Trust
Well, obviously my list of goals for 2013 did not include blogging more. Thought about it, but ended up sticking with the more realistic goals. You know, like having perfect children.
That was a joke.
No, in theory, blogging is not hard. And every couple of days I tell myself I should write something. But golly gee, what about? Let's see.
Maybe about Aden and what may be a mild case of night terrors. Somehow it makes sense that the boy who just. won't. stop. during the day would have some energy to expend in the wee hours.
Or Trey, who just last night quit his basketball team, without ever having played in a game, and leaving his best friend as the only boy on the team. Like fingernails on a chalkboard is a man who doesn't finish what he starts.
Or my husband himself, who has learned a very hard lesson in why it is necessary to frequently back up important documents. He's thanking his lucky stars for a geeky wife right now.
How about me, as I have dealt with someone's vomit (not my own) every single day of 2013? Needless to say, I have cleaned a toilet every day of 2013 too.
Or that, for the fourth January in a row, our well has run dry for a day or two. Three cheers for a new savings goal! Bleh.
But the blog can't be such a negative place. After all, life is good. It's still a new year, and dag nabbit, we're thinking positive! So, let's try this.
Aden can now count to twenty, except to him, the number fifteen does not exist. He knows his shapes and most letters, and maintains the sweetest lisp that, would it not severely embarrass him as he grows up, I'd love for him to hang on to. Sometimes I steer our conversations just so he will say "train tracks", which is more like "gain gaxsch". Heart. Melt.
Trey spends almost all of his free time writing. His new and potentially expensive favorite is to snail mail notes to his loved ones, causing extreme swoonage and immediate phone calls. That boy can win some hearts. Trey's writing has improved so much at school that his work was placed on the Principal's Pride board this week. That's my little nerd!
I have watched as God has worked in Brandon's life, through the difficulties surrounding teaching and coaching, to both soften and strengthen his heart. At least as it appears to me, he has reached the point of accepting the trials the Lord has given him for now, and instead of praying to be delivered from them, he is praying to be effective in them. Most of the time he doesn't realize what a witness and a tower of strength he is to his players and students, and to his family. I love my man.
And then me. One goal that is on my list for 2013 is to get up earlier and spend some time with the Lord. This involves Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, a devotional that is totally changing my perspective on so many things. Things I probably already knew, but never paid attention to or believed to be personal.
I started the devotional in early December, exhausted, miserable in parenting and in my non-walk with the Lord, desperate for a word from Him that I wouldn't sit still long enough to wait for. And I read this:
"Your needs and My riches are a perfect fit. I never meant for you to be self-sufficient. Instead, I designed you to need Me...I carefully crafted your longings and feelings of incompleteness, to point you to Me."
Cue tears. I don't have to do it all. I don't have to be enough! I knew that, I did. But every fiber of my being had always told me otherwise, and my actions, my exhaustion, my angry frustration with my children were proof that I had chosen to believe the lie.
And so began the theme that, at least as it seems to me, has continued through every day of Jesus Calling. Trusting God to complete me, to compensate for my many inadequacies, for He is the only one who can. Trusting God, and not overindulgence of food, to fill me, for nothing could ever satisfy my hunger like He does. Trusting God, fully, sold-out, no looking back trusting, as the first response to both small and world-rocking challenges. All day, every day, keeping this picture in my mind - that the Lord, who loves me unconditionally and immensely, is both within me and beside me wherever I am.
It took me a little while to make the connection, but this trust is essential if I am to live out my one word for the year, steward. For being responsible and doing my best with all that God has given me requires me to recognize all that God has given me. To appreciate and value my precious family, choosing to happily serve and build them up instead of grumbling or yelling at them. To want with all my being to please the Lord, and want it enough to sacrifice my selfish, lazy, fleeting desires.
Not easy. Hence the trust. Which really should be easy.
So I'm a work in progress. We all are. Hey, maybe as I learn to trust God and calm the heck down, I'll have enough mental energy to blog a little more. Gotta keep my scrapbook up. And, you know, keep the grandparents happy.
I know, I know...pictures coming soon.
That was a joke.
No, in theory, blogging is not hard. And every couple of days I tell myself I should write something. But golly gee, what about? Let's see.
Maybe about Aden and what may be a mild case of night terrors. Somehow it makes sense that the boy who just. won't. stop. during the day would have some energy to expend in the wee hours.
Or Trey, who just last night quit his basketball team, without ever having played in a game, and leaving his best friend as the only boy on the team. Like fingernails on a chalkboard is a man who doesn't finish what he starts.
Or my husband himself, who has learned a very hard lesson in why it is necessary to frequently back up important documents. He's thanking his lucky stars for a geeky wife right now.
How about me, as I have dealt with someone's vomit (not my own) every single day of 2013? Needless to say, I have cleaned a toilet every day of 2013 too.
Or that, for the fourth January in a row, our well has run dry for a day or two. Three cheers for a new savings goal! Bleh.
But the blog can't be such a negative place. After all, life is good. It's still a new year, and dag nabbit, we're thinking positive! So, let's try this.
Aden can now count to twenty, except to him, the number fifteen does not exist. He knows his shapes and most letters, and maintains the sweetest lisp that, would it not severely embarrass him as he grows up, I'd love for him to hang on to. Sometimes I steer our conversations just so he will say "train tracks", which is more like "gain gaxsch". Heart. Melt.
Trey spends almost all of his free time writing. His new and potentially expensive favorite is to snail mail notes to his loved ones, causing extreme swoonage and immediate phone calls. That boy can win some hearts. Trey's writing has improved so much at school that his work was placed on the Principal's Pride board this week. That's my little nerd!
I have watched as God has worked in Brandon's life, through the difficulties surrounding teaching and coaching, to both soften and strengthen his heart. At least as it appears to me, he has reached the point of accepting the trials the Lord has given him for now, and instead of praying to be delivered from them, he is praying to be effective in them. Most of the time he doesn't realize what a witness and a tower of strength he is to his players and students, and to his family. I love my man.
And then me. One goal that is on my list for 2013 is to get up earlier and spend some time with the Lord. This involves Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, a devotional that is totally changing my perspective on so many things. Things I probably already knew, but never paid attention to or believed to be personal.
I started the devotional in early December, exhausted, miserable in parenting and in my non-walk with the Lord, desperate for a word from Him that I wouldn't sit still long enough to wait for. And I read this:
"Your needs and My riches are a perfect fit. I never meant for you to be self-sufficient. Instead, I designed you to need Me...I carefully crafted your longings and feelings of incompleteness, to point you to Me."
Cue tears. I don't have to do it all. I don't have to be enough! I knew that, I did. But every fiber of my being had always told me otherwise, and my actions, my exhaustion, my angry frustration with my children were proof that I had chosen to believe the lie.
And so began the theme that, at least as it seems to me, has continued through every day of Jesus Calling. Trusting God to complete me, to compensate for my many inadequacies, for He is the only one who can. Trusting God, and not overindulgence of food, to fill me, for nothing could ever satisfy my hunger like He does. Trusting God, fully, sold-out, no looking back trusting, as the first response to both small and world-rocking challenges. All day, every day, keeping this picture in my mind - that the Lord, who loves me unconditionally and immensely, is both within me and beside me wherever I am.
It took me a little while to make the connection, but this trust is essential if I am to live out my one word for the year, steward. For being responsible and doing my best with all that God has given me requires me to recognize all that God has given me. To appreciate and value my precious family, choosing to happily serve and build them up instead of grumbling or yelling at them. To want with all my being to please the Lord, and want it enough to sacrifice my selfish, lazy, fleeting desires.
Not easy. Hence the trust. Which really should be easy.
So I'm a work in progress. We all are. Hey, maybe as I learn to trust God and calm the heck down, I'll have enough mental energy to blog a little more. Gotta keep my scrapbook up. And, you know, keep the grandparents happy.
I know, I know...pictures coming soon.
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