Snowflakes are individually unique, magnificent and pure. There’s joy in snow!

There’s a white blanket out there covering everything; it’s beautiful, really. Snow angels, snowball fights, running and playing, carefree and content. We had a great time! I remember doing that with my mom when I was about 15, before life got complicated. We put her scarf on the snowtoddler we made :)

My babies sure are growing fast! (Can’t even keep them to stay in a size of jeans for long) I’m just going to love them and enjoy them for as long as I can, and hope in the end I’ve imparted a love for life and the Lord. They’re good and happy kids, really, and their strong spirits are a wonderful asset to the kingdom of God, even if it takes a great deal of extra strength and effort to shape and mold them.

Thank you Lord for my little snowflakes.

God doesn’t have a Plan B for you.  He doesn’t need it.  Though we have free will, He knew all along what choices we would make and planned accordingly. 

Isn’t it funny that we have Plan A, B, and C.  In addition, we are quick to think through and weigh out 15 different scenarios and the potential outcomes in a matter of seconds.  At times, having done everything else in our power, not even thinking to look for God in the situation, we finally ’resort to praying’.  But He truly is the hope to the hopeless, the light to the darkness, the Alpha and Omega.  The great I AM.  What a mighty God we are blessed to serve.

So, I didn’t make it into nursing school.  Onto Plan B.  Or Plan C…I’m not sure.

Plan B – reapply and enter into the spring ’10 nursing program at TCC

Plan C - finish prereqs at TCC for an associates  in pre-nursing and transfer to the ORU nursing program in the fall ‘10.  I’ve desired to attend ORU all my life, that’s my obvious choice, but let God’s will be done :)

And about the ‘Plan B’ mission trip… I drafted my letter and flyer and I am believing God to raise the $3500.  Thankfully, the organization sent me a book which addresses the ‘fear’ of fundraising.  Perfect, these people are awesome!  I also received two other books; one about the country, and the other about the difference in our religions.  See, the wonderful thing is, I feel God is leading me to just love the people and let the love of God shine through me in their lives.  I am so blessed and excited to serve on this medical trip!

Any path you take to God’s will result in Plan A being fulfilled if you don’t stray, or if you return when you’ve strayed.  I love the verse in the Bible that says, “He restores all the years the locusts ate.”  Ephesians tells us to stand firm in the armor of God, and when we’ve stood, stand some more.   As long as we continue, we cannot be defeated.  We all fall, but unless we remain down when we fall, we already have the victory in Christ Jesus.  Our instructions are just to stand and praise God, His mighty plan will unfold.  Not only for us, but for the people our lives will affect either directly or indirectly through our faith and obedience in Him. 

Hey, if  He will use a donkey, He will surely use everyone of His faithful children.

Lord, help me to stay on your path, at every turn, every curve, and every decision.  Lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil.  Thank you for your angels that surround and protect my family, friends, loved ones, everyone reading this blog, and myself.  In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Life’s not always fair, but God is always good!

I’ve been recovering from a nasty cold all week, so you can imagine my joy upon awaking to rowdy boys at 6 AM.  Oh yeah.  Then to make matters worse my daughter gets up and screams and cries all morning.  UGH!  I don’t know if I had any patience at all when I woke up; I certainly didn’t have any by the time my aunt arrived around 7:30 to take the kids to their basketball and cheerleading.  I had already given at least two or three spankings to my daughter who continuously refused to eat and get ready.  My aunt, so loving and gentle, said she would take over for me.  (An attempt to keep me from yellling.)  How’d that work?!  The kids didn’t respond well to her soft persuation either and when they finally walked out of the house it was a few minutes after 8.  The pictures began at the church at 8.  Nice.

It was my fault for not staying up at  6 when the boys initially woke me up.  I could have laid out their uniforms, socks, shoes, etc.  Okay, I admit that.  But the uniforms were located easy enough and still the kids took their own sweet time playing, screaming, eating, playing, dressing, screaming, playing, brushing teeth, screaming, playing.  (Now you’ve got the picture.)  A person can only take so much and I believe my aunt coming this morning was a Godsend!  I literally had tears in my eyes from frustration.  Thank God she was here to take them.  Now, I’m sitting here thinking how the morning should have transpired, but really I’m too tired to analyze the situation. 

These are the moments I look to heaven and wonder how I can do this.  Usually, it’s evening or bedtime and I go to sleep and wake up refreshed.  In this case, the beginning of the day was overwhelming and sleep is not an option.  Sometimes, I feel it’s all too much to bear.  I know my feeling sick is contributing to this perspective, but understanding does not always lead to better perception.  I’m tired of my children, despite my best, consistant efforts, showing disrespect and disobedience.  I’m tired of the boys breaking, destroying, and roughly handling everything and everybody.  I’m tired of my daughter crying.  I’m just tired.

I thought about getting ready and going to the church to watch them play.  (This is an every Saturday event for two months.)  Then, I thought I could just relax and wait for her to bring them back.  No matter, my daughter forgot her pom-poms and I need to take them to her.  Today is picture day and it just wouldn’t look the same without pom-poms.  So, here I go for round two…

Lord, I pray you will give me peace, understanding, wisdom, and discernment to handle the children with love, even when I am so overwhelmed and upset that I don’t feel like praying or asking for help.  I pray you would help me see these children as the blessings they truly are and not the animals they act like sometimes.  I pray you give them peace and a quiet, gentle spirit.  For that matter, I pray for a quiet, gentle spirit!

Without you I am nothing, and can do nothing of value.  I need you so bad in these moments when I feel I cannot hold up under pressure.  You are my foundation, my Rock, my Jehovah Jireh, and I thank you that you are always working in every detail of our lives.  I put my faith, hope, trust in you Lord and I commit this day to your will.

Thank you for always being faithful and good.  Thank you for your ever-increasing mercy.  Thank you for loving me first. 

Amen.

Okay, much better.  Here is the end of the day and it turned out wonderful because my aunt decided to take all the kids back to her house for the day and evening.  I got a much needed break which restored my sanity.  My aunt took them out hiking and exploring the country surrounding her house and wore them out for me.  I had much more patience with the kids upon their return.  :)  Thank you Amikee!

This summer, I’m going to The Gambia, West Africa, with a group that focuses on missions trips serving Muslim people.  The same organization that was initially planning the trip to Egypt.

Seriously though, she said she would let me get my hands dirty!  I will be giving shots.  At least I will be getting valuable experience working with patients and understanding what diseases and illnesses they are dealing with.  And I might be the only student at school this fall with hands on experience in some areas.  Who knows?

On another note, I turned in my nursing application awhile back and I’m just believing God for favor!  I will find out the first week of Feb.  That gonna be a great week!  Taxes and nursing school acceptance letter :)  I’m praying about paying for my trip in full before I go.  Honestly, I intensely dislike the generating support aspect. 

My stomach was in knots when I kept believing for the Dominican Republic and the deadline passed, airline tickets passed and it looked hopeless….and then BAM, there was $800 from an anonymous donor.  I quickly begged and gathered up the few other hundred due, booked my own airfare….the rest is history.  The trip forever cemented missions in my heart.  I was passionate and sure of my call before, but when I stepped on foreign soil, it hurt to come back.  And the ache still drives me to accomplish school and go

To Africa…finally.  And to North Carolina.  That’s always a fun drive with the kids.  Across the country, through the mountains…here we come, Sis!

What an incredible, amazing, wonderful, blessed, beautiful day! 

After hurrying to see my patients (daycare closed early) and doing some last minute shopping, I was blessed with the beautiful sight of ALL THREE of my babies getting baptized!  I am still so full of joy from the experience.

We’d discussed ‘being saved’ pretty recently.  I volunteered to help with the Toys for Tots this year at our church and after the training session I began to think that this ‘counseling children’ thing was so incredibly easy so why hadn’t I done this with my children already.  LoL  Well, upon talking to the children about accepting Jesus into their heart, my two younger children said that they had, in fact, accepted Jesus with my help.  (I had just forgotten.)  I guess that’s a good thing.  We talk about Jesus so much that I didn’t actually stop to ask Isaiah that day in the car when he repeated the simple prayer after me if that was his first time in doing so.  It was.  After thinking for a moment, I remembered the previous conversation and I was grateful I had played a part in both his and Geneva’s salvation! 

{{This is where some people question salvation at such a young age ~ To all of you I ask, ”Are you 100% clear on every aspect of theology now?!  Neither am I, but I’m sure glad I’m saved anyway!”}}

ANYWAY…

The next week I began asking them if they knew what it meant to be baptized.  Nope.  I explained that it was a step of obedience to God as well as a kind of show to others that they’d made a commitment to God and Jesus, an outward expression of their inward decision, etc.  They told me over the next couple of days that they wanted to be baptized.  You can imagine my surprise when Pastor Alex announced that the church would have baptisms before the Christmas Eve service.  I was so excited!  Then I got serious about whether they were old enough to take it seriously.  After talking with them individually, I felt sure about Jaden and Geneva understanding and sincerely wanted to be baptized.  Isaiah, on the other hand!  I tried to talk him out of it…LOL  He looked at me, so sincerely, with his puppy dog expression and little brown eyes and said, “But Mommy I want to obey God.”  How could I refuse?! 

It’s quite possibly the most beautiful moment of my life thus far, witnessing the baptisms of all my children on Christmas Eve.

Isaiah

Jaden

Geneva

Geneva, afterwards

I am so proud of my three little soldiers!  This was my Christmas present!  (And Moma, I know you were watching too!)

The service was great too!  And it was also the kids’ first time to participate in communion.  I had the privilege of teaching them the meaning behind that as well.

I am always amazed at God’s effort on our behalf!  When people wonder where God is and if He cares for them or their individual situation, I find myself praying they will <<be open to>> receive a fresh revelation of His love.

My good friend, Jennifer, gave me a testimony of how her sister basically got a miracle straight from heaven the other night!  There was no denying that God had orchestrated a series of events just for her.  I have had times in my life when I knew He had done the same for me.  What an incredible feeling!  There truly is no high like the Most High!

Wow!  What a title for this entry!  And yet I’ve no idea what I’m going to write.  Holy Spirit, do your thing!

I want to begin by copying and pasting an interview I had with T. Suzanne Eller on a site called Momlogic.  I feel this excerpt will cover important elements in my faith journey:

“I said a prayer of salvation at 16 when a friend in school invited me to a youth celebration. (I didn’t even know it was a church function.) Nothing much changed until I had encounters with some ‘Rhemanites,’ a water, and a Holy Spirit baptism! I began to understand, somewhat, the meaning of a real and personal relationship with my Savior, Jesus Christ. I began going to church regularly around Easter of 2004. (The free Easter egg hunt lured me in.)

“I joined a faith and Spirit filled church where the preacher was a world renowned Bible teacher. I was fed soup, salad, meat, veggies, AND dessert…fast. My knowledge of God and the Word seriously exploded! After three years I recognized what God had planned for my life, changed my college major to nursing, and attended Victory Bible Institute/Victory World Missions Training Center. I finally had direction in life and it felt/feels GREAT!

“Having said all that, for a long time while I was sitting under great teaching in church and school, I had refused to let some things go in my life that I knew were wrong for me. We all have different things God’s dealing with us on, and some things may not even seem wrong to others, but we know and feel that they’re wrong for us. (Does that make sense?) Anyway, it wasn’t until I truly fell on my knees, broken and humbled, before God, willing to surrender anything and everything, in response to His overwhelming love for me, that I truly began to live! I would give up all my hopes, dreams, plans, EVERYTHING just to sit at His feet and love Him! I found this was the moment God had been waiting for. I now walk in a peace, joy, and contentedness that I have never known before in my life.

“Now there are so many opportunities to help and encourage others, as well as the incredible blessing of God flowing freely in my life! I can’t describe the difference!”

Thank you to the ‘Rhemanites’ I referred to in this quote.  Thank you for seeing past the outward appearance and attitudes to tend to my spirit and soul!  For this I will be eternally grateful!  [Joy(Mitchell) Wegener, Beth & Todd Davis, Brandon Shadek, and all the others I forgot to mention!] 

I have put it all on the line.  God asks “Would you remain single indefinitely if I could better use you to minister?”  After a few moments and a sigh, I answered, honestly, “Yes, Lord.”  (Can I just be honest about this?)  God inquired, “If you never step foot in Africa, never even live outside of the United States, would you prefer me still?”  Quickly now, “Yes, Lord!”  Now as I type this, I recall from years ago, God’s haunting question, “Would you leave your children behind?”  I only cried that hard a couple of times in my life, but my answer was the same.  I remember looking up to God and wondering why He would have me do such a thing as leave my babies behind with my aunt to raise them.  He wouldn’t.  He won’t.  I knew upon asking the question.  He simply wanted to know where my priorities were.

God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, my priority is only you.  I long to spend time with you and know you, really know you.  I want to cry when you cry and laugh when you laugh, I want to hurt when you hurt.  Let me see people through your eyes.  Touch their lives through me.  I yield my clay vessel unto you.  Thank you for giving me all my hopes, dreams, and desires but if they never come to pass I will be content in loving and serving you in anyway I can.

I’ve put myself completely on the altar.  Every hang-up, every hurt, every inch.  Though the living sacrifice tries to crawl off, I will not have it.  The past along with it’s wrong & bad decisions stopped here.  I REFUSE to go around the mountain AGAIN!! 

My life feels like a fairytale most days.  I am overwhelmed with joy, peace, patience….ALL the fruit of the Spirit!  Thank You!!!

Here I sat, praying and journaling, when suddenly….creak…CRASH!  Seemingly in slow motion, my ceiling fan lowered and lowered and fell onto my living room floor, shattering several glass bulbs and breaking the glass light fixtures.  Pink insulation, different colors and textures of glass shards and the white ceiling stuff lay scattered on my carpet beneath the imposing fan.

Is this a sign??  How or why in the world did that happen?!  (followed by) THANK GOD MY KIDS WEREN’T THERE!  Is it possible?  I would say all these thoughts swirled simultaneously through my head.

Yes, in the previous couple of hours my children were cozily spread out among our living room on pallets while enjoying a movie.  Had this ~now gigantic looking~ fan fallen then, it would’ve crashed down squarely on top of one or two of the children’s heads, glass and all.  Not a pleasant thought!

God is so good!  I try to pray over and plead the blood of Jesus over my children EVERY SINGLE DAY and this could be a great example of how this practice helps!  I don’t know, but there’s a strong possibility that angels, (who are sent by God to help and protect us), were holding that fan up until after my children were safely tucked away in bed for the night.

A long wire, containing other wires, hangs down out of this hole in the ceiling.  I know if I turned the light switch on and someone touched the wire that an electrocution could occur.  This knowledge is not comforting and tomorrow I hope the landlord will be here to fix this!

Lord, thank you for protecting me, my children, and our belongings.  You are so faithful, merciful, and compassionate, and for that I give you all the praise and honor.  I love you God!

So I’ve been trying to sell my SUV for 6 months!  Ugh!  The whole time my cousin wanted to buy it but she was unable to sell her Camry and eventually we cancelled the idea.  Yesterday I put my Xterra on Craigslist for like the 100th time. <sigh>  I figured since gas prices have gone down so much there would be more interest.  Plus, I drove it around yesterday hoping people would call in response to the three ‘for sale’ signs in the windows.  Nope.  (But a couple people did show interest from Craigslist.)

In the meantime, I had advsided her that I was pushing to sell the SUV again and driving it, etc.  She  responded that she was going to try again to sell her car again so she could buy the Xterra.

I prayed with her, through text message, that the Camry would be sold that day, then prayed aloud to God to let it be sold so that she would recognize the presence of God in the situation and understand He truly cares for her and all her needs.  (I had been praying heavily for her during the last 2 weeks to develop a deep, intimate relationship with the Lord.)

Previously when she had been trying to sell her Camry, there was NO real interest.  To make a long story short, she sold the car yesterday!  God is so faithful!!  And now she has seen a direct answer to our prayer.

Well, I sit here waiting for President-elect Obama to address the nation as I wonder what the next few years will hold for us. 

Before I write more in this post, I’d like to include my reply to a Christian Momlogic forum which asked how we chose a candidate:

Well, this is a very good question! Let me begin by saying that I didn’t like either candidate. But I’m passionate about America, so…

When choosing a candidate I try to disregard what others are advising simply because I want my vote to be MY vote, based on education. (Popularity had absolutely nothing to do with my decision.) I began by looking at the voting records of the candidates, I watched the convention speeches and debates, and I reseached the candidates as much as I could. I even went to the library and checked out one of Obama’s books. I was also a pretty unhappy Republican because of the national debt issue and the war…. so I definately didn’t want more of the same type of administration. In my mind it came down to abortion versus a failing economy and possibly nation. I wrestled with this for awhile. I felt the ‘conservative’ Republicans hadn’t actually acted conservatively and couldn’t be trusted. I decided to support Obama. I got behind it 100%! I got the sticker, the button, and I volunteered.

Then I remembered I hadn’t prayed about it?! I felt so foolish. To make a long story short…I voted for McCain, though I still didn’t like either candidate. So ulitimately, after ALL THAT, my faith determined my decision.**

**I say this because it’s true for ME; God led me the direction He led me. I understand God can lead people in different ways and by no means am I implying that anyone who voted for Obama did not hear from God. (only an individual can truly know if he has heard from God)

God bless America!

**************************************************************

I can’t really explain how I feel right now.  I can say that as I watched Obama walk up to the podium to deliver his victory speech, my heart began to race and I felt suddenly panicked.  ?!  I can also say that as he began to talk I became overwhelmed and actually cried.  I have no idea why.  But that’s all I can do is describe my reactions, my emotions were too complex for even me to understand. 

Now, I’m resigned to the future.  I will accept, honor, and pray for our President-elect.  But somehow I can’t shake the feeling of impending doom.  Is it the lingering effects of the scare tactics from the Republican campaign, the Holy Spirit speaking to me, or just the side effects from fasting?  Only time will tell.

Again and again and again I say, “God bless America!”

I’m going to bed!