The power of a parents words

So I know it seems kids do not listen.  I know they act like Mom's advice is lame... But a little story of a know it all teenager ... me... who acted like a teenager who didn't make life decisions based on what mom and dad said.  Pretty typical...  So I always loved to sing.  I sang privately in my room or with friends on occasion or in the car when I was driving.  I always secretly wanted to share songs I wrote or sing in front of others, but I knew I was not exceptionally gifted and saw others who were and had no confidence in my ability, so I kept it to my room and usually horrified if someone walked in while I was singing into the hairbrush.  However one day when my first daughter was about a year old I was sitting with her while she was in the tub and to keep her entertained I would sing to her songs from Barney or Sesame Street.  I was living with my parents at the time due to my whole having a daughter at 19 in my sophomore year of college thing.... and I was singing to her Sing a Song from Sesame Street and my mom said you have a pretty voice.  It was that sentence that gave me the courage to begin to sing in front of others.  It was one sentence, one opinion I valued (even though I would never have admitted it) more than all others (except my dad!)  So remember moms and dads, that encouragement may be the piece that gives your kids courage to fly.  I never got to tell her this because she died before she ever saw me sing in a church, so kids make sure you tell your parents while they are still here how much their words mean to you!

Temporary situations

You see it in the lives of Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul and mostly every chapter of the Bible.  No I don't mean the amazing stories of how God used these men (and women) to change history (although they did).  I mean the parts where they struggled, when it was monotonous, when they did as the Lord asked and no one was listening or they were being persecuted.  I can totally respect the part of Moses that again and again return to God saying, ITS NOT WORKING!! THEY AREN'T LISTENING! and I can imagine many times the followers of old waking up thinking, are you sure Lord this is right, I mean I know you have a plan, but do you really want me to keep walking through this desert or do you really want me to go and talk to that nation??  I can't see how this is going to work out.  I see it today in people lives and my life in so many areas.  Things come up in life that throw us off, We think, that is not what I was thinking when I began this walk.  I could like a thousand things we hear about from family or friends or experience ourselves, anything that starts with unexpected...is kinda where I am going...unexpected diagnosis, unexpected pregnancy, unexpected break up, unexpected job loss.....  Publicly we can put out our faith in God, he will work it out, he will have a plan, and sometimes even in our private moments we can be strong and confident, but if we were to be honest, our hearts get scared.  We cry out of our fears, we feel weak just when we want to feel strong.  We want to and might call out to God as Moses did and let him know this plan isn't working or hide like Jonah and say I don't want to....  I am writing this post more for myself than anyone else.  I confess I want a clear plan for the future, I want to know everything is always going to be OK for me and my family.  I want to save any us from any trouble or pain.  I want heaven now....  However, some days I fall apart and its OK, life is hard, The Bible proves it always has been.  There is nothing new under the sun.  But yesterday was Easter and it was a reminder that unless a kernel of wheat dies, it cannot grow.  God was clear, death entered the world, but from this death comes true life, heavenly life.  At church my heart was thinking of those in Kenya and Syria who lost their physical lives for Christ.  But I realized those who were truly dead were not the Christians who would not return to their earthly homes that day, but those who walked away without the love of Christ within them.  Yes our days can be hard and our futures here uncertain, but at the cross I traded that for a certain future, one with the Lord for eternity.  I encourage anyone facing an uncertain to hang in their, talk to someone, cry with someone, pray with someone and rediscover the hope that lies within you, given as a gift from the Lord.  This life is temporary and so are our problems and situations because HE IS RISEN.

The Journey

I was reading an article lately that made me start to think.  I tend to struggle with comparing myself.  Its not biblical, its not mature...but its real and I do it.  I look at another woman or read a blog or other social media thing and I start to wonder if I am making the right choices, or start to pick apart what is going on in my personal life.  However the other day I was reading something that was so freeing, it said that when we are walking with the Lord and making lifestyle decisions based on biblical principles, we do not have to defend it.  It was then I realized my comparing came from a heart of feeling as though I needed to defend my choices if they didn't look mainstream.  Choosing to have a large family and putting an idea of a career on perhaps permanent hold, how I dress, what I listen to or watch, what I allow or do not allow my children to do, how much disposable income we have and what that limits when you have such a large family...these are all things that I am constantly in my mind trying to find the perfect words to defend...mostly to myself.  However all those things are really the journey God has put me on.  Our family doesn't always look like the others, we can't do some things as easily.  Most of my children have come from very hard places and that can affect what our daily life looks like.  Its reassuring to me that Jesus says, we will not look like the world.  Because in the chaos of life I need the reminder because my flesh some days would love to be the one who blends in, some days I am weary.  I have to remind myself in these times that the weariness comes because I am on a journey.  Journey's make us weary, but they also allow us to experience new things, they help us find a purpose and make a life worth living. Whenever we are on a journey some parts are exhilarating, some parts are good and other parts are drudgery.  I think of traveling to Bulgaria a few years ago.  It was exhilarating meeting my daughter, it had fun experiences and I got real experience in traveling to a foreign country, but the travel was exhausting and sometimes during the flights I just wanted it to be over.   I am also learning that I do not need to find a defense for God's ideals.  I can rest in knowing, he says it, I do it and he can take care of the rest.  I find it funny sometimes how I try to merge the things of the world with the things of God and then get all frustrated when it doesn't work.  Like when I believe just a little more money will make things easier so I can focus more on my spiritual path.....fail......or when I want to serve the Lord wholeheartedly in my home, but I also want to look good so I try to wear nice clothes or fix my hair and makeup only to spill some cooking oil on myself, accidentally rub my eyes because I was outside with the kids and end up with hair resembling Weird Al....fail....  Or my favorite I want to have 8 children from various backgrounds, put them in one family and then have the perfect TV family life....in reality we have some pretty weird and annoying stuff going on here.  I can't have it all, I laid down my life years ago to trust God and begin a beautiful journey that has made me someone that the high school me would not recognize.  I know the heart of God and I need to drop the baggage and run freely to him.  I need to embrace the journey and accept that it is not going to look mainstream or frankly even slightly normal sometimes, I will get weary but I will not fall, I will have troubles but will not be overcome, because these are the promises of my God.

The love of money

Today I was talking with Rosie about the adoption process and we were looking at the other children waiting for families and I began thinking of the verse that tells us money is the root of all evil....As I began to think if money was no object her 2 friends from her orphanage who are about to age out of the system and never experience a family choosing them I would gladly set up 2 more beds and set up 2 more plates for dinner.  Sadly though...its money.. the cost of adoption...the cost of travel...the cost of food and clothes and all children entail...

Money keeps children orphaned
Money enslaves the poor
Money keeps the homeless on the street
Money traffics the innocent
Money separates the have and have nots
Money starves the hungry
Money tears apart families
Money tells us we can't
Money keeps us from following our passion
Money makes us doubt our Savior

I should not blame the physical currency, as Jesus directs, its the love of money.  We love what money can give us and so we want more and want bigger and faster and easier and we fail (myself included) to count the cost.  How often do we not realize that our lifestyle is supporting slavery, child labor, trafficking?  How often are we dissatisfied with the amazing life we are given because we see and we can not have or we can not afford to do?  How often do we struggle or stress doing things to just pay the bills?  We have enslaved ourselves to money.  Do we really need more?  Does it have to be nicer, faster, more fun?  Children will never know the love of a parent, an ill man or woman will not have a place to sleep tonight, a person will labor in a field or factory and be paid so little they can not eat  and for what....so that we can enjoy the pleasures of the world.  We are not storing up things in heaven when we can sleep peacefully knowing these things are occurring and yet still feel as though I do not have enough.  I write this mostly out of my own realization that I had let my heart close for a season, I didn't think about those faces or those things.  I have been stressing over money, possessions, activities and I am thankful today that God has reawakened my heart to the truth.  The more we add to our lives the more we separate ourselves from the one thing that brings true peace and joy.

Who's in control anyway?

This past year I have come to learn about another layer of loss of control.  I always think I have yielded my life to Christ, I mean its been years and I gave him my life years ago.  I became his follower, his disciple....so yeah at first I realized I had to change the way I used my time, then came the days of learning to put Christ before my husband and my children. Every time God taught me what it meant to let go of control and live in the way of His will and not mine.  This past year I have struggled with my health and rheumatoid arthritis.  I suddenly couldn't do things I used to do.  Walking was painful, using my hands to open jars or use a knife was impossibly hard.  I was suddenly seeing doctors who were telling me I would be on medication for the rest of my life and that it won't just get better or go away.  But here I am, finally able to use my hands and feet more as we have figured out a good medication combo.  However, the medication I am on is one of those ones you hear about on TV with a whole slew of "possible side effects" which sound crazy to chance.  I found myself wondering what can I do in the future, I can't imagine doing some of the things I once thought I would be doing and even had some days of depression over that fact...however the past few weeks Jesus has been faithful to reveal to me something I have missed all these years...  Who's life is this anyway??  I gave my life to the One who gave his life for me.  I began thinking if I ever truly understood that...  He has and will allow what he will allow in my life for his purpose.   He loves me and cares for me and I don't have to fear what I can or can't do.  He already knows and I have (or at least am learning) to yield to his desires.  I am learning looking back on my walk with God, that his desires have become my desires naturally over time and always when he was ready to move in my life.  He is the vine and I am the branch, therefore I do not need to figure it out anymore than a branch gets down and pulls on the vine to make itself grow.  The branch instead holds tight to the vine and its growth is a product of clinging to the vine for all its needs and it grows by default through the vigor and health of the vine.  So I am back to asking who's life is this anyway??  I laid mine down years ago to be taken up by the one who is all sufficient.

New year new lessons

It is the new year and usually I get excited thinking about what the new year will bring. I am excited for 2015, as I will watch my oldest graduate high school in a few months! This year is different though for other reasons. Last year at this time I had no idea that in a few months in one weekend my health would be tipped upside down. A swollen hand one weekend in April turned into a 6 month journey to find out what was wrong and how to treat it. It totally caught me off guard. Now I am in the phase of learning how to live with being on constant medications and learning new ways of doing things since my body doesn't always want to cooperate. Confession, I am a bit of a control freak....my kids may say more than a bit. I like a plan, I like to make big plans...hence the 8 kids. I am a weird creature as I love things that terrify me, such as storms and disasters. If i didn't follow the path of having a large family I would have finished my degree in emergency management and worked with FEMA. I only had one semester to go! Now though I am starting a new season of life on different levels and really its terrifying and excited...but mostly terrifying.. I have spent that last 17 years building my family and the last 10 years deeply involved in the adoption world. Now this will be the first time I start to enjoy the family and even start to watch them become their own people. As a planner I have often thought about what I would do when the family building/adoption time ended. Some of plans involved things like getting back into storm spotting and volunteering with an organization, getting ready to start my career as a teacher (which is what I ended up finishing college with), going out and doing mission/ministry work with Randy and the kids. I imagined that with some more time I would get into fitness (though this was ALWAYS a long shot..) or even taking up something new! So here I am looking at the future but realizing I have no idea what my future will look like. Some people with rheumatoid arthritis do great and the medications allow them to do all sorts of things, others end up living a pretty depressing life of pain, exhaustion and multiple surgeries...oh did I mention I research everything constantly so I have read every website and blog that talks about RA? One thing I know is that God knows what he has planned for me. I also know that I am weak in walking in the faith of this knowledge. My fear is that I will become someone who doesn't leave the couch and is wasting the life God has blessed me with because I can't figure out how to live with this disease, but my hope is that I can find new ways to discover new things and enjoy old things. Luckily I have some time to think about the future as I am currently still homeschooling 8 children!  One humbling thing I am learning is that I have never really let go and given it all to God, every time I think I am letting God lead, He shows me an area that I am clinging to and I have to learn to let go. So here is to the future, whatever it may hold. This year will be a year of learning to trusting in God's plan for me and stop trying to control and guess the next steps...

Generation follows generation...

As I watched my daughter set up the table and the other kids who are part of the youth mission team at our church stand up and make a plea to the church to donate shoes for the souls for orphans project, I realized the importance of passing on what God has called us to do to the next generation not just in words but in actions.  She has not just heard but experienced the plight of orphaned children, Four of her siblings formerly lived in orphanages and 2 in a foster home.  She not only heard of children needing shoes, but watched her new sister and brother come home with flip flops held together with paperclips and watched me put ointment on the sores on their feet for months until they healed.  She saw the pictures of the excitement of the children in Bulgaria as they received the shoe boxes so many pack with treats for Christmas and heard her sister tell of how happy they were to receive them a week before and how hopeful she would be Christmas morning only to find year after year no presents on Christmas Day.  She has watched her father faithfully head out every Saturday morning and spend countless hours building Trusted World and she herself has gone out and handed food out to the men and women in need.  To her God's commands to serve the orphans, the reality of pure religion is not just words on a page, its not just a catalog that comes out at the holidays that shows pictures of hurting kids.  Its the people she loves and its the people she has watched transform through the little we had to share.  Its amazing to me because so many times I worried that the sacrifices we made in her life whether time, money or emotions in following God's calling in our lives would impact her.  It did, but in a way that gives me great joy.  She is standing in a church lobby today making sure as many children as she can possibly can will have a new pair of shoes.  She is touching the souls of children she will never meet, but she knows that they are valuable.  The Bible tells us to pass it on from generation to generation and so it fills me with such joy to see my children rise up to the occasion and stand in the gap for those who can not.  God has taught me through these 16 years of parenting, kids will learn love and will learn compassion if that is all they know...I will be the first to admit I go into life having no clue what I am doing, everyone who truly knows me knows this...  I have had a ton of ups and downs and many times I have questioned if I am really following God or really messing up what I have going :)  But as I watch my oldest daughter share her love for others and as I listen to our uniquely created family talk about their futures and realize they believe caring for others is just, what you do and have the realization that love is color blind, I begin to see a peek of what God has done despite me.  He has made this.......