Amazing!

It's been a little over a month into this new year and you may remember that this year my theme is Focus. You can read about that here. I thought I might give you an update on how it is going. 

When I began the year with this theme of fully focusing on God, the intention was that it cover all areas of my life. I started with areas that I knew needed some work and decided that I needed to take what I knew that God's Word says about that area and get practical living out that truth. All the while, trying to stay tuned in to Him to see other areas that need work and to not miss any opportunities to show Jesus.

Giving and our budget in general is an area that my husband and I both agreed we needed to get right before God. So this year, we made that a priority and got to work getting our budget in order and cheerfully giving out of the abundance of God's blessing. - It is important to note, because I believe this has been part of our growth process, that this is not to say that we are rich. In fact, my husband has been unemployed since Christmas and I only work part time. As you can imagine that makes taking care of a family and paying bills quite difficult, and honestly in the past when this has happened, it has been difficult. However, in the past I had been trying to figure it out all on my own. As I have been trying to put my focus upward, I have been reminded that everything I have has been given to me by God and all of it is blessing in abundance. Because He has given it to me, I can trust Him with it. What an ENORMOUS weight has been lifted off my shoulders!!! Seriously, I don't think I can remember a time not being stressed over finances. But now when that stress starts creeping in, I remember that I can trust God and then I do. Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am. Stress gone! Honestly, you should try it. 

Oh, but that's not even all! Not only is the stress gone, but trusting Him means that I also trust Him to do what I believe He can do... for me. For a long time, I would hear stories about how God would provide for people by having others randomly and/or anonymously give them money. You know without asking for it, just giving it to them. I believed God really did this, but I believed it with jealousy not believing that He would do it for me. How long have we struggled with finances, yet He had never done this for us? Now there are two things I have to say about this. First, that I now see that it had never happened for us, because I never believed it would. Second, I can now say He has done that for us!!!!!! I knew that to say I was going to trust Him meant I had to believe He could and would provide in whatever ways He saw fit, and He saw fit to have that happen to us not once, but 3 times in just about a month's time!!! God is amazing. 

Moving on, 

Parenting - We all hope that we will be good parents and most of us are very intentional about being good parents. But just being a good parent wasn't enough. I want to be a biblical parent. I want to parent my children in a way that brings the focus back to Scripture. Every. Single. Time. Why? Because I believe that it is that important. Now, I am not saying that I have been the perfect parent in this last month, but what I can say is that there has been major change here. I have caught myself mid-yell and stopped to apologize to my children and start over the right way. Even more importantly, trying to stay focused on biblical parenting has opened my eyes to be able to see the root of problems more quickly and clearly. This has really helped in being more effective in discipline. 

I've also been praying for my children on a regular basis. You may remember that I have chosen specific Scripture to pray for every person in our family. It's been really cool to pray Scripture over each of them. They not only know that I am doing this, but I have it out in the open, so my older ones who can read even know which Scripture I am praying for them. We have had great discussions about this at times during the discipline process when I have reminded them of the Scripture I am praying for them and what it means. I have to tell you that talking to my kids about Scripture and theology has shown me how much they really do understand, even with how young they are - just further proof that this has more to do with the Holy Spirit giving us understanding than it does our age, education, or anything else. 

Have I said that God is amazing? Well, He is!

Last, but assuredly not least, God has done tremendous things in our marriage. One biggie - He proved me wrong. Now that may not seem like a good thing to anyone else, but trust me, it was a great thing! You see, my husband made some promises a few months ago, that in my anger with him, I refused to believe. The other day, it hit me, like a slap in the face - he's been keeping his promise. I was wrong. Intertwined with proving me wrong, was another biggie - the promise my husband has been keeping - which is to allow God to lead him in leading our family. It has been amazing. God has been amazing and I know He will continue to be just that. AMAZING!

A Vision For Life

If you have been reading my blog, then you know that this year I have set out to really start focusing on God in everything I do. It has already meant making some really tough decisions. That being said, it's not easy. Earlier this week, I was praying about one of these tough decisions and asked God, "When does it start getting easier? When will I get "there"?" ("there" meaning that point where you trust God without even a hint of doubt, where everything you do is Christlike and you would honestly have to work harder at sinning than being Christlike). I wanted to know, when will I know if I have gotten "there", so I asked my question and here is what happened:

Immediately after asking, I was given a vision that I am going to do my best to describe to you -

A man was standing next to me. He had long gray hair held back in a low ponytail. He also had a long gray mustache and beard. He was dressed in a light blue and purple robe-like gown. I knew this man represented the Holy Spirit. He spoke to me as if directly answering my previous question. I could hear his voice, but it was not coming from the man's mouth. As I heard him speaking, we turned to look behind us and he stretched out his arm to show me myself in the past. I was dirty and wearing rags. I was hunched over and a long thick chain was attached to my heart. The chain hung down to somewhere I could not see, but I could see that it went through fire. Both the chain and me had been blackened by the smoke of the fire. The man was saying, "Your heart was bound by sin to the pit of hell." As he continued to speak, we turned back around, and we were standing in the front entrance of a castle. I had been cleaned and given new clothes. "You were bought by the King to serve Him. I was given to you to help prepare your heart. Until...". While the man spoke these words I saw he and I working to serve the King together. It had been years and we had grown close. He was my most trusted friend. At one point we stopped and were looking at my heart. It looked like the actual organ in our bodies. Most of it looked like new healthy tissue, but some of it, while now clean, still remained damaged. We were assessing which of the damaged areas we were now going to begin working to prepare (the new healthy parts, had been changed over those many years). "...He determines that you are ready." This time the words were coming directly out of the man's mouth and he was speaking directly to me. I was ushered into the throne room. The room was long with a very high ceiling. The walls were ornate with paintings of His Creation. There were six marble pillars, three on each side that stood floor to ceiling. At first my view was from behind the throne, which sat up on a sort of stage with steps leading up to it. It was very tall and made out of gold. Then my viewpoint went around the room to where I was standing, as if seeing it through my eyes. As I looked toward the throne all I could see was the brightest, whitest, purest light I had ever seen. I knew I was looking upon God's holy face. In that brief flash of light, the vision was over.

Although it may seem like it was very long, It probably did not last more than a minute.

I immediately understood that God was answering the question I had asked. The answer was that like He promises in Philippians 1:6 that "He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of completion." That day of completion is the day that we are called home to be with Him.

But just as I had looked at my heart in the vision and could see that there were still parts that were damaged, yet He had determined it was time; when He calls us home, there may still be areas of our lives that are damaged by sin and still need to be renewed in Christ, but all of our heart has been washed clean by Christ's blood.

We will not reach Christlike perfection here on this earth, but as we live to serve our King we need to be working with the Holy Spirit to allow Him to prepare our hearts for the day we stand face to face with Holiness.

Basically, the answer to my question was that when I get "there", I will not longer be on this earth. Which means that my whole life will be spent becoming more and more Christlike because He promised to continue the work He started. That may seem daunting to some, but I had such great relief!
I'm not sure if it was relief that I don't have to hold myself up in comparison to someone else who I may have thought has made it "there" (because really they haven't) and be overwhelmed by the areas of my heart that I know still need renewed. Or if it was the refreshing hope that as I continue to work closely with the Holy Spirit, allowing Him to assess the areas of damage and guide me, and walk in obedience, serving my King, He will continue to renew those damaged places until the day He calls me home.

I know the road ahead will be long and tough. But I continue on with fervent zeal and eyes fixed on Christ alone!

Miracles DO Happen!

This has been a tough week for me. Well, I guess a more accurate statement would be that this would normally have been a tough week for me.

At the beginning of this week, I finally agreed with God that there was something I need to talk about to someone, anyone. It was a sin I had been holding back, wanting to keep it a secret, even though God has really been working on me about his throughout the years, it had gotten to the point where it's only hold on me was the fact that I wouldn't talk about it. Well like I said, I agreed that I would talk about it this week, so I made a date with someone to talk about it. That didn't work out, because of the next thing I'm going to talk about, but anyway, since I knew I couldn't meet up with that person this week, I made a last minute decision to tell one of the women at Bible study Tuesday night.

I was scared, but had an amazing peace as I just opened up and let her in to that place only God, my husband, and I knew about.

Josh and I made a commitment to really get our finances in order this year and be better at sticking to a budget, something that is difficult for both of us. So Sunday night we sat down and went over our budget. We thought we had it all figured out. We were wrong. I'm still not really sure where we went wrong but by Tuesday our bank account was so messed up and we were left with not even enough money to put gas in the car and Josh had an interview this week and I have to work this weekend.

Let me tell you, my first reaction was to be riddled with anxiety. What was I going to do? I had no idea how to fix this. We had some money in our paypal account, but that takes days to transfer. We got the process started, but then we had to sit and wait. I'm not really good at waiting, but what choice did I have?

The more I thought about what was happening, I realized that God was putting me in a position where I had to trust Him. See, I'm a "I'll take care of it" kind of person, but this time there was just nothing I could do, and honestly I'm thankful. Realizing that I could do nothing but trust God, really lifted the burden off of my shoulders and again I had peace. No, we weren't out of the woods yet, but I had peace.

A gracious friend allowed us to borrow a can of gas, thank you so very much! But here's the miracle: Josh put that gas in the car before he went all the way out to Westlake for his job interview. Now I work every weekend in Olmsted Falls, so we know that to drive there and back takes about 1/8 of tank of gas, but when I got in the car this morning to take the kids to school we had exactly the same amount of gas as we did when he put the gas in the car! It was like we hadn't used any. And yes, I know for SURE that my gas gauge works.

It was a miracle! You may think that's small, but it was huge for us. It was confirmation to me that God fulfills His promises:

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 4:6-7

Maybe we can't figure out what we did wrong because it was just something God allowed to happen to test our resolve to trust Him. I don't know, but whatever it is I am glad it happened. Yes GLAD it happened, because it forced me to lay it all down before God and trust Him. And not only did He come through on His promise to give peace, but He game much more!

Focus

I often get distracted: I get distracted by my thoughts and forget where I'm going, I get distracted by my kids and forget what I'm doing, I get distracted by my laziness and forget what I need to do, I get distracted by enjoyment of what I'm doing and forget I'm supposed to be somewhere, but most often I get distracted by my feelings and forget truth.

I don't want to be so distracted anymore. So this year, 2013, my word for the year is

FOCUS

"Now set your heart and your soul to seek the LORD your God; arise, therefore, and build the sanctuary of the LORD God..." 1 Chronicles 22:19a

I want to set my heart, my soul, my mind, my footsteps, the work of my hands on seeking the Lord, glorifying His name and nothing else. This year, I want to have ultimate purpose in all that I do. For too long I have allowed myself to get distracted and because like the hymn I am "prone to wander". The problem is the Bible calls the way I've been living foolish (read Proverbs). 

Who wants to be called a fool? Not me. So I'm done with foolishness. 

Ok, now I'm going to get crafty on you again, haha! 

To help me get focused for 2013 I made one of these pictures for each member of my family: 

It's not much, but each one has their first initial and a Scripture that I am committing to pray for them throughout the year. The artwork should help me reset my focus when I look at it.

Now before you start thinking I'm really artistic, let me tell you the fun way I was able to do these and get my kids involved having fun with it too.

I printed out color-by-numbers for each letter from this site:
http://www.reading-with-kids.com/color-by-number-coloring-pages.html

Then, I taped a piece of cardstock over the printed out color-by-number on the window (I don't have a lighted desk, so the window was the only was to see it through the cardstock clearly). My kids thought this was cool, so I let them do some on regular paper - imagine what our neighbors thought as they walked by and at least four of us were sitting in the front picture window with paper taped to it coloring, haha).

I chose my own colors for each one and voila! I know you are all impressed ; )

Anyway, here's to getting focused this year on what really matters!

Today...

I cried today. Uncontrollably. Unashamedly. I hugged my children tighter, thankful to have been able to welcome them home. I prayed for a lot of people that I don't know. I prayed for families, for children, for parents, for teachers, for a community.

I witnessed many responses to this tragic event. Some are looking for answers in stricter laws, some don't know where to look, some are turning to God, others are blaming God.

It's one of those things where people start to ask those questions - Why would someone do something like this? How could God allow something like this to happen to innocent children?

There is only one answer - Sin.

"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--" Romans 5:12

It is for this reason that Christ came to die-

"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

We ask how someone could murder innocent children, but what about the deaths of millions of babies that occur everyday that are encouraged by our society and government? Our society pushes God away and then wonders where He is when tragedy strikes.

We need to be clinging to our Savior. We need to realize the urgency to share Him with others and do so with boldness because we are burdened for their lives and eternity.

Christmas is coming. A celebration of Christ's coming to Earth as a baby. There was a time when He was five years old. He knows what these children went through today. As I think about how desperately people need Him, my celebration this year will be even more heartfelt.

Attitude of Gratitude

This post is a little different than most, because I'm going to get a little crafty with you.

In our house, having the children do chores was starting to become time consuming, burdensome, and a trigger to much irritation and anger. So I stopped forcing them.

Now before you freak out thinking that I'm not teaching them responsibility and so on and so forth, I stopped them for awhile to think about and reevaluate why we were having them do chores and where we had gone wrong or what we had been missing in our teaching.

This month I have been trying to be intentional in thinking about all that I am thankful for, and as a part of that serving my family as a response to my appreciation for having such a blessing. Having stopped the children's chores (well, not completely), naturally, all that work fell back on me, so I was taking the opportunity to have a better attitude myself in doing them.

This made me realize something - we were teaching our children about responsibility, but not gratefulness. That's what was missing. Doing chores is not just about learning to be responsible, it's about being a good steward of the things God has blessed us with. But if I want them to think about taking care of our house and their things as an act of stewardship, I first must teach them to appreciate what they have been given! (That's the light bulb that went on in my head).

What does this mean for chores? Well, I've changed the system. We no longer have "chores" that are assigned to be done. We now have what I call "Thankful Acts". I made up cards with our chores, each has a poem that reminds them to be thankful for what they have and the act that shows appreciation.

There are acts they are all expected to do and then there are others they can choose from. Those that are not chosen, I will do (at least at first) while we continue to teach and encourage them to have attitudes of gratefulness.

One of the great parts about being a parent is that I learn so much in my efforts to teach them. I am so thankful that God laid it on me to take a break from the madness of trying to force them to learn responsibility to realize how much more important it is to teach them to be grateful for God's many blessings and that responsibility is how we show that, and in the process He worked on my attitude about serving my family.

"Whatever you do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father." - Colossians 3:17

Hurricanes in the Home

Recently, Hurricane Sandy blew through the east coast.

Not long before that a hurricane blew through our home. This hurricane was caused by a cold front of bitterness colliding with a warm front of anger over the deep waters of our marriage relationship.

Waves of emotion crashed down. Tears rained for days. Thundering shouts of anger, lightning strikes of hurtful words.

The storm got so bad, I wanted to evacuate, but eventually decided to ride it out.

Then there was a loss of power.

Well, not really, because the truth is, I never had the power in the first place. (Matt. 6:13)

Thankfully, our power didn't actually go out during the actual storm, because by that point we were already in clean up mode. Literally. My husband is a landscaper, so the storms meant no work for him, so being holed up in our house, we embarked on a major house cleaning project.

This project involved going through every room in our house, clearing out the clutter, cleaning the room and carpets, painting dressers, and while we were at it - washing all the laundry in the entire house.

Now, I LOVE when we do projects together. I'm not really sure my husband is in the love stage when it comes to this. Honestly, I don't blame him, it always ends up in an argument. A big argument.

This time was different. This time we didn't argue even once. We were patient with each other, encouraging, and when I started to get tired and whiny and wanted to quit - Joshua was comforting and encouraging. He held strong, working day and night to paint dressers, sift through belongings, clean carpets and even helping keep up with the laundry.

It. Was. Amazing.

As much as I hate going through these storms in our relationship (this would not be the first), I love what God does through it. It's not just that we got through a huge project together without arguing (though you have no idea how HUGE that is), that just represents some of the ways God has been working on us.

Oh, and God is doing big things in the heart of my husband who not only endured Hurricane Barbie, but has been lovingly bringing me back to where God wants me.