I will praise You more and more

Psalm 71:14: "But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise You more and more"

Often I need to remind myself not to allow the events of the day or situations to overcome me. One of the things that I have been blessed with is a great imagination. I have learned that this gift can be used for good to entertain my grandchildren or for bad when I give in to fears and imagine the worse cases in a situation.

Thankfully, I have been blessed with a husband who reminds me that God is not the author of fear. I then begin to ask myself if the situation is hopeless. Of course, the answer to this question is no. I may not be able do anything about it;but I know One who can. The next question is who or what needs to change: answer is usually me and my attitude.

As a parent, I often thought what do I need to do to help one of my children. So I jumped right in trying to make them conform to what I think should happen or just fix their problem for them because I could not bear to see them suffer. I repeated this action over and over through out the years at various times with different children. And when they continued to repeat behaviors that created the situations, I would cry and ask God what do I need to do.

Because I was too busy handling the situation instead of hearing the answer to the prayer: I missed what He was trying to say to me. When I finally reached my end, I heard clearly: "You need to have hope and trust that I will do what is needed. You need to believe that I can meet your children on whatever road they have chosen to walk."

Again, I was in the way trying to fix what I had no business trying to fix. We repeated the same situations over and over because I thought I had to change things. I did have to change something;but it was me and my attitude. I had to trust that if that child suffered,God would bring healing to them and He would keep them .

Well, that child did suffer and it was painful to watch. But in the midst of that suffering God was there and He did bring healing and new life to them. Today that child has a growing relationship with Jesus and is stronger everyday. I confess too, that I always have hope and I do get to praise God more and more because of the lesson He taught me....when to let go and step out of His way.

For a parent this is one of the hardest things to do...This God understands because He let go of His Only Son so that we might have HOPE