Still Loved With My Eyes Shut

Happy May everybody!

Yesterday it was close to 90degrees and today our high is 42. Between allergies and the drastic weather change, today I find myself quite sick. :( it's one of those gloomy days where m head feels like it weighs 10 extra pounds due to the amount of pressure in my sinuses and behind my eyes. 
I'm sitting in one my my psych classes right now and were going over shape biases modeling with various exemplars such as the Rel and the Kiv and the Hux. It's a little difficult to comprehend the discussion being in the diphenhydramine fog that I'm in.


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I was drafting that yesterday whilst attempting to remain conscious during class. Unfortunately, I am only more sick today than I was yesterday and I haven't been able to kick it. However, after a pleasant work out and hot bath I crawled under my covers and slept the afternoon away and woke myself up some 3+ hours later, and made myself present enough to attend my last class on couple therapy and get the answers for our exam next week. 

Today is cold and rainy and I'm quite content to sit in my Time Alone with Jesus chair and listen to the rain and worship music whilst drinking hot coffee. 

 While I often tell my friends that I am so excited to move into our next place across town and whatever else not, I'm thankful for my room now. It's big and cozy and The Lord has grown my heart in big ways whilst doing my quiet times here. This is where I have a space just for me and Jesus. I hope that wherever I move to next, I will have a place for me and Jesus for the cold rainy days and the good days and all that's in between. 

The other night one of my friends was needing some Truth to bring healing to the deepest places of her heart and, being that my heart needed it to, I had her over for supper and then got out my crayons and some paper for some art therapy. Ha.. well, coloring is always therapeutic to me anyways. We decided to color whatever the Lord put on our hearts. 

I don't consider myself to be especially artistic or talented, but I love my crayons. I felt like the Lord was reminding me of how he had rescued me because the line, "For He has rescued us out of the dominion of darkness and brought us into His Kingdom of His son..." was playing in my head. So I thought I'd try to draw that on paper and I came  up with this...

And then I decided to look up other verses on being 'rescued' and I found this beautiful verse in the Psalms that goes, "He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because he delights in me" -Psalm 18:48

And whilst I was coloring this little picture that the Lord had placed in my mind, I looked up pictures of people be rescued and carried and came to find out that what I had depicted above was called a "bridal carry." Which was absolutely beautiful to me because the verse that the Lord had put in my mind, "..rescued out of the dominion of darkness and brought into his kingdom" and then Jesus says in John "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also."
And in Revelation "And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" And as I flipped through several passages about love I saw that the constant reminder for husbands to love their wives was to represent how Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. 

I felt quite loved. I feel loved now. I just love how the Lord loves in obvious ways. He never tries to love subtly. It's only subtle to us when our eyes are shut, but He still loves us even then. 

I love knowing His voice. People have asked me what his voice sounds like. I don't have an answer for that exactly, other than that it sounds like truth. If a verse from the Bible randomly plays through my head, I attribute it to being from the Lord as I don't think my natural sinful self chooses to think true things. His voice is when I'm thinking in my head "ugh.. today I am not pretty" whilst looking in the mirror and then somehow I hear, "But you are. Because I made you."
 His voice sounds like love. When I've come to a hard part of my day and feel like I've failed in more ways than one, and I hear myself thinking, "The Lord still delights in you. You are precious all the same. I love you and that's all that matters"... that is not really something I'd think up about myself on my own. I like that.

And that is why I feel loved by the Lord when He places a picture in my mind and laces it with scripture. I know my redeemer lives. I know my God is real because He is presently and actively working in my life. And I am loved! I am so loved! .....I like that. :)