Inspirations and encouragements

  To the readers of this blog I want to welcome you. The purpose of this blog is to encourage everyone: whether you are needing a pick-me-up because you are having a bad day, or you are going through some rough times and you need some inspiration. Through the posts of this blog I, along with the other contributers, will do our best to lift you up.   I want to thank Sarah Baughn for giving me this blog. Sarah and I met on June 12, 2015 and we had no clue then how close we would become. We exchanged phone numbers and the friendship began. Not only are we friends but we are like sisters because we have so many things in common... from our family life to our schooling to what we like to do, ETC. I always jokingly say she's my sister from another mister, but Sarah's my sister in Christ. Sarah has seen me through some things that happened in my life: the biggest thing was when I found a lump in my breast last year. I was scared about what was going to happen to me and Sarah calm...

So when my best friend was diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis in November of 2009, I decided to read everything I could get my hands on about the disease. Books were helpful, but I decided I needed to talk with and get to know other people with MS. So I joined a Yahoo email group for people with it, and I learned a lot more. By the time that group fizzled out due to lack of participation, I had, in my view, learned pretty much everything a lay person not in the medical field could learn. I saw a suggested group on Facebook called We're Not Drunk, We Have MS. I also found the Facebook group page for the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, and I joined that one too. I joined these groups because, knowing what I knew about MS, I wanted to uplift and inspire people with this debilitating disease. People with MS are prone to bouts of depression and hopelessness. That's where I believed, and still believe, that I could help, and the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation...

I am just the pencil in the hand of God. It is He who writes. Mother Teresa. So now I call on Him to write down exactly the thoughts and feelings--and the lesson that He has written on my heart today. I am an avid sports fan, as Ray can tell you. It has been a beautiful, sunny, not-too-humid Saturday in the middle of June in Middle Tennessee, which is a rarity. Ray and I went to our friends' shop, as we do most weekends, and I found me an exercise bike that they had just acquired, and they gave me a steal on it. Just by virtue of the weather and the finding of something I had been looking for since I moved here, the day was shaping up to be awesome. But nothing could prepare me for the thought-provoking article I would read in ESPN the Magazine when I got home. It was about a guy who is now a coach with the Kansas City Royals who, in his playing days, was in the Texas Rangers' organization. He was just about to catch his big break in the big leagues when he collided wi...

This morning I got out of bed and grabbed the clothes I was going to wear for the day. As I left my bedroom, I couldn't help hearing Ray sleeping in the other bedroom across the hall. How peacefully he was sleeping, drawing in long, deep breaths. _He seemed to be holding them in for a couple of seconds before releasing them, as if subconsciously just wanting to hold onto and appreciate every one of them as they came. He seemed to be drinking in the breath of the life that was coursing through his veins, the very breath of the God who made him. With every breath he took in and held, his spirit seemed to be satisfied that this life, and this sleep he was enjoying was created by God to rejuvenate him so that he could go out into the world and be Jesus to the least of these. God had created him, created life, and it was, it is, good. I went into the kitchen and turned on the coffee pot. Then, on the way to my bathroom, I stopped once more to listen to this beautiful, peaceful b...

So I want to continue, now, the story of my very musical spiritual journey. So Ray and I walked out of the church that fateful day, we went to my bank so I could deposit a check. As we walked out of the bank, a man stopped us. I didn't know him from Adam, so I was startled when he said: "you have a very beautiful voice." Amazed, I asked how he knew me, and that I could sing. He said he wasn't the most regular churchgoer in the world, but he sometimes went, and when he went, it was to Holy Disciples, the same church we went to at the time. I couldn't believe it. I was stunned. Two weeks later, Ray was diagnosed with MS. Six months later he was moving to Tennessee, and soon thereafter I found myself engaged. The next few months were a mixture of so many different emotions and thoughts that it was getting really hard to sleep at night. My fiance, along with his family and friends, started trying to get things donated to me for the wedding, up to and includ...

This is a phrase I have only heard a time or two, when Ray was reading to me out of a book he owns. It is very powerful. In fact, when I heard it, I had just moved down to Tennessee to pursue a music degree. I have always loved music, loved singing, but had not done much with it until I got back into church life and got started in the choir. This was back in 2005, and now it seemed that God was speaking to me here, in 2011, in musical terminology. Ray had always believed that I was called to uplift people with my singing, but I knew my musical skills and knowlege were definitely not where they needed to be. So now, here I am in Tennessee, listening to him reading these words, after having auditioned for the music department at Cumberland University. I was waiting impatiently for their verdict, and as he read those words, another memory hit me. It was 2009, and a lot of things had happened. My mom was two years removed from her diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, a family...