No Harm . No Foul

 I've been focusing on cutting the limits I seem to give myself. I feel I have passed some sort of CheckPoint & sharing that, I only hope someone comes across this, and feels the joy of possibly doing the same to get the feeling I have. It's Amazing, just saying. Only way I can describe it is Mentally Healthy & it's definently Exciting, PeaceOfMind. I've focused a lot on My thought processing & I now fully understand that everything comes down to a decision for me. I know I can not ignore a thought or emotion I have to deal with all things I put my mind through. PROCESS is Key. 

  I have trimmed away the excess fat, the unnecessary and I'm left with nothing but a Heathy State Of Mind. It's something I only want to pass down. ReBuild & the team has helped me in the Battle. Other than pointing at a person I should be like or setting examples I should only meet up to, we have back tracked & help me shied out of all the roles I've played. I had to Personally Clarify who I was, also face OldWays & just "Erase The Hard Drive". ReBoot. No BrainWashing Methods, I swear on that! That would've been easier :P. Where I'm going is when you learn to manage your distorted mind and clear the air, only then could I, Myself hear the message, Gods Calling. My Calling, My Role, Me. There's a You too!

  That's the only way I feel you can have Self Acceptance, Happiness with Self, & get in gear with Self Driven... SELF! When you're being You, there's no feeling of being set up for failure. That's what always scared me away from Change. I knew I couldn't put up any sort of Act & lead by example of a Perfect,Happy,Productive,Approved Member of Society, No Thanks! I'd rather be Kayla. We don't aim to make Copies, or expect from others to cover up their True Identity. I wanna know You. I wanna know if You know You & if not, why you don't? How to get you where you feel Mentally Healthy, Focused & then, My Favorite - Determined. Being honest with yourself & the people building with you is a way to kinda cheat this, people to share opinions and hold you accountable. MyFriends. The Real Kind. 

  You will only Tap into Your Potential . Expand Creativity . Discover Solutions to Life Challenges . See Opportunities instead of Problems . Awaken a Sense of Purpose . Ignite Personal Growth & only Maximize Potential. I just want to pass it on so you can do the Same!

  

Outward Gaze

For a while I’ve super fed up while looking at social media. I couldn’t figure it out. I mean the eye rolling I do is horrible and the things I mumble to myself are even worse. I say frequently that it’s time to take a Facebook break because my frustration level, on a scale of 1-10, gets to a +20. And it’s not just Facebook it’s things that happen all over. I’ve had a terrible time trying to figure out why. I pray and ask God to forgive me for having a critical spirit. And then I start it all over again. Today while talking some feelings out with a friend, I was like DANG……I got it.

Because of the ministry I do, my eyes and my heart have seen many things. I’ve seen where people live. I’ve seen how they’ve been taught to live. I’ve talked to people who don’t have food to eat.  I’ve seen what is happening to the[R1]  children. In seeing these things it’s changed my perspective. There are things that don’t bother me anymore.  There are things I will not argue about. Don’t look for me to judge or point out that beer bottle in someone’s picture or the curse word they said. Do not come to me if you want to argue about church denominations. WON’T. DO. IT. There are also things that I’m not going to jump for joy about that are posted on social media. Mainly because we all (myself included) live such shallow lives. That shallowness makes me nauseous. We are out for ourselves and our family and others get our leftovers. We somehow think that we have done something to deserve what we have and others have done something to deserve what they don’t have. I’m not sure how that shares Jesus at all. None of us deserve anything. I’m not trying to come off holier than thou. I don’t need to do that….I’m well aware of who I am and things I’ve done. I have lived the shallowest of lives and it makes me sick thinking about it. Thinking about the time and money I’ve wasted on things that DO.NOT.MATTER. We spent $50,000 on the last car we bought for ourselves. Do you know how many people you can feed for $50,000?

Because of images that are burned into my brain. Because of the things I have seen. Because of the stories that have been shared with me. I will not complain about petty things. We all have down days. We all have days that don’t go how we want them to. But take a look around you every day and tell me if someone has it worse than you. Our hot water tank went out last week. We were without hot water for 5 days. It was an inconvenience to us each night because we had to load our stuff and ourselves up each night to go to my parent’s and shower. It was incredibly frustrating then I remembered 1. I have clean water. It’s cold, but it’s clean. 2. I have parent’s 5 minutes from me who have hot water and 2 showers. What was there to complain about? I know people right now who don’t have heat in their home. It’s 21 degrees and they have no heat. We can whine and complain all we want about how rough we have it, but I can guarantee that there is always going to be someone who has it worse.

What is wrong with us? I’ve been doing a Bible Study on Jesus. He lived with a level of humility that is obviously unattainable to us. Yet, we are still to model our lives after Him. We can justify everything we do to death, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are to put others first. We are not to be so consumed with ourselves that we don’t see the needs around us. The people around us.

I do not have this way of living down to a science. My shallowness comes out more often than I want. But I am trying to do a better job of being aware of people around me. I am trying to keep my gaze turned outwards!

---

 [R1]

Middle of the Night Thoughts

It's 1:40am and I'm laying in bed desperate for sleep. Without sleep I am intolerable to be around. Yet tonight it's not coming. Usually when I can't sleep i scroll through Pinterest for some mindless activity, but tonight my mind is much heavier. We had our Thanksgiving Dinner at ReBUILD tonight (our outreach center). We spent two hours feeding people & visiting with them and trying to do our best to love on them. I'm reminded of the needs. They are overwhelming. We deliver food to a friend. She has no heat. Winter is coming. I meet new neighbors who need diapers for their baby. I'm reminded of the needs. These are people that God loves just as much as He loves me. Bad decisions may have been made in the past, I don't know. Should those bad decisions be held over their heads forever? Do I want my bad decisions held against me forever? No! Do I want grace shown to me? YES! So I will lay here tonight and I will pray myself to sleep. I will pray that I take advantage of each opportunity that God gives me to show His loves to others! 

I Love You....the real kind!

I love that TV show. 

I love these new shoes. 

I love cupcakes. 

I love diet Pepsi. 

I love you. 

We throw that LOVE word around a lot. I wonder though, if we when we say it, do we mean it? Especially when we say I love you to another person. Do we mean it as a from the depths of our soul kind of love? I want to! I am all about love. Grace and love trumps law and rules any day for me. If I'm going to err on one side or the other please let it be on the love and grace side. 

I was leaving a friends house yesterday and as I was leaving she said "I love you....the real kind." Oh yes! The real kind! That's how I want to live. That's not just how I want to love I believe that's how God has called me to love! Love people with a real kind of love. There's so much hurt going on all around us...

In our city. 

In our country. 

In our world. 

Are we showing those people in our city, our country, our world the real kind of love? We are living in difficult times. Times when a REAL kind of love is so needed. People need to not just hear the words. They need to see the words put into actions. The real kind of love put into action! 

Look around you today. Ask God who and how you can love. And not just flippantly say words to, but to truly, really, deeply love...the real kind! 

Renee ❤️

Made New Night

              

                                        
                                        
                                        
                                         

                                           
                    


Hello friends! I just wanted to share some photos from Made New night and Story Hour last night! It was a great time! Our project this week was to make a rug.  I wanted to make the rug for the rebuild buildings, specifically for our future class space.  I also wanted to make a rug because it is a cost effective way for the women to make rugs for their homes.  The project cost around ten dollars to make and it is a fairly large rug.  My favorite part of the evening was when the kids from story hour came and in and wanted to help with the rug as well.  We all had a great time.  We didn't get the rug finished, as it is fairly large, but we have a project to work on in the coming weeks in our spare time, which will create a one of a kind rug that each of us put our heart into.

- Kayla H

Gotta Love 'Em

The world could use a little more love in my opinion. I have been thinking so much about what it really means to love you neighbor...and I mean really love your neighbors....

Growing up, in fact up until pretty recently, loving my neighbor meant loving the 'pretty people'.  I was supposed to love the little old lady next door, the family at my church, the kids in the neighborhood.  It was always easy to love my neighbors, because my neighbors were well...loveable. It's funny how that works isn't it.  It is only recently that I have come to realize and embrace the fact that my neighbors...are everyone.  It's that guy who you locked your car doors for, it's the inmate in jail, it's the woman who made some bad choices along the way and is now paying the consequences. Everyone is your neighbor, so the question is, how do we practically love them like Jesus does.

The way that I have come to practically learn how to love my neighbor is through a very simple idea:

If you wouldn't say it about yourself, 

don't say it so someone else...

If you wouldn't say it about someone else, 

don't say it about yourself. 

It's a very simple way to think about how to love your neighbor.  I have found it to be a useful standard for how to treat others, and how to treat yourself.  If you would want someone to grant you a kindness and grace in a situation, can't you lend that kindness to someone else.  It's a practical twist on the golden rule.  I mean, we were granted immeasurable grace by the creator of the universe, so I think we could all stand to extend just a fraction of that grace to those around us.  This world and our neighborhood is broken and hurting.  I believe that love is the greatest resource we have, and we need to use it.  There is so much hate in this world, and in my opinion, it can't hurt to at least try spreading a little love.  

One of the hardest parts of loving those around us is that many of our neighbors are difficult to love, and yet, we are called to love all of our neighbors.  We have to love that little old lady around the corner....but we also have to love the criminal, we have to love the neighbor spewing hate from behind their computer screen.  The man standing on the corner spewing hate from behind a picket sign is your neighbor too (I know, I know I don't like it any more that you do, but we have to love them anyways).  We can't judge people based on how they appear.  It's like this...you see a puppy and growling angry dog.  It's obviously going to be so much easier to love the puppy. However, consider the fact that maybe the angry dog is protecting you from an intruder....and that adorable little guy just ate all the family photos (a high crime in the puppy community).  My point is, is that the people that you have trouble loving, may not be who you think they are.  We can't know them for sure until we get to know their story, and we can do that by listening to them.  Listening to people, and truly seeing them how God sees them, that is the face of loving your neighbor.  We don't have to approve of everything our neighbors do, we are never going to approve of everyone, but we have to show kindness to them anyways.  This world has enough hatred and judgement in it already, it can't hurt to try treating others the way that we would want to be treated.  

-Kayla H 

More Than A Bowl Of Chili

We had chili night at ReBUILD on Saturday evening. I love those nights. I love going down and hanging out with the neighbors. Some of them have been coming to events since we first started hosting them. Some are new friends that we haven’t known for very long. What’s so great is that we get to spend the time just talking to them, getting to know them and building relationships with them. I never want to go down as some type of scary church person. I go down as the completely, messed up person that I am. I don’t wear a mask. I certainly don’t pretend that I have anything all together. I try and just be a non-judgmental friend to someone who may be struggling. Someone who needs to know that no matter what they have done or what they may be currently doing God still loves them!

ReBUILD is about relationships. We are about building trust. We about valuing each person’s life. We are about meeting spiritual needs as well as meeting physical needs. It takes both to make it in this world. I have seen strong truth spoken into people’s lives at one of our cookouts (that’s a night I’ll never forget). I have been prayed over by a man in the community who just wants to support what we are trying to do. I saw people on Saturday come back through the chili line 3 or 4 times because they were hungry and needed to be physically fed. It’s when they come through the line and you are filling their bowl that you get a chance to lock eyes. The eyes tell a lot. They tell about past pain and more often they tell about current pain. When you are serving them you get a chance to greet them with a smile. You can acknowledge that they are a real person, with real feelings and that no matter what they just want to be loved. That’s what we try and do. Just love them….but the cool thing is that while we are “just” loving them they begin to see us as “normal” (although I KNOW there is nothing normal about me) that’s when the relationship begins. That’s when we’re driving down the street and see a friend walking we can roll the window down and yell “ Hey! What’s up?” And yes, I have done that many times.

We are not just about a bowl of chili. The bowl of chili is just a tool. A tool to say we love you! To say you are valuable to us, but more importantly you are valuable to God!