This one is sort of heavy and quite poignant to my own life right now - the discernment of choices - paths to follow.  Just because someone else chooses a path does not mean that you have to follow suit.  It might be better to take the higher harder road.  It is the one not often taken - this is the path of virtue with God.  The other choice ahead is the one of loneliness, the path of suffering without the support of God - this is the wide path that leads to the wide gate.  I prefer the narrow path to the narrow gate and while I know it is not the easy path - nothing ever worth anything ever came easy. Start the path of choice making with a decision to pray for discernment and wisdom about what to do.  God will lend his hand in telling you what choices to make. Trust and have faith in Him.

We do not always know when challenges come our way but we can prepare for them and anticipate them, recognize the signs that we need to see. This requires a special gift to discern what is really happening at the time and I can tell you that practice in "seeing" helps a lot. Practice makes us stronger and the more we are tested the more we know that we are God's soldiers in training for the bigger fight. All the way through we just keep leaning on Him to get us through the "challenge." 

I heard a new definition for a "lie" and that is what is called "perspective adjustment." It's okay to go down the path as long as it does not involve a perspective adjustment or "lie". What this means is that when you choose a side and inevitably you will have to choose, choose with wisdom and discernment. Wisdom and discernment are gifts, it takes practice and it is perfectly okay to make mistakes and likely that too will be the case. Why? Because we are humans and sometimes we just do not see things quite so clearly. How to address all this and avoid dilemmas you ask? Pray - just pray about everything and you'll never go wrong. Have faith and trust in prayer.

How does one show love - by doing. Doing/Showing is active not a passive feeling or action. Loving means doing because you can't show love by keeping it in your head or keeping it in your heart. If love isn't shared then it isn't love, it's just a thought needing to be acted upon. Bad thing about that thought of love is that if it stays a thought then it means you never gave love which also means that you never receive love either. If we do not "do" love with people then what is it that we are doing with God?

He gives us exactly what we need when we need it. The rest doesn't really matter. What we don't have now we grow into because if we started out soaring right out of the nest we wouldn't have enough energy to make the duration. The goal for the duration is to make it through the pearly gates. Until we get there we just keep learning, accepting and being thankful for the gifts we are given along the way.

I think it is important to remember who is in control, who provides security in our lives. Really, we are in control of nothing of significance and everything significant is a gift or blessing of some sort - it is grace at work. The more we realize that we are not to live of ourselves but for Him the sooner we will figure out that is better to live in the world than to be of the world in a false sense of living (security).

We often say that odd saying "the gift of giving" and it isn't the easiest saying to understand. It is a gift to be able to give is what it is really saying. The ability to give to another is a gift in and of itself. When you realize that the "gift" is a gift from God then it has that much more significance. For we would not have that gift if it were not for God's grace. We must act responsibly and continue giving as he would give. For what we give eventually comes back to us - be it good or bad...