Steal My Joy

Do you know the song Old Church Choir by Zach Williams?  I hear this song all the time and I love it.  For about two days now there is one line from that song that has been stuck in my head: There ain't nothing gonna steal my joy.  No there ain't nothing gonna steal my joy.  I have realized that God is trying to tell me something.  God is trying to show me how often and how many different people I let steal my joy all the time.  The wonderful joy that I feel when singing about Him alone in my car.  The joy that I feel because of the wonderful children He blessed me with.  So many times a day I let people steal my joy.  Between some of life circumstances that come up and some of the students that I teach I let them steal the joy from my heart.  I let this profession, where I go in all day just trying to do what I can to put a band aid on a system that is broken, beat me down.  I let these students taking out their other issues on me take away pieces of me.  Sometimes I let all the burdens that come with having two little ones, working full time, and being married to a football coach steal away little pieces of my joy.  Sometimes my heart feels so heavy because I have given up so many pieces that I don't have any left.  I know that the big answer to this is that I just have to rely on God and He will project the joy in my life and exude it out of my heart.  I know that I need to trust and rely.  That always seems to be the big answer.  The problem with that is that I don't know that next right step to take.  I don't know what it is that I need to be doing in order to be able to truly trust and let go. 
I have gone my whole life thinking that I needed to be self sufficient and that they only person I could truly rely on was myself.  Now I am slowly learning that I cannot rely on me.  That I can't do it.  God always wanted me to know that I can't do it.  How do I overcome years of conditioning telling me that I'm the only one?  What is the one next step?  I know what the problem is, but where do I go from here and how do I start to fix it?  Maybe one day I will figure it out.

This Chapter

Today is my husbands last JV game in his first year as the head coach and I don't know that he has any idea how proud I am of him.  At 15 I didn't really have any idea about what kind of man he would become.  I never would have imagined that 15 years later we would still be us and have these wonderful lives together.  I also had no idea about the many ways that he would touch people's lives and the influence he would have.  I am so thankful that he is here to give our girls the same love and guidance, maybe a little more delicately that he gives his boys and his students.  He is such a caring and dedicated man.  I know that this has been a challenging experience for him.  I know there have been some long nights spent wondering what more he could do and what else he could try to make them better.  The way that he is concerned not only with the game but the character of the young men in his care.  The tenderness he shows as he draws the hard line and as he cares for these boys on and off the field is astounding.  I don't care about the record they come away from this season with.  What I do care about is, that even though the long hours drive me nuts, he is becoming a better man.  These boys make him better.  Our girls make him better.  When we were kids and first started dating I knew he was a good guy, but I didn't the man he would become now and I wouldn't change a minute of it.  He balances me out and partners with me in the trenches of the preschool and toddler years.  This man makes my life bearable.  He will touch lives and I'm just waiting to see it.

I don't know how to feel

Today has been a hard day to top off a difficult week.  This difficult week has involved some parent conferences, the craziness of the end of the quarter, some "spring fever" for my students, and the culmination of frustrations that comes with being in the third month of football season.  In teaching the mood ebbs and flows quite frequently.  Frustration can be quite common, with the kids, with myself, and with anyone and everyone else.  This week has culminated in today.  Today started out hard.  I got frustrated with my husband when through no fault of his own he was not as helpful to me while we got ready for school as I would like.  Then my students were hard to handle and I received a couple of sets of upsetting news today.
Today I feel like my heart has been taken out of my chest and broken.  The news that we have lost a former student of mine was shocking and tragic.  I hadn't thought of that young man in years and when I heard the news images came flooding back to me.  When I think of him all I see is that big grin on his face.  I remember him being a handful, but really what stands out to me is that big smile that I used to see on her face.  Hearing the news shook me.  He's not the first former student of mine to be lost and like I said I hadn't thought of him in years, but it still stung.  In shock "That sucks" was all I could think to text back to my husband.  I still don't know what else to say or how to feel.  Much later in the day I got some other news.  News that made me concerned for someone close to me.  The feelings of anger and unfairness that it brought up almost had me in tears.  I know that life is not supposed to be fair and God never said we wouldn't suffer in fact He said the opposite that we need to be prepared to suffer for Him.  That is all well and good, but when you have to watch so much pain and heartache come to someone that you hold so dear it is hard to understand and to wrap your mind around it.  Before I left work today I bowed my head and prayed my head in my hands at my desk and just began to pray.  To pray that God would help me and those in these terrible situations.  My heart cried out to say that I was pretty sure I just couldn't handle any more.
I don't know whats going to happen tomorrow, next week, or even five minutes for now.  What I do know is that my heart hurts, not for myself, but for those near to me.  I know that when I can't handle it that I am going to pray.  So far prayer has at least gotten me through the next moment and then the next, and then some more of those moments. I don't know where it will take me next, but prayer is the only thing that has gotten me this for so continue to pray I shall.

His story not mine

I have had this nagging feeling that I had something to say, but I haven't exactly been able to put it into words.  Ever since reading about it in a book I haven't been able to get this out of my head.  It talks about not letting satan steal your story.  I had never thought before about how our whole life, our whole story is not really ours.  It's Gods story and it has the power to tell people so much about God.  Our whole life story is our testimony to how great God is.  I have never thought of myself as having a particularly powerful testimony story.  I have never seen myself as having anything to say that would help anyone else. It got me to thinking when it said that our hard times can be what leads someone else to God.  When someone sees how we rely on God when things are tough and how He takes care of us when we think we cant handle any more it can point others straight to God.  I don't have the most radical testimony it wasn't one of those stories that you read about and to me that made it feel less special in some ways.  I have come to realize that sometimes the biggest can come from just the small moments.  Reading about another woman's ability to rely on God in the hard moments of parenting speaks to my heart in a soft and special way.  In the past I have felt so self conscious about sharing my testimony because I didn't feel like it was special enough.  I didn't feel like it was enough of a story to matter.  And shame on me for that.  To not think that the story that God gave me was special enough to need to tell, thats on me.  This is the story that God gave me and its not about me.  It's all about God and how He is working in my life to further His glory, not mine.    God has given me this story and it is my job to tell it.  Now lets see if I can learn to live up to that.

Forgiveness before too late

This is not the first time the message of forgiveness has been laid on my heart.  And I'm starting to think that it's like in school, if I repeat something it's probably important.  So I feel like this message must be important and I must have missed something the last time.
The hardest ones to forgive are the closest ones to you.  The ones who's hurts have cut the deepest and the most often.  For most of my life my dad was not an easy man to love or to get along with.  And I do have to say that most of the rough edges of my personality come straight from him.  For so much of my life I remember being so angry and so hurt by him.  I felt abandoned, unloved, and unworthy.  Even many years later when I started to understand my dad much better, from the stories he told and from the fact that my personality seems more likely like his all the time, I still harbored those feelings.  That deeper understanding was able to strip away the raw edges of that hurt, but true forgiveness wasn't there.  That's why even to the day he die, even with as much closer as we got, I still tended to avoid my dad.  Deep down I wasn't able to forgive him and let go of those hurts.  I think even more than my hurts was watching the way those same hurts had affect my sister three years my junior.  Watching the struggles that she has gone through, so many of which I feel like stem from his rejection, kept that last layer of bitterness in my heart even after my daddy was gone.  My father became a much better man before he died and I loved him dearly, but I wasn't able to forgive him for the hurts of my childhood.  I have realized that slowly after losing him those feelings have ebbed away.  My heart focuses on the good times and slowly I have forgiven those deepest of hurts.  It saddens me to know that I couldn't do this while he was still with me and it makes me wonder what I missed because of it.  What moments that I could have had with him did I miss out on because I clung to my hurts? This has made me contemplate the other hurts I've been holding on to and the ones that I have slowly been able to let go of. All I can do is pray that God will take hold of my heart and remove the bitterness that remains.  Forgiveness is hard work, but thinking of what could have been can be quite the motivation.

Dear Daddy,

Daddy,
Today is a hard day.  Sometimes you think that the pain of loss will lessen over time, but Im not so sure.  I'm not sure that celebrating your birthday without you will ever get easier.  I don't think that answering my four year olds questions about "Why did my grandpa have to die"  will ever be any less painful.  Sometimes I can get through days where you are not on the forethought of my mind.  Then there are days when I open my mouth and you come out.  There are so many ways that I am just like you and now I can see those same traits, for good or bad, in my children every day.  Whether it is Quinn's assertiveness.  Rorey's no no nonsense when standing up to her sister.  When I look at my face in the mirror I cant help but see you staring back at me.  This face that you gave me will always remind me of what was.  I don't forget about the times that were hard, where we hardly even spoke to each other.  I choose to dwell on the love that I always know was there even when things weren't easy.  I think about your face when you got to meet my baby girl.  How proud you said you were of me when I went to college and pursued my dreams.  How you danced with me on my wedding day.  I choose to think about the long talks we had when I cared for you during your hospital stay, I don't think I ever knew you better than that time.  My days are also filled with frivolous wishes.  I wish you could have met my other baby and seen her face.  I wish you were there when they were baptized.  I wish I had asked you how you felt about God.  I wish that I had know where your soul resides.  I wish that I had loved you more freely in the time I had.  I wish my girls would know you more than just from my memories.  I wish you knew how much you meant to me though I never got around to saying it.  Sometimes my heart breaks thinking about the wishes that I have.  I try to focus on your voice in my head where I can hear you calling my name (when you called me the right one).  Today on your birthday almost three days after the day when I never got to say goodbye, my heart hurts.  It hurts from the love I feel, the sadness I can't escape, the moments that never were, and all the feelings I can't even put words to.
                               Love you,

Parenting is Hard.

Anyone who has ever been a parent or even ever watched someone parent knows that's true.  Parenting is HARD.  It is no secret that I have been having a hard time lately with my role in motherhood.  This has been a very hard time for me the past couple of weeks or so and I know it is probably not going to ease up for a couple more weeks until we establish our new normal.  This season of motherhood has been such a challenge for me.  My oldest is four and it seems like everything that is four has hit our house full force as of late.  It is coming on the tail end of her not so stellar recovery from her tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy.  I feel like I didn't even get to catch my breath in between and now football season is in full swing.
I've decided that something's got to give and I think it's got to start with me.  I have started reading two different books this week that were recommended to me by different sources and they make me hopeful.  They are Gospel-Centered Mom: The Freeing Truth About What Your Kids Really Need by Brooke McGlothlin and Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp.  I have only read the first two chapters in both, but they have made me hopeful.  They both talk in different ways about how today's society gives you such a bleak outlook on parenthood.  Not the everyday moments, but the in generals.  Every time I talk to a parent with children older than mine about the challenges I am facing they tell you to just wait, things get worse.  How disheartening it is to think about parenting always getting worse.  In the first couple of chapters they address very differently what I can do about it, but it all kind of boils down the same.
One of the best things from Gospel-Centered Mom is about how I am not enough, I will never be enough, and that's ok because I was never supposed to be.  God is enough.  I don't have to be enough with Him working through me.  All I have to do is to trust and rely.  The other book talks about focusing on the heart issues because behaviors stem from the heart.  And how hard it is to look at your child's heart and to model the right heart if your heart is not right.  I think that I agree with Brooke.  My life hasn't been the easiest, but I have been able to overcome everything and that has made me feel like I can do it all by myself and that's not what God wants.  God wants me to need Him ALL the time.  He wants me to come to Him with every need.  Trust and rely.
While I have to trust and rely to set the example I need also work on intentionality for me and my girls.  I need to intentionally spend more time alone with God.  And I need to intentionally spend time with my girls and God.  I know that this is only a start, but we have to get our foundation right in order to build on that.  It's all about baby steps.  We will see what the other chapters hold for me, but one of them left me with Psalm 145 for hope.

I will exalt you, my God the King;
    I will praise your name for ever and ever.
2 Every day I will praise you
    and extol your name for ever and ever.

3 Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
    his greatness no one can fathom.
4 One generation commends your works to another;
    they tell of your mighty acts.
5 They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty—
    and I will meditate on your wonderful works.[b]
6 They tell of the power of your awesome works—
    and I will proclaim your great deeds.
7 They celebrate your abundant goodness
    and joyfully sing of your righteousness.

8 The Lord is gracious and compassionate,
    slow to anger and rich in love.

9 The Lord is good to all;
    he has compassion on all he has made.
10 All your works praise you, Lord;
    your faithful people extol you.
11 They tell of the glory of your kingdom
    and speak of your might,
12 so that all people may know of your mighty acts
    and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
    and your dominion endures through all generations.

The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises
    and faithful in all he does.[c]
14 The Lord upholds all who fall
    and lifts up all who are bowed down.
15 The eyes of all look to you,
    and you give them their food at the proper time.
16 You open your hand
    and satisfy the desires of every living thing.

17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways
    and faithful in all he does.
18 The Lord is near to all who call on him,
    to all who call on him in truth.
19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear him;
    he hears their cry and saves them.
20 The Lord watches over all who love him,
    but all the wicked he will destroy.

21 My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord.
    Let every creature praise his holy name
    for ever and ever.