CALI, here I come!

Tomorrow morning I leave for Cali :) It has been almost 15 years since I was there last. My family and I went when I was in 6th grade and made a vacation of the San Diego Zoo and San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf. That is about all I remember down that memory lane.
This trip to Cali has a whole new excitement- and by "new" I mean I get to spend quality time with my "new" family- Kennedy's bro and his precious family. ALSO, one of Kennedy's sister will be there! I am looking forward to hanging out with them & getting to know them. Kennedy and I haven't seen them since last May, which was the first time I met Carl & the kids. I had known Kennedy's bro's wife in college, funny enough! We lived in the same dorm freshman year, but obviously college was many years ago I am ashamed to say. So, it is fun to have that connection and to become not only friends but sisters!
I came across this quote today in the newest issue of Tabletalk that Kennedy and I received. If you don't subscribe to this magazine, you should. It is totally worth it. The quote is by St. Augustine:

 

"That GOD may be loved, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, not by the free choice whose spring is in ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit, given to us." 

 

 

What I gather from this quote in this point of life is gratitude...that I am thankful it is not up to me to gain favor or salvation from God...but it has already been done and completed in Christ...and that by our own "free choice" or left to ourselves, we cannot love God. It is THROUGH the Holy Spirit, given to us BY God that we can love Him. Maybe it is the older I get, but I am seeing how my heart is not prone to love God. It is like training for a marathon or eating healthy every day and committing to those things that I have to train my heart every morning to lean on and rely on God. Without His perfect love, my heart would not choose to love Him.

This quote and the place I find myself in life remind me of His perfect, unfailing, constant love. It reminds me of this precious hymn:

 



O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.