The Blessing of Baby Steps

I have a dear sister/friend named Jan with a family member in need of a major healing. Loved ones are joining him in faith as he fights for his life, already having beat some odds, everyone seems poised to see him all the way through to victory.

The same doctor’s who once bore the grim task of having to explain devastating news that would send even the strongest of believers to their knees have also been the ones that have day-by-day delivered little bits of good news, glimmers of hope with a resounding tone of “baby steps”.

As much as the human mind or heart would like to discount “baby steps” because they often don’t appear grand enough, exciting enough or miraculous enough I had to stop and think about what a “baby step” really represents. Baby steps are a blessing!

Think about babies. Think about the first time you’ve seen the special baby in your life take a step forward, even if they fell again. It’s truly a cause for joyous celebration. I have been privileged to closely see the development of little loved ones who have made the daring task of walking. Regardless of it being uncomfortable, unfamiliar, unstable and downright scary they’ve done it, one by one. They walk, gain momentum, garner strength and confidence to go on. That’s a blessing!

I want to be the kind of person, like Jan and her family, that is grateful for the “little” like it’s the “big” they’re after. I want to be the kind of person, daughter, sister, or friend that celebrates the “baby steps” in my life and the lives of others just like I do the “leaps and bounds” because life has taught me that the God we serve is capable of using baby steps to operate like leaps, bounds and beyond!

-Angela Moore

I Found Out My Ex Is My Brother!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve dealt with shock and awe in my life in many ways many can’t imagine. From my time as a television journalist years ago, to the seven years I spent working in full-time ministry, to my own antics as a human being and everything in between, I’ve pretty much seen or heard it all.

But nothing took me aback recently like a shocking fact I finally uncovered around 2011. While in the midst of a recurring Church of the Highlands Small Group called Restoration for persons experiencing divorce or separation taught by Donna and Buddy Collier I was faced with a grim discovery…My Ex is My Brother!!!!!!!

I feel you. As a matter of fact, I could hear your gasp through the computer. It floored me just about as much as I’m sure this revelation floored you. I was so resistant to the thought of him being my brother, almost rebellious and embarrassed even, as I accepted how the knowledge I’d gained was going to change my life forever.

You see, it was while in the Restoration Small Group (which starts again in June at 11:30am each Sunday at Church of the Highlands Grants Mill www.churchofthehighlands.com) that I had to face a hard truth. All of the pain, disappointment, shattered dreams, unfulfilled promises, ways I wanted to get revenge, and plain old ANGER surrounding my divorce were involving not my “husband”, not simply another “human”, not even a “man”, but my BROTHER in Christ. He was my brother, and subject to the same faults, flaws and forgiveness as I. And for that fact, that gigantically, small fact, I had to forgive him, view him, respond to him, pray for him and treat him like the brother in the Lord Jesus that he was.

People often ask how I “did divorce” the way that I did. I guess they’re inquiring why I didn’t go all “Hollywood crazy” like some who haven’t put things, even their own pain, in a greater perspective and in greater Hands. Don’t think a quick flash of Angela Bassett’s stirring performance in “Waiting to Exhale” didn’t flash through my mind like some lighting in July. Don’t even think I didn’t allow the devil to have me entertain some very cautiously, creative ways to make his life miserable because mine was. But it wasn’t worth it. It just wasn’t worth it.

Was viewing him as my brother in Christ easy? N-O! Has it grown to be easy? Not easy, but much, much easier.  But it is worth it to choose to see him as my brother each time something goes wrong in my life (mostly finances, if you want me to be real) and my internal answer is to look for a blame. Because of how I choose to see things I can correct myself knowing that he’s my brother and not my blame. Whatever happened God allowed and ultimately, my life, (his life) and all the great things to come in spite of the “not as great things” that have come are God’s responsibility and no one else’s. My responsibility is to love, heal, forgive, keep the peace and stay in place to receive.

-Angela Moore