Stories

You need to understand that the One who is writing your story, has bigger plans for you than you would ever have for yourself." -Paul Tripp

This was the facebook status for two of my friends this morning.  Powerful huh!

The reason I find it so powerful is because I need to believe it is true with my head, my heart and with the way I live my life.  In my head, I know this to be true.  I have since I was a small child.  I was told by countless people that this was true and I believe it.  However, I do not let this thought transform how I live me life.  IF I did, I would live a surrendered life.  I would not try to control my thoughts, my emotions, my actions and my desires.  I would not get angry with the my life when I see the shape of other people's life.  I would not covet my neighbors lifestyle, my friend's children, my husband patience,  I would embrace where I am in my life each and every day and would live a life surrendered to the process of growth that God has for me. 

I love to watch movies, read books and hear people talking about their life...their stories.  Each time I do, I see a glimpse into the reality of someone else's life and when the person is a Christian, I hear how the gospel of Grace transformed their life.  It cant helped but come out, because when Christ gets a hold of your life you will be forever changed.  I enjoy seeing people in all areas of that reality.  I guess that is why I like reading blogs because I get to read stories each and every day. 

I am happy to share my story with those who want to hear it, but most of the time I have a hard time accepting that story for myself.  Why?  Because there are parts I dont like.  There are labels and "titles" I have that I dont like because of that story.  The biggest title I have that I dont like is SINNER!  I have seriously messed things up.  I live a life that is marked my selfishness, self indulgence, pride and guess what...it does not seem to be getting better. 

Here is the good news...God can work in my life and use me for GOOD even though my story has not been completed to perfection!  Don't believe me?  Take some time to read any story from the Bible about our "heroes".  Adam...Abraham...Jacob...David...Paul...I could go on.  God did amazing things with those men, but he did it IN SPITE of them.  Not because they were special, successful or powerful, but because God was.  I think that most remarkable thing about all of those men is when they laid their head down for the final time and left this world, they probably recognized how powerless they were and how great God was. 

When I was a little girl,  I would sit in my window sill, or in my tree house and dream about the life I would have one day.  I would act out "scenes" from that life.  I would play all the roles of the husband, the kids and myself and no one ever got frustrated, no one got tired, no one disobeyed.  I had a great time :)  However that little girl grew up...I realized that not everyone was going to act out the role of husband, child, friend, parent like I did when I was acting as them.  And I realized that I was not going to act the way I thought I would either.  I never dreamed of yelling at my daughter because she would not get in the car.  I never thought I would get frustrated with my husband for wanting to put his arm around me because I was so hot from running around that I could not take one more heat source on my arm.  I never thought that I would get frustrated with my daughter because she was trying to pull her way up my leg so I would hold her instead of making dinner.  I never thought I would be divorced.  I never thought I would be a working mom.  I never thought I would not understand how to teach my daughter.  I never thought I would....  BUT I DID! 

So, if I could surrender each part of that story to the One who has the power to heal, to restore, to make beauty from ashes...AGAIN.  If I could stop being the potter, the author, the artist and let the true master take the reins...Imagine what could happen. 
     

The Black Dog

Annabelle had her first bad dream last night/this morning....

I was getting ready for work when I heard Annabelle crying in the house.  I called out to her to tell her I was in the closet because I thought she was sad she did not know where I was.  She came in, tears in her eyes, and just wanted to cuddle.  Not knowing what the problem was, I tried to cuddle her and talk to her but she just kept whimpering.  After about 15 mins, the reason came out. 

She said a dog came into her room, was looking and growling at her and was now under her bed.

I dont know what she imagined, but this was the image that came to my mind.  At that moment, I realized that a bit of her innocence was gone.  She will no longer think that all dreams are about ballons and cupcakes and she did before going to bed last night (which is her standard answer when asking about what she dreamed of). 

We talked about dreams and the fact that they are not real but it is okay to be scared of what we see in our mind.  We looked under her bed for the dog and it was not there.  When Maggie got up, she wanted to look under her bed to see if the dog was there.  She then said the dog's name was Daisy and that it was probably a nice dog. 

I wonder if this is really more like the dog she saw:

I will never know, but I think it will be interesting to see what she wants to talk during our bedtime chat tonight before bed....

     

Lessons from our Kids

My friend Sherah blogged about her daughter saying No! the other day and I thought her words were so great explaining what our kids teach us about our heavenly father.  It has got me seeing the things my kids do through that lense.  A few morning ago, Annabelle was enjoying her cereal bar in the playroom while watching one of her recorded shows on the computer.  She came running into the kitchen and said, "Mommy my arm is REALLY hurting,  It hurts so bad.  Can you please help me?"  First off, I was tickled pink that she said all of those words.  A few months ago this scenario would have resulted in about 15 mins of SCREAMING and me trying to figure out what on earth was wrong.  So after I did m happy dance and tried to figure out hos she had hurt herself.  I had to giggle a little bit because the source of her PAIN was crumbs from her cereal bar on her arm.  I brushed them off, gave her a kiss and she said, "That is so much better, thank you so much Mommy!" 

I remember in High School thinking that some people were so silly for getting all worked up about the smallest things and it used to irritate me to no end that these "trivial" things were mentioned as prayer request before each class began.  This has stuck around with me slightly into my adult life, but I understand that the WORST thing is some people's life may not be the worst thing in my life and you can't compare troubles with people-EVER!  It is all relative but the thing that shook me to the core a few mornings ago was:

God cares about the crumbs on our arm and wants to help us get over the pain!

He may not always brush them off for us but he will comfort us until they no longer bother us or until they are gone.

Amazing that God does not tell us to ask our friends if we should be upset about a certain situation or google remedies to our problems and came to him ONLY after we have exhausted all of our own resources, he tells us to come to Him, lay our burdens down and he will give us rest.  He WANTS to hear from us.  He WANTS to help us.  He WANTS us to be dependent on Him for all of the answers and not just the ones we cant find somewhere else.  Nothing is too little or too big for HIM!     

In these tough economic times...

I came across these hilarious pictures of cheap home repairs today.  The made me laugh at loud-except for a few I did not understand what they were trying to fix...  like the urinals and the camera???  Please enlighten me :)

But the funniest part of this post was how true to life some of those photso seemed!  You see my Husband is a very handy guy.  If there is a problem with our cars or our house, my wonderful husband is going to find a solution.  However, our budget is not in a place where we can put extra away to have money for car repairs or home repairs so when something happens, he has to be more creative than others might because he usually can't spend much on the said repair.  I know it puts him in quite the guandry on each of the repairs, but somehow he ALWAYS finds a way to restore the issue and spend very little if any money!

He has repaired his laptop power connection with alumimun foil

He has repaired a $800 broken cable in our car with some basic electric cables 

He has replaced our engine mounts for less than 1/8 the cost of the car repair shop

  

He has pulled the EGR valve out of our car and cleaned it out rather than spending the money buying a new one

He has repaired the damage done by countless animals who decided to make our attic and different parts of our house their home

He has crafted an antenna to get us free of the fees of cable television (i will let him share all about this in his own blog post)

And the list could go on and on!  He is amazing at saving us money and doing things on a shoe string budget.  All I can say that I have done to save our family money is giving up my preference of highlighted hair for boring brown hair and cooking more meals than we eat out.  I really appreciate how handy he is and it allows us to stay out of debt that I am sure we would have if we had to charge these needed car and home repairs!

The craziest part about all this handiness is that it took me a LONG time to come around to letting him do these things!  This whole issue reared its head a few months before we got married.  We got married in September of 2005 and in June of 2005, we purchased our first house together.  So do the math and that means that there were 3 months before our wedding day that we owned a home.  I moved out of my apartment and into my parents house and he moved in to our new home.  It was difficult for me to see him starting to do things on our house and for some reason I jsut did not want him spending time messing arounf with repairs.  I wanted to pay someone to do the work so I could have all to myself.  We actually had the biggest fight in a relationship-still to this day-over him repairing a sprinkler system!  We were both furious that the other person would not give in and fought for several hours in my parents front lawn over this issue.  It is so crazy I was so resistant to his handiness, but I guess I had to learn to trust him.  And stop being so dang stubborn!

I am so happy with all his creative genisus when it comes to his repairs but I really hope we dont find ourselves in the situation that many of those in the link above did and not have some money to buy the materials to make the visible repair attractive!   
   


  

My little Maggie Rose

I can not believe how quickly my Maggie Rose is growing up!  I thought it was time to document a glimpse into our world with her.  She now has 8 teeth.  The top 4 came in all at once and the two additional bottom teeth are making their way through the gums right now!

Besides a runny nose she has not made too big of a fuss about her teeth.

Maggie is full of life and quite the little kidder.  Each morning I go into her room and she plays a silly little game with me where she grabs her paci and her biggest blankie and lays down and waits for me to rub her back.  Then I rub her back and give her a little tickle and she jumps up, giggles and then moves her blankie to another part of the bed and starts over.  Unless I mention breakfast, this could go on for a LONG time! 

Maggie really enjoys eating and will eat more than anyone else in our family!  Only once in a blue moon she will tell me she is done, but mostly she just signs "more" and "Eat" over and over again!

She is not a fan of all of our water outings, but is starting to tolerate them more and more.  She usually finds the shallowest part of the water and enjoys licking up the water like a doggie!

The other night we went to a splash park and she seemed to like that a little better but after a little while she decided to head for greener pastures!

Maggie is very affectionate and loving.  Her favorite thing to search for is a lap that she can sit down in.  I dont think she minds much whose laps she finds as long as there is one around :)  She has started giving kisses when asked for one and it is so much fun to get them from her!  Even if she does give you some tongue with her kisses they are awesome! 

  Maggie has started to get more sleep during the day due to our new nanny that we LOVE so she and Annabelle are able to go to bed at the same time each evening.  That means that all 4 of us pile into Annabelle's bed for prayer time each night and we all exchange LOTS of kisses!  Annabelle and Maggie LOVE getting and giving kisses from each other and I LOVE listening to their precious giggles.  I wish I could see Annabelle and Maggie enjoying more special sister time but mostly Annabelle plays and Maggie just watches.  Annabelle does not really play WITH Maggie but I know she loves her little sister very much.  I pray that Annabelle will develop the skills to tolerate playing with her sister over the next few years but until then, I treasure each moment I see them playing beside each other or interacting in some way. 

My girl is a serious animal lover!  If she sees an animal anywhere is sight, she gets all excited and starts "talking" all about them!  My poor cat is chased around the house all day long but so far she has never been caught but Maggie.  I wish Makey would let Maggie pet her and sit down with her, but alas that is not in the cards.  Somehow she seems to have the same "fleeting" effect on all of the animals she encounters!

Maggie really is a sweet spirit and is at the stage where she really listens and obeys to most of what I saw.  I think it is amazing to see her looking for permission and guidance as she goes through her day.  She will start toward something and always gives me a little look of-"Mommy is this okay" before she continues.  I know the days of this obedience are going to be short lived so I am treasuring them as I see them now.  She is starting to push the limits these days and doing things I have asked her not to.  In the picture below she is barely touching the water and looking at me to see if it is ok.  So sweet....and disobedient at the same time :) 

Maggie does not have any words yet, but we find a way to communicate pretty well most of the time.  I am starting to teach her more and more sign language until her vocabulary catches up with her.  For now, she understands everything we say and is mimicking sounds she hears for words she likes. 

My dear sweet Maggie...you are such a joy to my life and truly make each day sweeter with your magical hugs and kisses.  You are loved beyond measure by your Daddy, your sister and your Mommy!  I pray that I can get to know you more and more over the next several years and unlock the key to your mind and heart so I can find the best way to teach you.