For Kobe's Sake

For Kobe's sake, I am in Love with a little princess named Shawnie. She will be released from the Maricopa county jail after serving in that hell hole for a year. We are so close now I can almost taste it. Over the last couple of weeks the reports we have received about her Five year old son Kobe have been a little disturbing. He has been so strong for so long. He has shown such tremendous courage through out most of this long journey. We are near the end and God bless his heart but he is crumbling a bit, he has regressed in many ways currently. I do not blame him one bit and am so proud of him. After talking with Shawnie earlier today it all hit me. We have taken so many body blows from life this year it would be understandable if we were rattled and afraid, but for Kobe's sake he deserves our best, and our best apart from God is not good enough. He deserves the absolute Best we have. It will only come from our faithfulness and trust In our Lord. Bryan is only sixteen, But for Bryan's sake he deserves nothing short of our best. Shawnie and I are grown and have had to live with the consequences of many of our own mistakes, but for the sake of Shawnie and I we deserve nothing less than our best, and apart from God our best is not good enough. For the sake of all those who will cross our path in the future they deserve nothing less than our best. It all begins though with a little Five year old who has spent most of his life wondering why he was not enough and why they do not come around any more. Starting in a little over a month Shawnie and I have an opportunity to rewrite this little boys legacy. Will we contribute another chapter of pain disappointment and loss to this precious little ones existence. If we don't do the right thing and surrender it all to the one most high God in all that we do we are not going to show up with our best and with the damage that has already been done to this little boy we will be signing his death sentence. Sobering but true. All day I have kept repeating Three words " For Kobe's Sake" even though it starts in my mind with Kobe it is for all our sakes, we were all little and precious just like him. we also deserved the best someone had to offer and were shortchanged by those around us. How long will we let this go on. can we really forgive those who failed us if when presented with the solution we find we did the exact same thing. Can we ask for forgiveness from our past mistakes even though we continue to do the same thing over and over. With my eyes wide open this time. I will not be able to live with myself if I don't give Kobe my best, God' best this time. Along with that includes My son Bryan and all my other children, also Shawnie and myself we deserve some one's best and we are in a position to do that Not only for ourselves but every one we meet because they were just like us and deserved the best too. Love Always Wins

The End is Near

A little over a month and my little princess comes home. It is almost impossible to believe after a year and so much is happened we are literally stronger than ever. I have really felt better and better every day. Satan keeps taking these huge body blows at me. I am now done reacting to them any more. Even though trials disappointment and loss will come the sun shines brightly and I have so much to be grateful for. As some people stand against me others boldly no matter what stand with me. Love Always Wins has been our creed and continues to be our calling card and every day it is tested Both for me and Shawnie. It has made us really intentionally apply this continually often in the face of so many that are first inclination is to shoot and take no prisoners. What a good test but not always easy. I try to keep it very simple. Love God with all your heart mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself, God is truth, and truth is Love. If we have faith we will have the needed power to display courage. The power we wield that can not be stopped is love. If we strive to really see the beauty in others we might see the beauty in ourselves, and yes you are beautiful, I see it. There is no freedom in the perceived shortcomings of others,we are confined and imprisoned by the practice. unless we identify we would have nothing to judge. So who are we judging anyways. A life that does not include Love any every level God, myself and others is no life at all. Some things are worth fighting for, some things are worth dying for. Well all those I posted on facebook today. I thought I would write them down. Love Always Wins when we first began using that phrase I thought of it as a feel good phrase for our happy home which it is, but it really has become much more than that. The world and it's people along with the demonic forces that prowl are more threatened by that than any religion on this earth. What if we all just started being more loving to each other. Really Loving. The kind that does literally turn the other cheek and keeps no record of wrongs, forgives again and again. I have had to reaffirm that decision so many times, but this i know today is that I like and l love myself so much more every time I do it. I see how this works, but certainly I deserve no credit. The God I love first loved me and has been equipping more and more to bring his Love to other people. It's amazing to be apart of what he does through Shawnie and I just by loving people, yes I know people can be hard to Love

We are never as good as our press clippings

A quiet Saturday afternoon contemplating what my new composition I will create on the new canvass I purchased today. It's brewing inside of me but has not revealed itself to me yet. I am on day Two of a Three day Fast. As I was reading the Bible God spoke to me. I try real hard to be obedient when my messages are clear to me. I have been confronted recently with my weaknesses and don't like it, but they have driven home the idea that apart from an all compassing deeply personal relationship with my savior I struggle and spend so much time being afraid it clouds everything I do. Haven enjoyed a great deep communion with Holy Spirit makes this futility and separation more acute. I have no excuses, ignorance is no protection at all. I know better today. This fast is my testimony, my witness that my words are exactly what I say they are. I have been In Love with my princess for over a year and half now. I reached a point after nine months of her being incarcerated though when my relationship with Christ was at it's lowest point after I got thrown out of my church. I caved in and could not take the weight of all the losses that I had walked through over the last year. I convinced myself temporarily that I could walk away and life would be better. I did not plan my escape, but I met someone who was so amazing as I watch her do the work of learning to Love herself. I was drawn in. We became very close friends and really looked forward to my time with her. At some point she dropped the bombshell and shared with me that her feelings were now far beyond friendship. Initially I did the right thing and we really stopped spending any time together at all, But since I was really not in a strong place spiritually it was really hard on the both of us. I wanted an escape from all the things that I could no longer bear anymore. Well to make a long story short I ended up being unfaithful to my Princess. After this I did tell my princess what I had done. Not A great day as she hid herself when I left. I then tried to regain my focus and put her behind and renew my Love for my princess. The whole time my princess and I have been together she has struggled to give her hear to me completely. Her past and deep wounds prevented her from being all in. She was always honest with me about this. We enjoyed an amazing communion anyway, But then someone I really enjoyed showed me what it was for someone to be In Love with me, and what that looked like. I was more than intrigued and could not resist the temptation to find out. I told my Princess that i had to pursue this otherwise it would haunt me. so i did, it was all great and we were very compatible, but I under estimated were my heart was at. I had given it all away to my princess. It was no longer mine. Also as a result of me pulling away Shawnie had to be real honest with herself and she discovered she was In Love with me. We continued to talk on the phone and I still visited her in jail. Amazingly she was not willing to give up on me and us.. She demonstrated real Love beyond description and just kept doing it even though her must have been so heavy. Tiff and I never had nothing but sweet times, but she sensed and knew that my heart was elsewhere. So one day she told me that she had to concentrate on other priorities and made a few excuses and we parted. Right before that I told Shawnie I would start writing her again which had stopped doing after having written well over three or four hundred letters in the nine months she had been gone. I stopped writing because I knew that when I write I always reveal my heart and was and had been trying to run from my heart. So I stopped and was willing to just be honest. Not so surprisingly that sweet communion blossomed between us an even richer than ever before because it included both of us completely. I would not recommend my path, but it served a purpose and has had some benefits. But looking back I feel foolish but I move forward In Love.