It is Blog Month for the Compassion Bloggers. Every Thursday this month I’ll be sharing with you about Compassion International, why I am involved and how you can be too. I love blog month because Compassion sends us creative blogging prompts to help us write a creative and interesting post and not just a bunch of stats about what a wonderful organization Compassion is.
A Message to My Childhood Self
When I look back through the lens of time, I had a pretty good childhood. My first 16 years were spent in Massachusetts as an upper middle class family. The rest of my life I have been in Florida. We are a strong family and we weathered most of what life threw at us pretty well.
Thinking back, the one piece of advice I wish I had known is…”Be flexible, don’t hold onto your plans too tightly.” I have always been a planner, a bit of a control freak and part dreamer. I enjoy change for change’s sake but I don’t like when change is forced upon me.
As a young girl I had my plans- finish high school, go to college, be a teacher/actress/singer, get married, have 4 children, live in a nice house and live happily ever after. A lot of those plans have come to fruition, but not at all how I had planned them. I was a teacher-I homeschooled my children for 16 years. I am an actress and a singer I have been in many community productions and even one professional one. I’ve sung on the worship team at church, and I have sung at countless weddings, funerals and special events. I have directed numerous plays and musicals in the church and homeschool community. This is not what I thought my life would look like but God has used my dreams and used them for His glory!
We live in a fallen world and things like illness, corruption, addictions and temptations befall us and those around us. These evils and others cause pot holes in the path of our lives. Often times they even cause sink holes which require detours-changes in the path, so we can move forward. Fortunately, “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.” Psalm 37:23 NLT.
Turning your life, your hopes and your dreams over to Jesus when you accept Him as your Lord and Savior does NOT mean your life will be smooth sailing from there on out. It does mean that as you grow to be more like Jesus your hopes and dreams become the hopes and dreams He has for you. It also means you will never be alone again and that He will be with you when you come upon a pot hole or sink hole along the road of life. He will be there to give you wisdom in your decision making and if you listen to Him your path will be made clear.
I pray regularly for my Compassion child, Aderlin and I always pray that he will seek God’s wisdom and plans for his life. I pray that because of our help through Compassion International, he will rise above his circumstances and grow into an influential man of God.
About Compassion International Blog Month
The goal for Compassion blog month is for 3,160 more children to receive sponsors. It is easy to sponsor a child…the hard part for me was to pick which child to sponsor! It only costs $38 a month to change the life of a child. If I can do this so can you. Just click on the widget in my sidebar or the links in this post to meet some of the children waiting for you to make a difference in their lives.
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