You lead; I'll follow

Dear LORD,

You lead, I'll follow. Jamie Grace sings so lightly, so happily, and her words have such depth to them: You lead, I'll follow.

LORD, let it be so every day.

Thank you, LORD, for this past week of employment: I'm so pleased my employer is pleased with me.  Please turn my good sart to an even better relationship, fostering mutual respect and help. Let me help my employer meet their targets and be pleased with their successes. Let my employs help me to be fulfilled in the work I am doing, let them help me to be productive and helpful. Thank you for the time I have commuting so that I may write and plan and build systems that can help my family achieve financial independence and freedom from debt.

Thank you for the work my wife is doing to manage our money so that we spend frugally and prudently. Thank you for the joy in the hearts off our children: their joy gives me great joy to see it in their eyes. May I be a good, kind, funny, caring Papa to them, that they feel safe with me and happy to have me as their Daddy.

LORD, You lead, I'll follow.

I ask all this in the name of Jesus, the Christ.

Amen

Work

Dear LORD,

Thank You for today, my first day back at work after a three-month hiatus. Thank You for the financial hardship, for the lesson that this is not the answer, being a consultant in the financial industry, that this only provides for today but does not help my family in stability and security.  Help me to see that working long hours for someone else does not help my family. Help me to work, to work hard, to enjoy my work before me, but then to set that all aside and then actually to do good, lasting labor.

Please bless the work of my hands, please bless that I do on the job and let it be a blessing to my employers and coworkers. Please bless the time with my family, please continue to make me, and to remake me, a blessing to my wife and my daughters, to my sisters, and to my parents, to my cousins and my aunts and uncles. Then please strengthen me and let me labor with a will and then with solid results. Help me to build a strong, steady foundation that will secure my family's financial future.

I ask all these things in the Name of Jesus, the Christ.

Amen

Got a job, paying the bills, next up: slaying dragons.

Dear LORD,

Thank You for today.

Thank You for allowing me to restart paid work March 17th, 2014. Our funs have run out, and we have no credit to pay the mortgage or insurance or gas, so this work now is a God-send, a much-needed relief of money to pay for the things we need as a family for warmth and sustenance. Please, o LORD, grant me the strength and will to keep me at this contract so we can pay our arrears and then start to regain sound financial footing.

Thank You for this in-between time with my family where I can help with the cooking and praying.

Thank You for my renewed interest in the technical indicators portfolio. Please bless this work, make it fruitful and a way for our family to have sound financial security so we can live our lives happily and healthily and so we can assist others in need financially so they can do great things in Your Name, Jesus.

Amen

'W' is for water-walker

Meditation.

At work today I was asked: "Do you actually walk on water?"

That's how I appear to others: a water-walker, a miracle-worker.

Now I just have to do that for myself and my family.

'L' is for Lent

Dear LORD,

Thank You for today. Thank You for helping us all to resolve the contractual issues so that Imay start work Monday, March 10th, 2014. Please help me to be helpful at work that I may be of use and that I may help the project and the people there to work together well and be fulfilled in their work.

This Lent, LORD, please make me a light to the world to show them Your Way. Help me to be prudent and modest, hardworking and cheerful, and helpful. During this Lent help me to sacrifice the things that take me away from You and help me to embrace the things that guide me to You.

Hard times, LORD, hard times. It's been three months between jobs, but still, during this famine of work, You have provided for us heat and shelter, food and water, love and protection. Please let us always turn to You, be the times hard or easy.

Thank you, LORD, for this time tonight. Thank You for Lent, so we are reminded of all Your blessings for us.

Amen

'I' is for Interviews

Dear LORD,

Thank You for today. Thank You, finally! for the fourth interview at FINRA... two months interviewing for this contract. Thank You for letting the interview flow well. Thank You for a nice meeting with Clayton and with Matt. Thank You for the friendly, easy-going conversations, for their not belaboring check-marks but for them getting down to what was important for them and why.

LORD, please let me start working on this job this week so that I may start getting paid agains so that our family can weather this financial crisis and so that we can return to some stability.

Thank You for the forbearance of my wife during this difficult time. Please reward her with many spiritual and temporal blessings for her keeping the family safe and secure during this crisis.

LORD, please help us to dig our way out of this debt and return to solvency. Please bless me with strength and determination so that I may see through what needs to be done so we can succeed, again, and prosper!

LORD, thank You for the generosity of my Dad with money so that he could keep us afloat over Christmas.  Thank You LORD, for my dad and his good financial sense and hard work.

LORD, thank You for letting me apply myself to getting the taxes done, Fed-wise, please help me to get those forms sent off (done) and also help me to complete my Commonwealth taxes today (done).

LORD, thank You for the kindness and generosity of acquaintances.

Please, LORD, help us. Heal this broken world. We are all trying so hard, yet we in such dire straights. The World is not working without You in it. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done.

I ask all these things in the name of Jesus, the Christ.

Amen

'D' is for Dreams

EM:

Dream 1:

So, I was lost in a large garden and I had a heart-shaped candy, it was very big and when I bit into it the outside was hard candy but the inside was sweet and smooth and creamy and fruity, and I kept looking for you, Mama, but I couldn't find you and I had to do my lessons.

Dream 2:

So, I was holding an egg, and the inside was filled with custard but I only got a little bit of it.

me: what was its color? was it speckled?
EM: Why does that matter?
Mama: What do you remember from your dream?
EM: It was a plain, white egg.

me: how big was it?
EM: It was as big as me (and she demonstrated by rolling up into a fœtal position)

Li'l Iz:

I had a dream, too! I dreamt that Até and I were in a large building, and Até went off to play manhunt with her friends, but then Mama said we had to go and for me to go get Até, but I couldn't find her, even after I looked and look, and I told Mama that. Mama said Até left me everything in her will, so I said 'Yay!' but I was sad, too, because I liked playing with Até.

EM: Hey!

p.s.

I had a dream, once, twenty years, thirty years ago. I dreamed I was the Silver Surfer, and I was on the waters far, far in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and I was surfing across the waves on a sailboard. The wind was incredibly strong: it knocked the tops of the waves off, capping them, and the spray splashed me and my board, staining it with salt. It was very cold, the sky was gray with clouds, there was no sun, and the ocean was so cold the water was black, but I was not cold, inside. I was alone: it was just me with the wind and the water and the horizon that extended into Eternity, and that was enough.