Things to do before the Wee One gets here....

Clean craft area to make room for stuff stored in middle child's new room in basement

Clean out middle child's  new room in basement

Take out one of the closets in middle child's  new room

Patch wall and prep middle child's new room for paint

Paint middle child's  new room

Lay carpet in middle child's new room

Move middle child into her new room

Clean carpet in oldest child's new room

Prep oldest child's new room for paint

Paint oldest child's new room

Hang curtains in oldest child's new room

Move oldest child's into her new room

Put up crib in oldest child's new room

Paint small dresser for the Wee One

Make bedding for Wee One's Moses basket

Make assorted "other things" for Wee One

Co-host two showers for oldest child and the Wee One

Bake obnoxious amounts of goodies for showers

Celebrate Valentine's Day

Make sure and tell my brother Happy Birthday

Make sure and tell my neice Happy Birthday

Celebrate my son's 17th birthday

Make sure and celebrate Mom's 65 birthday...somehow :}
Celebrate our 25th anniversary and tell best friend Happy Birthday

Remember to read the word/pray,eat,sleep,
tell my family I love them....and breath....daily.

All...within 62 days...and only 9 weekends.

Give me strength O Lord!

"Me Time", "Miller Time" or "Lap Time"?

http://www.crosswalk.com/11644566/page0/

I have suffered from stress issues since I was a small child. The doctors think I had an ulcer in the first grade, in middle school I was convinced that I had immaculately conceived because I felt like I was going to throw up EVER MORNING before school, I have suffered from migraines since I was a teenager,I have TMJ and I suffer from various other IBS symptoms.It is something I deal with on a daily basis.

Just recently I discovered "lap time" with my Heavenly Father. It is not something I was specifically taught. It was a discovery born out of desperation. Some days I only need a few minutes of my fathers time ...some days I need several hours. It is the only way I have made it through the last few months without imploding. I wish that my parents had been given this information when they were children so that they could pass it down to my brothers and I...so that I would have had it when my own children were small

I am sure that all of these things are why I feel led to share this article in as many ways possible. You may not need this information and if you do not "PRAISE GOD!!"...but you might know someone who does. OR...if "lap time" is something you already practice on your own...you may not have considered how to deal with your CHILD'S stress...or that they even HAVE stress!

BTW...my mom will be reading this...and she understands that I in no way hold her responsible for MY stress issues. We have discussed, at length, how as believers, each generation grows and gains more tools to pass on to the next generation. My grandmother had very few as she was saved in her mid forties but with each generation since...we grow stronger and stronger.

So anyway...read the article contained in the link at the top of this page...practice the points with your children, or if you do not have children yet... practice them yourself so that you will be able to pass then down to the next generation of believers in your family!

Feeding My Spirit So That I Don't Suck Yours Dry

As I was reading last night I came across this....

Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the wilderness. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” Deuteronomy 1:29-31...I love Deuteronomy BTW!!

Then there was the Spurgeon devotional I read this morning....

"He was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said, thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst?" - Judges 15:18

Samson slays a thousand Philistines, and piles them up in heaps, and then faints for a little water! Jacob wrestles with God at Peniel, and overcomes Omnipotence itself, and then goes "halting on his thigh!" Strange that there must be a shrinking of the sinew whenever we win the day. As if the Lord must teach us our littleness, our nothingness, in order to keep us within bounds. Samson boasted right loudly when he said, "I have slain a thousand men." His boastful throat soon grew hoarse with thirst, and he betook himself to prayer. God has many ways of humbling his people. Dear child of God, if after great mercy you are laid very low, your case is not an unusual one. When David had mounted the throne of Israel, he said, "I am this day weak, though anointed king." You must expect to feel weakest when you are enjoying your greatest triumph. If God has wrought for you great deliverances in the past, your present difficulty is only like Samson's thirst, and the Lord will not let you faint, nor suffer the daughter of the uncircumcised to triumph over you. The road of sorrow is the road to heaven, but there are wells of refreshing water all along the route. So, tried brother, cheer your heart with Samson's words, and rest assured that God will deliver you ere long.

And on a slightly different note but just as encouraging...something else I read today....

This is what the LORD says to me: “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place,like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.” Isaiah 18:4

Is not this a marvelous conception of God--being still and watching? His stillness is not acquiescence. His silence is not consent. He is only biding His time, and will arise, in the most opportune moment, and when the designs of the wicked seem on the point of success, to overwhelm them with disaster. As we look out on the evil of the world; as we think of the apparent success of wrong-doing; as we wince beneath the oppression of those that hate us, let us remember these marvelous words about God being still and beholding.

In case you are wondering if I do anything OTHER than read...and blog...yes I do. I TRY to set aside time in the morning for reading the word,a couple of different devotionals,journaling and blogging though. I consider it a form of ongoing education and maintence of my mental health and spiritual growth. It is also my way of protecting my friends and family...so that I don't suck the life out of them. ;)

Fear

I am having a lot of fear today. It has been building since yesterday afternoon. Fear of the unknown. Fear for the future. Fear of loss.

I am not getting answers to the questions I am asking. Answers that I need to make decisions. Lack of information means that I can not formulate a plan...and this causes me fear. This fear then renders me unable to do the things I need to do. So I literally become "paralyzed" by fear.

I WANT to move ahead. I have a million things I need to be doing...but everything has come to a screeching halt because I do not know how to move ahead...or if I even need to move ahead on certain things.

This fear also causes me to move backward...it brings up the past and things I thought I had laid to rest come alive again.

I understand where the fear is coming from. I understand that God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control. This morning I have prayed about it, I have journaled about it and I will spend some time searching the word. The only other thing I now to do, since there is no physical course of action to take in this particular matter...and things REALLY are out of my control, is to ask OTHERS for prayer.

So if you have a moment, please pray for me. In whatever way you see fit. And if you have any favorite "fear" scriptures...send them my way!

I will search for the one my heart loves. SOS 3:2

With thine whole heart seek him, and he will be found of thee: only give thyself thoroughly up to the search, and verily, thou shalt yet discover him to thy joy and gladness. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Today I will begin a new journey. I pray that a shaky 21 day fast from FB and Coke, and a very feeble attempt at reading through the Bible in 90 days(although my spouse has done wonderfully in both matters) has laid some groundwork for the somewhat longer journey I now embark upon,and that by the grace of God and through his power I will see it through to it's completion.

Three weigh on my heart heart. One leaving, one yet to arrive, one ever present. It is my hope that in my attempt to honor what I feel the Lord is calling me to, I will find not the answers my flesh desires but that I will come to a deeper understanding of the one my heart loves.

To deny one's flesh is a notion long forgotten by our society...and is a form of sacrifice. To love is to sacrifice. I will search for the one my heart loves through sacrifice. My sacrifice is unworthy of the three who weigh on my heart...but it is all I have.

From my journal....

This day, O' Lord, I come before you and offer up my meager sacrifice. I pray that you take it and that it is pleasing to you. I pray that as I embark upon this search for the one I love you will prepare the way for those of this world whom you have laid upon my heart. Make their path smooth and do not let them stumble. Build up their physical bodies and strengthen their hearts. Hold them in the palm of your hand as they are fully formed and pass from one phase of life to another. Allow them to know you in a way born only of the Holy Spirit and fill them with the knowledge that they are loved.

Big Mama is watching

Being a mom is hard and hard to shut off.

I mom my own, my siblings children and all that come into our home. If you happened to wander in to my home or anywhere within ten feet of me...you are being mommed whether you realize it or not. There may be no physical evidence of it...but it is happening. I am appraising your condition, physical,emotional and spiritual, and there are times when it takes everything within me to keep from hugging you, touching your arm, holding your hand...or picking up a child I do not know because they are crying. I was having lunch in a fast food restaurant with my husband the other day and a woman asked one of the people working there if she could hold her baby while she went into the restroom to change her toddler. I almost jumped out of my seat and said, "I'll do it!". But I restrained myself.

I considered nursing but I do not do bodily fluids. I considered teaching but something inside me knew that I would not be able to separate the teaching from the momming. The children whom I babysat and watched in the many nurseries I worked in are now adults and having their own children and yet they still hold a place in my heart. And if we are friends on facebook...I am watching you. ;) I can not watch infomercials about children in Africa because they make me cry, I can not have foster children because I remember, to this day, what it felt like to hold my last foster sister on the day they came and took her away to live with her aunt, I can not be a missionary because the thing that keeps you from having everyone live in your home does not exist in me, and this past summer I had to quit watching the news. And, if at all possible, I do not go to the mall or any other large gathering places because if I sit in a food court, or stand in line for too long...I will have to fight back the tears. We live in a lost and dying world, full of hurting and deceived people and this thought is overwhelming to me at times.

So I shut myself off from others...because it is easier, safer and less embarrassing for everyone this way...and the only ones who suffer from my momming are the ones unfortunate enough to stumble through our front door.

Consequently my children believe I do not want them to grow up, that I want to control their lives. I hate to tell them this,but that assumption could not be farther from the truth. What I want for them is this... a strong relationship with their Heavenly Father, an undying love for their family, financial security if at all possible... and that they find someone who treats them as wonderfully as their father treats me,that because of the actions of their future spouse they will not doubt that they are loved by the one they love, that they are treated like the treasures that they are, that the mere touch of their beloved is enough to pull the tension out of their world weary bodies, that the yin to their yang makes them laugh out loud every day, that they know that the father/mother of their children would be just as willing to take a bullet for them as they would be to make them peanut butter sandwiches every day of their high school career,that their other half prays for them on a daily basis,lifting them up to their Father when they are unable to do so themselves...and that their future spouses will be honorable, righteous, hardworking and able to show their love in ways apparent.

The need to love, to protect,problem-solve, to serve, to empathize was programed into my hard-drive from the the moment I was created. I am now who I have been for as long as I can remember. Some edges are smoother, some are more dangerous. I will continue to evolve as a believer, as a parent and as a wife. But I have always been and will always be just me. A mom. I mommed by dolls, my pets, my brothers, my foster siblings, all of the babies in all of the church nurseries and mother's day outs I ever worked in, and my parents... even before I was blessed with my own to mom. I WILL mom my grandchildren but I will do so as my mother has mommed my children, with a respect for my own abilities and decisions. And I will stand back and bite my tongue and cross my arms if need be...until someone makes a move to hurt them or their grown parents.

So,now that you know that you are being mommed every time you are near me,that your physical appearance is being assessed and your emotional and spiritual well being are being scanned...pray that I might use my powers for good. And if I grab your hand or arm, or touch your face, or hug you out of the blue....don't be afraid...it is just the mom in me.

Beauty and the Marine

I have taken THOUSANDS of photographs over the years...but this is one of my favorites. We attended the wedding of the subjects of this photograph yesterday. It was the joining of a young Marine to his beautiful bride in the simplest of ceremonies.

We have known the young man for close to five years now. At the time of our meeting he was a funny, energetic, smart-mouthed, barista at the coffee shop where I too was employed. I soon realized that he knew our eldest from high school and thus the connection grew stronger. He never failed to make me smile with his talk of music, film school and his youthful take on the world....or cringe at his youthful shenanigans!

During this same time our eldest had come to know his future bride. They sang together in choir and we heard her name often in our home.

And then, one day, as we celebrated the high school graduation of our eldest, these two....this head turning beauty and this future Marine...renewed an acquaintance recently made.

From then until now, in our home at least, their names were spoken as one.

Some time has past since then. My fellow barista went to school for a while, then joined the Marines, and as it so often happens, time and circumstances made it harder and harder for us to connect.

But whether it is known to this young couple or not, they have never been far from our thoughts or our hearts. And we must have remained in their hearts and minds as well because in the middle of the hub and bub of the holidays we received a beautiful, elegant invitation to their wedding.

And so Sunday, January 16th, we were honored to witness the union of one of our favorite young men and his sweet bride, in one of the nicest, purest ceremonies I have ever been to.

The setting was a new event center nestled in the foothills of the Rockies and located not fifteen minutes from our home. As we entered the hall we signed the mat surrounding a photograph of the young couple. As a family we commented on how much more practical this was. A photograph, surrounded by the signatures of those who attended your wedding, framed, and placed on a wall will bring MUCH more enjoyment than a guest book stuck in a box somewhere.

We seated ourselves facing a large fireplace. Behind us was a lovely courtyard which contained a waterfall surrounded by snow. After the parents had seated themselves our young Marine took his place beside the pastor...and I burst into tears! It was the first time I had seen the young friend who had stolen part of my heart so long ago,in his dress uniform... and the sight of him standing there, so straight and proud, combined with my memories of a teenager making his way toward manhood, unleashed a flood of tears I hadn't expected.

Next came the groomsmen in the their tuxes and red Converse, a few cherubs attending to their flower petal and ring duties, bridesmaids in their red strapless dresses carrying yellow Gerbera daisies tied with red and yellow ribbons...and as the father of the bride placed himself at the bottom of a winding stair case...the blond,fair skinned beauty descended the stairs in her strapless gown...as her own athletic shoes peaked from beneath her dress.

The scripture chosen for the ceremony was from Ephesians...Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior...and the pastor elaborated on these scriptures, gently guiding us to understand the selfless nature of each point held within.

The vows,written by the couple,were direct, to the point, yet full of the type of pledges all young couples should speak to one another as they begin their lives together. Love, laughter and support through good and bad. Foundations on which to build a long and lasting marriage. These vows were followed by the exchange of rings,his wrought by his own hand, then the kiss, and a final prayer of blessing.

Our one regret was that we had to leave before the newly wedded couple returned from having their pictures taken. I pray the note, hastily written on a cocktail napkin with borrowed pen and entrusted to another wedding guest, made it to our friends. It was a poor substitute for the hugs and love we had wished to bestow upon them. But know this Brandon and Kendra,we do love you, and pray God bless you in unimaginable ways as you move forward in this grand adventure we call marriage!

It so happens that our hasty exit was prompted by our need to make our way to another party. This one a going away party for another young friend who will also become a Marine very shortly. Pizza and chocolate cake seem such a meager offering for one willing to offer the next few years of his life in service of his country. I ask God's protection over one willing to serve...and that this future Marine understand that he takes with him our love and gratitude as well as our prayers.

We have lived a lot of life in this first 17 days of 2011. I have celebrated a couple of birthdays, witnessed the joining of a Marine to his beauty fair,held a newborn baby in my arms, felt the love of our friends and a little of the pain a mother must feel as she prepares to send her son off to serve his country. All of this as we prepare to welcome the first of a new generation.

And yet...in the 72 days between today and the expected date of our grandson's arrival...there will be even MORE life to live. More celebrations....ones of days dedicated solely to love, of birthdays spanning three generations, of marriages lasting more than two decades...and celebrations of the new life we so long to meet.

May we all remember to give thanks to the one who makes these reasons to celebrate possible.

Of dreams realized

I don't know why they keep coming back.

The people that is.

We had twenty-six people in our home last night. They were here to help us celebrate the fact that Jeff and I have made it to the advanced ages of 44 and 45. The food was Italian, the age range was from one month to early fifties, the dessert was lemon petifores and chocolate amaretto cheesecake and the boys nudged out the girls by two. The theme....family.

The theme here is always family! We had a few newbies last night.... the parents of our youngest daughter's suitor,the dear friend our oldest daughter, and of course the baby. One of my favorite parts of the evening was explaining how everyone was connected. How this young adult belongs to this parent, how this young man was attached to that young woman,how almost all that were once single have now married and miraculously their spouses have not run in horror at the chaos of our "family" dinners, how this woman represented by the picture on our fridge is my oldest and dearest friend and how she has all of the rights afforded to an aunt born of my own blood by virtue of the longevity of her presence in my life, how this young man in this pic had once been the youngest member of our original group, and how this beautiful couple in this pic were were the kids of the very proud mama with an album full of pictures of New Zealand on her I-Phone...and how none of this would have ever gotten started if it weren't for the small group of young people who began meeting in our home five or so years ago.

Things have changed quite a bit over the years. It used to be that my wonderful husband and I cooked almost everything and our young friends brought ice, or bread, or premade food stuffs in plastic packages. Now our "boys" are married and the newlyweds bring actual FOOD, and much of the dishes WE provide are cooked by our youngest. Which leaves me with more time to obsessive over OTHER details like having a place for our new mommy to go when she needs a quiet place for the newest member of our group.

Back to my original statement....

I don't know why they keep coming back. Our home is awkwardly laid out... to say the least. Our kitchen has NO counter space. The "public" dwelling areas are MUCH too small and we end up sitting on top of each other or inching around each other as we move from room to room. Everyone is always so busy talking we never have a chance to play a game or join in any OTHER kind of group activity other than a opening prayer... which last night was a prayer for the food, the birthday couple, our young man joining the Marines on the 24th and a request for a blessing for all in attendance. Also... then there is always some frazzled, crazy lady running around wringing her hands because she is so worried that she has forgotten something.... and most likely she has!

And yet...they keep coming back?!?!

Next time we meet like this, probably some time early next summer, we will be blessed with yet ANOTHER addition to our crazy group. I think I need to sit down with the engineers and contractors in our group and have a serious discussion as to how we can enlarge our home to accommodate the expanding numbers of our group...because by marriage,birth or rents returning to the roost...they are coming!

I used to dream of having a huge family that all came together during the holidays and for birthdays. You know...the one where the brothers and sisters were adults, and the ones who had married into the family were just as close and as special as the biological kids, and the aunts and uncles would be there,and everyone talked about life, babies, movies, music, books...and God, and there were kids tucked away somewhere in another room playing a board game, and the babies were passed from one member of the family to another as everyone cooed and made faces at them...and then they were jiggled and rocked until they fell asleep amidst the cacophony of voices and laughter of their family.

And then I woke up one sunny January morning with a slight party "hangover" that had nothing to do with alcohol and everything to do with the intoxicating time spent with the ones I love....and realized that I had someone received the family I had always dreamed of. A beautiful family, handcrafted by my Lord who understands all of my dreams and desires, my Father who knew,long before I was born, that the members of my family needed to be handpicked. That they needed to be readers,movie goers and music lovers, that they needed to love our Father to understand my heart, that they needed to challenge me to put myself out there or read a work of non-fiction, that they needed to enjoy food, that they would need to be patient and be able to process all of the words tumbling out of my mouth in a quick fashion, that they would see me in my panic of wanting everything to be perfect at the beginning of one of our family dinners and remind me to breath...that people came to our home because they love us...and that I would need lots of encouragement, love, prayers and a big circle of arms, representing the arms of our Father,to make my way through this big, scary,crazy world!

Ophiuchus, Birthdays and Turf Toe

Yesterday was my 44th birthday.

I'm not real hung up on my age. Some days I feel like I am 19 again. Some days I feel like I am about 99. Most of the time I'm not even aware of my age unless one of my lovely children mentions it. And then I just laugh to myself because I know that one day they will receive their comeuppance!

Age means nothing when you are married to someone who makes you laugh every day...which I am. Yesterday my goofy husband took a REALLY HORRIBLE birthday and turned it upside down. He came home from work early. Took me to Chick-Fil-A and the feed store (Yes, it is the little things in life that make me happy!) and accompanied me to my podiatrist office. You see, I fell down a few stairs the other night and managed to give myself "turf toe". Basically I damaged the soft tissue at the base of my big toe and will have to tape my toe and wear a BEAUTIFUL "moon shoe" for three weeks. LOVELY HUH!?! And for those keeping track...NO...it was not the LEFT ankle I broke and have been dealing with for years. It was the RIGHT foot that I had surgery on December a year ago. ;)

My age seems to be weighing more on me this year because we have a grandson on the way...but I am aware of the fact that the only things keeping me from being a cool hip Grammy is my weight and my white hair. Both of which I will be working on this year. The Washington branch of my WONDERFUL family sent me a Wee Fit for my birthday because they knew I wanted one, and once I get the all clear from my doc I will be yelling wee wee wee all the way to a smaller pair of jeans!

Anyway...the point is this. I don't CARE if I am 44. My husband, my sister-in-law and my best friend will always be older than I am!! :) And my heart is young...most days,and on the days it is not...I always have the love of my life to make me laugh.

Yesterday I started to read an interesting article about how the constellations have shifted so you may not be the astrological sign you thought you were. This morning my son brought it up again so I went online and looked at some more articles.

First...this is old news. As a matter of fact is like 2,000 year old news! Which from a SPIRITUAL standpoint I find very interesting.

Second...I am not the least bit surprised. The boy and I had learned about this shift on an episode of Stargate SG1 a while back. Something to do with not being able to reach certain stargates because of the shift...

Third...If you believe that the stars have any control over your life you've got more things to worry about than having a new SIGN!

I MUST admit though,it is a little weird to have spent my whole life as a Capricorn to wake up on the DAY of my 44th birthday and find out that I am a SAGITTARIUS!

Oh well, given the theme of my life right now...which would be CHANGE...it is almost fitting. So, I'm just gonna roll with it. At least I'm not an Ophiuchus!

Here's the new line up if you are interested.

Capricorn: Jan. 20 - Feb. 16
Aquarius: Feb. 16 - March 11
Pisces: March 11- April 18
Aries: April 18- May 13
Taurus: May 13- June 21
Gemini: June 21- July 20
Cancer: July 20- Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10- Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16- Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30- Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23- Nov. 29
Ophiuchus:* Nov. 29- Dec. 17
Sagittarius: Dec. 17- Jan. 20
*Discarded by Babylonians B.C. because wanted 12 signs per year, not 13 even though there were 13 constellations

Gotta run! I need to get busy because we are having friends over for dinner tomorrow night. It is a combined celebration for my birthday and the birthday of my husband...who, by the way...gets to remain a Capricorn!

Overcoming Brain Pain and Clumsiness With the Power of the Internet

A three day migraine. A small fall down the stairs in the middle of the night. A request from the podiatrist office that I stay off of my feet for a couple of days until we can decide if I have indeed "done damage" to myself.

I do not have time for this! My house is a WRECK, I have company coming for dinner on Saturday, a wedding and a going away party on Sunday...and in case you haven't noticed my ticker over there on the right hand side of your screen...there is a baby coming to live in this house in about 78 days!!

So, in an attempt to get SOMETHING done... headache and injured foot be damned...today became somewhat of a "baby" day.

While my younger children tried to make sure I was fed and attended to, I sat in a semi-dark room and checked out some baby websites, worked on an invitation list, found a free pattern to make a cover for the Moses basket Bubbie got the Wee One for Christmas, and looked into recommended books and toys for babies on grandparents.com.

Then, after my first born and I managed to pound out a final invitation list and got her registered online, I drug myself out to Starbucks to visit with a few friends so that we could make some plans for the Wee One's baby shower.

ONLY for my first born grandchild would I venture out on this brilliantly bright, 11 degree, January day. Do you KNOW how much pain the sun, reflecting off a yard full of snow, can cause to an already addled brain!?!?

I made it through another day though...thanks to three great kids, a few devoted friends and the POW OW ER ER ER OF OF OF THE EE EE IN TER ER ER NE E ET ET!

Growth

Oh, that we might always catch the vision of an abundant harvest, when the great Master Plowman comes, as He often does, and furrows through our very souls, uprooting and turning under that which we thought most fair, and leaving for our tortured gaze only the bare and the unbeautiful.
~Selected

Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh the deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle husbandman, He purposeth a crop.
~Samuel Rutherford

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
~Mary Antin

Growth is the only evidence of life.
~John Henry Newman

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
~Richard Bach

Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant.
~Stephen Sigmund

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
~Anatole France

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
~G. K. Chesterton

Eleven and a half years

I have begun to think that I do not understand the difference between joy, peace and happiness.

So, I decided to look up the definitions.

Might I just say right now...I would give ANYTHING for a good old Noah Websters Dictionary!

"It is reported that Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary contains the greatest number of Biblical definitions given in any reference volume. Webster considered "education useless without the Bible". "

For you see, that is what I am looking for, definitions to these things which elude me, based on the Word of God. Oh...I looked them up, but online dictionaries are just as watered down and convoluted as everything else now. No wonder no one can find true peace. No one knows what the heck it means anymore!

What happened to absolutes? Can someone please tell me? What happened to right and wrong and black and white and good and bad...and when did all of the gray move into the very definition of the words to the things which are most important in our lives? Joy, peace, happiness, morality, right, wrong, good, bad....family.

We have lived here, in our little town, in the same house,for eleven and a half years now. We moved a LOT before we came here. From the time of my birth I had never lived in one house for more than 21 months before coming here when I was 32.

During the eleven and a half years that we have lived here I have always said that this is the only place where I have ever had peace in my life.

Then, this morning, while sitting in the bottom of the shower stall, crying and pondering the state of my life at this time, I realized that I have been confusing STABILITY...and occasional HAPPINESS...with peace.

Because when I am totally honest with myself. We have not had very much "peace" in the eleven and a half years we have lived here. We were blessed to find this house, we moved in and fixed it up, we immediately joined a church....and after a little more than a year we realized that the whole time we had been there some one had been spreading rumors and telling lies about our family and after being hauled in before the elders and being questioned and yelled at for more than an hour, we eventually lost all of our close friends and our church family.

SO, I promptly said I would never go back to church, because churches are made up of people, and they are idiots.

This lasted maybe a month before I realized that I wanted my children in a place where they could hear the word and be in fellowship because there is NOTHING like a corporate anointing. You know that anointing of the Holy Spirit that falls when His people join together in praise and worship of Him and the word is broken and people are working together for the good of their Lord?!?! There is just nothing like it. It is not better than individual time spent with the Lord....it is just DIFFERENT...and needed!

So, we found another church. And it was good for a while. And I thought I had found peace...and happiness...and joy...even though it took me over a year to be able to go to church without getting sick...because PEOPLE go to church. And I had had just about enough of PEOPLE.

ANYWAY...things were good for a while. And I THINK there may have been a little peace in my life. There WAS happiness...and a fair amount of joy.

And then...everything changed. Our nice little world turned upside down. For various reasons. Leadership at churches change, family moves away, the little bit of financial security you thought you had dries up,your body turns on you, and the enemy you have worked so hard to protect your children from gains a foothold in an area you thought you had protected...and four and a half years later you realize that you do not remember the last time you truly felt peace in your life....or joy...although there is some occasional happiness.

SO...What do you do when you wake up one morning and realize that the "peace" you thought you had been feeling for 11 and a half years was really only "stability"...with a few happy times...and a little joy thrown in for good measure?

Truth: Real peace only comes when you are in a viable relationship with our Heavenly Father. This is truth.

Truth: The circumstances you find yourself in do not bring you peace. They can bring you happiness...and a fair amount of joy...but not peace. This is truth.

Fact: I am in a viable relationship with my Heavenly Father. It grows and changes every year and at times every day. I have learned that he is my only refuge in times of turmoil.

So...where is my peace?

And...what do I do with the knowledge that I have stood so firmly in one place for so long because I THOUGHT what I was feeling was PEACE...when it was actually STABILITY I had found?

Is this the place for me..for us? In truth, the only thing holding US here are a job, a mortgage and a grandson on the way. And the only thing holding ME here are the man with the job and the mortgage, the children he has given me and a grandson on the way.

BUT...what if...these things are anchors created by my father to hold me in place so that I couldn't run away when I finally realized that a house or a church or life in a small town had not actually brought me peace?

AND...Maybe...these anchors are the things that continue to hold me fast when my heart is torn asunder by the choices made by one most precious to me...and the knowledge that if this precious one continues down the path they travel now...I may actually lose part of these earthly anchors.

The gypsy ways of my youth call to me daily. The need to run and hide from all that is going on around me is ever present. Everyone thinks I am firmly planted here with my crafts and my garden and my chickens. They only see the mom, the cookie baker, the wanna be Martha Stewart, the responsible one...the fixer. When in actuality I fight the longing to run on an almost daily basis. The only thing that has held me into place thus far is an indescribable love for one man and for the children he has given me and the desire that my children would not have to move once a year when they reached middle school.

It took me eleven and a half years for me to realize that my peace does not reside in this house or this town. I guess that was just long enough for God to anchor me, good and fast, so that when he was ready to continue his work in me I couldn't run away.

Maybe my journey is not one measured by how many miles I can run, but by the number of times I DON'T run.

And maybe...now that I understand what peace ISN'T...I might actually find it.

Flying Monkeys, Chris Farley and Playing Possum

In this world, those who seek the truth will also find trouble.
~ Gary Amirault

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
~ George Orwell

Candor is a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate.
~ Wilhelm Stekel

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
~ Jim Davis

************************

The search for righteousness is a rocky path. Once you set out to follow it, you encounter "road blocks".

As I begin to set forth this analogy clips of "The Wizard of Oz" flicker through my mind. If Oz is truth/righteousness and the yellow brick road is the path which leads us there....then the Wicked Witch is the Enemy and the flying monkeys, the trees pelting us with apples and the field of poison poppies are all of the things which the Enemy sets in our path to prevent us from reaching our goal.

And no...Oz is not Heaven and the Wizard is not God. Although I DO believe that a heart, a brain, courage and a home or the things found upon attaining righteousness.

Sorry people, these kinds of things are what you might encounter when reading the blog of a woman-child raised on pop culture.... and who, by the way, read EVERY Oz book ever written.

Now from the ridiculous to the sublime....

All of this began two days ago when I wrote my first blog of the new year.

I poked my head out of my hole and called attention to myself instead of hiding in the shadows. And then when the enemy attacked in the form of a killer headache, the interruption of my best laid plans, a look at our financial situation and some unwelcome news...I had to decide if I would indeed heed my own advice or play possum.

I tried to play possum.

BUT when the attack continued today...I tried some Sweet Ninja Skills. ALTHOUGH...my ninja skills look more like Chris Farley in "Beverly Hills Ninja than Michael Dudikoff in "American Ninja".

Anyway,I went to my favorite daily devotional by Charles Spurgeon, which I confess I haven't done in several weeks, and I started by reading the chapter surrounding the scripture reference, 2 Peter 3:18.

Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Backing up a couple of beats....Just the reading of that one scripture at the opening of the devotional made me what to quit right there. "Growing" always involves GROWING PAINS...and that is the last thing I want to think about today. No pain, no growing, now striving or seeking!! I wanted the nice, soothing reassuring scriptures. 2 Peter 3 is all about last days and people following their own evil desires and things are going to be destroyed by fire and how because of these things we must live holy, godly and spotless lives!!!

AARRRGGG!!!!

So, on to the devotional itself...

I'm reading, reading, reading....hard words, Victorian language....and then...like a neon sign....

"HE WHO GROWS NOT IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS, REFUSES TO BE BLESSED"

Is is too late to go back to playing possum.

This is the prayer I wrote based upon this devotional....

Allow me to grow in grace, O Lord. Grow my faith and let it increase in fullness, constancy and simplicity. Free me to grow also in love. I ask that you extend it, make it more intense, more practical and that it influence my every thought, word and deed. Show me more of my own nothingness so that I might grow likewise in humility. Allow me to grow upwards toward you in prayer and grant me a more intimate relationship with your son. May I, through the power of the Holy Spirit, grow in the knowledge of my Lord and Savior. Grow me up the knowledge of your son that I might be blessed.

Sooo....there you have it. Cheryl Pyle, attempting to use her Sweet Ninja Skills, Chris Farley style.

Right before I started writing this, I read an email from our good friend Mark M. He is sending out a daily email as we go through our 21 day fast/90 read through the bible. In today's email Mark provided some some scripture and encouraging words I thought useful and on topic....and I decided to pass it along.

"Luke 10:19 says “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”

Spiritually speaking, life is a battlefield. Most of the battles that we fight are not “of the flesh”, meaning they don’t have to do with things in the natural, but instead, they are spiritual battles. (Ephesians 6:12)

As soldiers, God gives us armor and weapons (Ephesians 6:13-18) and he gives us the power to use the artillery he has given us. In this passage in Luke, serpents are symbolic of Satan, (Rev 12:9; Gen 3:1-14) and scorpions are symbolic of evil spirits/evil men. (Rev 9:1-5; 9:10)

No matter what we face, we can be encouraged that through Christ, we have authority and dominion over negative influence we encounter. Amen?"

AMEN BROTHER!!

Hit the Ground Running in 2011 with Barbed Wire and Ninja Skills

Well, it's January 2 and thanks to a LOT of help from my two hardworking men, all of the Christmas decorations are put away and the house is "sort of" back to normal. To be totally honest, if it weren't for Jeff and our two younger children, the Christmas decorations would have never made it out of storage...nor would there have been any Christmas cookies.

2010 was a very hard year. I told Jeff this morning that I thought at this time of our lives things were supposed to be getting easier. Instead we seem to be in the EXACT same place we were when we were young marrieds. Jeff has a great job but we have no money, we drive used junker cars and there is a baby on the way. The only differences are, we are paying on a mortgage instead of renting, my parents live four states away, we have three grown children, the baby on the way is our grandchild and although it may not seem like it to some of you, my head knowledge of the Lord has grown into an actual relationship with Him.

Oh...and I am 22 years older, so the body aches a lot more and I have reached a place in my life were I don't really give a hoot what anyone thinks of me, my family or my relationship with the Lord. AND, I have very little patience with young people who think they know more than I do about children, relationships, God, or just about anything related to having been a wife and a mother for nearly twenty-five years.

I do not mean to appear negative. Please forgive me if I do. I have recently come to understand a couple of really important things though....

1) There is ALWAYS going to be someone in your life who does not "approve" of how you live your life.... ALWAYS. There are just people out there who didn't get enough love from their parents, or whose blood sugar is too high...or two low, or maybe they are just spoiled or they have no confidence in themselves..or in the Lord...and it makes them feel better about themselves when they can point out every thing they THINK you are doing wrong and how you SHOULD be living your life. It's just the way things are. If they are part of your family...someone you have to do life with...just smile and nod and pray that the Lord use them to refine you... or grow a backbone and try to talk to them about it. If they aren't...smile and wave bye-bye...cause life's full of enough crap without letting someone run their cattle on your land and fill it up with any MORE!! Put up some barbed-wire for crying out loud.... set some boundaries!!

2) Anytime you strive to make a better life for yourself, to grow, to stretch, to move ahead, the enemy is gonna try to knock you on your keister.(He might even use those mentioned above to do so.) There will be hurdles,and sucker punches and you WILL be blindsided. So get yourself some sweet ninja skills and when you get hit... tuck, roll and come up fighting! BTW...Sweet Ninja skills probably should involve some time spent in prayer and the word and having a pretty good network of friends willing to pray for you and find comfortable furniture for your pregnant daughter.

(Do you think I've mixed enough metaphores yet?)

Anyway...enough of that! I don't have TIME to wallow in the misery of 2010! I must RISE to the need and expectations of 2011!! We have a grandson on the way and TONS to do before he gets here. There will be the trading of bedrooms and moving of furniture and painting and sewing and baby showers and LOTS of birthdays and our 25th anniversary between now and March 30th when the Wee One is due!!

If 2010 was the year of angst and tears then 2011 will be a year of new beginnings. Here we are...not yet three days into a new year and we already have a good start on a list of highs....

1)Jeff's father married his long time girl Bea in a quiet ceremony in East Texas this weekend!!

2)Jeff and I have started the new year by beginning a 21 day fast (me from FB and coke, Jeff from Coffee)...

3)... as we attempt to read through the Bible in 90 days!

4)The Christmas decorations are put away!

5)Keaton made his first pot of stew today...and it was WONDERFUL!

6)Tomorrow is the 77th birthday of my Uncle Willard....whom I love dearly!

Tomorrow, January 3,2011...we hit the ground running. Jeff goes back to work, Keaton goes back to school, Kaitlyn and I try to beat back the clutter which has overtaken our home and Kirsten keeps on doing what she does best...serving up coffee and her dazzling smiles, all the while taking care of herself and the Wee One!

Let's do this thing people!!!