Faith in God

My daughter and I have both been home sick this week. One of her make-up assignments from the teacher was to write on a topic of her choosing for a Public Speaking Program the school is participating in this week. As we put the finishing touches on her work last night I asked if I could have permission to upload her story - just as it was written - as a guest post on my blog for today. She excitedly said "yes!" Here is her story...may it encourage you!

~ by Emily Mattox, age 10

2008 was a begining of a tough 2 years for my family, but God was with us through all those difficult days.Thankfuly God was giving all of these songs to listen to and there were two special songs that he gave me.The songs that God gave me were "Walk on the Water" by Britt Nicole and "What Faith Can Do" by Kutless.

The trial began after my mom and me were getting sick constantly. We had an inspecter come in and he found toxic mold. You could not see the mold at all. He found it in the walls of our kichen and mostly in the walls of my bedroom.  Before we knew the mold existed I had reactive arthritus all over my body. For days I could barrly move or walk.

With toxic mold we could no longer live in our house. We moved in with my grandma thinking that we would only be there a few weeks, but we turned out living there 22 months! It took that long to get the house tested, cleared out of mold and our things taken to the dump. We lost about 95% of our belongings. My mom had to throw almost everything in my room away! Then we painted the rooms and the outside and got everything in the house done and put it on the market and sold it. Then we started looking for a new home.

My mom always wanted to live in Copper Ridge on a street called Amethyst. We were rejoysing to God when He answered her prayer and our realter found us a house on Amethyst!

The night that we closed on our house we invited some friends over that were praying for us and we wrote on the walls. You are probibly thinking that my family is crazy, but we wrote Bible verses on the walls and then painted over them. But we can always know it's there and think of the friends that wrote on our walls. Thirteen days later we got to move in after my mom and dad painted, bought new furniture and put it all together. Me and my brother had no idea what our rooms would look like. It was a surprise. When we got to move in and see it was like our own extreme home make-over!

It all ended up good but on tough days music and prayer really helped us. "Walk on the Water" by Britt nicole helped me the most. The lines that got me through were...

             Step out even when it's stormin',
             step out even when you're broken,
             step out even when your heart is telling you, telling you give up,
             step out so you can see where you're going,
               
             ...you don't have to be afraid.

The song means that even through tough times you still need to press on and foucus on what you are doing. The other song, "What Faith Can Do" is based on having to make a new begining and not to give up. I have learned when life is hard I will always have faith in God.