Licensed Professional

I got my license in the mail today. My title has officially changed I am now:

Kelly Ram, MA, LLPC

Also member in good standing with the ACA.

Homeowners

No more a secret: Don and I are homeowners.

Our house even has an occupant — one gigantic stuffed gorilla. Our TV and some shelves will be there tomorrow and we will join Fuzzy and all the other fun on Saturday. I am tired of packing even tho the Kitchen was not has difficult as I had suspected. I am so excited to live there...excitement has officially moved out of our apartment.

Pictures to follow. ...After I've unpacked.

Thoughts on Faith

I am reading this book, "Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus can Transform Your Faith" and I must say that this book has greatly impacted me. I keep thinking, 'Why do we not teach first century Jewish tradition in churches and Sunday school classes?'.

One of the ways it has impacted me is how I see praying in confidence, believing that God can and will do what we pray for. That is not to say that God is some Mover, waiting for us to pray for him to act, that would deny God his sovereignty. It is to say that when we pray, or when I pray, I often think in the back of my mind, 'This really won't happen...God won't really ... the way I expect or desire.' Which in reality, reveals more of my lack of faith than God's will and/or sovereignty.

If you go back to my blog entitled 'Expectations' (the only August 2010 entry) I wrote about this struggle that Christians have. I need to pray with faith. I know we all need to pray with faith. If we pray and have doubts, isn't that defeating the purpose? One of the purposes of prayer is to enact the will of God because, yes, there are times that we pray and God changes, but He won't act if we don't believe he will!

Miracles. Miracles never happen to prove God exists. In order for a miracle to happen, one needs to have faith that God exists (to perform the miracle) and faith that God will indeed perform this miracle. Therefore, by default, faith needs to exist in order for a miracle to be present. So, if we look at prayer in the same way, we ought to expect, without doubt, that God hears and answers our prayer.

There is a seven year old girl, Kate McRae, who needs us to pray with absolute faith on Feb 8. For the past 9 months she has been in remission from a rare form of brain cancer that threatens her short life. It is inoperable as it is wrapped around veins, arteries, or some sort of blood supply. Her dad is a pastor in Arizona and she has both a brother and a sister. Her last MRI, back in January, revealed new spots and there is a STRONG possibility that is cancer again. The team of doctors and her family are searching the country over trying to find doctors to help in this massive effort. Please pray. Her picture is currently my Facebook profile.

Clarity and Joy

Clarity that comes from hindsight is a wonderful thing. Probably one of the better things in life. In my packing and sorting and labeling and all that, I ran across a journal I kept from that third year of college. I always wished I would have kept better track of these sorts of things but I never do so you could imagine my astonishment when I found it.

Without going into detail here and to make a LONG story short, I will recap it with this sentence: It was probably the most difficult year of my life. ...And it wasn't even a year. Reading through it I realized it was only three and a half or four months (so that's how difficult it was, it seemed like a year!).

I come to a very steadfast conclusion and I've said it before: Conflict defines relationship. Without conflict we do not know what the true value is of someone or something that we have. Whether it be conflict with another person or someone else seeing you through conflict, truth about that relationship comes to fruition.

I am also amazed and very surprised (pleasantly) to see that some relationships I held back then are not only present in my life today but they are some of my most cherished and favored things in life now, nine years later.

I cannot believe God's amazing grace in this simple fact of my life. I think it really puts in perspective all God, through Jesus, over came just to live with us on earth. I mean, my conflict was great in my life. Hands-down it will probably be the greatest conflict of my life (I hope) and yet, in the grand scheme of this world from creation to the time Jesus comes again, it was pretty insignificant. Yet out of that great conflict in my life, such joy has come because we all fought for some semblance to be brought to reality. I cannot image the greatest conflict of all time — that between God and us because of sin — being resolved and the joy that it will bring at the end of time. Praise be to God! A thousand times over!