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.