My greatest pleasure has to be the fact that God speaks to me and I hear Him. Growing up, I was taught about a god being more so, a distant deity, not really a person with feelings. Well that god had anger, and plenty of it, lol. I know God to be totally different from the one I was taught about while growing up.

Looking back on my life, I now understand that God has been speaking to me -and I have actually listened, quite a bit. I now know that so much of what I have done in life was because of His leading. He’s had me travel paths that I didn’t know existed so there was no previous interest in them. He has led me to have the types of birth experiences I’ve had, from my first and only hospital birth to go on to have unassisted homebirths. I went from sending my oldest to daycare, inwardly dreading her first day of real school, to taking her out of daycare and going on to unschool her and my other children.

With the track record God has established between us, I trust Him implicitly when He gives me a directive. That’s not to say that I don’t get afraid. I most certainly do. I am just ok with moving forward in spite of fear. Really, it’s because this is God we’re talking about. It has happened many times that people want me to do one thing when God has directed me clearly to do the opposite. I always go with God. In that way, I am not a fool.

I find that God can get real weird in His directives with me at times. I think He does it sometimes just to show me (not Himself) how willing I am to follow Him. He already knows what I will do from one moment to the next. I believe He’s teaching me about myself in these instances. He’s showing me how I can advance to greater levels of trust and intimacy with Him. Sometimes it’s fun, other times it’s hard, there’s pain involved, but it’s always good.

So, I will keep right on trusting and following Him, even when others are saying something different. Some even say that what they are telling me to do is from Him. Sometimes I laugh it off, knowing what He told me directly. Other times, I freak out and He gently says, “Who are you going to listen to?” Now, more than ever before, I am so grateful that I hear Him.