A tale of two messages- Part II

There are some ugly things in my life and I have shared many of them, but one thing I don't like to talk about are the things I fall short with the things that I truly cannot control.  I like most people have a vice, its probably even an addiction and it stems from my need to control and my inability to find comfort from a healthy place.  I have battled with this my whole life.  Some of you are going to think that it is ridiculous when I tell you what it is, that its not a real addiction and some of you will nod your heads knowing exactly what I mean.  Its FOOD.  It consume so much of my time of my thoughts and my life.  I let it control me.  I obsess over it, I worry over it, I think of it constantly.  This is a battle I have yo-yoed with my whole life sometimes doing better and sometimes worse.  I realized something today.  My first problem is I never really realized how much of my life it takes over, or how much joy it takes from me.  I am not worried about my physical weight, even though I think we would all like to be thinner.  This about my heart and my soul and the weight that I would like to lift off of them.  I have been trying to fight this battle by myself my whole life and thats why the victory has never taken hold.  I realized this morning if I can give this battle up to God and let him fight it for me, then I can truly be victorious.  Maybe my two post from this morning have a lot more in common than I thought its all about giving up and giving it to God, and you can only do that once some of your faith has been restored.  Even with Gods help this will not be any easy fight, to break habits that have lasted a lifetime, but He can handle it.  Maybe now I can truly find comfort in the places that He intended.  In Him.  Its time for me to let him be strong and for me to give up control.  I have spent so long in life feeling like I was the one who had to be strong because no one else was going to do it, and I was wrong.  Its His turn.  Today its easy and some days it won't be, but you have to start somewhere, and He will give me His strength.  And His has always been so much greater than mine anyway.  ITs time to stop hiding the ugly, so HE can fix it and fix me.

A tale of messages- Part I

There are two things lying very heavily on my heart this morning and I am hoping that I get the chance to get them both out.  Sometimes it take the hard times in order to be able to realize the good. This past week has been a very big challenge for me.  We are in the full swing of football season so that means my husband is home on a very limited basis and I have had a sick child this week.  I ended up missing two days of work and leaving work early once all in the second week of school.  That is what it is.  It leaves me feeling frazzled as I am trying to do my best to keep up with my school work, but my kids come first.  The culminating event in this week was when I had to take my baby girl to the emergency room at about 3AM Friday morning.  This was particularly trying because at 6 months old my baby ended up being put in the hospital for 5 days, so that experience was very fresh on my mind that morning as I watched my daughter struggle to breathe.  The whole way to the hospital in the car I prayed (and thats a big step for me, that thats what I went to first).  I am a worrier and I like to be in control.  I like to do.  I like to feel like I can fix everything, but I can't.  I did not realize until this morning when I read the blog post of a friend what all this meant.  Not to say that I was not stressed or worried that morning.  I am a mom and she is my baby girl.  And most of all I am human and I do struggle.  But the fact that I could pray about it and I knew that God was going to take care of it so that I could stop trying was a big step for me.  When I read a post about restoration I realized something.  Some of my faith that I lost along the way through the hard times and the experiences that I have been through has been restored.  If that faith had not been restored, at least a little, then I would not have been able to trust God in that situation, in a way that I have not for a long time.  Sometimes you don't see these things until a friend unknowingly points them out to you.

The really BIG Crazy

I'm not quite sure what this says about me, but I do best with the really big kinds of crazy.  Not that I like dealing with them, but I can handle the big deals better than I can the everyday crazy in life.  In situations like when my dad died or when they put my 6 month old in the hospital for 5 days.  I got this.  I don't know if God made me that way because of all the crazy in my life, and someone has to deal with it , or if he has a bigger plan for that.  Now the everyday crazy mess of life I don't know what to do with.  My little one doesn't feel well, she cutting teeth, just the 3s, and last night was the first night of 3 in a row that my husband will not be home until late (after we are all in bed late).  Right now I am fine, better than I usually would be, but that is not the norm.  It is not my strong suit.  The kind of crazy where everyone else is a mess and I can take charge and handle it is what I'm good at.  I think it is like what I was talking about at church I have a control problem.  I like to feel like I am handling things.  With the little stuff there is no handling, it is what it is.  With the big stuff I can handle it I can take care of everyone else.  I can take the mom role just like I always do no matter who the other parties are.  For someone who has been "the adult" or even "the mom" figure for so long, way before I was a mom or even an adult it is hard to give up that control, especially when you sometimes feel like thats all that you have.  Sometimes I feel like my self worth is defined by what I can handle and what I can deal with.  I try to stop and remind myself just like my husband knew well and good what he was getting into before we got married because we had been together 7 1/2 years at that point, God knew.  God knew long before I was born what kind of person I was going to be and he made me that way.  Despite all of my flaws and sometimes because of them He loves me.  I read this in my bible reading last night and it hit home -1 Samuel 16:7-But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” God looks at the parts of me that no one can see. -Psalm 139:13-15 -For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.  God was the one that decided to make me this way and that doesn't mean that I don't need to change, but it does mean that there was a reason and He always loves me.

You see what you're looking for

I have learned over the past couple of days that you see exactly what you're looking for.  This has not been an easy couple of days.  It turns out my youngest has what we think is a cold or some other mild virus, which is aggravating her asthma.  Plus she is cutting her molars.  Because of all this wonderfulness she was up from 1 AM to 3 AM last night.  Needless to say I am exhausted.  However thats not the point the point is that once you start looking for and asking for God to show you some love and encouragement then you will.  Its not always easy to get into that mindset, but when you do its all around.  Its the small things like a song on the radio that comes on and soothes your rough edges after a long night.  Its the story on the radio or facebook or wherever of another mom going through something similar that makes you feel like you are not alone.  When your heart is ready to see it God is ready to show it to you and I am just glad that today thats me.  I know that tomorrow I may not see these signs I may not be in a place where I am looking, but as for today they are all around.  

Proverbs 8:17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.

Why is God using ME?

I just finished reading a book Hope for the Weary Mom: Let God meet you in the mess and it was awesome.  In the last chapter it talks about why God even bothers with us and why he doesn't just pick someone else.  This resonated with me.  Some days I really wonder why God chose this for me.  There has got to be someone with a better story, someone who has their life together so much h more to have better advice.  I always feel like my story is too much in the middle to be helpful.  I did not live that cookie cutter life and I have had some hard times and some bad things happen; but its not like I have lived through what I think of as real tragedy.  So why didn't God pick someone more qualified, why did he pick me for any of this?  Well I can't answer that, like the preacher said, or at least not yet.  One day I might know what it may be about me and my life and my story that has prepared me for the places that God is taking me or I may not.  On bad days I feel despondent and like nothing I do is ever worthy and there is no way that I can help anyone.  But as much as its all about my backstory at the same time it has nothing to do with me.  The things that I will accomplish and the lives that I have and will touch are because that is the way that God wants it to be.  He never wanted hard things to happen to me, but he always had this plan for me there are things that He wants me to do for Him and they wouldn't be possible with someone else.
Jeremiah 29:11 perfectly sums this up -For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.-

Work in Progress

I am a work in progress, but Go'd makes sure to let me know that I am progressing.  Today has not been a particularly challenging day just normal and sometimes that makes you weary.  My days start bright and early (5:17 is when my oldest got up this morning).  Then I made pancakes, washed dishes, and tried to clean the house before my husband had to leave for football.  I took some time to look up some new ideas for my classroom.  Made lunch played my youngest down.  When they woke up we had to drive to a nearby town to buy shoes for my oldest where my sister met me.  We got dinner to take home then come home had dinner, tried on all the new shoes, cleaned up super and got the girls in bed.   Then is my time.God has this way of giving you exactly what you need when you need it.  On the way home from our shoe expedition I heard a beautiful song on the radio that spoke straight to my heart.  "Eye of the Storm" by Ryan Stevenson.  There is a line at the beginning that talks about when everything is going wrong and gets crazy you hear the rain and it reminds you that God is in control.  I love the rain it is so therapeutic and peaceful.  I constantly need to be reminded that God is in control and I should qui worrying about it.  (Much easier said than done),  It is so easy for me to get caught up in the stress and the bustle that is my beautiful and messy life.  I have to make sure that I take time for myself everyday to recharge and get perspective, so that I don't end up forgetting all of that.
God has his gentle way of reminding me that I am doing this and that I can do this because of him.  Sometimes its a song on the radio at the right time.  Sometimes it is a well timed hug or unprovoked declaration of love for your children.  Sometimes its how excited my husband is to talk to me at 2AM after he gets home from a football game.  Sometimes its seeing my girls play with one of the toys my daddy so lovingly picked out.  There is a lot of beauty in this mess if I don't get too caught up to see it.  And God has had a lot to say to me lately maybe I can start listening a little better.

Its all about the BACKSTORY

Sometimes I have no idea what it is I have to say or where I am going, but I know what I am going to get there.  I have faith.  This is a very therapeutic process for me.  It is time that I take for myself to sit down and think about the things that have happened and to gain some perspective, which is so important especially on weeks like this.  It has been a challenging week with school starting back, my oldest is acting out, none of her shoes fit, and about one hundred other small and meaningless things.  I am tired and I am stressed but taking a minute to breathe and realize it is not that big of a deal and to really make myself think about how all these little pieces are fitting into God's plan for me helps.
I know that there are some thins working right now and I can feel it and I am actually very thankful that I have some people in my life who are willing to call me out on those whether they know it or not.  This does not always mean when the pastor calls me out in front of the church whether he is using my name or not.  I have noticed other people more subtly saying things to remind me of where I am in this journey and were it is that I need to be going and I have to take time to realize that God put them there.  That God put those things on their heart and I need to be paying attention.
Tonight for instance my oldest was acting out at church so I had to take her out of the fellowship hall and have a talk with her among other things before I could eventually leave her screaming with her sister in the nursery to return to bible study.  I was frustrated, upset, and at wits end with tears stuck in my eyes.  Then I walk into the fellowship hall late and the first thing that they start talking about is about backstories.  Oh and I have a doozy.  As related parts of his own backstory I felt like he was looking at and talking directly to me.  I have shared bits and pieces of my back story on here before and as he called them its one of the messy ones and for someone who doesn't mind being honest about the messy parts and who talks as much as I do, I manage to have a whole lot to say sometimes without really saying any of the important things.  I am trying to do better.
But the funny thing is in my 29 years I feel like I have lived many lives.    When I was so young that I barely remember we lived in this cookie cutter house in the perfect neighborhood, where everything seemed like it was the way it is in movies.  Then things changed I think its so much harder to handle the messy when it didn't start out that way.  I think the sad part is that I am just now beginning to be old enough to truly understand just how messy some of it was and still is.  I didn't realize that not everyone watches their parents get torn apart, their sister lose her first child before she was due to graduate high school.  Not everyone knows what it is like to see drugs and men destroy one of your sibling and what that does to your mom and the other sister you have that was her best friend.  Not everyones best friend growing up had a mother who was an alcoholic and all the things that entailed.  Not everyone rushes out of work because their sixth month old baby is getting admitted to the hospital as she struggles to breath.  Not everyone hears the stories that my students tell me that break my heart.  Not everyone has to look at the doctors and tell them take their daddy off the ventilator, knowing that will be his last breath, because he will never get better.  But I also know that not everyone gets to watch their beautiful baby girls that they carried forever sleep at night.  Not everyone gets to marry the first guy they started dating at 15 and almost 14 years later say they'd never want to be anywhere else.
These things and so many more things that I can't even think of right now or I have yet to figure out aren't a part of everyone else life; these are my backstory.  If I did not have them I would not be able to write these words to touch a life, even if its only my own, just like God has lead me to do.  If it weren't for my backstory I would not have some of these things to bring to the table that I don't know if I even realized util now were gifts from God even if I wasn't ready for them yet.  Like the one student who's mom came to me when her child would talk to me and not her after returning from the hospital because the little girl tried to hurt herself.  If I did not have the backstory that I do.  I would not have connected with that little girl and there are so many other students and other people that I would not be able to understand without these life experiences.
I read the story of Gideon tonight and this part stuck out to me even before I knew what I had to say.  Judges 6:13 -"But sir" Gideon replied, "if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?  Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said 'Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?  but now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the had of Midian."-  God didn't go anywhere in my life, I did.  And God let me because he knew that all of these things had to be a part of my backstory to carry out the purpose that he has for me.  Sometimes it is easier to feel sorry for yourself because of what you have been through and to feel abandoned by God than it is to realize the messier you backstory is probably the bigger God's plans are for you.  The mess is what allows God to use me in the ways that he has called me and how amazing is it to think that even though I may have just figured this out he has had this plan even before I was born.

When I lost faith

In the book that I am reading "Hope for a Weary Mom" I started the chapter about when life hurts too much.  She spoke about how several hurtful events in a row didn't exactly take her faith away but it took away some of her trust and weakened her relationship with God.  It mad we realize thats very much what happened to me.  When I was really little before my parents spilt up we went to church all the time and we were a very active church family.  Then my parents split up which made church attendance a little strained for us, but that was not the event that severed the ties with my childhood church.  One of my older sisters got pregnant in high school and her baby was born very prematurely and with significant health problems.  My niece only made it through the first 24hours of her life.  I was too young then to appreciate what was happening and to even need to grieve.  My family had trouble with the funeral arrangements for my niece.  The church as a whole was against us burying my niece in their cemetery because she was born to and unwed teenager.  At the time I was only in about the 3rd grade and I didn't really understand.  I was much older when the hurt of that situation began to penetrate and compound with many other circumstances to drive me away from God for a good many years.  Like the author of the book I never lost faith completely but I held God at arms length for a long time after being very passionate about my faith.  Even immediately after this situation my faith was very strong in that way that only a child's can be.   I could not get my mom to go to church after that, but there was a church across the street from the apartment complex that we lived in that had Awanas .  I begged and pleaded to go.  My mom eventually let me try it out and I took my younger sister.  I loved it.  I can remember praying to God and telling him how fervently I wanted to be saved and believed in Him.  I remember the vigor with which I would memorize my bible verses, I made it all the way to the highest level at Awanas (and not all of that is because I was an overachiever).  I was always so excited.
Then we moved to another near by town because out in the country was the only place my mom could afford a house after the divorce.  I went to school in this small town from 4th-8th grade and tried three different churches with different friends.  None of them stuck and I eventually ended up finding another hurtful situation.  Im not sure exactly how old I was.  I know I was a teenager and I was going to Wednesday night youth at the home church of a friend of mine.   I had been attending Wednesday night there regularly for a little while.  One night they began talking about divorce.  I was the only child in that room who had divorced parents.  So the leader of the class after talking about how much of a sin divorce was, looked at me and said Kim your parents are divorced don't you wish they would get back together.  (I was outspoken even then.)  I looked her directly in the eyes and told her no because that was not what was best for my mother so that was not what I wanted.  She thought is best to make a comment on how divorce was never a part of God's plan.    In the middle of class when she said that to me I got up and walked out of the room and never went back to that church and except for sporadic attendance did not start to attend church regularly for probably about 14 years.
No these two bad experiences weren't the only grief I had.  I have spent a lot of time already telling you about some of the hurts that I have dealt with growing up, but because of the negative experiences that I had with these churches when I began to grieve in the hard times of my life I did not feel like I could go to church.  I felt that maybe just the churches around here or maybe churches in general were tainted and they just weren't for me.  I tried to keep up my faith and my relationship with God by myself.  That never works and the strength of my convictions faded significantly, I lost that joy that I used to have about going to church.
Until I lost my dad almost two years ago and had to grieve in a completely different way I just wasn't ready to come back.  And God always knowing the way to my heart was able to motivate me to want to try to involve myself in a church again for the sake of my girls.  With a nudge from a friend of ours my husband and I found a small local church to try.  And so far we have jumped in feet first and I am healing slowly but surely and I am growing.  But I am not going to lie sometimes I still get vey nervous and I still have not been comfortable enough to fully open up to the people at church.  Many of them do not even realize that I am loud, I never shut up, and I can be quite pushy.  Baby steps.  Its all about the journey.

Right Place Right time, maybe

Have you ever been in a crowded room and the speaker began speaking and you knew, because you could feel it in your heart that they were speaking directly to you whether they knew it or not.  These are the ways that we know that God is listening and paying attention in our lives.  I had the privilege to listen to a man named Manny Scott speak today.  He was one of the original Freedom Writers.  As I sat there listening in that gym full of people I felt him speaking to my soul like he and I were the only ones in the room.  At more than one point I could fear the tears well up in my eyes as he was telling me things that I needed so desperately to hear.
I love my job most of the time and things are not always perfect, but I don't think that I could work at a better school.  But I am constantly questioning if this is what I am supposed to be doing with my life and how much longer can I keep it up.  You may think that I am much to young for that.  At 29 years old this will be my 8th year in the classroom.  However if you have never taught or been this involved with so many young people you may not understand how easy it is to get burnt out and to feel defeated.  I may not always show it in a way that they can understand (because I truly am my fathers daughter), but these children become my babies even ones that I did not teach.  Their triumphs become my triumphs and their heartbreaks become my heartbreaks.  Sometimes with all of the demands that are being placed on us it is easier to just see them as a number, as a test score, but these are my babies.  And they come to me with so much hurt.
I don't know that I am good enough for them.  I don't know that I have it in me to be able to reach them and to be able to teach them the way that they need me to.  My husband says the fact that I even care about all of that says it all.  I am not sure.  Manny Scott inspires me to want to do better, to try harder.  The problem with wanting to do better is knowing that you are not good enough and that you are going to fail.  Then I read my devotional for tonight and it was about motherhood, but I think that its applicable to both.  The gist of the devotional is that I am not enough and I am never going to be as a mother or a teacher.  But I don't need to be.  Thats what God's there for, its not about our plan, its about His.
I am hoping and praying that I can keep this in mind when my new set of babies that I will get on Monday start to make me weary.  I also have to remember what Manny Scott told us today that even on our worst day some of us are still the best hope that some of these children have.

I am Struggling

I really am.  I am struggling this week.  This is always a particularly challenging week for me, the one when teachers start back to work and its a mad dash to try and get ready for the kids next week.  I feel like there are so many changes.  (They are some really good ones that I am excited about.) I just feel like I am not ready and it is going to take a miracle to be ready by Monday.  I also am getting the feeling that this is going to be a particularly challenging year for me because so much is going to be new and different and it needs to be.  I need to be so that I can be better, but oh is that daunting.  I feel like I have not come far enough in my journey to be ready for all this, because the crazy changes at school are only the tip of the iceberg.
My girls are both in the midst of a growth spurt and their routine has changed with them going back to full time daycare this week.  Anyone else who has had or dealt with small children know what happens when their routine gets disrupted.    I feel like financially its always just one thing right after the other and just never can catch up.  Add to that football season is in full swing so there goes my husband.  I still feel like I am relatively new at this church thing and am trying my best there.  I also am trying, maybe not very well, to make some real life connections with some other mommas so that I can have some more support and not have to feel so alone sometimes.   Not to mention that there is always something crazy going on with my family.  And lets not even talk about my house.
I have told people that this week I feel like I am treading water, but I just can't get anywhere.  I am being pulled in so many directions that I can't make any head way in any of them, or at least that's how I feel.
I haven't lost my hope completely I know that better and easier days are coming and I also know that these days where I am struggling and pulling my hair out are going to make me a better person, a stronger christian, a better mom, a better teacher, and even a better wife.  Sometimes all you can focus on is just sticking it out and having faith that this is part of God's plan and it's happening for a reason even if I don't know what it is.
So perseverance is my goal, at least for today, maybe when I make it through this day I can be on the a better day and a better goal.  This is my goal - Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.  Galatians 6:9    Doing good is not always easy and He never said it would be, but He did say don't give up.  So I am taking it one day at a time and I haven't given up yet.  And I am hoping and praying for a better and more encouraging tomorrow, and if not that I can find the strength in Him to not give up for one more day.

My journey surprises even me

I'm not going to lie I started today the with the best of intentions about how I want to start this new year with an attitude.  I was so hopeful after asking God to soften my heart.  And I failed.  I failed hard.  Honestly I don't know that I have any sagely advice or pretty words even for myself this evening.   I know that as soon as I can get my oldest to actually go to sleep I will go to my room and pray to God again tonight to change my heart.  The world is not changing I will always have to deal with the great sadness that can come with working with teenagers, my coworkers that usually have the best of intentions anyway, my husband again with his good intentions but not always so much with the follow through, and my children whom I love so much but they are trying.  To make me the bigger and the better person.  The person who thinks when she gets started that she has nothing positive to say, nothing encouraging.  I guess even though I failed today God has been doing more work in my life than even I realized.  Just saying these words I realize that even though I have so far to go I have come so far.  I have gotten to a place where I know I cannot do this by myself and the only way that I am going to grow and the only way for me to get through is to ask God.  Asking Him to change my heart and soften it to the good and the beautiful so that I don't get so frustrated and maybe so I am not quite so hard on myself.

God's pursuit of me.

My devotion tonight was wonderful and it spoke directly to my heart, funny how they just seem to keep doing that.
It was about God pursuing us, and wooing us just like He did with the Israelites.  What I needed to hear pointed out is that this is not always going to be the wonderful moment that we think of when we think of someone being loved, the whispering of soft words.  Sometimes to love someone the best and to get them to the wonderful land of promise love is hard.  Just like the love of a parent for their child(ren).  It follows you it pursues you.  There are wonderful sweet tender moments and there are the moments of tough love where discipline has to play its part to making you the best person that you can be in order for you to go to where you want to be.  She points out that many of us are being called to "the wilderness" which is where God loved the Israelites before he brought them in to the promise land, then asked if that is a calling we are hear and are you afraid to go.  I know that God is doing big things in my life and in my heart I just don't know yet what those are, but as soon as I read those words I knew thats what was happening in my life.
I know that this is the journey that I am on. It is filled with some beautiful days, like today.  Today my husband and I along with some friends of ours baptized our three girls together.  It was a beautiful experience filled with so much love it was palpable.  Love from the families, the preacher, the congregation, and from God.  It was very special, no matter what mood my girls were in.  These are the moments where God is whispering his soft word to me, these are the moments where His pursuit of me is kind and beautiful.  There are other days like Friday where I end up wearing in a ball on the couch with my girls staring at me.  That day was so hard I just broke and I did not know what else to do.  Those are the days when love is hard.  It does not be that He loves me any less or that he has stopped pursuing me, what is means is he has something to teach me and this is something that cannot be learned the easy way (that or I was just too hard headed to get it that way).
The next time that my days are hard and I want to break I cannot promise you that I will remember in that moment that this is God's pursuit of me and it is all done out of love to get me to the wonderful place that he has for me.  But God is working on my heart changing it so that I can better deal with the situations in my life and He has big plans for me I will just have to wait and see what they are.

The Broken pieces let Him shine

I don't know about you, but every time I feel like I am getting somewhere and making some progress, its like something knocks you back.

You are valuable because you exist. Not because of what you do or what you have done, but simply because you are. –Max Lucado

Wow I really hope this is true because I just don't feel like I'm doing a great job right now.  My girls are my world and I love them dearly.  I also know that 3 is a hard age and it is not just my child.  I feel like I have no patience left for her.  I feel like I am not being the mother that I need to be for her.  Anyone with anxiety or depression knows about your battling brain.  One side of my brain knows that I am being ridiculous and too hard on myself.  If I am not a little hard on her she will never learn.  The other side of my brain the one that is being ruled on my anxiety wonders what kind of a mother I must be to not be able to have patience for my own baby girl.  It wonders what must be wrong with me.  

2Corinthians  12: 9-10

But he said to me. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.

This reminds of something that i read in one of my devotionals.  We are like a pot and the more cracks and the more broken that we are the more that allows Jesus the chance to shine from within us.  So I may be weak and I may be struggling, but the more I struggle and the more that I continue to move on and try again with God's strength then more I give God the opportunity to shine through all the things that I cannot do myself. If it was through my own efforts I don't know if I would have the strength, but the point is I don't have to.  So through His strength I will go and look at my sleeping children and not be able to keep myself from smiling at their beauty and the blessings that have been bestowed upon me, no matter what they act like when they are awake.  Then I will thank God and ask him to give me His strength to get through tomorrow.

Oh What a Day, But Don't Worry

This has just been one of those days.  It started with my child being a terror and I am currently listening to her still being a terror in her room right now.  Once you have to send your 3 year old to room before you even leave the house at 7 AM, it is just hard to come back from that.  Add to that that today was the last day that I had while the girls were at daycare before school starts back and my husband hasn't been here since Sunday.  I am stressed.

Don't get me wrong there have been some serious bright spots.  I love listening to my girls playing with each other.  Quinn said her first nighttime prayer all by herself thanking Jesus fro her babies of course.  Then when Rorey didn't want to stay in her bed Quinn came in her room and wanted to sing her a song so we sang Jesus loves me.  Granted after that I think Quinn herself has been up 5 times since she went to bed and she just now stopped crying because I told her I was done tucking her in.

With football season starting, a new school year starting, all the difficulties that come with a 3 year old and a 1 year old, and then what seems to be a constant strain on our finances I am stressed and I cannot help but worry.  I have always been a worrier due to my anxious personality.  Tonight my devotional and her suggested scripture spoke straight to my tired and stressed out heart.

Psalm 91

He will cover you with his feathers,

and under his wings you will refuge;

his faithfulness will be your shield rampart. (verse 4)

"Because he loves me,"says the Lord, "I will rescue him;

I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. 

 He will call on me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. (verses 14 & 15)

Its so much easier said than done not to worry, but how beautiful of a thought is it that He is taking me up under his wing and shielding me because I have called on Him.  In my devotional tonight she talked about how she would recite this chapter old loud at night when she was home alone with her children reminding her not to be afraid.  Maybe this can be a new mantra in my life while I try not to let my worry and my anxiety control my life, because I only have to ask and God will take me under his wing and give me refuge from whatever is going on in my life.  Now to put it into practice, we'll see how that goes in the next couple of weeks.

Have HOPE because God is always on time

At church on Sunday the choir sand a beautiful song about God being an on time kind of God.  I have struggled with this for a long time I think.  I am an organized person (though you wouldn't know it from looking at my house or my classroom for that matter), I like to be in charge and on a schedule, but my schedule is not the one that matters.  I also read a blog post about how sometimes all the past hurts that we have suffered can lead us to lose hope and it is up to us to choose hope every day sometimes even every hour because of our faith.  I think these two things go together.

In my life I have had many things not go my way.  Sometimes in my family we joke about the "wonderful" luck that we have as a family.  This path that I walk has not been a straight one.  Sometimes in the past I have close to these revelations and the strayed back farther but here I am.  At my lowest point probably in jr. high I was and had suffered a lot of hurts and I thought that things would not get better.  I lost my hope and even now I can remember being a child praying for God to take my pain away even if it meant that I wouldn't wake the next morning.  (This is hard for me to talk about and something I don't know if I have ever said to anyone before and not where I thought that I was going with this, but how can I talk about where I am if I cannot talk about where I've been)To understand I was living in a small town where I did not fit in which is pretty typical at that age.  My parents were divorced and so angry with each other.  My mom worked way too hard at a job that did not pay nearly enough to support us all.  My older siblings had jobs or lives.  i started caring for my younger sister when I was in the fourth grade.  I felt a heavy burden, much older than my years, and I felt abandoned.  Abandoned by the family who had so little time for me, abandoned by my peers who weren't willing to give me a shot, abandoned by my childhood church when they were not willing to forgive the mistake of a child, and abandoned by God who I felt like wasn't answering my prayers.  I had lost my hope.  It has taken me a long time, some very good experiences, and actually some more great challenges to bring it back.

I wanted God to fix my life and to fix it on my timetable and when he didn't I lost my hope.  Because I am here and I am writing this I know and you can know too that God was always on time in my life and I have many reasons to hope.  It is so much easier now to look back and see how all of these experiences and so many others, that weakened my relationship with God and then brought me closer to him than I ever remember being before, were all a part of God's plan and had to happen how and when they did.  If they hadn't I wouldn't be here learning how to hope every single day.  God has rescued me from my worst enemy, myself.  Every day I struggle with this battle and at least for today I am choosing to have enough faith in Him to hope.  

I hope for the good days even for the good moments.  Sometimes if you catch me in the right mood I can even hope for the bad ones that will leave me a better person.  I hope for the person that I can be the relationships that I can have.  I hope for the beautiful moments with my girls (even while I am praying for patience).  I hope that someone else will read this and know that its not always easy and I am living proof, but hope is a choice and right now its the one Im' making.  Im also hoping that someone will remind of that the next time one of those life experiences is happening and I forget that He is and on time kind of God, but on His time not mine.

Grief

I think that this is going to be the hardest thing that I have written about yet.  Some things I don't know if I've ever even said them out loud.
Grief is a hard thing for everyone to deal with and I understand that.  It makes it a great deal harder when you've never had to deal with it before and you've never really seen it dealt with.  Honestly I'm not sure that I have actually dealt with it or all of it anyway.  In my family we don't talk about things and I think that makes it harder to deal with.

11/18/14.  Two year ago this November I lost my daddy.  This is still something thats very hard for me and probably always will be.  My dad and I did not always have a very good relationship.  From what I remember when I was a very young girl I was always a daddy's girl.  Some of that I think came from how much alike we always were.  I look just like my dad, when I was younger that was something that I hated being told, but now that he's gone its comforting.  I also have a lot of elements of my daddy's personality.  As people always tell me, if they knew my daddy, you must be one of Gary's girls.  Then when I was about nine I think my parents separated and then got divorced.  That was another really hard time for me.  Unlike some of my siblings I always knew that my dad loved me, but I knew that he was bad at it.  And for a while he was so angry with my mom.  It took a lot of years away from his family and some very hard times in my dads life, like the loss of both of his parents, for him to realize how to be a little bit better at it.  Several years before my dad died he and I got significantly closer when he had one of his many battles with his health.  I ended up spending almost three weeks with my dad during and after he spent a week and a half in the hospital.  It was in the summer so it was easier for me, but I was the one that dropped everything and went and took care of my dad.  We talked a lot in those days and nights that I spent with him.  I learned things that I never knew and got insights to his emotions that I had never had before.  It was a trying time but a good time, it brought us closer together.
Then in November two years ago I got a terrible phone call.  My sister called saying that the hospital had just called her to ask if anyone even knew my father was in the hospital because no one had been to see him.  He was in bad shape.  Megan and Laura were going to see him but they did not have a lot of information because my sister had not talked to the dr. yet.  I told them that I was not going on this late night trip.  I thought that this was going to be like all of the other trips.  My dad had been in and out of the hospital since that time 3 years before when I had spent so much time with him in the hospital plus I had work, I now had a baby girl to worry about  and unbeknownst to most of my family I was already pregnant with baby #2.  Part of me also felt like it could be someone else's turn now.  When my sisters called to update me on the way or the way back after talking with the dr.  I knew.  That was Sunday night or maybe Monday morning, but I already knew then that my dad was dying.  That next morning I went with the two of them back down to Charleston to see him.  There he was connected to all those tubes and a ventilator was breathing for him.  I think that I only went back to see him once in the two days that we were there because I already knew that he was gone.  My daddy wasn't there, and I didn't want that to be the only way that I could remember him.  I still struggle with that not having that last image of him be the first image that pops into my head every time.  That week was a whirlwind.  Its like as soon as I got there I was in charge and its like the whole hospital staff could tell, no matter what the paperwork said and no matter who else arrived.  I am my dad's second to youngest child out of 7, yet I was in charge with making sense of what the drs. said (with the help of my youngest sister), I was the one in charge of coordinating with the whole rest of the family, and in the end despite what his paperwork said I ended up being the one in charge of all of the decisions.  All this time trying to mother my daughter from afar and trying to at least marginally take care of myself for the precious little baby I was carrying.  I was the one that told the drs. to stop dialysis even though he needed it because it wasn't working, while my sister who could make that call just cried and nodded.  I was the ones that told the counselors that I knew that my dad was dying and that we were going to have to cut off life support we were just waiting for one more brother to arrive and for it to sink in for some of my siblings.  I was the one that ended up telling them, the drs. and my siblings, that it was time to cut off the life support and to just let him go.  I was also the one that ended up being in charge of his cremation and arrangements.
For as long as I can remember this has always been my role in my family.  I am the one that steps up and deals with stuff when no one else can.  This left me very little time for my own personal grief.  Time that I probably have still not yet taken like I need to.  This also left me with a great deal of anger to go along with the almost unmanageable sadness.  I may not have spoken to my dad as often as I should have, but even my siblings recognize that he and I shared a special bond.  Yet I was the one that had to make that call while so many older ones just stood my and watched me.  I was the one that only cried on the phone in the other room, when I could finally get someone to be there for me, while I took care of everyone else.  Being my fathers daughter I may not have done it as gracefully as some, but I carried that burden.
Today I am still very sad, but I am not quite as angry.  Still a little bitter about how it all worked out if  I am being completely honest.  But I think that it had to happen this way.  I think that this was God's big push to get me back, and it was my dad's time to go anyway to be in a place where his body is no longer broken and he's no longer hurting, but its hard every day.  I know God had a plane and still has one, but some days thats a little easier for me to see than others.