You Lift Me Up

by The Afters




You lift me up with your love
You lift me up with your love
You lift me up with your love
You lift me up

Waiting for the sunrise
Waiting for the day
Waiting for a sign
That I'm where you want me to be

You know my heart is heavy
And the hurt is deep
But when I feel like giving up
You're reminding me
That we all fall down sometimes
But when I hit the ground

You lift me up when I am weak
Your arms wrap around me
Your love catches me so I'm letting go
You lift me up when I can't see
Your heart is all that I need
Your love carries me so I'm letting go

You lift me up with your love
You lift me up with your love
You lift me up with your love
You lift me up

I know I'm not perfect
I know I make mistakes
I know that I have let you down
But you love me the same

And when I'm surrounded
When I lose my way
When I'm crying out and falling down
You are here to

Lift me up when I am weak
Your arms wrap around me
Your love catches me so I'm letting go
You lift me up when I can't see
Your heart is all that I need
Your love carries me so I'm letting go

I can see the dawn is breaking
I am feeling overtaken with your love
With your love
I don't know what I can offer
In this moment I surrender to your love
To your love

You lift me up when I am weak
Your arms wrap around me
Your love catches me so I'm letting go

You lift me up when I am weak
Your arms wrap around me
Your love catches me so I'm letting go
You lift me up when I can't see
Your heart is all that I need
Your love carries me so I'm letting go

I can see the dawn is breaking
I am feeling overtaken with your love

You lift me up with your love
You lift me up with your love
You lift me up with your love
You lift me up

Simply Trust God

Don’t complicate your life by trying to understand what is wrong with your friends and family members who don’t agree with you about everything. After 5 years of marriage, I still don’t have Kenji figured out. But I found joy when I simply quit trying to understand why he likes to watch sports and be a couch potato. I have learned to be a sports fan and watch TV series on a marathon, so now I’m a couch potato myself. LOL! How’s that for a change?

In other words, you can’t really love people until you quit trying to rework them and find joy in who they are. My life got real simple when I finally realized I couldn’t change people.

God can change someone if He wants to, and if He doesn’t, it’s because He doesn’t want to. So I might as well trust God. Trust is simple. Casting your cares on Him is simple.

The Bible message is simple: Love God and love others.

The gospel is simple: Jesus loves us, this we know. Why? Because the Bible tells us so!

Even the plan of salvation is simple: Jesus died for us. He paid the price for our sin. How much simpler can it be?

It is amazing how a straightforward, uncomplicated message change your life and bring joy.

Jesus came to simplify your life. Satan wants to complicate your life, but God is not the author of confusion.

There are so many people in the church who are not really serving God with their whole hearts or their whole lives. Their lives are a big, complicated mess because they have one foot in the kingdom and one foot in the world.

The Truth Is...

God is good. Psalms 119:68 says so. When the sun is shining and you have money in the bank and you’re healthy and everyone thinks you’re wonderful, it’s not hard to believe that God is good. But when you lose your job or a loved one is diagnosed with a terminal illness or your church goes through a nasty split or your husband or wife says he/she doesn’t want to be married to you anymore, the Enemy will move in and cause you to question God’s goodness.

The Truth is, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what we feel, regardless of what we think, God is good, and everything He does is good.

God’s grace is sufficient for me. 2Corinthians 12:9 says so. As a child of God, I will never face a circumstance that exceeds His grace. Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. When I am weak, He is strong. When I am empty, He is full. When I have no resources of my own left, His resources have not begun to be depleted.

The Truth is, whatever you are going through right now, His grace is sufficient for you. Whatever you will go through tomorrow – or next year or fifty years from now – His grace will be sufficient for you then.

His grace is sufficient to deal with the memories, wounds, and failures of the most scarred or sordid past. His grace is sufficient for a lifetime of singleness or for a half century of marriage to an ungodly man. His grace is sufficient for the single mother trying to raise four children. His grace is sufficient for the woman caring for her elderly parents, for the empty nester, for the man or woman going through the change of life or midlife crisis, for the widow living on Social Security, and for the invalid in a nursing home.

We need to speak the Truth to ourselves; we need to speak it to each other. In every season, in every circumstance, His grace is sufficient. It is sufficient for me; it is sufficient for you!

The Truth is… I am blessed! It’s my birthday! Thank you oh God for giving me life…

Moving Forward, Pressing On!

This morning I talked to myself… “Hmm, you may have come a long way, baby, in reaching your romantic goals or letting go of the past.”

Now I could receive further gifts in my spiritual life, love life, personal life, family life, career, and relationships. Perhaps some family planning or a positive change in my relationship that can expand my horizons is in the works? Let me get ready then – ready for exciting and creative plans for the future. Only the POSITIVE stays, never mind the problems, for it is not good to admire negativity. Why worry? As my husband reminds me consistently, “worry does not carry out anything good, nor does it promise any solution.” Yeah, he’s so right about this.

Looking forward, this may be the real deal! I could finally feel complete (as if I never was? LOL!) – but it’s only the beginning… “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” (New Living Translation, 2007, Romans 8:28).

Perhaps God's Spirit woke me up this morning to tell me this amazing scripture. Yeah!

Giving is Receiving

When it comes to your relationship or love life, there can be too much of a good thing, particularly if you fall into the trap of showing off. Like an all-you-can-eat buffet, where what you want is quantity, the situation changes or disappears once the want has been sated. But in matters of the heart, do what you believe, which, like a banquet, is all about quality. Tend to what you need, consider those who rely on you for support and practice gratitude. You may find that you are surrounded by a cornucopia of abundance and in a position to share this bounty with others. The more you give, the less you will suffer want in the first place. Get back to basics and make a clean sweep of those things that are cluttering up your love life or distracting you from true commitment and sensual pleasure.

A Message for Women

The wounds that we received as young girls did not come alone. They brought messages with them, messages that stuck at the core of our hearts, right in the place of our “psyche.” Our wounds strike at the core of our femininity. The damage done to our feminine hearts through the wounds we received is made much worse by the horrible things we believe about ourselves as a result. As children, we didn’t have the faculties to process and sort through what was happening to us. Our parents were godlike. We believed them to be right. If we were overwhelmed or belittled or hurt or abused, we believed that somehow it was because of us – the problem was with us.

Women are always looking for something to work on. Prayer, exercise, financial responsibility, a new hair color, more discipline. Why are we trying so hard? Don’t we know how amazing we are? Sometimes, what makes our search so frustrating is that we don’t know what is wrong with us. We simply fear that somehow we are not enough.

Many women feel that way, by the way. We can’t put words to it, but down deep we fear there is something terribly wrong with us. If we were the princess, then our prince would have come. If we were the daughter of a king, he would have fought for us. We can’t help but believe that if we were different, if we were better, then we would have been loved as we longed to be. It must be us.

Some women who were abused choose another path. Or, perhaps more honestly, they find themselves compulsively heading in another direction. They never received love, but they did experience some sort of intimacy through that abuse, and now they give themselves over to one man after another, hoping to somehow heal the wrongful encounters.

The vows we make as children are very understandable – and very, very damaging. They shut our hearts down. They are essentially a deep-seated agreement with the messages of our wounds. They act as an agreement with the verdict on us. “Fine. If that’s how it is, then that’s how it is. I’ll live my life in the following way…”

It’s taken a lot of years for me to sort through the wounds and messages that shaped my life. It’s been a journey for growing clarity, understanding, and healing. Year 2001 made me realize more clearly what the message of my wounds has been. That was the year of my divorce. The message that landed in my heart was that I was overwhelmed. My presence alone caused sorrow and pain for others. I got the message, “You don’t have a beauty that captivates me. You are a disappointment.”

And so, I made a vow in 2002. Somewhere in my heart, without even knowing I was doing it or putting words to it, I vowed to protect myself by never causing pain, never requiring attention. My job in the world was to be invisible, to cause no waves. If I upset things at all, surely this ship would sink. So I began to hide. I hid my needs, my desires, my very heart. I hid my true self. And when it was all too much, I hid in that proverbial closet.

Fast forward to 2006, I married a strong and forthright husband who is not afraid of confrontation (he welcomes it even). When I felt to run and hide, he would come looking for me.

I was embarrassed by my immature behavior, felt foolish about my seeming inability to talk maturely through a disagreement. But I had never seen it done, and I didn’t know how, so my husband’s slightest disappointment in something I had done triggered my unhealed heart. It took four years for Kenji’s love and reassurance to begin to penetrate my frightened heart. I still remember the first time we were in the middle of a “disagreement,” and I was able to stay with him in the room. It took all of my will to keep one foot in the room while the other straddled the doorway of the bathroom, ready to retreat into contrived safety. It was a turning point. I’ve never hidden in that way again.

I did, however, begin to put on weight faster than you would think humanly possible. Unconsciously, I had found a new way to hide. I feared from the start of my marriage that at my core I was – and would always be – a disappointment to Kenji; that it was simply a matter of time before he realized it. The wounded little girl inside thought it would be better to hide. And my hiding, like everyone else’s hiding, made things much, much worse.

Fast forward to the last month of 2010, I am now changed! Again, Kenji has sought me, but this time in a quiet way. My husband prayed for me (and he is still praying for me). God heard his prayer – finally, I have come around. I thank God for my husband’s love, loyalty, determination, dedication, pureness of heart and trust. As Jesus said, she who seeks to save her life will lose it (Matt. 16.25). The vows we make and the things we do as a result of our wounds only make matters worse. I am happy and content today. If not for the protection of God, through my husband’s unconditional love, I’d probably still wonder what message is out there for me.

May we all have a godly and blessed year ahead!

I Have a Great Life

I have a great life. It's the best life. It was chosen by myself. Others may seem like they have amazing lives, but mine is really the best and most adequate one for me. I just have to live it proudly, and enjoy each experience, trying to learn from it.

The universe doesn't just plan 1 path. It plans multiple paths, so whichever choices you make in your life (''Take the bus or walk? Or maybe catch a cab?''), there'll be plenty of enriching experiences.

My life is a great life. If someone wants to partake in it, then good for them. But either way I'm still going to continue having a great life.

I'm worthy of love. And I AM LOVED. God and the angels love me unconditionally. And other people are just different reflections of me. I, like them, deserve to be loved.

Other people and me are parts of a whole, the same whole. Therefore, their happiness is also my happiness. When I make people happy, I am making myself happy.

Sometimes we learn from bad experiences. The perfect life does not have only joy. The balance between joy/euphoria/happiness, which keeps me motivated and positive, and emptiness, which helps me grow, is what makes each of our lives an amazing life.

The world is beautiful. Be it summer or winter, the world is amazing. Natural landscapes can be beautiful (from plains, to mountains, lakes, oceans, forests or swamps), but man-made landscapes (cities, villages...) are also incredible. Every landscape is worth looking at. The rain falling, moving clouds, the lights of the city, the stars, the moon, the movement of people and cars, wind shaking the leaves of trees... A different place is a different experience. And even the same place is always different, or feels different on different moments.

Each people I come across interact with my energy. Each person has their own special shine, and I am no exception. I must let my light shine through, instead of being scared of it. If I have a positive mindset, am confident in myself, respect others, and don't let the little tests the universe throws at me put me down, I will attract very good things, and make any environment I partake in much better for me AND for others.

Like stars have their own consciousness, I too have the potential to burn bright and warm like a little star. My own little star. With my own kind of light, and my own kind of gravity.

People Need to Work Harder at Marriage

One of the reasons I keep reminding people that “love is not enough” for a quality marriage is that emotions are labile, vulnerable, situational, unpredictable, and without an IQ. Commitment and respect for vows, promises, obligations, and tradition are much more worthy and predictable building blocks for a good relationship. You may get your “jollies” fantasizing about some movie star or neighbor, but nothing fills your heart with deeper affection (and perhaps passion) than watching the tenderness of your spouse with the children, having your spouse be compassionate and non-combative when you’re in a mood, or having your spouse be solicitous when you feel (and look) like garbage.

If you really think there is anyone who can sustain a happy, fulfilled state all the time, you’re wrong. You’re also wrong if you think there is some one person out there with whom you certainly would sustain a perpetual happy, fulfilled state. You’re also wrong if you think that the best of relationships don’t go through stages, and phases, and problems.

A stupid breakup occurred from my first marriage. I was “unhappy.” I’ve been used, physically and emotionally battered and despite my willingness to stay in that marriage, I was divorced because he wasn’t done "leeching" and womanizing. I encountered a good reminder on the web one day. “The Five Stages of Marriage” and they were: “Stage 1: Falling in love. Stage 2: Discovering the foibles, faults, etc. Stage 3: Deciding what to do about this new knowledge. Stage 4: (If you reach it) The hard work involved in getting through the realities of Stage 2. Stage 5: The glorious falling in love at a whole new level of intimacy and commitment.”

A light went on! Now I know that when the going got tough, I got going. WOW! What a revelation. The stupidity comes in when I consider the harm to my children and the pain I caused my ex-spouse. If I had known that relationships go through these stages, I think I would have been able to work through the problems. I’m back on the marriage train tracks again, so to speak, but I have become wiser and more patient in understanding what makes a marriage work. Alas, I know better how to keep my husband and children in check. I finally see the big picture. It's not about me, not about my spouse or children, but it's about having a solid relationship with God throughout the marriage.

I believe that millions of people would be able to work through their problems if they had that knowledge and support from their families, friends, and society at large. I will post an intriguing statement here for you to ponder: “Those who are married are happier, healthier, and wealthier.” Go figure.

In most cases, couples don’t try hard enough to stay together. They don’t talk about problems, try to identify the issues, or work them out. And they don’t take the time to remember what made them fall in love with each other.

I believe that most divorces are caused by materialism. In a way, our society is becoming corrupted by materialism. There is competition about having the best car, the biggest house, the nicest clothes – but no one seems to care about having the closest family, the most dinners together as a family, and ongoing friendships with family members. Though divorce has been used as the easy way out of the challenges of marriage and family, the three A’s – addiction, adultery, and abuse – justify divorce as a valid consideration. Quite honestly, I'm done putting up with these three A's and I thought of them as dragons to slay on a day to day basis. Finally, after battling out the quagmire of painful reality, I put these dragons to rest in peace!

A preponderance of divorced women are disgusted with what they put their children through. I’m not an exception to this demographic. I believe that parents should think more about their children than themselves and the world would be a better place. That means making your marriage work – and it does take work! When there are terrible problems, like the three A’s, it becomes a major challenge to consider whether or not to stay. When there is repentance (responsibility taken, true remorse, behaviors to repair and not repeat), there is hope. When there is no repentance, the hope is just postponed disappointment.

I think that people give up too easily on marriage when love, understanding, and forgiveness can help your partner remember what it was that caused them to commit to you in the first place. Giving up on a marriage without attempting to prove your love and worth is a stupid reason for a breakup. Each one must write "NO DIVORCE" on God's Solid Tablet and continue to live a life of truth, happiness and love.

Butterfly Effect | The Butterfly Effect

Butterfly Effect | The Butterfly Effect

No one like you has ever before been created - no one with your dreams, goals, visions, or purpose. This inspiring movie reminds us that when we live a life of permanent purpose, every thing we do in our lives matters. Then we can experience the joy and benefit of our purpose, both in our lives and in the lives of others.

There is Only Me!

Some of what makes people self-centered in relationships has to do with immaturity, lack of experience, poor role models, personality styles, habit, self-protection, and some combination of the above.

Being on my own for so long, I got very used to taking care of myself and if I was hurt or in any type of bind, no one else had to know about it and it really just wasn’t their business anyway. When I became engaged five years ago, this affected our relationship greatly because it took me a while to realize that I can’t become one with someone and still behave like the Lone Ranger. I had to share my thoughts, what I had, and very personal information. That wasn’t easy, but I have to thank God for a patient and tolerant man who is now my husband. He taught me a lot and helped me realize he was there to help, not hurt me, and I didn’t have to do everything on my own.

As many people who might have gone through decent therapy have learned, it is not unusual for them who have suffered to take it out on their spouses – a kind of “I suffered at the hand of another so now you owe me!” mentality.

Some folks grew up in a sexually, emotionally, and physically abusive homes. Most of the students I teach everyday have a rough home life. They, too, will become adults someday. While it is not unusual for people hurt as children to react in such a chaotic way, pushing away values and good people and good experiences out of unresolved historical anger, a fear of hurt or loss, or a discomfort with normalcy after so much chaos, the solution always is love, bonding, commitment, purpose. The solution always is getting back on the soul train someone threw you off.

That “pain” isn’t always from childhood, although those experiences do have an impact on how you handle challenges along the way. Some people have had terrible experiences, which they generalize to all relationships.

A friend of mine puts “pain” in this tune…

“I find that people find it easy to see the demons in others because they have not faced the demons within themselves.... it is easy to be judgmental and righteous because people think they are perfect.... it takes a lot of courage and humility to face our own demons and declare to the world that we have sinned...after we have done this, it takes character and faith to strive to be a better person... let's all stop pretending that there is someone in this world who have not sinned...I prefer to learn from my experiences, forgive others and forgive myself and strive to be the best I can be... we all learn from pain, from our experiences and from others as well, and yes I also choose to share my experiences and the lessons I have learned with others....”

I call this a case of “self-protectiveness” and oboy it is something real and happening in many people’s lives.

Self protectiveness is alienating and lonely. Somehow, the person has chosen risk over safety, and without risk there is no gain, and without gain there is no intimacy, and without intimacy there is no peace and safety that comes from being known and loved.