Just Trying to find My Way

I was just reading through my last post about my trip to Nicaragua and how Jesus had begun to speak to my heart about softening the rough edges and I realized that it has taken no time at all for me to fall back into old habits...no time at all. Since writing last-- school has started, which means the "schedule" is back! The schedule of making sure the boys are getting what they need when they need it, that they are where they need to be when they need to be there, that the homework is getting done, that dinners are thought about ahead of time so that the groceries can be bought, that the dirty laundry pile doesn't take over the stairway going to the basement, that I can see my husband at least one meal a day because of his busy schedule and that I keep up with things at my own job. Just to name a few!!! In all of the madness I caught myself having a very large, very ugly pity party this week.... Call it a test or bad luck or just plain life, but the past three weeks

It was exactly two weeks ago today that I left on a missions trip to Masaya, Nicaragua. It's been exactly one week since getting home from Masaya, Nicaragua & it's taken me this whole week to be able to start putting words to the experience! It was about a year ago around this time that I told my husband that I thought I was ready for something different this summer and that our church was putting together a missions trip to Nicaragua. We had done the same thing every summer for the past 15 years and this mama needed a change. He told me he didn't feel like Nicaragua was calling him at the time and he thought maybe he would take our boys to see grandma and grandpa in California if I wanted to go to Nicaragua. Sounded good at the time! Fast forward a year and that's just what we did. A day and a half before I left for my trip I took my boys to the air port, dropped them off for a week of fun in the sun and Disney World, and I cried most of the way home. That's

I was just reading through my last post and couldn't help but chuckle a little. I am continually amazed at how God works. Since writing last I was given a book called "Beautiful Battlefields" by Bo Stern. The verse that is talked about throughout the book is Romans 5:3-5... "We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame." Some years back I remember sitting in a bible study where this verse came up and me being me said something like this, "if suffering is the only way to produce more character than I don't want anymore character!" This thinking took root. I began dreading any battle that came into my life...those I could see coming and those that knocked me sideways. While reading this book I realized it was time to pull out the weed with the really long root. Battles (suffering) in this life can be beautiful....it's a

This journey of dusting off the shelves at times gets painful..... When I was young my dad used to fish a lot. I remember going with him a few times and I remember when we would catch one sometimes the hook was easy to get out, sometimes it was stuck a little deeper and my dad would need a pliers to work it out, and sometimes the fish would swallow it so we had to just cut the string and it stayed with the fish. There are things in my life (not very good things) that have been thrown my way that like a fish hook have made me a person I don't like to look at in the mirror because I swallowed it and let it become a part of me that Jesus never intended. So far in this journey I have written about the things on my dusty shelves like doubt and anger, but this week I was confronted with the ways I have chosen to deal with those emotions (in not good ways) and how those ways are expressed to others that I was completely oblivious to. I am slowly realizing that I have allowed the hurtf

As I write I'm on a mini vacation in Florida for my birthday. I will be 43 in just a few days and I still want to be doing better in this life of mine. So I continue to force myself to face the dusty shelves and more importantly dust them off. Tomorrow we are headed to the ocean and for those of you who know me know that it is my happiest place on this earth!!! I love everything about it...the sound of the waves, the smell of the air, the sand in my toes, and the way the water meets the sky...that's my favorite part...I can see God's love for me in that place, where the water meets the sky, in that place there is no end. God's love for me has no end. And yet, over and over and over again, I find myself getting tossed around like the waves of the ocean in the circumstances of this life and I doubt. Even after all of God's faithfulness, I doubt. Doubt happens for me not because I don't have enough faith. I believe God can do anything...the Bible says, more tha

After making myself write my last post I have found that I am not alone in what I am feeling!! Which makes me want to continue writing about this journey that I'm on.... As I have continued to "clean off" the many dusty shelves in my heart I have found that I am a MASTER avoid-er of emotions. I can stick emotions to the side as easily as I can stick junk away in my basement storage room, shut the door, and ignore it for months...or even years!  The typical pattern for me is that I take something someone does or says and it hurts me in some way, then I push it to the side because I don't want to deal with the feelings where it festers and eventually turns to anger. Left to the side long enough I found myself not even sure of what I was angry about. I've had a number of real and legit hurtful things done to me in my life, but by not dealing with them completely when they happened it had made it so that I couldn't even deal with the little things that I sh