Keep Looking to The Father!

Music has always been my go to therapy.  When I need a mood change it makes me feel better; when I'm happy it makes me smile and laugh and dance, when I'm angry it let's me vent and scream out loud!, when I'm sad I can either find a song that makes me cry or one that makes me laugh (whatever the situation calls for) ... sometimes you just feel like a good cry, though!  I feel there's a song for everything.  Sometimes I feel music is weird, in that I feel it's a fairy tale, something not real or applicable to life.  Seeing life through rose colored glasses and all that.  Then again, sometimes I feel there is nothing more real than the story within a song.  Maybe that's where the magic lays within music...  It's all relative to how it affects your heart!

Dolly Parton has a song called Appalachian Memories that I just love.  It is full of imagery, heart, and strength drawn from faith in God. It starts out where somebody told them they should go North to look for work, the promise made was that "The air was filled with gold dust and fortune falls like snowflakes in your hands."  These lofty promises filled their heads with dreams and when they got there all those dreams fell in on them because "there was no land of promise."  They began longing for what they had back home.

It is SO important to realize the moment you're in and appreciate what you have when you have it.  If you are always longing for something you perceive to be better than what you have, what will you get but disappointment?  It's important to remember that nothing comes easy, and anything worth having is also something you usually have to work for.  There's struggles and hardships that will need to be overcome and maybe the sacrifices you made would become worth it in the end.  And to get through those struggles in life?  The song says:

But I'll keep leanin' on Sweet Jesus

I know He'll love and guide and lead us.

Smoky Mountain memories keep me strong.

What is your "Smoky Mountains?"  The place or feeling or longing that you call "home?"  Is it your loved ones?  Your faith?  Your family?  Let those things be the things you draw strength from, but first and foremost remember that Jesus will love and guide and lead you when you feel overwhelmed and need strength to carry on.

Ya know I've been thinkin' a whole lot lately

About what's been and what awaits me

It takes all I've got to give what life demands

You go insane if you give in to it

Life's a mill and I've been through it

I'm just thankful I'm creative with my hands

Life is so overwhelming at times, you feel like you'll sink if you don't start swimming but just the thought of trying to swim overwhelms you as well!  If you have faith in God, though, just remember this verse from 1 Corinthians 10:13:

But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.

I don't claim to be a Bible scholar and the way I interpret this verse is probably not the way anyone else in the whole wide world would interpret it, but when I read it for the first time I felt as if God was telling me that he wouldn't keep putting tests and trials in front of me if He didn't trust that I could handle it.  Sometimes I feel like, why does God trust me so much?  I don't even have enough faith in myself to believe I can accomplish some of the things He puts before me to do.  However, just the knowledge that He is there for me and has faith that I can do it, or He wouldn't have put it in front of me, keeps me striving to do better...

If I keep lookin' to the Father

he'll keep our heads above the water...

Appalachian Memories by Dolly Parton

As usual the emotion and almost prayerful way Dolly Parton sings this speaks to the soul and pulls on the heartstrings!