INSANE

I LOVE MY BLOG!  It is nice to know that someday my grandchildren can look me up on the Internet and they can read the stories of my journey.  Any who, today my hubby and I started Insanity.  For those of you who do not know what it is: maybe you've heard of P90X.  Well Insanity is like ten steps above it; it is INSANE!  Just the warm-up alone is killer.  I thought I was having a heart attack.  Today's workout was pure cardio, with one minute non-stop intervals. And the video itself was like 25 minutes (stretching included).  It's so funny how your mind can play tricks on you, but this time I tricked my mind & pushed through the workout!

Lately, the theme of "inviting God into your daily life" has been jumping out at me.  It has been the main focus of my Women's Bible Study.  It simply relies on the fact that we cannot do anything on our own because it is beyond the human flesh & will to do so.  We are always looking for a motivating factor.  We always need a reason to forgive, to love, to work harder, to read our Bible, etc.  As Christians, GOD is our motivating factor.  First we need to grasp the concept that every day we need to invite God into our tasks.  When you wake up, thank God you are alive & you have breathing lungs.  Invite God as you prepare your morning meals.  Invite God to check your emails with you at work.  This idea of inviting God into your daily routine, will not only change your relationship with God, but it will also give you intense fuel to get through your day.  Better yet, it sets the pace of your attitude for the rest of your day. The only way I got through my workout today (Day 1 of Insanity) was because all day I invited God to help me be energized.  

Mind over body: God has the Power to help you shift your thoughts to positive ones.  However, God will not do this unless you invite Him to!  God knows exactly what you need to push through your day.  God knew exactly what I needed today to do my workout & to eat healthy.  The only way that you will be able to retain the ability to have mind over body, is if you find the inner motivation that God has sowed in each & everyone of us.  Yes, non-Christians are successful & they do Insanity & obtain awesome results, but my God gives me a purpose to do what I need to do.  God makes me love everything I do because I do it all for His glory, not to say: "I" accomplished something, but rather say "God" accomplished something & much more! 

At the end of the day, I look for my Eternal Life with God in His Glory, where someday I can see my loved ones once again!  That is INSANE!     

Stay posted for my progress with Insanity! 

For Our Angels

Usually I am pretty good at expressing my emotions through writing, but for the first time in my life I have been speechless.  I was listening to music this morning and I heard Kenny Chesney's "Who You'd Be Today" and it describes my feelings right now.  I wrote a blog when Shawn, Grms & Amy passed away, but it is too hard to publish.  So I will let these lyrics speak for me.  ~Always in my heart~

"Who You'd be Today"

Sunny days seem to hurt the most
Wear the pain like a heavy coat
I feel you everywhere I go
I see your smile, I see your face
I hear you laughing in the rain
Still can't believe you're gone
It ain't fair you died too young
Like a story that had just begun The death tore the pages all away
God knows how I miss you
All the hell that I've been through
Just knowing no one could take your *place*
Sometimes I wonder who you'd be today
Would you see the world?
Would you chase your dreams?
Settle down with a family?
I wonder, what would you name your babies?
Some days the sky's so blue
I feel like I can talk to you
And I know it might sound crazy
Sunny days seem to hurt the most
I wear the pain like a heavy coat
The only thing that gives me hope
Is I know I'll see you again someday

In Excess

My friend Sammy wrote a blog titled “Find Your Spot.”  I always say that he manages to use absolutely every life situation to write a blog, inspire a thought, or does a bible study.  Well this particular blog he wrote (Which you SHOULD go read, right NOW: www.holycrossnm.com/blog) inspired me to write the continuation of it. “Find Your Spot” speaks about finding your balance through God.  I can recall all of the times that I continually prayed, read my bible, went to bible study & those were the times that I felt more joyous.  At the time I didn’t notice that keeping my focus on God helped me have a thorough balance in my life.  It felt like nothing bad could happen and if it did, God snapped his right fingers & just like that my problems melted away.  I still feel that way today, but now I am fully aware of the ways God is working in my life.

The integral part of one’s faith and life is to find a “healthy” balance in everything you do.  This ensures positivity, productivity and success.  By “healthy”, I am referring to knowing your own limits, weaknesses and always keep in mind that everything in excess is not good.  Well, the only thing that you can never go over on is your relationship with Christ!  Everything else is of the flesh and will derail the path that was destined for you to follow. 

Eating in excess will lead to obesity and that will cause many medical conditions.  Drinking in excess will cloud your judgment and you can become an alcoholic.  Spending money in excess may leave you broke.  I could go on and turn this blog into a book of “Things in Excess.”  Personally, I don’t care if my sin leads me to being fat, diseased, addicted, or broke, but what I do care about is that my relationship with God would be forever dampened because I decided that a life of excess was what I wanted.  Ok, so I hope everyone knows that I do not lead a life of excess and I don’t do it because having God be my Father is more important to me.  However, there are people that are already leading a sinful life and they seem to not be able to turn away from it.  Maybe they have no clue as to how awesome being part of God’s family is.  Maybe they feel like the only way to cope with the road blocks in life is to live a life in excess.  Whatever the reason, I can guarantee that if you could hand people a magic wand to fix their lives, they would run with it and “fix” everything. 

The only problem with this magic wand is that as soon as the problem has been “fixed” another problem will arise.  Life is not perfect, that is the beauty of it; but our God is and that is even better.  Now, if we focused our lives to God our creator, He would take care of all the problems in the past, present & future.  We wouldn’t need a magic wand and the good news is that we don’t need that magic wand.  You see, when you put all your energy into making God be “your spot”, you won’t need anything else.  You will not need everything the flesh craves in excess because God is here to quench the thirst of the flesh. 

1 Peter 2:11 reads: “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”  Peter knew that when you focus on “sinful desires”, instead of on God, there will be an unbearable war between your flesh and your soul.  Let’s keep our focus on God and on His Kingdom because He will take care of everything for us.  Abstain from excess gossiping, eating, drinking, shopping, etc.  You may think that what you are currently doing is not so bad, but when your focus is on everything, except for God, your balance in life will be completely thrown off.  Remember that God loves us infinitely and if you let Him, He will start to work on your heart and He will finally end that war between your flesh & your soul.

Feeling unbalanced? Addicted to excess?  Open your Bible right now.

It's never too late...no matter what I do!

So it's safe to say life has been pretty busy and hectic recently, hence why I haven't had time to write any blogs!  Ideas have been running through my mind all the time, yet I can't seem to just stop and write.  I've been thinking a lot about who I was when I was still living at home with my parents as opposed to who I am today.  The one thing that has not changed is how blunt I am.  80% of the time I just say whatever I am thinking and sometimes I get in trouble or it just confirms how I feel.  I had a good friend tell me something that I hadn't really noticed about myself and that is that I am the same person no matter where I go.  More importantly, I am the same person both in Church and out of Church. 
In high school I rarely went to Church and now that I am on my own and in college I go to Church all the time.  Some people around me probably think I go way too much and I've even had people call me out for it. I can understand where they are coming from and so I don't take it personally.  The one thing that did upset me was the fact that people think that it's kind of pointless to go to Church if you're still going to have problems.  Well last night as I was praying it was revealed to me why it's so important for me to stand firm in my believes.  For me (and I can only speak for myself) going to Church does not mean I am perfect, I don't have problems, and I don't worry, but it does mean that I have hope in my heart & I have a new perspective to be able to face all of those difficulties.  And the true reason I continue to go to Church is because God has obviously done so much in MY life and I feel I am forever connected to Him.  I see Him at work all the time and some people just choose to ignore what is so crystal clear.
So you've read it, I am NOT perfect: I like to go out dancing, I still say a few bad words here & there (not on purpose), I like to have a drink here and there, sometimes I am not too nice, I am extremely stubborn, & if you keep complaining about problems you have I'm going to tell you "don't complain unless you're willing to fix it."  That is who Gaby is, take it or leave it; God chose to take it so He could take care of me!  That's why I know it is never too late to go to Church; no matter what we do God is always there with arms wide open. 

I am not cheating...with your husband!

In my last post, I shared my Rock the Universe experience; however, there is something that happened to me on the trip that I don’t think I will ever forget.  Let me begin by saying that most of the times that I pray, I always ask God to use me to expand his Kingdom and to use me to be able to help people.  On this trip God most definitely used me to be a helping voice. 

The first night on the trip, I had asked the bus driver’s wife to give me her cell phone number so that I could communicate to her at what time and where we would be meeting after the concert was over.  Well it turns out that I accidently wrote a 3 instead of a 2 in the last digit of the phone number.  By the end of the night I had called the wrong phone number (which I did not know it was incorrect) about 5 times and I had sent a text message saying: “we will meet at the entrance of Universal at 1am.”  I never received a respond, so I guessed that she would see the text and all would be good. 

The next morning, I get a phone call from the phone number and it was a different woman, so then I realized it was the wrong phone number.  I apologized to the woman and said I had the wrong number and then she says:” Are you sure?  I think that you know my husband.”  Immediately I thought that the woman was implying that her husband is cheating on her with me!  Well I told her once again that I had the wrong phone number and we hung up.  A few minutes later, she calls once again from a different number and she starts yelling at me telling me that I can have her husband because he is an alcoholic and that he has made her life miserable.  I had to commend the situation to God because the woman kept calling and calling, until the point that I became annoyed and I yelled at her.  I did not realize at that moment that here was my opportunity to help this woman through this problem; I let the enemy take over.

After calming down, I explained to her that she was wrong in accusing me of such things because she does not know who I am and then she began to vent all of their marital problems.  She then apologized for the mix-up and I told her that I can imagine why she is feeling so paranoid.  I continued by saying that she needs to rest her life in God’s hands and that she does not deserve to be treated in such ways.  She told me she is a Christian woman who believes in Jesus Christ, but at the moment she is hurting a lot and does not know what to do anymore and she asked me to pray for her. 

Even Christians go through suffering they can’t escape because at times it is easier to let the problems continue, instead of taking them to Christ.  And a lot of times, people do not take the time to listen to others who have problems.  I think that God put me in that situation for a reason; I mean seriously, who else does something like this happen to!  I missed one digit in the entire ten digit phone number and it so happened to be the phone number of a hurting woman whose husband is a chronic alcoholic and she is a Christian!  Coincidence?  I think not.

At the end of the day, it is not for me to take credit; I just give thanks to God for using me to be someone else’s way to turn back to Him.  And I will take this experience as a lesson that you never know when God is using your life and your circumstances to help someone else.  You also never know when the enemy is using you to hurt others and to make you stay away from God.

Never in a million years did I imagine something like this happening and it came up in the most unexpected time.  “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” –Matthew 5:13-16 We must always remember to be the salt and the light in the world, “for when you put salt into something it changes and when you light up a dark room there is no way it will not be seen.”
~Thank You Lord for allowing me to be a testimony for others~

Going All In

Hey everyone, reading my blog!  I haven’t written in a little while, mainly because I’ve been busy, but nonetheless, my blog has been on my mind.  So many things have occurred since last time I wrote.  For one, I turned twenty-two, which is still hard to believe because I don’t feel a day older.  It’s true when they say “age is nothing but a number”, it is mainly how you feel. For my birthday I escaped to “Paradise” and rested the whole weekend.  Happy birthday to all the fellow Virgos’!
This past weekend I had the pleasure of being a chaperone for Rock the Universe.  Rock the Universe is a Christian event at Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure that has been around since 1998.  Different Christian bands are featured at different stages through Universal Studios and at the same time all of the rides are open.  It was amazing to see so many people there for one cause and to see how much people love Jesus Christ.  It’s easy to get caught up in your local church life, so events like this remind you that there are so many other people worshipping the Lord and spreading His Word.  The first night we listened to “Switchfoot”, which is one of my favorites, and they played “This Is Your Life”, which is an inspiring song because it teaches you to forget about the past and focus on today. 

The second night we watched “Third Day” and “Casting Crowns”.  Two amazing bands with unbelievably rocking praise music.  Casting Crowns played “Praise You in the Storm”, which many people know and relate to because we all have those storms in our lives.  Finally, on the last day, we attended the worship service and the message was about “going all in with your faith.”  The speaker compared it to when a guy asks the father of his girlfriend for her hand in marriage and the father’s only question was: “Are you going to go all in: are you going to stay by my daughter’s side until death do you part, are you willing to give your all to my daughter, are you going to build a strong relationship with her?”  The guy answered, “I guess so…”  Well as you can guess, the father was not thrilled, because the guy was not going all in.  The same relates to our relationship with Christ.  Most days our respond, attitude, and actions say “I guess I will have a relationship with Christ.” 

Going all in means you will leave your past behind and commit to what being a Christian means.  It means facing your bad habits, it means turning away from the evil in your life, and it means you will become a new creation in its entirety. Sure it’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. 
It takes one step: spending time with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 

I’m going all in!

Who Are You?

This has been a busy, stressful week (as usual) and during these types of weeks I find it more difficult to stay on top of my priorities.  Usually at work there are various personalities and people who just think very differently from me.  I can imagine this happens at everyone’s work place and in every profession.  It’s hard to be Godly when you want to scream or when it seems like you just can’t get through to a person.   Granted every aspect of our lives have stress factors and we can either dwell in these negative feelings or we move on.  Lately I’ve been pondering on the subject of why we as human beings can’t seem to brush certain things off and why let such small petty things affect us.  Then I wondered why is it that some people’s lives seem so much simpler, as opposed to my crazy hectic life.  These are just a few questions that tend to run through all of the lobes in my brain!  I’ve argued all the reasoning and all of the “answers” in my head, but nothing seemed to satisfy my curiosity until I was listening to someone tell me that I wasn’t really free. 

Freedom is what we think of when Fourth of July roles around or when we think of Martin Luther King Jr., never do we associate it with our daily lives.  It was told to me that the reason I worry and stress so much is because I have not felt True freedom in life.  My reaction was, “what does that mean!”   After reflecting on it, I found the answer in my heart:  When you know who you are, you are truly free!

What I mean with knowing who you are, I mean being aware of all aspects of your life.  For example, I am a Christian woman who pretty much goes to church every Sunday.  Let me dissect that sentence for you: “I am a Christian woman”, why am I a Christian?  Because I believe Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins and He is my Savior.  “Who pretty much goes to church every Sunday”, why do I pretty much go to church every Sunday?  Because I feel that God has called me to serve for His Kingdom and to spread His Word.  What I am trying to channel is the fact that the more I know what drives my actions, the more I learn about who I truly am.  By knowing who I truly am, will lead to me standing firm on my beliefs and not let anyone distract me from my path.  When someone wants to insult what I believe in, I will be prepared and not let that person upset me, because knowing the Truth will set you free! 

Someone might say that they are fully aware of whom they are and they don’t like who they’ve become.  We hear people saying all the time: I am fat, I am lazy, I am not good enough; but what you hardly hear people saying is: I am fat but I am going to work out every day, I am lazy but I will set a goal of being more productive, I am not good enough but I am good enough for my Lord and for Him I will rise above the negativity that consumes me!  It goes back to the principles of “life transformation is rooted in mind transformation.”  It takes knowing who you are to help us grow in life and to help us de-clutter from all the stress.  I know it’s not an easy task and it’s one I personally struggle with from the time I wake up until the time I lay down.  People say that you never really finish getting to know someone, well that is also true for knowing yourself and for knowing Jesus.  I am encouraging myself and you to spend more time reflecting on who you truly are, whether it’s through a journal or maybe even a blog; analyze your life and see what is missing.  Maybe Jesus is missing from your picture; I know that for me, the deep relationship with Him is what I am missing.  Now that I am aware of the issue hindering me to be stress free, I vow to spend more time just Jesus and I.  I read in an article that there is nothing more precious than the pure silence and peace that Jesus brings while you spend time with Him.  Well I sure want that peace!  And hope you too can experience it.

This week my husband started his second semester of “bible college” and I am so proud of him because he has found who he truly is and because of that he is happier and not as stressed as in the past.  God always leads you to the things that are important; it’s just up to us to walk through those doors and to be free!