Be Still

From 2012 – 2015 I wrote a blog called My Rosie Outlook at myrosieoutlook.com. It was my first attempt at writing a blog and it was intended to be a one year project.  At the time I was struggling a bit and found myself in an awful funk.

I had hoped that trying something new would help with my daily state of mind and it did. I will always be quite grateful for those who took the time to read my posts. Their encouraging responses made a genuine difference in my life.

It is something I haven’t forgotten in the years since I stopped writing My Rosie Outlook.

Our family went through some major changes in 2014 that lead to us packing up, putting all of our household goods in storage, and moving to Texas with what we could stuff into our minivan.

We moved into an apartment with a plan to live there for just a few months…which turned into 12 long months. We put mattresses on the floors in the bedrooms, patio furniture in the living room, and literally lived out of our suitcases for a year.

An entire year.

It was during our time in the apartment I stopped writing. I was overwhelmed by our circumstances. It became clear to me it was time for me to Be Still.

I spent a good deal of time each day sitting on our tiny little balcony reading my Bible, working through Bible studies, and praying. It clearly wasn’t time to write, it was time to listen.

Be Still is not a new concept to me. It’s been one of my family’s verses since my brothers were little. In the small country church where we grew up, we sat in the same pew behind the organ every week. One Sunday, we walked into the sanctuary to discover someone had hung a plaque right by our pew with these words:

 “Be still, and know that I am God”  ~ Psalm 46:10  (NIV)

As you can imagine, finding such a plaque hanging over the place where our family sat each week, made a memory.

Another verse my family has relied on more recently was spoken by Moses to the Israelites as they fled from Pharaoh. Moses told them: 

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.  ~Exodus 14:14 (NIV)

As challenging as our year in the apartment was…2016 would bring two of the most immense challenges our family would face, and we truly needed the Lord to fight for us.

So much has happened since my last post in March 2015. Without a doubt, the Lord has fought for us and there is much to share. After a time of being still, I am ready to write again.

It’s nice to start over new and fresh, so I have created this new website. It is still My Rosie Outlook…this is just the Texas edition.

I am thankful for times God calls us to Be Still. It is a reminder that He is in control and we can rest while He takes care of whatever we can’t.  I’m happy to be back.

See you next Monday!