Putting in the work.

I've been thinking about this one for a long time.  First I was trying to decide what to say, then how to say it, and most recently trying to just find the time to sit down and say it.  Sometimes I feel like such a negative Nancy.  Like my struggles are the only things I have to talk about.  But maybe that's ok, maybe it's how I come out the other side of them that really matters.  Again the past couple weeks before this week have been a real struggle.  It was the last two weeks before Christmas break and my kids at home and at school were crazy.  Also football season was still going on.  We made it to the state championship game in a year where football season had to be extended two weeks for hurricane Matthew.  And I still feel like this journey of my faith is still in its infancy.  I was at my wits end.  I felt like I was doing everything that I was supposed to do, but things event getting any easier and I didn't know what to do.  I was praying harder than ever (which shows how far I have come).  God I don't know what to do or how to do.  All I know is that I really need to feel your presence right now.  This reminds me of the passage in Romans we just studied at church.  Romans 8:26-30 26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirithimself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

I did not know what I needed I didn't have a clue what to pray for, but I was patient (because I didn't know what else to do) and daily I would pray variations of that same prayer for at least a week.  Then one day last week they played two of my favorite songs on the radio back to back both about having faith; Eye of the Storm and King of the World.  That right there got my attention.  I could feel a peace come over me, but it's like I knew I was supposed to get something more out of it than that.  I am ever thankful for a God that understands me better than I know myself.  I'm not sure if it's because I a, so early in this big journey or if it's just who I am but He knows that I need bright neon signs or I have no idea what the message is.  One of those motivational messages came on the radio right after those songs and I knew it was for me.  I don't remember the exact words but the gist was that one of the biggest reasons why we tend to lose faith is because the second we start putting in the work we expect things to be different and that's not always how that works.  Yes there are immediate changes, but some of the changes only come with time after putting in some serious work for a while.  I realized that I was doing one of the very things that I get so frustrated with my students for.  As soon as they start putting in more effort in my class they expect their grade to skyrocket to reflect their new found effort, but that's not how it works.  That's not how this works either.  I may have been doing some good things like trying to read my bible all the way through for the first time (I started in Genesis and have made it through Mark so far), my prayer life has increased greatly, and we as a family have become active in a church.    I thought that because I was doing all of these things that my relationship with God should be so much better and stronger and it should be easier to keep the faith.  Anyone who is in or has been in a successful relationship knows that is takes work and nothing good happens over night.  All of these things that I'm doing are good and I should keep doing them because putting in the work is the on,y way to make this relationship flourish.  By not having these unrealistic expectations about where I should be in my relationship with Christ beautiful things have happened.  I have been given such a sense of peace, at least about this, and I feel like it is so much easier to keep my faith.  Just like it says in those verses God works for the good of those who love Him.  Some of us may not be as difficult, but God already knew I was going to be this way and He has plans for me.

God knows what I need.

I don't know how many of you know this Natalie Grant song, but I go back to it time and time again mostly I think because I am so hard headed.  I just keep trying to do things all by myself and this week has been a doozy with me trying to do it all myself.

                                                "King Of The World"

I tried to fit you in the walls inside my mind
I try to keep you safely inbetween the lines
I try to put you in the box that I've designed
I try to pull you down so we are eye to eye

(Chorus)
When did I forget that you've always been the king of the world?
I try to take life back right out of the hands of the king of the world
How could I make you so small
When you're the one who holds it all
When did I forget that you've always been the king of the world
Just a whisper of your voice can tame the seas
So who am I to try to take the lead
Still I run ahead and think I'm strong enough
When you're the one who made me from the dust
Chorus
Ohhhh, you set it all in motion
Every single moment
You brought it all to be
And you're holding on to me
Chorus

Sometimes when things get hard like this week when football is still chugging along, it is almost Christmas break, I think my beta club has about 6 things going on right now, my one year old is teething had shots this week and then had to be referred to the hospital for some X-rays, three year olds are just crazy, and then there is all the house stuff.  I don't think that I cold articulate all of the things in my head if I tried.  I am a complete crazy lady.  But God knows how to handle it.  This last verse has been particularly poignant with me today.  God set all these moments into motion, but He is holding me in the palm of His hand.  

In bible study for the past two weeks we have been studying Romans 8:26-30
  In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.  And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

These verses focus on how important it is to focus on having faith and trusting in God.  About how to let go when we trust in God.  This is something that I have always struggled with.  I am an anxious person by nature and that does not make this very easy for me.  After leaving the hospital where my little one was such a trooper while they did her x-rays I finally felt some peace.  I have no idea what the results will be, but I finally felt that peace and then I got to see my girls together.    Anyone who has more than one child knows how siblings are.  Sometimes they make me want to pull out every hair that I have on my head and other times seeing how much they love each other just makes my heart melt.  I grew both of those babies inside me and love them more than I could ever put into words and now they love each other just about as much.  God knew what I needed to find my peace and I firmly believe that.  My children have not been particularly kind to each other as of late but tonight they were precious.  Yes they did annoy each other but mostly they just loved on each other and I needed to see that.  

The Fog of Motherhood or Life

I feel like I have been walking around in such a fog.  I have no idea which way is up, but down is always real easy to find.  This fog is interrupted by brief periods of technicolor splendor or terror.  Football season is dragging on.  This week the boys will play for the lower state championship and one way or another it will be over soon.  I, just like most teachers, am trying to cram in one more unit before the holidays and midterms despite the fact that all my children think that we should be doing are fun holiday activities.  And motherhood is just hard enough by itself, but we are trying to prep for Christmas and all the other holiday activities, along with two grumpy children; its been super fun.  I actually stuck my head into the bathroom the other day and told my husband if he did not hurry up he may not have to children when he did come out.  Don't get me wrong I love my girls, but FRUSTRATION is at an all time high in my house.  Particularly this morning.  My youngest does not feel well she has snot and is cutting two teeth.  So after she got up this morning she followed me around the house screaming at me, wait a minute that is what she did off and on after we got home from school yesterday.  I am not sure why, but this has been a particularly trying year.  I'm sure the combination of more duties than ever at work, an extended football season, and having a 1 and 3 year old at home have nothing to do with it.  What I do know is that it may not be pretty, but I will get through it.  And I keep trying to remind myself to savor the sweet times.  Like Sunday morning they may have made me get up at 5:30 but then Rorey wanted to snuggle with me and sleep in my lap for 2 hours.  Quinn and Rorey's faces the first time that they saw the Christmas tree this year.  This too shall pass and it will be bittersweet.  I know that it will pass sooner than I would like.  my baby girl is already getting so grown up and when did 3 become so grown?  Just holding out for the holidays.

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.