Today I choose to be THANKFUL

Today I am choosing to have faith.  Faith that God is putting me through the trials that he is putting me through so that I can turn into a vessel that he can use.  Today I am choosing to be thankful.  I don't know if it is the season or if God is doing some serious work in my heart, but today I choose to be thankful.  There are so many blessings in my life that sometimes I am too caught up to notice. I am thankful for a God who spends so much time on each one of us even when we feel unworthy.  I am thankful for a God who loves me even when I behave like a petulant child, just like the Israelites. I am thankful for my two little fireballs.  Those girls are my world.  They are beautiful and smart, loving and oh so spunky.  Even before I found my way back God blessed me with those two wonderfully infuriating bundles of joy.  I ma thankful for sweet morning cuddles from the same child who has gotten poop on me the last two days in a row.  I am thankful for my husband who I love dearly and I know that no one else could ever love me or even put up with me the way that he does and has for almost 14 years now.  I am thankful that he has a job that he loves so much and brings him so much joy even when the long hours start to make me particularly crazy around this time of the year.  I am thankful for my house that is dirty and could use some work but I love it.  I am thankful for my car that due to my father in law is running better and hopefully will not leave me and my girls stranded.  I am thankful for budding friendships.  I am thankful for the other moms in my life who are walking a path so similar to mine and the comfort they bring me because of that.  I am thankful for a church family who has adopted us so fully in such a short period of time.  I am thankful for family and friends.  I am thankful for a job that some days I don't want to go to but where everyday I have to opportunity to touch the life of a child.  I am thankful for the kitchen full of food for me to cook for my family on Thanksgiving.  Honestly not much has changed in my life in the past week, but today I choose to be thankful and in the words of the Berenstain Bears to count my blessings.  God has blessed me so mightily and this morning I will have faith in Him because He is my King and He can handle it, I just have to let him.

Depression

For a week or more I have been pondering exactly what I needed to say and how to say it and I'm still not sure if I will have the words exactly right,but I know now is the time to say it.  With the exception of last night for about a week or so things have been better, but the couple weeks before that were real rough.  I suffer from depression and anxiety.  Mine is pretty mild.  I haven't been on medication for it for years, but any time in my life that is particularly high stress I struggle with it.  My depression has been rearing its ugly head.  The thing about both depression or anxiety, at lest with me, is that it makes me feel like I have two brains almost.  There is the one logical side that thinks like I should and then there is the other side that gets caught up in either the anxiety or the depression.  So my brain is battling the one side is so deeply unhappy with everything that is happening that the other side of me can't reason with it.  I know logically that there are so many little things that I could do to make the situation better.  Little steps that I could take to help make me a happier person, but I just can't.  Its too hard and I am too unhappy.  You are so unhappy that even the things that you know will make it better you can't make yourself do.
  I don't know what all of a sudden made it better and made me better able to deal with the circumstances that didn't change, it was just my attitude.  Well actually I do.  It could only have been God working in my heart.  Then my days started getting better and I started praying to God to help me make better choices that make me healthier and happier.  I can't do it by myself I have proven it time and time again.  Yet it doesn't stop me from trying.
  Then I have days like yesterday.  I am already pretty much at my wits end.  I don't know if anyone can truly understand the sheer frustration and exhaustion that comes at the end of football season for me unless you have been there.  So I am already not in my best sense of mind.  Then yesterday I not only had to work a regular work day, but then we had to work from 5:30-7:00 and because it is so late  and because my darling husband works with me when football is not an issue I had to bring my children with me.  They were running crazily around the gym.  Then after that we tried to go home and again my car wouldn't start.  Then I just got upset.  Sometimes it feels like nothing can ever go your way.  And the minute that things do start to go your way something pops up that slaps you in the face.  And money was what slapped me in the face last night.  From about Friday until yesterday I had 32$ in my checking account to last me until I got paid today.  I had to max out the credit card at my doctors appointment last week and I still owe them money.  Then I start to think about Christmas coming up and I just wonder is money always going to be a problem for us.  Are we ever just going to be ok?  All of these thoughts are flashing through my mind as I am calling my husband to come get us in the neighboring parking lot last night.  Then my sweet three year old asks me if I'm sad because I am crying and I told her yes and she says "me too mommy, I;m sad cause your car won't work to".  Bless that sweet girl.
Sometimes the crazy side of my brain wonders if I am the only one that God has to teach these lessons to this way, or if other people just don't talk about.  I must be one of the most hard headed.  (The not crazy side of my head knows thats not true because I am reading Jeremiah right now and pretty much the whole Old Testament shows how hard headed the Israelites are and how God still loves them.)  I was listening to the radio this morning and they said something pretty important.  They asked if you were carrying a burden too heavy for yourself and if you were was it one that Jesus was asking you to carry.  They said chances are He wasn't and if you wold drop your yoke and pick His up it would be a much easier journey.  I know that I bring much of this stress and heartache on myself because I just can't give it up and thats why God is teaching me the hard way I suppose.

My heart is a little bit broken

Sitting at a table in a room full of ladies you never know how someone is feeling.  Just like the nurse who drew my blood this week told me I am good at concealing how I feel in my face.  I only let people see what I want them to see and that is not very many of my true emotions.  I cried on the way home from that meeting because of a conversation that I heard;it was meant to be inspirational, but instead it broke my heart a little.  One of the ladies at church told a story of going to see a man in the ICU at the end of his life to verify his salvation for his son and he did.  That right there that simple story that may restore faith for some broke a little piece of me right there at that table.  Many people will probably never know how it feels to walk into an ICO room and see your father's body laying there hooked up to tube with goodness only knows coming in and out, the ventilator breathing for him and just looking at him and knowing his soul in already gone.  Thats not the worst of it as I was so abruptly reminded about two weeks before the second anniversary of my dad's death is that I have no real idea about where his soul was that day or resides even still.  My dad was a very complicated man and for much of my life even though I understood him better than most I still did not understand him very well.  Not until about 2011 did I gain real insight to my dad.  That was the summer I spent about three weeks taking care of my dad after he ended up septic and in the ICU after his pacemaker/defibrillator had to shock him about a dozen times on the way to the hospital just to keep him alive.  I thought I was going to lose him that time (and I think that is why every time after that lost urgency).  I stayed with him in the hospital and at home for those weeks as his primary care giver and I learned a great deal about him as a person the path he had taken in his life and how he was starting to feel about things.  One thing that we did not talk about was his faith.  I was in a position where I had essentially lost mine and it was not something I was going to bring up and even at 24 then I don't think I had ever discussed that with him.  And now I will never know or at least not in this lifetime and that breaks a little piece of my heart.  One day when this wound is not so fresh or when my faith has grown and so has my relationship with Christ I might be able to use this as motivation not to leave this stone unturned with the people that I love but right now all I can let this do it break me just a little.  God is going to use all my circumstances, my whole back story to bless someone, its just probably not going to be today.

Speak to Me!

Do you ever need God to speak to you?  I have been praying for days maybe even a week or more for some insight, some guidance, some comfort, some something.  These past couple weeks (really a month or more) have been really hard for me.  There have been some really good days, some bright spots, but its been rough.  It starts to make you feel like all of your days are bad.  I have just felt so defeated and so frustrated lately.  I have started feeling like I may be doing something wrong.  I feel like I am bad at everything.  That I am not doing a good job as a mom, wife, a teacher, a christian, a friend, a daughter, a sister, nothing.  Overall I've been feeling pretty crummy emotionally, mentally, and even physically because my chronic conditions are giving me fits.  I know that sometimes God has to break you down before He builds you up.  I also know that sometimes you have to learn the hard way especially if you are hard headed like me.  I know that I am doing a terrible job of letting go and letting God handle things.  I feel like even my worries have worries at this point and thats no way to live and I don't know how to fix it or even how to let God fix it.  Even yesterday I felt like I was starting to lose faith and hope.  And just like the princess diaries I realize how many times a day I use the word I.  It shouldn't be all about me and I don't know how to change that.  God always answers when you speak to Him and He is always on time; just not on my time.  Tonight when I was reading my chapters in Isaiah I read a couple of verses and I could just feel it.  This was it, this was Him speaking to me.
        Isaiah 30:20-21  Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them.  Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying "this is the way, walk in it."

I guess I am busy with the bread of adversity and the water of affliction right no, but at least it gives me some hope that I may come out the other side of this and know that I am on the right path and that I am going the right direction.  Even though this does not make me feel a ton better and I am still in some serious need of guidance I feel like at least I know He's listening and at least a little bit of my hope was restored.  God always answers when you speak to Him and He is always on time; just not on my time.