Devotions of a High Heeled Warrior

I've celebrated another birthday, so here are a few things I've learned over the years. 1. Never use a sweater shaver to do your eyebrows. (Don't ask.) 2. Don't get in a hurry looking for the right person for you.  The right person is worth the wait, and they do exist.  Looks fade, but kindness lasts your whole life. 3. It's okay to have conflict in marriage.   Two different personalities will clash at some point.  It's how you handle the conflict that matters. 4. Take a breath before you enter a verbal conflict.  Once hurtful words are spoken, you can never take them back. 5. Never take children to Walmart when they are hungry.   Your bank account and peace of mind cannot handle it. 6. Never take your spouse to Walmart hungry.   Same reason as above. 7. If you give your children choices, make sure you can live with whatever they choose.  Don't tell them that if they don't get along, you'll turn the car around unless you reall...

During this time of year, I love to give gifts to people.  One of the things that annoys me is when I give a gift and find out it was never used.   I can't tell you how many times I've found gifts for my husband in a bag in a corner.  I found the solution to this problem.  I would gather all the gifts he hadn't used, then I would re-gift them to him for the next holiday.  It might be his birthday or the next Christmas, but he kept receiving the gift until he used it.  It kind of defeats the purpose of giving selflessly in love, doesn't it?   But how many times do we do this?  We see someone that God compels us to help.  Then we question how they will use the gift we give them .  They may buy liquor with it or waste it.  They may mistreat our gift.  Then through our justification, we refuse.  When God gave the gift of His son, Jesus, He knew that the world for which He was given would mistreat His gift.   He knew ...

When my children were young, I struggled with something very common lately.  I wanted my children to feel loved,  and I loved watching them open gifts.  You would walk into a store and find something cute and want to buy it for your child.  Eventually, at Christmastime, there were huge piles of gifts under the tree.  My light bulb moment was when I watched my children open the gifts.  They would rip off the wrapping paper, examine the gift, then throw it down to move on to the next gift.  After all was unwrapped, they would load up their bounty and carry it to their room.  Sometimes I found gifts months later still unused and in the Christmas bags.  I started to think there had to be a better way to give my kids wonderful gifts without over-doing it.  This is when I had some very effective ideas.   1) Give three gifts per child.  I buy one big gift that they really want, one medium gift, and one small gift.  Some...

Have you ever noticed that the minute a weather forecast calls for snow in the South, everything shuts down?  The stores empty of groceries, meetings cancel, and people postpone events.  This happens before severe weather even appears.  This week, the weathermen called for 6-8 inches of snow.  People went into a panic days before snow showed.  People prepared for the worst.  But instead of 6-8 inches, we got 6-8 snowflakes.   However, by the time everyone realized the storm wasn't coming, everything had already been cancelled.  In the book of Revelation from the Bible, it mentions that no man knows the hour when Jesus will return for His second coming to earth.  It won't be like a storm.  There will be no weatherman giving you warning that Jesus will be here at noon on a certain day.  So what can we do?   We prepare like a storm is coming.  1) We do inventory of our lives.   What isn't ready for Christ's retur...

This morning, a special speaker at church asked an important question.  "How many here have a drug problem?" Several hands went up. He then said," I don't mean opioids. I mean how many were drug to church?   Do you have a drug problem?" He brought up a good point.  Do we go to church, read the Bible, and do good works out of conviction to please God, or do we do it because it is what we are expected to do? The world has lost hope.  Without hope we just exist.  But as we enter Advent season (where we look for the coming of the birth of Jesus), we remember the whole purpose of Christmas is to bring hope .  Advent meant the coming of Jesus as a baby, but it also has us looking for the coming of Christ again. Imagine what it will be like when we join Jesus either through our death or His return. No pain, addiction, depression, rejection. There will be peace, real love, joy, and real freedom.  That's what hope is all about. It means this is not all...

We have faced all four seasons in one month in Arkansas.  One day, the weather is balmy, and then two days later, we have snow or freezing winds.  This last Monday, I was able to help with a bake sale to benefit a homeless woman for Christmas.  I started out the bake sale at 9am thinking that it was cool but manageable.  After a couple of hours, I realized that manageable was a little generous.  The wind chill was 32 degrees.   I bundled up as best I could and quickly sent my husband for hats and blankets.  By 4pm, I couldn't feel my toes and started begging God to send people to buy the baked goods that were left on the table.   I had already decided that by 5 pm, I would give up and go home.  Within 10 minutes of making that decision, a man came up to buy a couple of bags of Rice Krispie treats.  He told me he had also suffered through the cold selling mistletoe in the past and wished me luck.  A few minutes later, as his wife f...

How many of you remember Thanksgiving as a child? You spent weeks in school making paper fringed vests and Pilgrim buckle hats. You would load up in your car and visit family you may not have seen for a while. Now we tend to skip right over Thanksgiving to move straight to Christmas and gifts. But lets's look at the first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims were starving in America. They were resigned to the fact they would die when God sent help. In that help an entire civilization was saved. The Pilgrims forgot differences and joined with the Native Americans because they were thankful for second chances. When struggle comes, we forget differences. In Arkansas, the leaves are changing colors in an amazing array of colors.  The reason for this is rain. Because of the storms and rain, the leaves stayed hydrated instead of turning brown and dying before color change.  Instead of complaining about rain, we can be thankful for beauty because of rain. So when you face hard times, focus ...