August 26, 2015 - Before We Go Roadtrippin'

August 26, 2015


The next several posts are going to deal with pit-stops I've made on this life journey with God. Some of it utterly laughable; most quite unbearable.

As I've been preparing to unpack this, my family has been staring down a few real time (happening now) challenges which again have put me on my face before God.  Needless to say, God's timing is always spot on and the ugly crying and clinging to God (think of a toddler not wanting to go to preschool kind of clinging) is actually preparing me to share my story.  (Isn't that just like Him?)

I'm affectionately calling the next several posts "Roadtrippin'." 

Before we begin, I want to share with you a book I am re-reading and finding so many statements of truth in its pages.  The book is 300+ years old and was written by brother Lawrence.  It's entitled, "the practice of the presence OF GOD."  A friend and life-long mentor, Jerry Riddle gave me this book years ago and it is in my top 5 books if stranded on a desert island I would want by my side.  Here is what I read today.

(I'm bolding the text that speaks directly to my heart.)


Dear Friend,

I cannot thank God enough for the way He has begun to deliver you from your trial. 

God knows very well what we need and that all He does is for our good.  if we knew how much He loves us, we would always be ready to face life - both its pleasures and its troubles.

The difficulties of life do not have to be unbearable.  It is the way we look at them -- through faith or unbelief -- that makes them seem so.  We must be convinced that our Father is full of love for us and that He only permits trials to come our way for our own good. 

Let us occupy ourselves entirely in knowing God.  The more we know Him, the more we will desire to know Him.  As love increases with knowledge, the more we know God, the more we will truly love Him. We will learn to love Him equally in times of distress or in times of great joy.  

Although we seek and love God because of the blessings He has given us or for those He may give us in the future, let's not stop there. These blessings, as great as they are, will NEVER carry us as near to Him as a simple act of faith does in a time of need or trouble.

Let us look to God with these eyes of faith.  He is within us; we don't need to seek Him elsewhere.  We have only ourselves to blame if we turn from God, occupying ourselves instead with the trifles of life.  In His patience, the Lord endures our weaknesses.  Even so, just think of the price we pay by being separated from His presence!

Once and for all, let us begin to be His entirely.  May we banish from our hearts and souls all that does not reflect Jesus.  Let's ask Him for the grace to do this, so that He alone might rule in our hearts.  

I must confide in you, my dear friend, that I hope, in His grace, that I will see Him in a few days.  

Let's pray to him for one another.

(on February 12, 1691, just a few days after writing this letter, brother Lawrence passed from this life into the next to dwell fully in the presence of His God.)


Wowzer.  Deep AND Wide!

I've learned a leadership maxim over the past two years.

CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THINGS & THE THINGS YOU LOOK AT CHANGE.

Isn't that what brother Lawrence is saying.  The trials -- the sucky stuff -- doesn't have to be unbearable. We can choose whether or not to look at it with faith or with unbelief.  He's not saying that we won't experience bad times...quite the opposite.  The sucky stuff drives our dependency on our Father.

Here's the TRUTH:

"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." Romans 5: 3-5 NIV 

So, today I am thanking God for everything.  I'm thanking Him for the blessings AND I'm equally thanking him for the current trials I'm facing because I can definitely attest to the fact that these momentary trials HAVE driven me closer in communion with God and if it was good enough 300 years ago or 2000 years ago, it's still good for today.

More to come...

August 25, 2015 - Change is Just Dang Hard!

Personal Note:  I want to thank you for the overwhelming and I have to say unexpected responses I have received.  If one person can gain encouragement and hope from all of this mess, I am grateful.  So...thank you as it has given me the courage to keep unpacking.


August 25, 2015

I wish I could say that everything became instantaneously better.  The progress was so glacially slow that to the normal eye, it might not seem like anything at all was happening.  In my spiritual life, I had released the bitterness in that epic purse dump a few blog posts back, yet the wounds still remained.  Looking back, I think that the bitterness was keeping the healing process from taking place.

Think of a person that has scraped the bottom of their foot on a rock in the river. For all intensive purposes, let's call it the "River of Denial," shall we?  "It'll be alright!" He said. So he puts a Ninja Turtle band-aid on and a sweaty sock and keeps going.  It's slightly painful but "it will get better!" He exclaims.  Meanwhile, bacteria from the river seeps into the scrape and coupled with the dirty, sweaty sock creates the perfect climate for a lab experiment to occur. Bacteria, now left unattended leads to a localized staff infection. "It will heal on it's own.  No worries!" He says, limping around and refusing the medical attention he needs.  Bacteria now enters the blood stream and a simple scrape has become a systemic, full-body infection that can and will kill him in the end.  Do you see the progression?

So, how does that apply here?

I had allowed bitterness and anger over the death of my Dad, the broken heart of my mother, the death of The Kingdom Kidz Club and the loss of a new career I loved to fester for far too long.  I had a raging spiritual septic infection.  So, when I was finally willing to release all of that to the Lord, ONLY THEN  was the infection removed and the healing process could begin.  I had serious, deeply infected wounds that needed to heal from the inside out.  This process was not days or even weeks or months but almost two years. During those years, I didn't doubt my faith in terms of Christ's Sacrifice for my sin.  I just thought that God had passed me by and I was destined to live out the rest of my life living in the Desert.  I had lost hope.

I distinctly remembering a Sunday Morning as the band was leading us in corporate worship, a gratefulness to God welled up from deep in my soul and I WANTED to sing.  It wasn't a habit or something rote...it was real.  From my heart to God's heart.  After years of the song in my heart lying dormant (or dead as I thought) the feeling of nearness to God was completely overwhelming.  Like a loved one who had been dead for several years all of the sudden calling your cell phone to talk. Bring on the Ugly Cry again.  Even late into the evening, the tears were still flowing.  These were different tears though.  They were healing tears.

Psalm 56:8 in The Message says, "You've kept track of every toss and turn through the sleepless nights.  Each tear entered into Your ledger, each ache written in Your Book."

I was certain there were miles of healing ahead for me...but that touch from God reassured me that He had not left me and was working on my behalf.

More to come...

August 24, 2015 - Give Us This Day our Daily Bread

August 24, 2015

Let me be clear: This is NOT a blog about business success.  It is NOT a blog about Financial Wealth or a particular company.  This IS a blog about my narrative - my story.  As I unpack this 6 year journey, there will be times that I speak about a particular experience or experiences that brought about radical growth.  Just keep in mind to not fixate on particular destinations but rather the journey.

So to pick up, I felt an inner pull from God to dive into Real Estate.  I obeyed, passed my test and chose the company I would be working with.  On my first day, I was introduced to this company Keller Williams of which I knew absolutely nothing about.  The next several months was spent watching a ton of videos and reading blogs of successful Realtors and their best practices.  I also reached out to any agent that had listings and asked if I could host Open Houses for them. I attended a course called BOLD which dramatically changed my view on how impacting Real Estate an be if you are willing to commit to time and consistency.  I lived by the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them due unto you."  That kindness paid off and within the first 2 months, I had my first home under contract!

I felt empowered, encouraged and ENTHUSIASTIC that this idea was going to actually bring about a check.  I got a check just for helping people!  FANTASTIC!  Plus I realized, if I can do this once...I can do this thousands of times.  And God was opening doors with almost every client to pray over them and sometimes minister when times got rough.  I wasn't shoving the Gospel in their faces. I just looked for times when God was present and took the ball from there. Little by little, with each client and transaction, my faith was restoring.

I still didn't really feel anything.  I wasn't feeling the power an presence of God as I had throughout my life.  Yet, for the first time, I saw a pinhole of light which was the light at the end of the tunnel. God had a LOT more work to do in me.  This was how God meets our needs and sometimes calls us into a foreign field in order to teach us and grow.

In the Lord's Prayer it says, "Give us this day our daily bread..."

Until Next Time -

August 23, 2015 - One Step at a Time

August 23, 2015

Recovering from the emotional fall out that was Me + God Cry-out Session, the seed of peace was planted in my soul and I began to feel that everything would work out.  I had absolutely no idea how that would happen or a timeline of restoration, just a knowing.  The next couple of weeks morphed into an intense time of reflection and quietness.  You know the verse that says, "Be still and KNOW that I am God"?

I'm not really good at the being still part.

I want to DO not BE.  I remember journaling and just writing whatever was on my mind at the time. I guess it was more like a data-dump.  Before all of this, I had always been a prolific writer and journal keeper. But like any muscle not used for a season, some atrophy was present and needed time and regular exercise to get back in shape.

I knew that I needed to participate in supplementing our family income.  However, I needed a career that would allow me to have the flexibility to still be there for my mother as she recovered.  I also wanted the flexibility to go to my daughter's functions and be there when they needed me the most. In one of my quiet time sessions, I heard inside of me these two words.  Real.  Estate.

Ummmm.... God? I've done a LOT of things in my life and I can tell you with great certainty that Real Estate was not one of them.  I didn't know the first thing about selling real estate other than what we have experienced in our own home buying experiences through the years.  Yet, there it was.  Like it was written in letters across my brain.  I remember going into Patrick's home office and asking him for a few minutes.  I wanted to tell him what had been spoken into me and was absolutely sure that he would laugh me right out of his office.  Taking a deep breath, I dove in and about 10 minutes later was completely shocked when he said, "You know Kim, I think that you could be really good at that."

What?  Are you kidding me?  I only knew a couple of people in real estate, so I talked with them to find out exactly how you made money in Real Estate.  The more I talked with people, the more this seed of peace grew into a small germinated seed of excitement and hope.  I went online and found an online course and three weeks later, I had passed and was headed on my way to take my exam. Within a month, I was a licensed agent and on my way to being a Realtor.

I signed on with a company mainly because I knew the Broker from our church.  What I didn't know was that this company was in the stages of merging with one of the largest Real Estate Companies in the world, Keller Williams.

I knew NOTHING about this Keller Williams.  I knew NOTHING about really how to sell property and how to market myself in a local community.  What I knew was that I was hungry to learn and grow.

What I couldn't have known at the time was how much this seed of an idea would be used to touch so many areas of my life.

To Be Continued...

August 21, 2015 - Are you there God, It's Me...Kim

Hi Friend.  If this is the first time you've seen this blog, I would recommend going back to 8/19/15 to understand the whole story.  - Kim

August 21, 2015

So I left off with the drip. A single droplet that touched my soul.

Have you ever been standing outside when a drop of rain hits your skin.  It's almost unnoticeable.  It takes a second to register and then you look at the place of impact to verify that a raindrop, in fact, fell and hit you.

That's what this felt like.

It took a moment for me to register this droplet of God's grace, mercy & power.  It had been SO LONG since I felt anything at all.  I had basically resigned myself to a life walking through a parched, deserted wasteland in order to get my prize of eternal life with my Father.  I wasn't sure what I had done to deserve this sentence.  Where had I made a left turn? Don't get me wrong.  I was saved, but a sinner. I definitely had hard lessons I had to learn and being quite hard headed, sometimes it took longer than the average bear.  However, I understood God's mercy and did my best to confess, turn away and find redemption through Christ.

This was different.

I tortured myself for the first few years, racking my brain at what I could have done to cause all of this heartache and pain.  Unable to make sense of it and frankly tired of thinking about it, I just gave up any hope of ever getting through it. I found myself reading JOB on a regular basis and I was pretty sure if I could Ancestry.com my way back to the Old Testament...I'd find him.

REWIND:  To give you a bit of back story...I would have NEVER, and I say it again, NEVER imagined that I would EVER find myself in this wasteland.  Not me. (Prideful, right?)  I asked the Lord into my heart when I was 7 years old and answered His call into ministry at age 16.  I went to college and studied Music Business, met the love of my life and married him in 1991.  I had sung professionally from the age of 16 and moved from traveling and singing to congregational ministry.  I was ordained.  I loved the Lord and desired to sing and minister for His Glory since I could remember.  I read God's Word and hid it in my heart.  I had two beautiful daughters.  I was happy. Was I struggle free? Well, no...

My eldest daughter started showing signs of Autism and was delayed in her muscular development and received diagnosis' of Asperger's Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy at the age of 3. I had two difficult pregnancies and a year after having my youngest daughter, was diagnosed with Sarcoidosis & Lupus. These are things that I still deal with on a daily basis...but just a part of my life and as a family, we learned to cope and adjust.

I left my congregational position to pursue a concept that I KNOW FOR SURE the Lord had given me.  The Kingdom Kidz Club was born because I wanted my kids to know God's Word in their hearts and at the time, I wasn't sure how Rebecca would learn but she could mimic any song with haunting accuracy.  So, I started writing little songs with the Bible verses and put the Book, Chapter and Verse into the song so she could remember and started singing to her.  She sang it back to me.  This little exercise turned into volumes of Bible Verses that reached thousands of homes worldwide. Everything seemed great! I began to write prolifically and my mom and I were even honored with writing a song for the National Day of Prayer that was a finalist.  It seemed like nothing but blue skies.

So...how was it that I was in this desolate, barren, never ending desert?

I'm pretty good with directions, but taking a slow 360 degree panoramic camera shot from my current location, yielded miles and miles of the same sandy, rocky nothingness.  I was now going on almost four years of feeling absolutely nothing stirring in my soul.  I went to church, sporadically, but couldn't sing.  The song inside my soul was silent. I couldn't write music and rarely even played the piano.

So here I was March of 2013, laying on the floor, crying out to God from a deep, dark recess of my soul.  Through the tears, I was releasing all of the anger, disappointment, sadness, heartbreak, fear and pride.  Basically, I dumped my entire purse on God and it was a BIG PURSE.  I emptied out everything I had been carrying.

I remembered the Bible verse 1 Peter 5:7.  It says,  "Cast ALL your anxiety on him because he cares for you."

God showed me that when you CAST something, you are throwing it away from you.  Like if you are fishing and cast the line and hook into the water.  When a fisherman has a net, they cast or throw it out into the ocean for their catch.

You can't cast AND hold on to something at the same time.  Where had all of the anger, bitterness and disappointment gotten me.  Well, smack dab in the desert, that's where.

So, I threw it all away from myself and asked God to carry it for me.  I accepted and owned where I was and still didn't expect a helicopter to come and rescue me from the desert, but at least my bag was significantly lighter.

When I got back up from the ugly cry and purse dump, I did feel lighter.  I also felt a bit of peace--not a torrent but the drip had become a trickle. I didn't know what would happen next and NONE of the things in my life had changed, except I wasn't shouldering them on my own.

I said, "Okay, I can't make all of this better.  I can't bring my Dad back, I can't heal my mother's broken heart, I can't make the economy better and get my former job back.  But I can listen to You, Lord. Tell me what to do and I will do it.  Whatever it takes."

What God put in my heart would have NEVER been what I would have thought in a MILLION YEARS...


To be continued...

August 20, 2015 - Is that a Drip I Hear?

Hi, my name is Kim Norton.  I live in Northwest Arkansas with my husband of 24 years and two beautiful daughters.  This is my daily journal.  Hopefully, if you find this it will be an encouragement to you in some way.  I pray God's very best for you today and everyday!


August 20, 2015

This daily blogging thing is new to me so I have several years pent up inside of me.  I would encourage you to start at the first blog to get up to speed on the past 6 years as it will help today's post make more sense.  Yesterday, I left off with my broken, hurting, bitter self literally face down before the Lord crying out to Him to rescue me and my family.  I was emotionally, physically (I will talk about that at a later time), mentally, spiritually & financially broke.  Nothing. Zip. Nada.  I heard a motivational speaker say one time, if you hit rock bottom, make sure you are facing up.  Because if you can see up, you can get up!  I don't know how much I fully believe that statement because that would have required the physical wherewithal to actually get up.  I was down for the count.  The referee was slapping his hand down on the mat and calling it a TKO.

Then God reminded me of a verse in the Old Testament of the Bible.  It is Jeremiah 33:3.  I had written a Kingdom Kidz Club song called "God's Telephone Number" years ago, so I knew it by heart.  It simply says, "Call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you don't know."  I also remembered that the word "call" doesn't mean pull out your iphone and just hit 911.  It also didn't mean a nice, neat, formal, sweet prayer. It meant crying out to God!  As a mother it is the kind of cry that will stop you in your tracks and allow you to move heaven and earth to get to your child.  That kind of Call.  So, that's what I did.  I cried out to God.  It was super sloppy, disjointed and rough.  I was Ugly Crying.  I laid it all out there.  All of the pain, misery, anger, bitterness, hurt and fear and cried out for God to rescue me & my family.

I wish I could tell you that the heavens parted and a shining chariot came rocketing out of heaven with all of the answers to my prayers.  God did, however, bestow upon me an instant gift - peace.  I felt an immediate and immensely calming peace come over me and a knowing in my being that everything was going to be alright.

Drip. Drip.

What is that? That, my friends was the spicket of my heart turning ever so slightly and a few drops eeking their way out.  I felt like a person wandering through the desert with an empty water bottle and the moment before imminent death, getting cool refreshing water on my tongue.  It wasn't a torrent or even a trickle but it was confirmation that the well that had been bone dry for 6 years had reconnected to the Source.

August 19, 2015 - Beginning

Hi, my name is Kim Norton.  I live in Northwest Arkansas with my husband of 24 years and two beautiful daughters.  This is my daily journal.  Hopefully, if you find this it will be an encouragement to you in some way.  I pray God's very best for you today and everyday!


August 19, 2015

I've been going through a transformation over the past few months that has been WAY LONG OVERDUE.   If you hit rewind on my life back 6 years ago, my life was altered. Shattered might be a better word.  Up to that point in my life, I was a happily married momma of two, loved the Lord and had served in congregational ministry for 8 years.  I then produced a series of music based Bible Memorization CD's called The Kingdom Kidz Club and marketed those nationally at christian retail and through events around the country.  We had sacrificed every penny and then some to get it to retail and didn't have the funds to full out market it so we were drained.  I remember sitting out front of Lincoln Junior High waiting on my daughter and thinking, "I don't have any more to give."

Shortly after that, our family was relocated to Central Arkansas for my husbands job.  Four days after we moved, my father suffered a catastrophic heart attack and my summer was spent in the ICU waiting room living day to day on whether or not he was going to make it.  He slowly recovered and school was starting so we made our way back to Central Arkansas.  The first day of one of my daughter's 4th grade year was perhaps the worst day of her life.  When she raised her hand to tell her teacher that her previous school only taught Denilion and not cursive, the teacher (with a mic on so the whole class heard) berated her in front of the class and went on a rant about she is not prepared to be in this class.  My sensitive child broke.  We attempted moving her to another class but after a month realized that we were going to have to make a dramatic change, so I pulled her and home schooled her.  My older daughter was not taking the move well either and when she cried out, "Momma, I just want to go home."  We made the decision to move back to NWA, even if it meant Patrick finding a new job.

On top of ALL of that, I was working as a Children's Pastor in a local congregation and went through a very difficult situation.  I am not at liberty to divulge the details but at the time I needed support and answers and was unable to get closure. I was hurt and angry and coupled with the stress my children were under and my father's failing health...something shut off inside of me.

The only word picture I can give you is it was like the faucet of my heart that normally flowed with love, compassion, mercy and worship was manually shut off.  Not even a drip was coming out of that baby.

I floated along for a while on the reserves I had still in my spirit.  The kids went back to their schools in NWA and were elated.  My father was getting better.  I was happy in a new job.  However, I could feel that something was different inside of me.  The worship, the creativity and the songs that had flowed out of me for decades was gone.  At first I thought it was classic writers block.  Nope.  It was worse...much worse.

May 2011 my father went to UAMS for a "minor" surgery to remove a benign mass that was in his carotid/neck area.  He was only to stay one night and then discharge the next day to come home.  The surgery was a success and we had a wonderful evening talking to my Dad about everything under the sun.  We all went back to the hotel to rest and were heading out the door to come pick him up when he called us to tell us he was discharged.  On the phone with my mom, he had a massive blood clot hit his heart and he stopped breathing.  The nurse took the phone and said that Mr. McMillan couldn't talk right now.  We rushed to the hospital and found that he was on life support but was without oxygen for over 20 minutes.  After 3 days of waiting, hoping and praying, we were told he was brain dead and we had to make the decision to remove him from life support.

My mom had a breakdown over the events and the next 3 years was spent with her in our home. During that time, we were in but mostly out of church.  We couldn't leave my mom and as I previously stated, my spiket was shut off so I was walking through life...completely numb.  I did not lose my faith in God or my knowledge of Jesus Christ as my Savior.  I just didn't feel anything and I was mad.  Mad at how things ended at my previous ministry position, mad at the way a teacher carelessly and single-handedly ruined my daughters trust in teachers, mad at my dad dying, mad at the doctors who should have given him blood thinners, mad that the thing I LOVED "Kingdom Kidz Club" was essentially dead.  AND, the job I had been working went bye-bye when the economy tanked which cut our income in half. To top it off, we had not figured our taxes correctly during a time I was self-employed and the IRS came to our door.  Yes, they do make house calls.  No notices...nothing.

That was the final straw.  I broke.  On my face before the Lord I unloaded. There was nothing left.  Where had all of my anger gotten me? Nowhere except bitterville.  I didn't want to be that person anymore.  Maybe God gave our pastor a sermon series just for me or more likely, I was now open to hear the Word of the Lord but whatever, I started allowing God to feed me.

More tomorrow