harder that they do come back to him, and that God will continue pursuing them.  And these are not surfacy prayers, these are deep cries of my heart, lying awake at night prayers!!  God made us for relationships, that’s why we feel saddened and hurt when it’s broken.  But thats also what he made pain for, if there is pain then we react, everyone reacts.  We can turn to God, we can turn to addiction, we can turn to things that we think will fulfill us, but in the end who is it that experienced the most pain?  Jesus Christ!  He endured the cross, He took it upon himself to bear our sin.  He was separated from God.  The Father turned his back on Jesus, WHY did he do this?  So that we could be restored!!  In the end wouldn’t it be better for us to just give our pain to him?  To give our pain to the one who already took care of it?  To the one who promised that he will turn our pain into glory?
Romans 5:3-5 “we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance; character; and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
  If we put our trust in him, he promises us such big things that should revolutionize our lives.  He promises us life, truth, he promises to love us no matter what.  When we died with him, we also rose to knew life with him.  This means that all things that are true in Christ are true in us.
I took a little break here to read through the Scriptures and I am totally and completely overwhelmed with the love of God, this is not a human kind of love, this is bigger than anything we could ever imagine, but I know it in my heart, because it’s different than any other love I know.  When I read about my God I have personal and real connections that don’t compare to anything else. I’m reading about someone I have a relationship with and the way He sees me and the way He loves me is beyond compare.  I am overwhelmed.
I’m just gonna copy down this entire next passage because it is sooooo good, and really expresses my heart right now.
1 John 4:9-21
“This is how God showed his love among us;  He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love;  not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God;  but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.  In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement, because in the world we are like him.  There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  We love because he first lived us.  If anyone says ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  And he has given us this command;  Whoever loves God must also love his brother. “