Anna M. Aquino

Most of you have heard me talk about the years I spent training as a cheerleader. It had been a personal goal of mine to cheer for OSU until I injured myself doing a standing back tuck on a carpeted concrete floor without a spot. I spent a lot of time training in gymnastic gyms. For a period of time my mom drove me to another city about 45 minutes away because my trainer, a former OSU cheerleader, taught cheerleading gymnastics there. While I went to that gym there was a particular girl there that changed my life. I honestly don’t remember her name. I don’t remember much about her, but I do remember she had such an awesome relationship with the Lord. It oozed out of her. She loved God so much that in order to express her love for God she used to write things like “I love Jesus” on her knees while in school. It seems like something so little and funny, but this was during a time in my life where I had a crush on a different boy every week and I was writing “I heart so and so” on my book...

On special occasions while I was growing up my family would congregate at the Branding Iron in Delaware Ohio. It was a small town steak restaurant where I could get a Shirley Temple and drink it out of a glass boot. I remember going there as a little girl and being terrified of this big wooden Indian statue that was in the restaurant. They’d moved it several times over the years but somehow I’d find that Indian. It seemed humongous as a child. It was dark and foreboding and it scared me more than I let on. I remember feeling like an ant next to it, and every time we’d go I’d manage to place myself furthest from it as possible. That restaurant closed its doors sometime in the late 90’s and before it did my grandmother insisted that we all go there one last time. Then I was a young adult and I looked for my Indian. When I finally found it standing by the entrance I had to laugh. Somehow it wasn’t nearly as big as I remembered it. By this time while it was still taller than me, it wasn’t ...

As a little girl my mother would faithfully drag me to a little Lutheran church in Waldo, Ohio. We were there every time the door opened, and then sometimes more than that. The interior of that church looks something like I would pretend watching the underneath of Noah’s ark. Its wood paneling left for me to imagine the Bible stories coming to life on Sunday mornings. I used to love the old hymns. The organist would faithfully pound out the music with a special vigor of God and as a little girl my mom and I would pile back into the car after service and sing the songs again in the car. We’d have our own praise and worship session on our way home from church. I was thinking this morning about some of the old hymns and I found myself singing one in particular: “They’ll know we are Christians by out love” by Carolyn Arends We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord And we pray that all unity may one day be restored And they...

So often, we find ourselves in places in our walk in life where it’s easy to look up at God and say, “Ok, God what’s next? I did this over here, now what do I do.” It’s perfectly okay to keep asking the Lord where he would have to go next. However, the misconception comes into play when ones, myself included sometimes, begin to get frustrated in the place. I’ve talked to many people over the years and it’s a popular deception that in this place to start questioning God. People get this thought that it’s as if God is dangling their destiny on a fishing pole in front of them and the minute they think they might be able to reach it, He pulls it further and further from their grasp. Truthfully, one must stop for a moment and think about this deceptive thought. God put that destiny on your heart. God put those talents and abilities in your life. He WANTS you to fulfill your destiny. It makes Him excited when you are going towards your destiny. It makes Him excited that you are stepping into...

A few months after Dan and I bought the house we live in now, lightening struck it. It was a Sunday night. We’d been at church, and Pastor Arthur had just finished preaching a message on praising the Lord through all things even if it wasn’t a time you felt like it. We came home. There was two inches of water in out master bathroom. The pipes had burst. Water is coming from somewhere in a wall. You could see up the mirror where the lightening struck. It left a burnt trail. I went to use the phone and the phone was dead. The lightening had literally burst out the phone line. Our TV was affected, our washer shorted out, and the stove fried. In that moment when we looked at the destruction to be real honest I wanted to cry. We didn’t have the extra cash to fix everything that needed fixed. Fear like a vicious snake tried to creep in the scene. As I watched water spilling out of my bathroom suddenly I felt the Holy Spirit reminded me of what Pastor had preached on. I had a cho...

It is God’s desire to communicate with His children. He longs that His children would know his voice and earnestly seek after it. Many people have this view of God as this entity that is somewhere out there that is not concerned with their daily lives but that is not true. John 10:1 (The Message) has a wonderful illustration of this concept "Let me set this before you as plainly as I can. If a person climbs over or through the fence of a sheep pen instead of going through the gate, you know he's up to no good—a sheep rustler! The shepherd walks right up to the gate. The gatekeeper opens the gate to him and the sheep recognize his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he gets them all out, he leads them and they follow because they are familiar with his voice. They won't follow a stranger's voice but will scatter because they aren't used to the sound of it." God wants you to know His voice and know how to follow it. I have often sa...

When I was in high school, a group of people decided they wanted to start a Bible Study and essentially put me in charge of it (however, there was another leader and pretty much it was ran between her and me). I went to a small school in a picturesque town. When this ministry was dropped in my lap, I was still struggling with the call of God on my life. It never occurred to me the opposition we would face. All lot of things happened in those two years that I will not publicly discuss in this format, but there is one particular instance that always makes me smile. I was taking a class and the teacher decided that we would hold a debate whether it was okay and legal for us to even have that Bible Study on campus. I was in a situation where people would growl at me and yell satanic slurs at me as I walked through the halls. In this class at the time I was the only one that would publicly stand up for the Bible Study. The schools opinion of me and this group got worse and worse. The tensio...

While I was growing up, we repainted one bedroom twice in the course of a few weeks. I had chosen to paint the room a burgundy, but when the color went on the walls, it was just not the right color, and eventually we turned around and painted it a cornflower blue. I remember I was trying to get the burgundy paint off of the electrical outlet. It was not my brightest move but for some reason I decided the pick up, some steel wool to try to scratch the paint off. Please do not ever try to do this with a live outlet. Sparks went flying and I am lucky I did not electrocute myself. Sometimes there are people in life that will be like that steel wool to you. You just do not like them. As hard as you might try they can be as if you are the live electrical outlet and every time their near you sparks fly. God desires for you to walk in unity in your daily life. He desires that His children would be at peace with one another. Psalm 133:1 says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is f...

A few weeks ago, I found myself trying to help my youngest daughter drive her battery operated kids toy car. The snazzy pink and purple car with all the Disney princesses on it, as a small remake of a Pontiac Solstice, was purchased for my girls when my oldest was little enough to drive it. For a while, it was a great set up because my oldest would drive my youngest around the sidewalks of the neighborhood. However kids grow up, and officially my oldest has grown too tall, and my youngest is not tall enough. My youngest has been admiring the car in the garage wanting desperately to take it out for a test spin. I felt sorry for the girl. Surely, her mom could attempt to drive it so she could set in the passenger’s seat. It was obvious I was not actually going to be able to fit in the front seat. I mean my backside would take up ¾ of the available seat space. So I tried to set on the trunk space. I stretched my legs across the seat and on the gas, and grabbed securely to the wheel. At fi...