February 23: Do You Need a Taller Hedge?

Affirmation: I find balance between giving and receiving.

Balance yourself, whether you are a giver or a taker. Be willing to step in to help and in turn, be willing to accept help.

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Ponder, Personalize, Practice: Recite Zephaniah 3:17. Practice this verse in your self-talk. Remind yourself that God is with you. He delights in you. He loves you & chooses not to rebuke you. He sings over you with joy. Put this verse into PRACTICE by changing your THINKING.

Zephaniah 3:17 

“The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” 

https://youtu.be/qZzgeUJXmCM?si=xU3TMJ6w0NWk-dG4

Tommy Walker. We Will Remember 

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Catching Whimsy: 365 Days of Possibility by Bob Goff

                       Feb 23

Do You Need a Taller Hedge?

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23

I took a break from speaking and canceled everything on my calendar at the beginning of one year. A short time later, it seemed the world stopped spinning from a pandemic, and the remaining events I still had were also canceled. I was sad about the problems being faced worldwide, but also was silently deighted to be out of work. One event in Arizona, though, didn’t cancel, for some stubborn reason. I guess they didn’t have the same problem everyone else on earth had, or maybe they were just pretending not to. I didn’t feel comfortable getting on a commercial airline, and I estimated the drive from San Diego to Arizona. It would only take a couple of hours, so I decided to hop in the car. Boy, did I miss that one. After a punishingly long drive to the event, I spoke that evening and then turned around and drove home, finally pulling back into San Diego at 3:00 AM.

The next day I was beat and went out on my back porch to take a nap on the warm bricks. I’m not usually a napper, but I was whipped. I was in one of those deep, drooler’s sleeps when something woke me up. It was a woman standing over me. “I’m here to render help,” she said, locking her intense eyes with my groggy ones. My first thought was, Who in heavens are you? and my second thought was “why are you speaking in King James English?”

Evidently, this overeager woman had been walking down the path behind our house on the bayfront when she looked over my hedge, saw me lying down and assumed I was having a stroke. She jumped over the hedge, separating the walking path from us, ran across my lawn, up some stairs, across another lawn, and up some more stairs and up to the porch, where she was ready to do mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions on me. What I learned that afternoon was this: sometimes we need a taller hedge.

We all experience trespassers in our lives. Some come in the form of in-laws, or strangers, or fans, or work colleagues, but we need to find a way to guard our tender hearts and lives while these people are navigating their complicated ones. What hedge do you need to grow a little taller in your life? 
What boundaries would serve you in your faith and your relationships?