Just Trying to find My Way

Today is Mother's Day....and a particularly emotional one at that. In just 3 short weeks I will watch as my oldest son walks across the stage to pick up his high school diploma. I've dreaded this day for about 15 years. Why only 15 of his 18 years? Because I wasn't one of those girls that dreamed of being a mom since I was little. When I did get pregnant, I wasn't one of those women who loved every minute of it...as a matter of fact I hated it! I felt terrible all the time and the hormones quickly took over and turned me into someone I didn't even like being around, but couldn't get away from. Then Zach was born, December 29th, 1998. Not a clue what I had just gotten myself into!!!!!! I tried nursing and we both stunk at it and it left him with jaundice and a hospital stay. I stayed close by but found myself not having a clue what to do for him. I quickly learned something about myself that I never had to pay attention to before...I didn't have a natural nur...

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...

I'm making myself write today...partly because I said once that writing brings me some sense of healing in my soul and partly because my soul is a bit cloudy. I have a shelf in my house that I RARELY pay any attention to. It's on the way down to the laundry room and it's right where my stairs curve to the right so as I'm walking down I'm always concentrating on making the turn and usually my hands are full of laundry or something that needs to go in the freezer. Until this past Christmas when I only went halfway down because I was trying to get my husband's attention. That's when I saw it...I can't even say it was dusty because I'm not sure there is a word for 'beyond dusty'!! Like cotton ball type puffs of dust and spider webs...with dust on them! Why is this a big deal? Because anyone who knows me well knows that I am a clean freak,,,vacuum every day, sheets every Thursday, bathrooms every Friday (with a touch up on Monday)...clean freak....

I haven't written for a really long time. There are many reasons why, but mostly because of my own self. I think I get in the way of a lot of things that Jesus is trying to do in my life, but I don't know how to stop. I want to do better...I want to forgive more...I want to be a better wife and mom...I want to not hold grudges...I want to love people better. I want all these things, but I don't 'be still' long enough to work on them. My mind never stops long enough to be able to focus on one thing for very long or to see clearly. So I just keep going--the checklists of each day are much the same and they start the moment I wake up and don't stop until I lay back down. Today I stopped for just a minute. I was watching out the window at my husband playing catch with our youngest son. I thought to myself, "he's gotten so tall, how did he get so tall". For what seemed like so very long it felt like they would never be able to do anything for them...

There is a man in the town where I live that walks regularly in my neighborhood. I do not know this man, but I would describe him as "weathered and bent over by many years of living." His steps are slow and careful. He seems to walk with purpose even though he doesn't seem to have a destination. He seems to always be walking, sun, rain, cold, and snow....He just keeps walking. The biggest thing that I have noticed is that he walks with his head down and rarely looks up--- I have recently found myself in a season of weariness. Not so much tired, but weary. I looked up the difference between being tired and being weary and this is what I discovered....tired is something physical, having to do with the body. Being weary is emotional, having to do with mind. There are mini-seasons when my mind goes on overload and I begin to focus on things negatively, I begin to hear things negatively, and it's all down hill from there. I wanted to stop walking....I didn't, but I s...

This past week I was challenged to share a verse a day for 7 days that meant something to me or that I loved. I started out with my very favorite verse which is I Thessalonians 5:16-18. After that I went to some other great ones that I have clung to when life turned ugly. Then yesterday I stumbled onto one I hadn't really noticed before. It's in I Corinthians 1:18..... "The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction. But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God." Tomorrow is Easter and also my birthday. The older I get, sometimes I think the more jaded I get. I started reading that verse over and over and it started to tug at me. I've decided that it's because I think I would be less jaded if I could really learn what it means to live in the power of the cross daily!!! God's power became mine to use the moment that Jesus took all of my sin on Himself on the cross, died for it, and 3 days later rose from th...

I've heard so many people over the years say at the end of their failed marriage, "we never should have gotten married to begin with...he/she wasn't who I was 'supposed' to marry." This is something I've wanted to write about for a long time and it took a friend having me sit down and listen to a song that made me finally do it. The song was Dancing In The Minefields by Andrew Peterson. The first verse of the song got my attention when it says "everyone said we were much too young but we did it anyway.....'I do' are the two most famous last words, the beginning of the end, but to lose your life for another I've heard is a good place to begin." Goodness gracious. That last line right there....to lose your life for another I've heard is a good place to begin....is at the heart of why our marriage came to a halt three years after we said 'I do'. I selfishly entered marriage with the attitude that Dave was supposed to make m...

This week has been I one that I can't help but write about. There aren't many times in life that we get to have conversations with people that change something in us. It is more than changing our minds, perspectives, or views. I feel like these conversations touched a part of my soul that I had either forgotten about or just plain didn't know existed. The first one was with a sweet woman who found it in her heart to trust me enough to share parts of her life that would have stopped the ordinary person from ever getting out of bed ever again! I don't feel like I can share the specifics of her story because I don't have her permission to do so, but I can tell you this.....I have been to some dark places in my own life that I thought I would never recover from: That dark and that painful! The events of this woman's story don't scratch the surface of mine. The kind of things that keep her up at night with tormenting night mares; that keep her in constant fea...

The last few Friday's I've been watching a show called Undercover Boss. I have seen the show before but not for awhile and I was struck by something 2 weeks in a row.... The first week there was an employee of the "undercover boss" that had a daughter that was born something like 15 weeks early and 2 years later the medical bills were closing in on 2 million dollars. Because the little girl will always need some kind of medical care there was no realistic hope of that weight ever being lifted. Until the end of the episode.....the owner of the company was so moved by the story that she paid the debt!!!!! I wish I could accurately put into words the look on the man's face as it dawned on him what she was offering. First you could see the struggle because he said he was never one to take a handout. Then you could see the complete and utter relief as the boss kept saying "let me do this for you, let me do this for you". Someone cared about what he was car...

It's a new year and I started a new devotional. Well, actually, it's an old devotional by Chuck Swindoll called Seasons of Life. I discovered him back in the 90's when I was in college. Back then I read a lot by him. Over the years I kind of just stopped..no real reason why and that's exactly why I'm writing today. The topic of the devotion I read this morning was finishing well or finishing what you start. I was challenged to think of something I had stopped doing. It was an easy choice. I had stopped writing. No real reason why. I can't help but think that it has something to do with the "season" that the book starts with...Winter. Friends, I really, really, really don't like Winter!!!!!!! Never really have. Cold, gloomy, dark, tired, and generally brings out the sad in me. Not things that I enjoy. But in the book Mr. Swindoll calls it "a season of reverence". Huh?! The dictionary defines reverence as, "a deep respect for someone...

I started writing this post two other times and I'm hoping that the third time is the charm!!! I picked the topic Life is Hard and the first time I started thinking about it was while on vacation in Florida. I found myself standing on the shores of Cocoa Beach staring out at the ocean. Sometimes life feels as overwhelming as the waves crashing on the shore...it can knock you off your feet when you aren't paying attention and even take you out to sea where you feel like you're drowning. Why does life have to be so hard? I started to remember the times in my own life when I would ask myself the same question. I have to be honest, at the time of my questioning I became more and more angry, cynical, and negative. I was focusing on my circumstances and not on the God who could use those circumstances for His glory. I wasn't letting Him. (Let me say that again,,,I wasn't LETTING Him!!!) Here's the thing that I think happens a lot of the time in this life. I think th...

I am joining my friend Meagen Chellin of  "The Girl With The Naturally Curly Hair" in writing about speaking the truth into each others lives as we all just try and find our way. It's so easy to focus on the negative in our lives. So easy to get distracted from what the real truth is about ourselves. I have a number of people in my life that I have been blessed with who give me perspective when I focus on the wrong things. One of those people is Meagen. We have had the honor of speaking truth into each others lives and I am honored to be writing these posts with her!!! Meagen has already written about being worthy and being beautiful. If you haven't gotten to read them yet please check them out....lightonmyface.blogspot.com. I have chosen to write about being significant. Not too long ago I was able to speak to a small group of women at church. We were discussing who God says we are and I was given the word significant. As I was preparing what I was going to say I f...

It's been a while since my last post. If I'm truly honest it's because I have been working through a season of disillusionment. Big word that translates in my simple mind to questioning everything that has come my way. I learned a long time ago that this life is hard and I also learned not so long ago to stop asking why things have to be so hard. I truly believe that God is always at work even when we can't wrap our human minds around our circumstance. I also believe that if I spend too much time focusing on the circumstance instead of on Him I fall into disillusionment really quickly. I need to read my Bible when I don't necessarily feel like it so I can refocus on things like.... Psalms 94:19-"When doubts fill my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer!" & I Corinthians 13:12 "Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and ...

I am REALLY good at self pity!!!! I found out just how good I am at it this weekend.....which is actually really hard for me to admit. It continues to amaze me how one thought in my head can snowball into flat out self pity. I'm in a weird place in my life. I'm not in the little kid phase anymore where my kids need me for everything. They are 15 and 10 and can do most everything for themselves so I find that a lot of times I'm just hanging out waiting for the times they need rides, things at the store, or to go cheer them on at an event, which is what happened this weekend. Actually there were two things this weekend which is where the beginning of the pity party came in---there was this big women's event at church and for the first time in a long, long time I wasn't asked to help with anything. That was really hard for me because like most people I want to feel needed. But instead of enjoying the break and going to enjoy myself at the event I found myself on the ...

It was Sunday afternoon and I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor having myself a good cry. There was a day when I would have felt guilty about that. I'm the kind of girl who used to think that I had to carry the world on my shoulders. I had to, in the world's eyes, keep it all together. It had been a week of people just needing a part of me. Seemed like everyday someone "needed" help with something and normally it isn't a problem, but this particular day I had come to the end of myself.  It's the little things that seem to chip away at you and slowly tire you out. So, there I sat. I found myself remembering the verse in Psalms "Be still and know that I am God!" and next came remembering that one of the names of Jesus is Wonderful Counselor. That struck me that day because I needed to call out to Him and tell Him I was done struggling to keep all the plates spinning. I needed to let go, but letting go of control is not my strong point!! To a...