When You Forget Your Best Friend's Name

With one child away at camp and the other attending VBS mornings this week, it's a different pace this week. Lots of writing projects are on the horizon, so I'm trying to crank out as much as I can.

This one, though, I knew was meant to share today.

The counting the days until she is five child made a "best friend" at VBS this week. Yesterday the teacher (the child's daughter) reported that her child and mine were inseparable. They did everything together, right down to holding hands on their way to the activities. What a great thing to hear!

On the way to the car I asked my child, "What's your best friend's name?"

She shrugged.

"I forget."

Seems odd to forget a best friend's name, isn't it? But I'm guilty of the very same thing.

Jesus Christ is my best friend.

But I don't just forget His name, I often forget Him.

I run ahead starting my day and I never look back. I make decisions without talking to my best friend. I don't keep in touch. I don't read His letters or listen to His Words. An hour becomes a day. A day turns into a week. A week melts into a month. Then some crisis hits and I remember.

I have a best friend.

And I forgot His name.


Have you visited Christian Women Take Root? The Narrow Gate Invites girls are not only involved in the social networking site with fantastic groups to join but the main site called Take Root and Write. Regular columns are ongoing, check it all out. The best thing you could do with Take Root is sign up for the free subscription feed right to your in box. We'll see you there...and hey---if you have a blog, Take Root has a blog roll. Give your blog some exposure and be associated with a quality Christian site!

Julie Arduini is a surrendered writer with her own blog, http://thesurrenderedscribe.blogspot.com/. A graduate of the Christian Writers Guild, she blogs for the Christian Writers Forum Sundays as the mommy blogger. She is active with FaithWriters and has several writings ready to publish in different books and anthologies in 2008-09. She is the tentative debut interview on surrender/fearlessness for Kathy Vick's upcoming website, Run Like a Girl. To get to know Julie better, read her interview by Lynda Schab at:http://www.faithreaders.com/featured-author-details.php?id=33%20
To contact Julie, please use the e mail provided in our profile.

Stepping Over The Line

In my last post I promised to share more about the Summit, the orphaned, and ways to become involved . . . and I will very soon. Today I have something pressing on my heart and I feel the need to walk, or shall I say "write" it out.

Since my salvation experience 2 1/2 years ago the Lord has been working in me as I chase Him, run from Him, and ultimately seek His face. I have been through seasons of joy, awe, peace, doubt, desperation, lonliness, and healing. My time with Him has been like a roller coaster ride and I must admit my favorite part has been the anticipation of His prescence and then going down the first hill with my hands in the air in total surrender. I love the freedom and thrill that He brings into my life! But today is different. Today I am standing on the platform of a new coaster, a new ride, right behind the 'yellow line,' asking myself . . . 'Do I really want to get on? Do I really trust that this is all 'real'? What if this ride is too scary, has too many twists and turns, or it is not what I thought it would be, what then?'

Within the past few weeks I have been at two separate prayer gatherings with two totally different groups of people and had the same words prophesied over me both times. The words were like an invitation, an invitation from the Lord, to enter into a new place of intimacy with Him. A place that is full of depth and love where He will share His heart with me. He is asking me to take His hand and be with Him, spend more time with Him, and truly fall in love with Him. He is asking me to start 'birthing' the destiny He has placed inside me, to trust Him, and not feel guilty or be afraid. But honestly, I am scared to death! In the natural my mind is swirling. Can I truly experience pure, fufilling love in this life that will not be filled with void and ultimately disappointment? Or am I really kidding myself? What if this whole 'Christianity thing' is not really real, then what? What if I make a fool of myself and land flat on my face? Ughhh!!!!

So here I stand on the edge, behind the yellow line, with a decision to make. Do I believe the words spoken over me through God's prophets or do I believe the lies man and the world has told me? Do I believe His Word, the bible, or do I spend my years here on earth searching for fufillment in man made truths in books, self help sections, and material things? Do I remember and give thanks for all the healing and peace He has already brought into my life or do I let the enemy convince me that it is all just a facade and not real? Well, I have already tried the later, so I suppose the choice has already been made. I'm going to step over the line, get in, buckle up, and get ready for the ride of my life. I will keep you posted.

Holding On, Kim

Maria on Surrender

Did you ever have a minor cut or scrape that at first hurts so bad, you don’t know how you will ever think about anything else? The pain seems to override everything else you have to do or focus on….It takes all of your energy to do something other than try to alleviate the pain from this wound.

Then after you nurse this wound for a little while, you realize the pain is not as it once was, it is tolerable, and you can go about your daily routine without having to feel the reminder that it is there and still causing you pain. Then suddenly, one day, you see the remainder of a scab or scar that was there, and you actually forgot it was there, or that not so long ago, it was causing you pain.

I feel that the wounds of our lives, our hearts, our emotions, are very similar to this kind of wound. No matter how minor the wound may be, the pain that can come from such a wound can pierce our innermost beings. But when we come to Christ, we know and we learn that He can make all things new, He has paid the price of his life for us, for our sins…so initially we think that if we go after Him and search out answers to all of our questions, maybe he can take away some of this pain. And we read His promises, we believe them to be true, but in the meantime, we are nursing these wounds…they still hurt. We know in our heart that He is who He says He is, and we see Him working in other people’s lives, and we read, we ask, we want to know him more….and we believe. But why then, if we believe, do these things still hurt? We think, “If I were a true believer, this pain would be gone…what’s wrong with me? I must not know enough, I must not be willing enough…” So, in turn, we search more, more resources, more books, more messengers and conferences, we think to ourselves, “surely if I go here or there, or read this book or that book, then I will fully understand and the pain will go away.”

But it is not until we realize there is only one book and only one resource that we need. It is in His word, and His name is Jesus, and He has endured the pain of our wounds, he has felt our scrapes, he has felt them even before we did. He knew we would be feeling them, and he has been waiting for us to totally completely surrender and believe him at his word. Believe that he is who he says he is, and he wants us to depend on him to carry us through.

I feel that this cannot happen completely until we learn what it is to receive this grace, this love, this mercy that he has for us. Each and every one of us. When we stop searching, running to find answers…when we just sit in his presence and truly receive his words from the only book we need, it is then and only then that our healing can begin. He doesn’t want us to hold onto anything…he knows we’re holding on to it and trying to do it in our own strength…he wants us to trust all of his words, and allow him to rescue us from this pain. He wants believing and receiving to go hand in hand. He knows it is sometimes difficult for us to receive….because some of these even small scrapes can be very, very deep and cause intense pain. When we decide to immerse ourselves in his word and live within his grace, we can truly, completely receive his promises.
And then, one day, as this receiving becomes second nature to us, we realize there were wounds that have now begun to heal. You see, when we surrender all to the Lord, and let his rain fall on us…and soak in it, it is then and only then that pain will become a memory. He will take the pain, and bask in the joy of our commitment and love for him.

Allow him to take your pain.
Allow him to rescue you from the wounds in your heart.
Let him in.
Give him your pain.
He wants to take it.
Go ahead. He really is who he says he is.
Let him heal you.
Surrender.


Maria and her family reside in NE Ohio. She and her husband are the parents of two. Their daughter is a person with hemipelegic cerebral palsy. Because of her experiences, Maria provides parent-to-parent support for families involved in her local early intervention program. Her gift for writing has come directly from the Lord since her daughter’s diagnosis. She writes a monthly column entitled, “Special Parents, Special Kids” for the Mahoning Valley Parent magazine in Ohio; and has expanded into Parent magazines in parts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. She is also a contributing author at www.mommiesmagazine.com. Maria is very passionate about getting the word out to special parents that they are not alone in their journey of raising their special child; and that they were chosen by God to parent their children. Maria welcomes comments and communication. If you would like to talk to her, please leave a comment with an e mail address.

And The Gate Is Open!

Welcome! We're scared but we feel the call and we can't ignore it any longer. This blog is called "The Narrow Gate Invites" because we feel called to share the deeper things of Christian faith. Our hope is to blog our experiences, mistakes, learnings, revelations and tears to challenge your walk and seek God in a way you never have before. By no means does this mean we have things mastered, quite the opposite. We're all on this journey together.



The authors of this blog are myself, Kim and Maria. Besides feeling the call to blog here, we are all wives and moms with a full plate stretching us in several directions. We are hungry for things of God yet when we get together we confess how we yell at our kids, get frustrated, and skip Bible readings when we need it most. Our hope is to blog a few times a week and we definitely want you on board. We ask for your grace as this full plate may prevent us from posting like we want. My hope is to tackle Tuesdays and Thursdays. Kim would like once a week and so would Maria. I can't wait for you to get to know them.



My name is Julie and you can also find me at the right of this blog with my personal blog, The Surrendered Scribe, http://thesurrenderedscribe.blogspot.com/ I blog about many things there, and this blog will be a little more faith specific, so check my rants, thoughts, confessions and learnings on anything from writing, to family to wanting a two car attached garage over at the Surrendered Scribe. I'm also a writer dipping my pen in the waters so to speak, and you can find the list of what I'm doing at the right of the Surrendered Scribe blog. On Sundays I am the mommy blogger at the Christian Writers Forum blog, http://christianwritersforum.com/Blog/ . I'm married with two children and like Kim and Maria, I live in NE Ohio. If you want to know more about me, I am the featured author of the month at FaithReaders http://www.faithreaders.com/featured-author.php and Lynda did such a great job interviewing me I joke that my family can use this interview as my obituary one day.



Today I just want to say welcome and Kim and Maria, it's real and happening. For you the reader, pray for us. We sense this is a new thing God is doing, and we want to be authentic vessels for Him. We don't want you to be fans of us, we want you to be close friends with God because when Christ died on the cross, He opened the gate and knocked barriers so we could know the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in a personal way. We want that, and we hope you do too. Note on the right you can sign up for the RSS service or the Feedburner subscription service. As always, feel free to bookmark us and check back often!



Some of what we may blog may be new to you and that's ok. You may not agree with everything we write, that's fine too. We don't want to be controversial, we want to be Scriptural. More than anything, we want to challenge your thinking and rock your faith. Anyone can go the wide beaten down path----where God is calling us and you now is lesser traveled. It's narrow. There is room for you, so please, take those small steps and push the gate open a little further. Walk with us. Share your thoughts, remembering to be kind even if you disagree. Laugh and cry with us, but don't stand still. This journey is for all of us.



Will you join me in this prayer of asking God to bless this endeavor?



Father God, we invite you to this blog. We ask that every word written here would be given by You first and filtered through us. Help us be the vessels you want us to be. Guide each topic, each blogger, each comment, every part of this experience. Let anything learned here be for Your glory. Give us the drive to obey this call, surrendering all fear. Bring the readers you want to be here in Your time, not ours. Thank you for stirring us to step out of our comfort zone and try something new and different. This blog isn't convenient or easy, but it's of You. We covet your favor, anointing, blessing and protection over this, us, and our loved ones.



We feel this year is a year where you want to use the theme of the gate, so we honor You with your Word: But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:14 NIV) and But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the (gate) stall. (Malachi 4:2 NIV)



Thank you Lord for the opportunity to serve You. Your grace amazes us. Blessed be Your name. Surrendered to Him, Amen.



*Note: The gate image comes from by Petr Kratochvil at http://publicdomainpictures.net/