Ladies, Ladies…All the Ladies!!

Have I mentioned that this month has been so crazy for our family?  Chris basically works every night and is sleeping during the day… Our kids were sick for two straight weeks…Therefore.. I am glad that it’s Friday and I only have one more week to incur the wrath of the “February Schedule”…I also have a vacation to look forward to… My husband–knowing me good and well…surprised me with a one week, child free, vacation for the first week in March.  I’m SOO excited..He is so great.  I have him on my mind today.  Being that this month is difficult.. it’s been hard for me to figure out little kinks like… when I am going to go to the grocery store, or Walmart, take the kids to their respective Doctor’s yearly check-ups….anyway.. so this moring, Chris so graciously offered to drive Will to school along with the other two so I could make a dash to the grocery store and stock up on as much food as I could… It was like I was on a supermarket game show this morning..racing through the aisles.. grabbing this and that.  Anyway… we are good.  I have been blessed with an awesome Husband.. yes, I’ve got one of the good ones.  I like to remind myself of these things especially on days when I encounter situations as I did this morning.

So I returned from shopping and was putting the groceries away.  Chris, so I thought, stepped out into the garage.  I assumed he was doing some kind of man thing.. like getting the trash out or cleaning out his car… or just something with tools… I don’t know.  Anytime Chris steps out into the garage and he’s NOT going somewhere, he’s usually working on something.  However, suddenly I see him come out of the utility room, which is near our garage back door.  He is wearing a smirk on his face and holding a salad fork in his hand.  He’d been there awhile.  When perplexed as to what he could be doing in the laundry room with a fork… I suddenly remembered that I had Will’s very OLD and GROSS birthday cake sitting in there needing to go in the trash.

“Chris… HAVE YOU BEEN EATING CAKE!!!  that cake is old… it’s been sitting out… wasn’t it all dry?”

“..ummm….well…..I sort of scraped off the outsides and just ate from the center… it wasn’t too dry”  he replies.  There was still white icing in the corners of his mouth.

“Ok, that’s gross and ridiculous…….you’re getting blogged!” I answer laughing.

To which he responds…”Jenny, I can’t live my life in fear of being blogged all the time.  That’s not fair.”  He leans in to kiss me…ooo..the smell of old chocolate cake overwhelms me….umm…gonna have to pass on that one. ……  now even closer.. .I just start cracking up at ALL of the icing STILL in and around his mouth.  Ok, so… I’m a little giddy today… my husband still cracks me up.  Look around your family and find the humor in these sweet people that we love and live with.  Everyone… have a great weekend…..laughing! 

Hey guys… I know that by the time you read this, Thursday will probably be over… BUT work with me here… it’s late… I’m not functioning properly… anyhoo…. i think I am going to do this every week…. I want to know YOUR news!!!  what are your favorite links…. music…. blogs….send me your links and I’ll post them on my blog!!!!  Sounds fun?  Let’s all help each other out, eh?

Ok, so being that it’s 8:30 central time on thursday night…. I’ll start out by sending you one of my new favorite artists……Andrew Peterson….yes, I know he’s been around a LONG time… but this christmas I had the PLEASURE of hearing him play at our church performing his Christmas Album…”Behold the Lamb of God”…..people…. you’ve GOT to listen to some of these songs… it just tells the story of Christ from Genesis through Revelation…. it’s AWESOME!!  I LOVE how our God is a perfect God… He is the God of order…. speaking of order… order this album before you buy “Josh Groban sings Christmas” next year—(or something like that) anyway…there’s my link.

 send yours…….

I’ll look forward to them….. :)

toodles!

I am sooo tired tonight… we’ve had a LONG and exciting week.  My husband turned 30 on Tuesday and my oldest son turned 4 TODAY!  Here are some pictures from his party at school today….. 

                                   Four years to this day I became a mommy and boy has that rocked my world–yes, I’ve had difficult days–but for the most part…it’s been the greatest thing that could have happened to me.  The Lord knew that it would only take being a mommy to strengthen me in ways I needed to grow me closer to Him.  I’ve learned so much and I learned so much from Will, my first.  When I was hit with so many devastating and disappointing struggles like having to have a C-section and breastfeeding not going well…I realized from that moment that I would need Christ to drive this woman around.  I couldn’t do this on my own.  the Lord gave me one of my heart’s DEAREST verses, Deut. 8:3, during this time:

“He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

I remember as if it were yesterday, sitting upstairs in our little Charleston home reading this verse that just ‘happened’ to be on a daily devotional reading…….and weeping.  It was as if the Lord, himself, sat down beside me and said, “Jenny… you want to be super mom… you have in your head everything you are going to do with this child and you are going to be perfect and you are going to make him perfect…. and most of all… you think you are going to do this all by yourself…. but you are not looking to ME…. you are not realizing that these things you are idolizing (labor, delivery, breastfeeding, mothering….) are nothing.  I am going to show you my glory in this… I am here… and I am going to teach you the greater things.”

That was my first lesson in motherhood.  And I praise the Lord that He instantly gave it to me.  The best things I will give to my family is “everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”  I learned that I am NOT in control… especially over these precious little children…..especially over their hearts and their attitudes.  And I can never be ungrateful for the way He has given them to me and the way he has ordained me to nourish them.  He has taught me that the most important nourishment they could receive is not in the quality of their milk…or bread…. but in the knowledge of the Lord. 

It’s funny… just tonight I begin reading on in that passage and I am moved.  It is so fitting that the Lord had me stop at verse 3 for so long.  Now, four years into my ‘mommy career’… three children later…. I read on: 

“Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years–or four years, for me– Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.  Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him.  For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills;”

Don’t you see?  Can you see how God is growing us.  Have you taken time to really look back at your life and see the person you were then and who you are now.  I pray with all of my heart that you are different… if you aren’t make today that day.  Let yourself be humbled…so that you may begin to learn that man CAN NOT live on bread alone!!!    Let the Lord take you to those dark places… into those pits… through those tunnels…. so that you may come out –four years later, perhaps— and see that your clothing did not wear out on you!!!….you survived!!  and you are all the better for it….Keep His word people… walk in His ways… I am preaching this more to myself than anyone else… I have REALLY had some difficulty this week….. “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land…”….. Christ is the good land!!!  He is shaping us into his image…. he is making us Christ-like!!!  Yes, these years in parenting young children can be SOO overwhelming… but God promises to enable and equip us for this task when we follow Him.  Keep walking my dear friends… yes, our feet are tired…. our shirts worn…our hands calloused….our bodies dirtied (i mean…who gets a shower every day?)… but with every mile walked in faithfulness with Christ and in His strength–we are being led into a “good land.”  Once again… a promise, people.  May we bathe in the brooks of forgiveness from our failures, drink from the fountains of grace, and extend forth springs of mercies to our husbands and children this week as we journey on into the good land. 

Two days ago one of my best friends had her first baby.  Anna Rose.  Isn’t that a beautiful name?  I am thrilled for their whole family.  If all goes well I’m going to get to go on Monday and see her.  I want to hold her in my arms.  See Anna Rose is very sweet and dear to me…(her mom doesn’t know this…)  but I have been praying for her for over four years.  I remember every year that went by and my sweet friend hadn’t gotten pregnant, I would weep before the Lord.  I remember the deep heartache I had every time I had to make that phone call and let her know the Lord had blessed me once again with the precious gift of a child and she had not been given one.  I pleaded with the Lord.  I couldn’t understand…. I was always turned to Isaiah 55:8

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

I continued to trust the Lord and in “his ways and thoughts”…. He obviously knows what is best for all of us.  And through this I have seen this couple grow in amazing ways… I’ve seen them be strengthened in the Lord in their brokenness…. I have seen them place all of their trust in Him.  You know, we wonder why God allows such things to happen to godly people….but I am beginning to understand.  We are being sharpened… grown.  We are being refined.  I was reading the other day in the book of John and I had never really paid attention to this particular verse until now…

“As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth.  And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?”  Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”  John 9:1-3.

 I can’t get that out of my head.  I think that is such a personal verse for me now especially because my husband is a pediatrician and he sees SO many cases of children born with health issues.  I just think that is the cruelest thing of ALL!  I always want to cry out to God and beg Him…WHY!!!  Why to the little children!!  Why! My eyes are tearing up as I type.  But see….it is so “the works of God might be displayed.”  God will always bring himself glory.  Sometimes I see him answer prayerss… as in my friend’s case… and prove himself to be a God of perfect timing….. sometimes I will continue to see Him withhold healing or blessing, yet watch these precious souls become rocks of faith…….and that in itself is a testimony of God’s glory…. the testifying of his greatness amidst the sorrow.  Whatever deep, deep pain we are facing… whatever blessing we feel God is withholding from us……may we rest in the knowledge that it is to display His work in our lives……let us let Him use us for His work….”We must work the works of Him who sent Me[Jesus] as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work.”  John 9:4.  I will pray for you all who are reading this.  I will pray that God will carry you through whatever pain or struggle you are going through…..mostly I will pray that He will carry you to that place of faithful acceptance to continue walking in Him and working His works—-that His glory may be displayed in YOU!

Monday I will travel to Nashville….I will enter a familiar home and embrace my dear friends… and for the first time in four years… I will not pray to the Lord for this baby… I will thank Him for allowing me to actually hold MY prayer in my arms.  What a blessing.  God is true to His word…He gives and He takes away…. but Lord give us the strength to always say….”Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

“pssst……yoohoo…..Jeeeeennnnyyyyy…….hey!  come over here…..”

Ok, so I’m just going to get all real and in your face tonight.  I’m just in that sort of mood.  I’ve been trying to do a little “gettin’ healthy” (I try to call it that because the term ‘diet’ does nothing positive for my psyche.)….anyway.. so one of my best friends and I are doing this together… holding each other accountable….anyway.. so I wasn’t going to write tonight, but I’m starving right now and one of my things is trying not to eat after dinner.  But see, I have some cookies in my kitchen and they somehow met a friend of a friend who told them my name… and well… they keep calling me… they are sneaky little varmints.  I even went into my bedroom and they called me on my cell phone.  I turned my cell phone off and then they had the nerve to send me an email.  Can you believe that?  Ok, I know, I’m going crazy.  I just have one question… how come Mr. Apple never returns my calls… and the Carrot family… they are the snobbiest of them all.  They NEVER remember my name.  Why is it that the Cookies, Mr. and Mrs. Ice Cream, and Semi S. Morsels…..they are always invitin’ me over and stuff.  They’re such servants…. you, know.. they just really seem to care.

Ok, enough… I’m done.. .and seriously, though, I really am trying to get healthy in all terms of the phrase.  Most importantly, I consider my body to be a temple of the Lord and I just want to treat it with the utmost care.  For some reason… Food is my thing…. it’s my comfort when I’m down and it’s my celebration when I’m up.  And all of those things are fine… it’s just I’m a little overindulgent.  Anyway…so I’ve been praying through some of these things… for instance this week I’ve been claiming:  John 6:27…”do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you….”

I was thinking before I started writing…I was like… not many people are really going to relate to this topic… but then I thought twice… in reading that verse… you know… my food is literally: food.  I tend to obsess.  My weight for much of my life has consumed my thoughts and emotions…. all of which replaced themselves on the throne instead of Christ himself in my life.  Thus, a “stronghold” is established.  So, I ask you….. what is your food?  Don’t we all have one?  What are you obsessive about?  Do you obsess in pride that you are extra healthy? Do you obsess about perfection?  Is it sanitation?  Is it TV?  Is it money?  Is it clothes, or jewelry?  Is it other’s opinions of you?  ……What is your food?  Whatever creates an imbalance in your heart and tips the scales away from Christ…that is your ‘food.’   I’m not saying some of those things above are all wrong… or it’s wrong if you enjoy gifts the Lord has bestowed… I’m just saying that it should remain in it’s proper place…UNDER Christ’s reign in our hearts.  BUT the beautiful thing is that once we begin working for the “food which endures to eternal life…. the Son of man will give” it to us.  Because all of us who hunger and thirst for righteousness….we will be satisfied..(Matt.5:6)  and we won’t have to dwell on such worldly idols.  I don’t know… perhaps I’m not making sense… perhaps I’m so hungry that my brain cells are having trouble functioning….I just think it’s something to think about.  Especially as women… as we gaze into those mirrors…what are we seeing… our ‘food’? (weight, clothes, comparing ourselves to others, pride at how good we look..etc) or are we seeing Christ in us.  It is SO hard in this world to be a woman.  There are So many demands; but God loves his precious little daughters and he wants ALL of our precious little hearts…….It is my prayer that we turn our attention to Him… let us “lift up our eyes” and open our ears that we may lose all other distractions.. and feast on the ‘food which endures to eternal life’ knowing without a shadow of a doubt that He’s gonna give it!

hey, I can’t hear those cookies anymore……..  :)