Thankfulness

Well, one thing I should have known was that I would not be able to keep up with this blog weekly. Once Thanksgiving hit, everything with our family went into overdrive, and I haven’t had any time to reflect on my life much. I have a little time now before things get a little too busy again, so here we go…

Scripture reference for the week:

1 Chronicles 16:34-36

David’s psalm of thanks says,

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Cry out, “Save us, O God our Savior; gather us and deliver us from the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name, that we may glory in your praise.” Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Then all the people said “Amen” and “Praise the Lord.”

Now one thing that I am very proud of is that I have two boys that 90% of the time say “thank you,” without being prompted. My three year old says it, and my 18 month old has been signing it for months (I’m a huge advocate of teaching your child sign language before he or she is able to speak, but I will wait to get on that soap box another time.)

And while I have two sweet boys who know when to say their “thank yous” (most of the time), nothing could have prepared me for what happened a few weeks ago.

One Saturday afternoon, I had the rare opportunity to take a nap while the boys were napping. And an even rarer thing occurred when I let our three year old take a nap in bed with me (a habit that I would never want to get into…Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s coming down the road. Yikes!).

We took a nice long nap and as we both started to wake up from our nap, my son slowly opened his eyes and said, “I love you so much, mom,” and then he rolled back over and closed his eyes. My heart melted. You know when your child tells you something so sweet, that you actually gasp a little and grab your heart? Well, that was what happened to me.

After a few minutes of trying to soak up the moment, I told my groggy boy that he needed to wake up from his nap and that I would carry him into the family room so that we could snuggle and slowly wake up. He rested his head on my shoulder as I carried him from the bedroom into the other room, and he said, “Thank you for taking care of me, mom.” Now my heart was a complete pool of butter!

The fact that my three year old knew that I take care of him is amazing to me, but what amazed me even more was that he was thankful for the care that I provide.

It got me thinking. How often do we take the time to thank others?

While I’m sometimes tardy with my thank you notes, I always try to hand write a thank you note to friends and family. It is an old-fashioned, well-mannered habit that my mother taught me. Thank you notes are one of the sincerest ways to show someone how much you appreciate their kindness and thoughtfulness. Check out the Emily Post website: (http://www.emilypost.com/everyday-manners/common-courtesies/61-being-thankful-a-thank-you-note-qaa).

While I think I am good about thanking others, I started to wonder, how many times have I forgotten to write a thank you note, or how many times have I taken things that others have done for me for granted?

Think about your life. How often do you thank others for what they have done for you? Not just for gifts, but maybe a favor that they have done for you. Maybe someone you don’t know held a door for you. Do you thank your spouse when he takes out the garbage or cooks dinner for you? Do you thank a colleague who has made copies for you? Do you thank your child for being a good boy or girl when you are in the grocery store or running errands?

It is so important to thank others for what they have done for us or what they have given us, but more importantly, it is important to thank God for all of the many blessings he gives us daily.

Think about your relationship with God for one minute. How often do you thank God for what you have in your life?

Do you thank him for all of the good things that he has bestowed upon you, or do you dwell on the difficulties that you have encountered or are encountering? And when you are going through those difficult times, is that when you lean on Him the most...when you need his help to make things better...when you feel like you are drowning?

It is so easy to turn to Him when things are tough and we need His guidance or help, isn’t it?  

Believe me, I know first hand that life is a mystery and it can be extremely difficult some times. But it can be extremely wonderful at other times. Recognizing the good in our lives during good times AND especially in the bad times is so important.

So here is my challenge for you:

1.       For you:

A.      Say your normal daily prayers, but devote at least two minutes of that time thinking about and making a list of your blessings, and then thank God for all of those many blessings that he has given you.

2.       For your children:

A.      Teach your children to be thankful in prayer as well.

Start a verbal list of things to be thankful for and then let him or her add to the list. *I try to pray with my boys at night. When I pray with my three year old, I thank

God for things that he may not think about, like a bed to sleep in every night,

running water, a roof over our head, clothes to wear, and food to eat. And then   

I explain that there are people all around the world and in our country who don’t have these luxuries  

every day and we talk about it.

*While it sounds like a difficult concept for a young child to grasp, believe me, it gets

 him or her thinking.

B.      Remind your children of what they already have

Let’s face it-children are children. They will always ask for that new toy or for something fun and exciting or bigger and better (My oldest now wants a hotwheels car ramp), but before you give into your child’s request, try to bring him or her down a level and remind him or her to be thankful for the things he or she has already been given. How will this work?

1.   Try putting some of his or her toys away for a few weeks and then bring them back out. Your child will play with the toys like they are new.

2.   Have children do chores around the house to earn money for the toy he or she wants.

You can teach a great lesson on money and counting, and your child will start to realize how grateful he or she is and will feel very proud when he or she is finally able to buy the toy on his or her own, instead of just getting it right away. (We are trying this with our three year old. He is saving for his hotwheels ramp. I’ll let you know how it goes...Fingers crossed!)

C.      Raise your child with a healthy mind.

Instilling thankfulness in children is extremely important, so that when things go awry as they grow up, they learn how to cope better. And when they don’t get what they want, they learn to deal with it better. Teaching positive thinking and thankfulness is important for raising a child with a healthy mind and steering a child away from depression. Check out psychologytoday.com: (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200308/depression-doing-the-thinking).

D.      Teach your children to write thank you notes

As soon as your child is old enough to write, teach him or her the importance of hand-writing a thank you note to friends and family. My sweet nieces hand-write thank you notes to me and my husband, and I have hung them on my refrigerator. Is there anything sweeter than a thank you note from a child?

So remember that God is there for us and our children in good times and in bad. Many of us turn to him when times are tough, but when life is so good that you feel like you don’t need his help anymore, turn to him and thank him because that’s when he is wants to hear from you the most. Think about how you feel when someone takes the time to hand write a thank you note for something you have given them or done for them. It feels pretty great, doesn’t it? I’m sure God feels the same way.

He is waiting for his thank you note, so what are YOU waiting for?

Finding strength in weakness

Scripture reference for the week:

2 Corinthians 8-11

Paul was feeling weakness, “a thorn in his flesh,” and he says:

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The life of a mom is exhausting! We are pulled in so many different directions. We take care of our houses, our husbands, our children, other family members and our friends too. Then, we throw in the time that we spend volunteering in our community. And some of us also have jobs (part time or full time). We are teachers, tutors, chauffeurs, nurses, cleaning ladies, cooks, coaches…. The list goes on and on.

We take care of our immediate families, but we try to nurture our relationships with our other family members as well.

Then, of course, it is very important to take time to spend with our friends. So we add birthday lunches, baby showers, children’s birthday parties, wedding showers and weddings into our schedules (All wonderful events that we enjoy very much, but it’s something else we factor into our busy schedules).

We do the present shopping for birthdays, new babies, weddings and Christmas. We send the sympathy cards, the congratulations cards and the thinking of you cards. Moms take care of everyone else, and we find little time to take care of ourselves!

Then life gets a little more stressful when our children get sick, or when God forbid, we get sick. As my husband says, “Mommy CANNOT get sick. If mommy gets sick, the whole operation shuts down!” How true this is! But even when we get sick, we can’t lie in bed and take care of ourselves. We just continue trucking through the day because we HAVE to and we WANT to.

Now don’t get me wrong. Life is exhausting for ALL of us, women and men alike, no matter what stage of life we are currently experiencing.

It can be exhausting for women who are moms and for women who aren’t moms. And life can be exhausting for men who are dads and for men who aren’t dads. We ALL do too much in a day and wear ourselves out. And sometimes we just feel weak!

Sometimes my weekly schedule makes me feel weak.  I’ll bet that most of you feel the same way. Do you ever get exhausted on a Sunday night just thinking about your schedule and all that you will be doing the following week? It’s amazing that we fall asleep on a Sunday night!

And if you haven’t thought about your daily schedule, take a few moments to think about it. What does it look like? It probably looks a lot like mine (This is not an attempt to complain. I count all of my blessings daily and love EVERYTHING that I do, but it just shows how busy we ALL are.):

Schedule:

Wake up, feed dogs, feed children, get kids dressed for day, clean up dishes and house…out the door for morning adventure (park, science museum, zoo, library, etc.), or get oldest out the door for preschool two mornings a week (I’m so thankful for my husband who takes our little one to school for me). After the morning adventures, we come home, eat lunch together and play. Then I get our children ready for naps. The babysitter arrives (She is one of my many blessings from God), and I leave for work during naptime so that I don’t miss much time with the kids.

I am the youth director at our church. So I head to church and work on children and youth programs, as well as help to run some of them. I arrive home at 6:00 most nights (except for Wednesdays and Fridays when I help with youth group…And don’t forget about the weekend events when I am participating in an outreach program with our church children, which I love doing, by the way). When I get home I play with the kids (swords, build towers, review flash cards, color, play outside)…Then I feed the children dinner and maybe take a family walk with my husband, children and dogs…We give the children baths and read, pray, sing and kiss children good night. Now, around 8:00, my husband and I cook dinner. We eat, talk, watch a little TV and clean up. We get ready for bed, and then I start writing (working on books and freelance articles), or I work on things for church. I go to bed around 11:00 p.m. Phew! I know you all can relate.

Now, add in the days where we volunteer in the community, go to functions for organizations, attend meetings for organizations about which we are so passionate, and we attend dinners and parties.

Yes, the daily schedule of life can make many of us feel weak.

But nothing makes one feel weaker than poor health. It can be physically and mentally exhausting!

It wasn’t until this past year that I experienced that type of weakness first hand. For several months I felt like I had run a marathon and I had not. The many symptoms I experienced made me feel like my body was shutting down. I went through multiple tests with several different doctors, thinking that only the worst was happening to me. The unknown made me feel extremely weak and absolutely helpless.

I felt a bit pathetic that I could not do the things that I once did and felt even worse that whatever was happening to me was out of my control. And when my test results seem to confirm that everything was fine, (“I’m just doing too much,” the doctors said.) my mindset completely changed.

I vowed to myself that from that day forward I would count every day as a blessing and try harder not to complain or worry about the small stuff (which can still sometimes be difficult).

Only my best friends knew about this difficult time, as I did not want anyone else to view me as weak.

Weakness is not something to be proud of or discussed, I thought.

But it was this verse from the Bible that a friend (Thanks, Josh) shared with me above that made me realize that it’s o.k. to be weak or to feel week, because it is when we are weak that we rely on God and that we turn to him more than anyone or anything else.

So take a moment to examine your life. What is it that makes you feel weak? Your busy schedule (I can relate), a nagging pain in your body or bones that just doesn’t seem to go away, having cancer, going through chemo, having a friend or family member who has cancer, your financial situation, a separation or divorce, a death in the family, the fact that you are alone, the fact that you can’t get pregnant one more time (or even a first time)?

We try to hide our weaknesses from everyone, but we can’t hide them from God. He knows when we feel weak and he rejoices in the fact that we need him, and no one else, when we feel weak and feel like hiding away and being by ourselves.

And so I encourage you, since we know that God knows our weaknesses, to turn to him. I promise you that your soul will feel restored.  You will find new strength in depending on the Lord when no one and nothing else seems to be giving you the strength that you need.

Finding contentment in our lives

Scripture reference for the week:
1 Timothy 6:6-10
"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
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Do you ever find yourself wishing and hoping for contentment? If you aren't searching for it now, I am sure that you have looked for it at some point in your life.


You find yourself praying, "If I just had a boyfriend...a husband...another child (or just one child, please)...a new job (or just A job)...some new clothes....I would be content."


And then when you get what you want, you are content for a while, but then you find yourself wishing for more or something else.


Many of us are constantly looking for the next step of contentment in our lives.


Personally, I am not one for material possessions. I cannot even tell you the last time I bought something for myself. And my husband and I (my husband mostly) drove around in my 10 year old college clunker with no air for two years until we finally decided we HAD to get a new car. And this was only after the repair man told us that what we were driving was no longer safe.


But recently, I have found myself thinking about a possession....a bigger house. We have lived in an adorable house for eight years, one that we love very much. Everything has been redone and we've created so many wonderful memories here, but our boys are growing and the toys are taking over, and we just need more space.


Some days I imagine how wonderful it would be to actually walk into an uncluttered garage and be able to find something, or enter a child's room without stubbing my toe on the train table that just barely fits inside. I think how content I would be when I actually have a back yard where I can play with the kids, rather than a front paved driveway that is enclosed by a gate.

And so, in my search for contentment, we stumbled upon a house for sale a few weeks ago, a bigger house, a house that my husband and I fell in love with.


Sure, there were a few things that we knew we would need to update down the road, but overall, we could see ourselves raising our family in this house and growing old there together.


So we took the bold step of making an offer on the house. The idea of moving into this bigger and better house was so exciting, but the adrenaline soon wore off when we found out that our offer was not accepted.


I thought I was o.k. when the offer fell through. "Everything happens for a reason," I said to my family and close friends.


But last week I found myself driving by the house that we had hoped to purchase the other day. And I burst into tears, thinking that the bigger house, the adorable house, could have been ours. We would have been so content, I thought.  


And it wasn’t until today, when my husband arrived home from being out of town, that I questioned my search for contentment. I began to wonder how I got so wrapped up in a possession....a house, when right in front of me, my children, who I am so blessed to have, were belly laughing while they played in the leaves that had fallen from our olive trees onto our paved "front yard." And my sweet husband, with whom I have such an amazing relationship, was smiling at THEIR contentment. How could I not be content with what I already have in front of me?


I found some great advice in my "Mom's Devotional Bible" (devotionals by Elisa Morgan, president of Mothers of Preschoolers, International) recently:


"Contentment comes as we view our circumstances through the lens of our relationship with God and what he is trying to accomplish in our lives. Contentment will involve:
1. Putting GOD first and THINGS second.
2. Looking for God in every moment-not just the pleasant but the unpleasant, not just the easy but the difficult, not just the simple but the hard.
3. Rejecting our cultural definitions of success. A successful life is one that begins with the Bible's view of what really matters: knowing and loving God."


Morgan writes, “Contentment is a life of inner peace rather than one of outer ease.”


Eventually, we will have to move, and we will continue to keep our eyes open for a house with more space. After all, I don’t have many more toes to stub.


But while we search for that house, I won’t look forward to the contentment that I think I will find then, instead I will find contentment in the life that I am leading now.


So when you find yourself forgetting that you already are so blessed with what you already have, remember Paul’s words in his short letter to his friend Timothy:  


"For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it."
-1 Timothy 6:7


Possessions mean nothing. God means everything!

When things don't go according to plan......

Scripture reference for the week:
Jeremiah 29: 11-12
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you."


At one time or another, we all have experienced disappointment, sadness or loss in our lives.

Maybe you have experienced frustration, anger or sadness during a break up or a divorce from someone you once loved very much. You wonder how you will ever move on. And if you have kids, you wonder how life will ever be the same for you or for them.

And after the break up or divorce, it is unbelievably difficult when you can't find someone to love right away-someone who loves you as much as you love them, someone who will take care of you. You ask yourself, "What is wrong with me? Why is this happening to me?"

You may experience frustration when you lose a job and you can't find another one right way. Or maybe you are experiencing financial difficulty, wondering how you are going to make ends meet. How are you going to put the next meal on the table for your family or yourself? How will you pay your mortgage or make your next car payment?

And maybe you are experiencing the worst possible scenario in your life-the loss of someone you love. Whether it be a spouse, a child, a mother or a father, a grandmother or grandfather or even a pet. The passing of someone that you love is life-changing and unbearable! Some days you wonder how you will even wake up and breathe in and out, let alone, get yourself dressed and fed.

Life is full of so many questions, so many twists and turns that we never truly understand. We often wonder, "Why me? What is your lesson here, God?" During these times in our life our faith is tested more than ever. It is difficult to trust in God and know that there are better times ahead. But it is during these times that we have to trust that he DOES have a plan for us, even though HIS plan does not sometimes seem to be OUR plan.

Please read below about when my faith was tested more than ever before in my life. (Story submitted to Guideposts magazine):

Finding Faith in the Midst of Infertility

A checklist. Isn’t that what we all have for our lives?  A plan that we have hoped for and looked forward to accomplishing since we were children?

Many of us hope to live out the American dream: go to college, find a job, get married, buy a house, have children.

At least this was the checklist that I always dreamed of.  I had my life planned out, like a recipe, with each step written down, ready to be checked off as each one was taken. I had a vision of how I wanted my life to unfold.

Even though there were bumps in the road and a few challenges in life, the first few dreams on my list were checked off. I graduated from college, worked at my dream job, and married the man I had a crush on since childhood. But little did I know that the next life plan, to become a mother, my biggest dream yet, would be so difficult and that my faith would be tested more than it had ever been tested in my life.

My husband and I began trying to have a baby after being married for a year and a half. But after several months of trying to conceive, we were unsuccessful. Doctors discovered that I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, which made it difficult for me to ovulate.

A year and a half of fertility treatments began. For months I took oral medication to try to stimulate ovulation, but to no avail. The next step was hormone injections.

While I used to get faint at the sight of a needle, I soon became very accustomed to it. Nightly, my husband injected needles, with vials full of hormones, into my abdomen, in an effort to trick my ovaries into ovulation. And on the evenings when my husband wasn’t home to inject the needle, I could not allow myself to get lightheaded. I had to inject myself at the same time, every evening, husband or no husband.

During the weeks of hormone injections I frequently visited the doctor who performed blood work to check for rising hormone levels and internal exams to check for egg growth. When I produced eggs that appeared to be the right size, I could move forward with the next procedure.

Finally, I started to produce eggs and they looked to be the proper size for ovulation and fertilization. With that, the doctors performed an IUI, intrauterine insemination, which placed my husband's sperm directly into my uterus. They believed that I had a good chance of ovulating at that point and that one of the eggs would be fertilized in the fallopian tubes, resulting in a pregnancy.  

While I awaited the news to see if the procedure had worked, I found myself in extreme pain. My abdomen ached like someone had punched me in both ovaries. I could barely walk. I found out that while there was still hope that I might be pregnant, the last round of hormone injections had caused my ovaries to hyper stimulate. My ovaries had tripled in size.

The doctors told me that I had to go on bed rest so that I did not risk losing my ovaries.  For two weeks I was only allowed to sit up to eat or leave the bed to use the restroom. I felt like an anxious, caged animal, waiting for the process to be over, waiting to hear, “You’re pregnant.”  

But at the end of it all, the only words I heard were, “I’m sorry. You’re not pregnant.”

Why was this happening to me? I could not understand.  What happened to the life plan? What happened to the checklist?

Physically, I felt like a voodoo doll, being stuck with needles and gadgets, by someone trying to force me to have a baby. But, it was the emotional side of the unnatural experiment that was even more difficult.

I experienced times of sadness and felt like crying all the time, partially because I felt like I was never going to have the children I always longed for, and partially because my body was pumped full of hormones.

As my friends became pregnant, my emotions took another set of ups and downs. One friend became pregnant easily. “It was unplanned.”

The other tried for three months and boom, she was pregnant. Soon, I became one of the only girls in my group of friends who did not have a baby on the way. I was happy for my friends, but I always felt a feeling of “Why me? What about me? This isn’t fair!” Of course I felt disappointment, but I began to feel anger as well.

Up and down, twist and turn-I was hanging on for dear life, trying to survive the roller coaster of emotions.

It was not until I recovered from bed rest that I decided it was time to get off the ride. I had had enough, physically and emotionally.

In an attempt to get our mind off the exhausting process, my husband and I decided to take a vacation. We took an amazing trip to London to see my favorite band, Pearl Jam. During that weekend, I enjoyed my life. I was my “old self” with my husband, not the monster who walked, talked and breathed fertility treatments, and I did not worry for one second about not being pregnant.

I returned from this unforgettable trip and that’s when it happened. I snapped out of my “getting pregnant trance.” It was like someone knocked me over the head with a baseball bat. Suddenly, I realized that I had abandoned my faith and God during this difficult time in my life.

I wondered how I had gotten to that point of giving up on God and my faith. I knew better. I knew that it wasn’t up to me to decide when and if I could have a baby. It was up to someone else. It was up to God, not me.

I knew that God had a plan for my life too. I knew that God knew my plan and my timeframe better than I did, and I needed to trust that this was true.

I wondered what his plan was. Did he want me to spend more time with my husband so that we could become even closer, or maybe there was a baby out there, waiting to be adopted by us. What was his plan for us? I did not know.

But what I did know at the time was that I would be a mother someday.  Somehow and in some way I would be a mother.

And finally, two years after trying to have a baby, I was at peace. I let go of trying to control my own life and put the situation in God’s hands. No more fertility treatments. No more medical experiments. My plan to have a baby was up to God now.

And three months later, his plan was revealed when I found out that I was pregnant with my first son.

Overwhelmed and Nowhere to Turn

It's 10:30 in the morning, and you finally have all the breakfast dishes put away, the toys cleaned up, the diaper bag packed and the kids are dressed to go out the door. Suddenly, you realize that the baby has a dirty diaper and he needs to be changed before you head out the door.

Just then, your three year old begins screaming a painful cry at the top of his lungs while you are changing the baby's diaper. You rush to him to find him rubbing his eye. Something is in it and it's hurting him. You try washing it out with a wet wash cloth, but he is still crying a painful cry that anyone could hear from down the block. You try putting his head over the sink to splash water into his eyes, but to no avail.

All the while, the baby is hanging onto your legs, screaming as well, because he wants you and doesn't know what's going on with his big brother.

So you scoop up the baby and put him on one hip and put the toddler on the other hip, trying to figure out what to do, as they are both crying as loudly as their little lungs will allow them. Finally, you decide to strip the toddler of his clothes and put him in the shower, telling him to look up at the running water, in hopes that the piece of dirt, lint or eyelash will wash its way out of his eye.

Meanwhile, the baby decides that he wants to go in the shower too, so you take off his fresh diaper and the play clothes that you just put on him before you were about to leave for your outing. That was a task in itself because it was like wrestling a bear to try to get the sweet thing dressed!

Your toddler is still screaming, so you go into the shower in your clothes to try to comfort him and help him open his eyes to flush out the foreign object.

All three of you are wet now, but the crying subsides. Your toddler's eye is feeling much better. You dry yourself off and you get your children dried off and dressed again. You realize that it has almost been an entire hour of screaming and chaos. It is now lunch time. So much for the fun morning outing!

You get the kids dressed again and go to the kitchen to make lunch.

What's that all over the floor? What's that smell? The dogs had found the baby's dirty diaper that had been changed at the beginning of the ordeal. They shredded it, ate what was inside and then smeared whatever was leftover all over the floor......

And this is one of the hours in the life of a mother!

While I felt like I had no where to turn on this day, I know I was not alone. The rest of us aren't alone either. Sometimes we don't know quite where to turn during the tough times in life and we frequently find ourselves "on bended knees," praying to God for help during certain situations. What we often forget is that many of his answers for us are right in the Bible. We just have to take the time to look for them and read them.

In my blog I hope to share some of my own experiences and thoughts about children, motherhood and faith, but I also hope to give mothers advice on how to get through the ups and downs of motherhood. More importantly, I hope to lead mothers to specific passages in the Bible that will give them the comfort and reassurance that they need to be patient and loving mothers.

I hope that you will join me on my journey through motherhood and that we can find ourselves on bended knees together.