The Code of Sweet Sisterhood

I recently discovered that I’ve been under secret video surveillance in my own home. By my seven-year-old niece Devon. 

I opened up the Photo Booth program on my laptop to see that she’s created 41 movies, complete with special effects and backgrounds. About half of the videos are of me and it’s a little unnerving watching myself since I’m completely unaware I'm being recorded.

I’m standing on a ladder hanging curtains. {Clambering up and down as if I were attempting to scale Mt. Everest.}

I’m pounding a nail into the wall, trying to hang a picture. {Which seconds later crashes to the floor.} 

I’m talking on the phone to my sister. {Dramatically relating an assortment of trivial details.}

Evidently, I don’t pay enough attention to my niece when she’s at my house. I think she’s just playing over at my desk, but she’s been hard at work designing and producing her little movie creations. 

And I didn’t even notice until the finished product was right in front of me.

Isn’t that how God sometimes works in our lives? 

When we can’t understand what he’s doing and we can’t make sense of what we’re going through, we wonder if he really sees us. 

But he promises that we’re never out of the frame of his panoramic view although we could be completely unaware of his presence.

We pray to an invisible God, making our requests to the ceiling and asking for his blessings from the sky. Often surrounded by silence, we wait. Hoping for a confirmation that he really is the director in the production of our lives.

So I will trust that even when I don’t see a change in my circumstances, he’s working behind the scenes, splicing together all things for my good. 

I put my confidence in his promise that he cares about every little thing that happens to me even when I can’t see his hand. 

And when I return to kneel at his feet once again, he reminds me to look back at what he’s already done. To remember that what I thought was so impossible, so improbable, came to pass in an extraordinary way that only God could direct. 

And that’s why I know that nothing is hopeless or far-fetched when he is overseeing the action of my life.

In Sophia Nelson’s just-published book, The Woman Code, she delivers a message of resilience and strength for women to live a life of faith and purpose. This former White House reporter and Congressional Committee counsel shares the 20 codes -- or beliefs -- that she lives by to inspire women to live with love, compassion and gratitude. 

Her codes include making peace with your past, guarding your heart, aging gracefully, being brave and choosing your thoughts and words wisely. She relates personal stories and urges women to treasure the sisterhood of the women in their lives, who she says truly are gifts to be appreciated.

I share this tradition of sisterhood since my sister is my only sibling and both of my parents had a tribe of just sisters.

So it was quite the momentous occasion in our family when my nephew was born ten years ago. Although I found myself head over heels in auntie-love with him, I still dreamed of a niece to carry on our girl-to-girl traditions.

It was on my birthday, three years later that my sister found out she was having a baby girl and told me my wish was coming true. {Devon never tires of hearing how she was my birthday present that year.} 

Having a niece is everything I've dreamed of. It’s in my kitchen where she decorates ghostly marshmallows for Halloween and sends her mother texts that she's excited to shred a zucchini. 

And when she told her class at school that her aunt’s house was her favorite place to be, I felt like the star attraction.

Devon thinks secretly recording me is hilarious. She says I do a lot of crazy things she likes to capture so we can remember them later. 

These days I’m feeling a little like an extra in my own home. From now on I'm going to keep a watchful eye out for the red record button on my computer. But I don't think I'll stop Devon from making her little movies. I think she might have a future as a documentary film producer of a blogger. 

She already has 41 movies to her credit.

I’m part of Revell publisher’s blogger review tour for The Woman Code by Sophia Nelson. I received a complimentary copy of the book, but my opinions are completely my own.

I'm linking up with my friends a Holley Gerth's place at Coffee for Your Heart. Click the image for more inspiration.