promise

I am tired.  Plain tired.  I am almost positive that any woman can say that at almost any time of any day.  Whether you are married or not.  Whether you have kids or not.  Whether you work out of the home or not.  It's just a common side effect of being female.  I think it's our brains.  The non stop thoughts that process through them.  The non stop activity around us.  The non stop feeling in our hearts to the things we see and hear about.  There is just always something isn't there?

Somehow my October just blended into November which is now blending into December and oh December.  We are two weeks in and almost all of that time has been spent with illness.  Illness of children and myself and I know I am not the only one.  I can name flus, stomach bugs, RSV, colds and even appendicitis that has gone through the friends around me.  I also have to mention this GIGANTICALLY HUGE project that someone decided at my husband's work was a good idea to have happen in the middle of December.  

I have watched and slept and prayed and gotten frustrated for him as he has been up for all hours on countless conference calls multiple nights in a row.  I have been tempted to make an appointment with whatever uppity up made this call to let them know that it was absurd, ridiculous and all the other less appropriate adjectives that spew out of me when I'm eating dinner with the boys and a man who has to have a black headset attached to his ears.  I am most thankful this is a virtually nonexistant part of his job at normal times but seriously there's nothing happening in the months of January through March.  Why not then!?

And then both of these situations are also followed by me getting annoyed with myself as I realize I'm just being a brat since I've spent so much time complaining over virtual blessings in my life.  Children who I love and want to take care of in sickness and in health.  A husband who has a great job and is a bright light of Christ in the middle of a corporate world.

I need to remember that overworked or not, sicknesses or not, overwhelming schedules or not, the beauty can not be taken out of December.  The joy that is known through advent and the celebration of the birth of our Savior and Lord is there always and in everything no matter what, but I do, sometimes, have to fight to see it.  I have to fight against the distraction, the frustration, the ongoing duties, and the sorrows and memories holidays so often bring.  I have to fight against my flesh that wants to get upset when things don't go the way I've planned, or my to do list just keeps getting longer, or my body is worn out and just won't do what I want it to, or the voices that follow me around whose only communication is through a whine or the brief but sweet time of prayer and reading that happened in those wee hours before children wake seem like a distant memory by the end of a day.

So I seek his face.  I repent yet again of trying to do it all on my own and make my own way.  I rejoice again that I have everything to give praise for and none is, or ever will be, due to my circumstances.  Again, I remember his promises.

  I have been doing the She Reads Truth advent study this month and each day has been wonderful.  As I've traveled through old testament prophecies and reading after reading of people and places that served their purpose in the story that leads up to Christ, I have been struck more than ever about the promises of God.  A prophecy is merely a promise, something told long ago that God promises to happen in the future.  The things angels told when they appeared to Zachariah, Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph were promises.  Every word God spoke or left with us in His Word was a promise of what will come, of what he'll do, and of who He is and not once in all of time has he broken any of his promises.  Not once did someone look at what he said and not see what he had done.  No it didn't, and still doesn't always happen in the ways our feeble minds can imagine or even comprehend, but My Father, your Father, the Father of our Savior, has never broken a promise.

  I had this thought the other day about what God may be thinking as I was struggling with the past and of how it still effects my present and my future while sitting in my car, tears streaming down my cheeks wondering why.  Why do I still struggle over and over with this same thing?  In the innermost part of my heart the Spirit calmed me with His promises.  I could just imagine my Heavenly Father tenderly saying I promise it's ok, I can see the big picture, I can see the beauty that is being created all around the yuck. I promise I will never leave you, I will never forsake you, I will be faithful to complete this work in you, all of this will work out for your good and you have nothing to fear.

Far better than even the most well intentioned promises I make my baby boys and the most genuine love I heap upon them, is the comfort of a Heavenly Father who knows no end and the promises He has made that can never be broken.

back home

The day after mine and Logan's birthday Zach left to go to Denver for a training class.   He was gone for 6 nights and 5 days, not that I was counting, and checking them off and praying that the time would go by quickly.  

I'm always excited when he goes somewhere fun for work and I get to go with him but I am never excited when he goes somewhere for work and I am left alone.  Not that anyone is excited to have their husband traveling so I know this is a shared feeling.  When I am gone for a day or a girl's weekend or something He never fails to let me know how thankful he is for everything I do.  Being left alone with three boys that you have to clothe, feed, and keep track of and a house that you have to not let get too destroyed definitely brings out a thankful heart.

Same goes for me when he is gone.  The daily things aren't too big of a deal.  I get them ready for school everyday and pick them up and help with the homework and make the dinner and all that on a daily basis anyway.  It's after dinner when there's the clean up of kitchen and children, and then the reading of the stories before bed and the praying and the singing,when my heart deeply misses my other half. Don't get me wrong, I miss him during the day too but at least then I can just pretend he is still at work!  Added to the normal schedule there was also Connor's Thanksgiving program at school and a Thanksgiving Feast to be eaten twice in one day and doing it alone was just no fun.

Though I can be truly satisfied in the Lord alone, life is just more enjoyable with my baby by my side.  God said it was not good for man to be alone, I am only assuming it's not good for women either.  I love having my encourager, my sanity provider, my partner, my fellow parent, my escape if needed, my cuddler at the end of the day.  I prayed more for single mothers last week than I have in a long time.  My heart was opened up to them in a new and fresh way with a desire to figure out how to reach out in assistance or at the very least show the love and grace that is so needed during times of frustration and struggle.  Will you pray too?

 Zach has been gone for extended periods of time before but for some reason last week the thought of living life like that hit me more than it ever has.  Probably because I now know all to well how quick something like that could happen and how thankful I am that it didn't.

looking ahead

My birthday was two weeks ago.  Well mine and Logan's birthday was two weeks ago.  For three years now I have shared a birthday with my 3rd son.  Yes some people think it's sweet and amazing.  I think my son is sweet and amazing but the jury is still out on the sharing thing being such as well ;-)

It never fails that I feel a little off around my birthday.  It's not a bad feeling per say, it's just a different feeling.  Many people spend the first of the year reflecting on the past and making plans for the future and while I am definitely a new year, fresh start, list making fool, a lot of my reflecting goes on around the time where the number associated with my years on this earth is about to go up by one.  This year that number went from 32 to 33 and my heart just wasn't sure what to think about it.

In the week leading up to the Saturday celebrations, my mind wandered through the past and what the previous year had brought, but I also spent a little too much time thinking about what it had taken away.  Without even trying too hard my mind kept wandering to the negatives, the hard stuff, the things that make my heart sink and tempt me to forget the wondrous things God has done.  I fell head first into that temptation the Tuesday before and spent the majority of the day in tears, but praise God for not allowing me to dwell there too long.  He took my eyes from the negatives and reminded me, yet again, of where I am now, who I am now, who I have now and who He is always.

Even after all this, it still wasn't until the day after my birthday at our community group that I began to understand where my thoughts needed to go.  As we were sharing our weekly "what is God doing in our lives" a friend talked about how God has been bringing up situations in her life that have initiated conversations with her husband about their future and what they should be looking forward to.  Something woke up within me when I heard that.

This past 15 months has been full of both heartache and joy that has required an immense amount of looking back and while in a lot of ways there was nothing but moving forward, in a lot of ways that moving forward was just to get us back to level ground.  I'm ready to rise above.

Looking back is always a good thing when you are looking back and seeing the faithfulness of God in your life.  I look and see what the Lord has done and it is GOOD, but I think after so many months of looking back I am ready to not just look at the past of what He has done and not just look in the present of where I am now but to look to the future of where He is taking me.  I think I am finally ready to live out the first verse I wrote in this new year 11 months ago.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.  But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3:12-14

next

It's November.  I didn't think I'd make it through October.  I remember eating dinner with Leslie on October 1st and looking at her and asking her to pray because I was already tired from everything that was going to happen that month.  I am so thankful and humbled to be sitting here a week into November not only having made it through October but having made it through, by grace and grace alone, better than when I started.

The Holy Spirit has been stirring within my heart pointing and pricking and pushing and convincing and setting me toward a path that is difficult but one I am finally ready to walk down.  I'm in the early stages, just a few short steps in, but as I continue the trip forward, with no step backs or at the very least no turning around and fleeings, I will continue to share.  We all have hard roads we need to walk and we can't walk them alone.  While my official sharings of clinging to my beloved God of Hope is complete my desire to write about His work in my heart is not.  Whether just for me, a handful of others or enough to fill Jordan-Hare (which is HIGHLY unlikely and not a goal just for the record) I want to continue to bare it all, to process it out and to pray it encourages just one.

I've been nervous about continuing on and letting all the doubt and insecurity try to weasel it's way back in or maybe inviting it back as the case may be.  But then a word from a friend or a well timed verse from the bible or a devotion shared by my husband encourages me and gives me truth, sometimes hard truth, in love.  I don't know why I'm always surprised when God shows up.  Of course with that surprise comes awe and to lose that feeling toward my Creator would be a sad day indeed.

I want Him to use me.  I want to share my heart and to keep none of it to myself.  I want to show others and help others to do the same so that all masks are off and the only thing we see are the beautiful hearts of other sinners who are firmly in the hand of God ready to be on each other's team, on the Kingdom's team, and not fighting amongst ourselves.  I pray this desire never goes away.  I pray it only grows stronger.  I pray that He will continue to surprise me as I see Him show up in this desire or keep in awe as He drives it in different ways.  Will you pray with me please?

thank you

Day 31 of 

31 days down.  It's over.  I did it.  My heart and mind feel lighter having poured out so much this past month.  I am so glad I took that step out, the action of writing and sharing.  I pray it encouraged someone, but regardless it surely encouraged me.  Thinking and walking through the whole path again is helpful because it reminds me of where I stand now and who I have been abiding in because if not for Him I'd be way back at the beginning or lost on a lonesome road somewhere in between.

If you are reading this, thank you for visiting and spending some of your not so free time, if your life is anything like mine, reading these words.  If you are reading this and read any of the 30 days previous, seriously thank you for entering in to my story for a moment.  If you actually finished the whole list of 31 ramblings from this very non professional writer, WOW, you might be the only one but I am thankful for you and pray you saw Christ in between the lines.

This little space was created specifically for this purpose.  To share for 31 days about the journey God has taken me through, to learn how to cling to Him better.  I don't know if anything else will show up on this little space in the interwebs.  I pray it will.  I pray I will continue to share what God is doing in my life in this little corner.  Even if it's only for me.  Even if it's only so I can see His faithfulness in my own life and the lives of those around me.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.  But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure (1 John 3:2-3)

Until then cling to the God of hope and

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13)

verses of hope

Day 30 of 

There is nothing in scripture that is not useful in your life (2 Tim 3:16), but there are definitely seasons we go through where we are combing the word for specific things to meet our present need.

  Because God is awesome and sovereign over all, our pastor had started a HOPE theme a month before the bomb.  As the year went by, the messages went hand in hand with many of the things we were learning as we walked our narrow road, not because he was using our lives as a stairway to writing sermons, but because when you talk about Hope it integrates every story and every life no matter the person or situation.

In the beginning of the Hope theme, our weekly bulletin had a list of scriptures to help us explore hope.  I spent the next few months looking each of them up, writing them in 'the' journal, and praying about how they each on their own needed to be assimilated into my daily thinking.

I want to share the references with you now in case you would like to spend time looking some or all of them up on your own.  I also want to encourage you to consider doing a word study of your own if you are in a season of searching for scripture to speak to a certain need, or asking someone else to do one with you.  Consider doing one even if you aren't.  For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope (Romans 15:4).

Ezra 10:2                                         Matthew 12:21

                                         Psalm 9:18                                       Acts 2:26

                                         Psalm 33:17, 18, 22                         Acts 26:6

                                         Psalm 39;7                                       Romans 4:18

                                         Psalm 42:4, 11                                 Romans 5:1-5

                                         Psalm 62:10                                     1 Corinthians 9:10

                                         Psalm 65:5                                       1 Corinthians 13:13

                                         Psalm 119:43, 49, 74, 114               1 Corinthians 15:19

                                         Psalm 147:11                                   2 Corinthians 1;7, 10

                                         Proverbs 13:12                                 2 Corinthians 3:12

                                         Proverbs 23:18                                 Galatians 5:5

                                         Proverbs 26:12                                 Ephesians 1:12, 18

                                         Isaiah 20:5, 6                                    Ephesians 2:12, 13

                                         Jeremiah 14:22                                 Colossians 1:5, 23, 27 

                                         Jeremiah  17:13                                1 Thessalonians 1:3

                                         Jeremiah 23:16                                 1 Thessalonians 2:19

                                         Jeremiah 29;11                                 1 Thessalonians 4:13

                                         Jeremiah 31:17                                 1 Thessalonians 5:8

                                         Lamentations 3:21-29                       2 Thessalonians 2:16

                                         Hosea 2:15                                        1 Timothy 1:1

                                         Jonah 2;8                                           1 Timothy 5:5

                                                                                                   1 Timothy 6:17

                                                                                                   Titus 2:13

                                                                                                   Hebrews 3;6

                                                                                                   Hebrews 6:11, 18, 19

                                                                                                   Hebrews 10:23

                                                                                                   1 Peter 1;3, 13, 21

                                                                                                   1 Peter 3:15

                                                                                                   1 John 3:3  

                  

end and beginning

Day 29 of

It's been a little over a year since the bomb blew up.  I waited patiently for the year mark because once it passed it meant I would have gone through everything at least once.  On the anniversary of different days, different experiences, different hardships, and different memories that we had walked through I will have the ability to say God brought me through it last year and He'll keep doing it this time around.

It blows my mind how many things God has taught me, truths He has tattooed on my heart.  It blows my mind still that there are so many more to go, and humbles me to know that I am so dear to Him that those truths will never stop coming.  It has no dependency on me and what I've accomplished, but everything on who He is and how much He loves and cherishes.

I am not the same person, and wasn't that His goal all along?  To rid me of myself so He could fill me completely with Himself.  To mold me as my Potter, to enhance me with His character, as the author of my story.  Won't He still continue to do so throughout my life?  That is a great and resounding yes.

Before it all blew up, my goal was to live steadily.  No see-saws for me, no ma'am, keep me in the middle where it's safe and comfy.  Now, I know that comfort was false, it was nothing but hiding.  It's in the peaks and valleys where you find true comfort, because those are the times you need it, and our Comforter is the only place to find it.

We ended a year of wisdom, a year of trauma, a year of growth, a year of restoration and renewal.  We are beginning another phase.  One I don't know, one that has been written since before time began but not yet acted out.  I have hope though.  I cling to the God of Hope.  He will remain faithful, remain comforting, remain loving, remain strong.  He will simply and always remain.