Christmas time, or present time?

I have seen SO many posts by friends recently that are all struggling to afford Christmas for kids. I wanted to write this just for you. I want you to know, I have been there. I have sat in my room and cried because I knew Santa just could not come that year. I cried because every Christmas I had as a child was full of presents and fun and huge meals and lots of family. Then all of a sudden, the little creatures I loved more than my own life couldn't have that wonderful moment I had.

But why? WHY were those Christmas' so special? Was it because of the presents I received? I can tell you, in all your pain and worry and stress, remember this. It was Never the presents, but the family. Here I am, 10 years without any relationships with my 3 brothers, and I would have traded every toy as a child to have those relationships now.

Your child may want toys, but all they need is your love. All they need is to know they have YOU! Family is supposed to love, and love unconditionally. So this Christmas, when you don't have a gift to give, make a coupon for them to trade in for a special afternoon you. Wrap up a game you made, a hand drawn puzzle you created. Take a day and go to the Warming Center and volunteer. Teach your children and yourself, that the TRUE meaning of Christmas is the gift Jesus gave us, unconditional love! If your kids are too young for that, then they are too young to have any clue that they should have gotten presents to begin with.

If you are alone on Christmas, I don't believe for a heartbeat no one would have you over. Swallow your fear and ask a friend if you can come over. I would never hesitate to allow a friend to come to my house who needed a home for Christmas! This year, let yourself find the true meaning again!

Kindness elves, what?

So, I have recently decided to allow myself to get sucked into the elf world! Who can resist them? Their cute, their fun, and they may make your life a mess if you forget to move them! In our home we have had the Santa fight many times. I grew up believing in Santa, and my husband did not. SO..... we compromised and Santa visits us ;) Like many moms, I fight the greed and idea of presents with trying to teach the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of Jesus!

SO we are trying a new idea this year! Instead of the Elf on the Shelf, which I agree with others is a little creepy but cute looking, with kindness elves! For more of the birth of these little guys, check out their facebook page here. Needless to say, its a pretty cool idea. Instead of focusing on being tattled on for bad behavior, they encourage your children to show acts of kindness! We are desperately working on kindness in our home, and I thought this would be a fun way to act it out! So, our elves should show up this week and will make a great entrance! I wont lie, my first letter is completely copied from the internet and the rest may be too, after all I am a working mom. I thought this would be a fun and easy way to update you on our elves and their progress each day! Stay tuned :)

I was blind, but now I see!

So, today was the BIG day! I finally picked up my glasses! Please remember I worked all day before I took this picture and be kind! :)

 

 



While I was at the eye doctor the person helping me brought me my glasses and warned me before I put them, it would be a big difference! As I put them on, a world I never even knew was fuzzy came in to focus! The doctor went on to say, my brain was so used to working to compensate for my vision, it would take up to a week to adjust to my glasses while my brain learned it didn't need to work so hard. I will likely experience headaches throughout the week and should be aware of that.

The first thing I did was look at my phone and realize that there are dots in the background of my phone I never saw before! I giggled as I drove back to work realizing how different everything looked, and yet it was all the same.

On my way home, I actually stopped the car for a moment when I realized that God was speaking to me in SUCH  a profound way suddenly! How like our relationship with God, was my experience today?

Things I never knew were fuzzy came into focus. How often do we go through life without realizing the effect our choices and actions have. Suddenly, when a magnifying glass is shined on us, we see the things we thought were insignificant as having a huge impact on our lives! How often do we wander aimlessly unaware of the plan for us, until God brings it into focus and we suddenly have clarity!

My brain is learning it doesn't need to work so hard. First of all, God made us so wonderfully! My brain is so advanced and intricate, it has been working twice as hard to compensate for my struggling to see. It worked that much overtime to get me through to where I didn't even realize how much it was working! HOW much does God do for us that we don't realize?!?!? Need an example? I have one! I completed my internship, and continued working at a residential facility. I believed (and still do!) God put me there to learn some pretty big lessons about life. I worked SO hard there and drifted a lot in my relationship and focus of God. Yet, through all of it, God protected me! I was injured several times while there, applied for supervisor positions several times and never got them. All of those times, I thought I was working hard, but God was working even harder to prepare me for the next step in my life! Here I am now, a social worker, in a fantastic job! I didn't need to worry, stress, and overwork myself, I just needed to allow God to do His thing!

I will likely experience headaches (pain) while my brain learns to work less (let go). Have you ever let go of something in your life that wasn't a painful process? I haven't! A part of the process of letting go, is pain. Pain for what we should have done, pain for the loss of what is gone, pain for a different way. That doesn't mean that pain is a bad thing. People in general need to learn to handle a little more pain in their lives. When a cut heals, its painful. Its a part of the process. There is a lot that has changed in my life lately. Along with the changes is pain. Its a sad thing to change things. That doesn't mean I wont experience joy and clarity (just as my eyesight will be more clear!), it just means it will be that much more sweeter!

God speaks to us in many different ways. Sometimes its a clear cut moment. It may be something you look at later and go, "well duh!" but sometimes, He reminds of those moments for many different reasons. I am sitting here looking at my three beautiful kiddos, one is sick on the couch whining, one is crying about a dramatic part of the movie, and the other is trashing my kitchen with noodles (yay for spaghetti night!) in an attempt to "clean the dishes". In this moment, I don't see the mess, the tears, or the whining. I see the love and joy I have for my kids and the confidence they will one day be world changers for Jesus! In this moment, like my eyesight, I have clarity.

Whats new?

Does anyone else feel like starting a blog is kinda like speed dating? You have to get all the important stuff in really fast or you lose the attention and you have to start over with the next one. So I am going to just tell you about me and family. If that's not interesting enough, then you don't know crazy when you see it :)

This is me! Im a 32 year old wife, mom, and recently a social worker! I have a background in working with kids with special needs, I have a lot of experience and knowledge with sensory processing disorder, knowledge of all sorts of mental health needs, and recently began working as a social worker doing special needs adoptions! I am adopted myself and have recently begun searching for my biological mother. My husband and I were foster parents, and down the road when our own kids are older we hope to adopt someday!

This is my husband. I know, its a pretty hot picture :) Don't ever tell him I posted this!! In 5 days we will celebrate 9 years of being married! We have had our share of ups and downs and we have been through more heartache in both our lives than anyone should have. We are here though! We have survived, and we will continue to survive. I consider him my best friend and don't know what I would do without him! Aaron is currently a recreation therapist at a residential facility were we both worked before I got a job as a social worker.

 These are my darlings!! The photo on the left is from Disney World this past year and the one on the right is this past Christmas. Emma is my beautiful, imaginative, creative 9 year old. She has such a brave outspoken love for God she challenges me to grow! Grace is my fanciful, unpredictable 6 year old. She has been diagnosed with autism in the past and presents a lot of challenges for us but I wouldn't trade her for anything! Hopie is my heart :) she is the joy of our family! She is almost 3 and spoiled by everyone in the house!

So here we are! If your reading this, chances are you already know us, but hopefully you will share this with someone who doesn't! I look forward to sharing the amazing things in our life and also some of the not so amazing too :)

Remember me?

Have you ever started something with the best of intentions and just utterly failed? I love to read blogs. I follow a ton of them! I love how eloquently mothers like me share the wonderful, horrible, honest, and helpful day to day aspects of their lives with people like me who feel just a little less crazy after reading them! There is so much I also want to share with others. I just don't do it well in a blog! I want to though. So here I am 1 1/2 years after my last post :) My life has had SO many ups and downs and lessons. Lessons I know I went through so I could share them with others. So I will work on that and this :) Maybe I'll do it and maybe I wont :) Today at least, I feel like I will! I think its definitely at least time to update some info on here!

Baptized!

So, this past year something has started in me, and while I still don't know all of it, I just wanted to share it with you! This past winter I did what is called a Sozo session (For more information or to find out if YOU should do one, click here. Our church also does sozo sessions right here locally if you want to do one!). For a long time I felt like God just wasn't speaking to me. I never realized I might not be listening! I desperately wanted to hear God, but felt I wasn't. During a sozo session can be very personal so I wont share all the details, but I want to share one huge part of what I got out of it. I had been hearing God's voice all along, but I had allowed myself to grow accustomed to ignoring it. That little voice in my head had been ignored by me for so long that I convinced myself it was me just "thinking" and not God. Finding that connection to God again has been amazing! I have found myself growing in my spiritual walk with God incredibly! Slowly but surely I have been working to respond to that voice. Our relationship is a two way street. Since God is ALWAYS waiting with open arms, when we find ourselves distant, we need to evaluate what steps WE are taking to continue that relationship!

Well, to continue the story..... growing up I had never felt that getting baptized was a huge deal. I knew it was important, but I didn't feel like it was required, and I never felt strongly like I needed to do it. Then about 2 years ago, at our church picnic, I had SUCH a strong desire to get baptized! I ended up chickening out because for some reason I felt so uncomfortable about it. I thought about doing it a few times after, but again, something just never felt right. This past Saturday our pastor preached a GREAT sermon. A part of it was the importance of getting baptized. It just spoke to me! You can listen to Pastor Harvey's sermon here (ha ha, just kidding its not up yet, I will add it in at a later date! You can listen to other sermon's here). I still didn't do anything about it. I had to run home during the picnic that we do our batpisms this past Sunday. I was picking up life jackets for Grace and her friend. When I pulled in, I pulled into the wrong section and had a momentary panic where everyone was! It just hit me then, I wanted to be baptized! NO MORE WAITING! So I found the right section, they had already started, and no more worrying, or caring, as soon as they finished them I asked if we could do one more!

Of course I was an emotional wreck, so I think I strangled out something between crying about why, but of course, later, there is always so much more you want to say!

I was "saved" at an early age. There was never a time I questioned God's existence or if he was real. I never had some dramatic moment where I hated God. Looking back now, I just realized I never truly understood what it meant to be loved by God. To me, love always came with a price or a sacrifice. Usually a dream I had to give up. This past year, I have truly learned what it means to be loved by God and what to expect in love from others. It has been such an amazing experience! It doesn't mean it isn't without its troubles and bumps, but I have a friend right there along the way! It also means I will probably be saying a lot of Im sorry's, but a great thing about God is learning even in the conflict how to handle yourself. You can still stand up for yourself and honor God at the same time!

So, that was my day yesterday! It was a pretty good one :)

Fear

I will say, the last few days definitely threw me for a loop. Its amazing the violence that has occurred in the world. At first I was afraid. I actually almost brought Grace home with me when her teacher told me about Connecticut. Then I heard about China, and several other acts of violence that just made my blood run cold. I felt in the pit of my stomach fear. I made the decision to not add to the media frenzy and I will not repost any information on it. In my personal opinion, all that does is give attention to the horrendous acts that occurred and further traumatize families who simply need to grieve. I also will not blame parents, school, mental health issues, special needs, or anything else other than what this really was. It was an act of evil. I will say it again, this was a  horrible horrible act of evil. We are a world in need of God. Everyone feels it! We all have an aching and a longing and so we try to fill it. We fill it with alcohol, drugs, pornography, violent games and shows. We fill it with sin. And maybe for a short time we feel better. We cover up that ache with sin and darkness, but in that darkness that ache comes back even stronger. There is only one thing that will ever fill that darkness! You can point the finger at the need for gun control, the need for parents to raise their kids better, the need for better mental health options. I will point to my Bible and say here is your answer! We need to shine light in every corner of the darkness that we face! We need to fill that longing and that ache with Jesus, not with sin. Evil is in the world. In my short life I have certainly faced evil many times in my life. I have also cried out to Jesus to save me and He did!

I hope you will call me radical. I hope you will look at me as though I have lost my mind. That means that I am stepping out in my faith and telling you we need Jesus. Its so easy. He is right there with nothing but love and forgiveness! Take that ache we all feel deep inside and see that there is a release from it that is far more satisfying than anything we could ever find on this earth. I am taking that fear I have felt and placing it in God's hands. I will not walk in a public place and fear for my life or anyone else's. I will not fear when I drop my kids off at school. I will certainly hug them close, but no closer than I should hug them everyday. I will place them in God's hands and know that NO evil will touch my children ever. They have been bought and paid for with a price far greater than anything that this world could ever compare to.

My heart breaks as I read the news and see only pain and heartache. I see a world in need of a Savior. I am grateful that I know the ending of this story. I am praying that if you have not had an encounter with God, that you will have one today. I pray for each and every one of you to experience the love that only God can give. It transcends any addiction or worldly need you will have. It is a pure love, one that is not tainted by family problems, or the baggage of our lives. It takes that past and wipes it out! No condemnation, no finger pointing, no buts, and no throwing it in your face. It is a God who waits with open arms to take away your emptiness and fill it with a love that overflows to those around you.

I have seen evil, and I will pray for the families affected by it. I wont feed it though, and I wont fear it. I will stand in the power of a God who has already defeated evil and will continue to defeat it as long as there are people willing to call out to Him. Reach out to Him today and see the fullness that you will feel in your life!