"What Consumes My Mind Controls My Life.”

“I very much recognize I will steer where I stare.  So I must watch what I fixate on. 

I know that what consumes my mind controls my life.”

Lysa Terkeurst

This past week I was crazy blessed to have an overnight visit by my oldest granddaughter Bella and her best friend, Jayden.  Bella is a tall 17 year old who has a magic eye for photography.  She sees things in nature and in people through the lens of her camera that most would overlook.  .

We decided to go Photo-hopping on Monday afternoon after delivering Meals on Wheel in Winnsboro.  We had taken countless pictures of cows and deer and ducks, when I remembered a really cool dirt road that ended at an old cemetery.  It is one of my favorite places to go watch a winter sunset, as it sits high up on a hill.  The girls jumped out of the Jeep as soon as we arrived and started taking pictures of barbed wire, daisies growing wild and then each other.  Eventually, we all got back in and headed back down the dirt road the way we came.....

It wasn't long before I heard, "Oh NOOO" coming from Bella.  She said she couldn't find her cell phone....a cell phone she had paid for with her own money.  We made our way back to the last place we had seen it....on the fender of the Jeep at the top of the hill by the cemetery.  We drove real slow....looking on the road, in the ditch....praying we would find it unscathed.  

At this point in the story, it's important you know something about Bella.  She is incredibly smart and talented, doesn't like swimming in water that has fish, is almost 6' tall, sleeps with one eye open, and loves God more than ANYTHING in the world.  She and God...well, they're more than Father and daughter...they are BFF's. 

After driving the road twice, she finally said, "It's ok Lele, I think God needed me to see how much I was making my phone a god."

Ohhh.  Is there a more meaningful word than "Proud"?  If there is, I'd like to place it here.  As this cool daughter of God prayed asking Him to help her find her phone, He helped her find something even better; a truth within herself....a truth within ALL of ourselves.

We never found her phone.  We were never meant to.

"Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things."

Colossians 3:2

P.S.  As I sent this article to Bella for permission, here was her response: "Thank you, Lele, for writing this and spending so much time searching for my phone.  But as for now, I am so grateful and content with Dad's old iPhone 4, and I've already noticed a shift in my prayer life and how often I look to God throughout my day.  As sad as I am to lose some of my photos, this is EXACTLY what needed to happen to set my mind on "things above".