Presley brought Gray a Message from Santa this morning!

A sleepy eyed Gray walked into the living room at 6:30 this morning to find Presley sitting on the kitchen counter by the computer and he delivered the following message to Gray from Santa:

Click to watch Gray's Message from Santa

Gray watched intently as Santa spoke and smiled then asking, "Did Presley bring one for Trey?" Not yet we said. One of us in the family is very soft hearted and cried as HE watched it with Gray....can you guess who?

The magic of Christmas is such a blessing!

Presley (not Elvis) is Back!

Presley is back at the Palmer home for the holidays! Who is Presley? Presley is our Elf on a Shelf who started coming to our home a couple of years ago. Each Thanksgiving he returns and makes nightly visits to the North Pole to report to Santa on the goods and bads of the day for our kids. Each night when he returns, he shows up in a different spot, usually in our home, but sometimes other places.

Yesterday morning was an adventure in our home as Gray searched the house over for Presley and couldn't find him. As we were leaving for school Gray declared, "He must be at my school or Trey's school because he is nowhere in the house." As we went to get into the car, Gray erupted into pure giggles because hanging from the sunroof in the car was none other than Presley. You see, Gray had a very difficult time having a happy heart with me and his dad while driving to school the day before. Gray was convinced Presley showed up because of his "unhappy" heart the day before.

I just love the pure innocence of Christmas in a child's heart. We should all have that innocent faith of not believing in Santa, but believing in a Savior who was born, died on a cross and rose again so that we may live and have the gift of eternal life. I've never understood why it is so easy for parents to convince their kids to believe in Santa yet struggle with teaching their kids the truths of the Bible. As adults, we all know the end result of believing in Santa but we don't have the same end result by believing in the birth, death and ressurection of Jesus. Jesus is not a myth or fantasy...He is real and each of us has the opportunity to have Him live within us.

Walk Peacefully with Me

This past week the Lord has grown me in so many different ways that I have found myself questioning him and asking, "God, what are you doing?" As I was sharing with a friend at work about a situation I was dealing with, she shared the following devotion with me which I hope will inspire each of you:

Walk peacefully with Me through this day. You are wondering how you will cope with all that is expected of you. You must traverse this day like any other: one step at a time. Instead of mentally rehearsing how you will do this or that, keep your mind on My Presence and on taking the next step. The more demanding your day, the more help you can expect from Me. This is a training opportunity, since I designed you for deep dpendence on your Shepherd-King. Challenging times wake you up and amplify your awareness of needing My Help. When you don't know what to do, wait while I open the way before you. Trust that I know what I'm doing, and be ready to follow My lead. I will give strength to you, and I will bless you with peace.

The Lord knew I needed this devotion. While I have found my ministry work this week to be challenging, the situations to which I was ministering were even a bigger challenge for those involved. I must not ask God why. Instead, I must ask him how and when if I am truly committed to serving Him as He calls me. I'm thankful he has considered me trustworthy enough to do His work this week, and I shall wait patiently for what is to come next. I desire to walk peacefully with Him and know disobedience would not bring the blessing of peace He desires for me.

Please, Don't Tell Me

Husbands and wives share everything.....and if you are married you know the word everything is all encompassing. We share our hearts with one another, our clothes, our bed, bathroom time, etc. I firmly believe a husband and wife should be best friends, and I am blessed beyond measure to know my husband is my best friend. We know each other better than anyone else and, after being together 20 years, we only have to look at one another to know if all is good or if something is wrong. I can't imagine not sharing everything with my husband but there are and continue to be times that I do ask him not to share everything with me.

I thank the Lord every day that He did not create me with a "need to know everything about everyone" personality. I have enough chaos in my own life to fulfill all the chaotic needs any one person could have. In fact, I'm the exact opposite and that has served me well in ministry. I can't tell you how many times people have privately talked with my husband and, assuming he has told me about their conversation, come up to me and start talking about it only to find out that I knew nothing of it. Or there are times when people will ask did you know about this or that with so and so. I'm always taken a little aback by this because it's gossip alley. Sometimes I do know what they are asking me about, however, gossip is not something I want to be a part of so I politely say no.

I was feeling torn about how I was handling these situations and decided there was only one way to resolve it. I went to my husband one day and said, "Honey, please don't tell me anything personal that people share with you". He asked me why, and I explained to him that if I didn't know about these situations or events then I wouldn't be lying when others asked me about something.

More importantly, God already knows the details of all our lives, and I am just as comfortable praying for unspoken requests as I am praying for known requests.

Blessings to you all!

Obedience and Faith

We have experienced many times in our life when faith was all we knew we had when we felt God calling or telling us something we needed to do. One of our biggest leaps of faith to date has been when God called Manley to the ministry. Manley gave up a full-time job to join what his co-workers termed "The God Squad". We take that reference as a compliment and are proud to be a part of God's Squad. We are now at another one of those points in our life where we feel God working and we hear him calling us. He's specific in this calling, relentlessly giving us confirmations we try to ignore sometimes because we are afraid. However, we are in prayer that we can be obedient and faithful.

God is calling us to simplify our lives. He is a big God and if you know us then you know this is a big calling. We have been termed the super couple and accused of being so active people aren't sure how we do it. Actually, we don't think of ourselves as being any busier than most of you are, and we know a lot of you are busier than we could ever fathom. The calling isn't going over well with our kids so we are still in prayer that God will bring them along with us. The calling to simplify has some significant impact on our lives and will create uncomfortable challenges for us. The great thing about it though is that we see God laying the way for us to be lights in a dark place and that is exciting.
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Please pray for us to follow God's will, pray for our children to have peace with the calling to simplify and pray for God to continue walking before us in this path we are to follow.

It feels good to be back blogging!