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Friday was the first day of the homeschool tutorial  that my kids are taking this Fall.  I was excited and a little nervous because it’s our first tutorial and I’m teaching a class there.  However, on the way out this morning, I passed all the moms standing at the bus stop still talking after the bus had gone.  The thought went through my head, “You are going to get to spend the whole day by yourself.” I brushed it away, not wanting to be distracted and went about my day.

After tutorial, the kids and I ran some errands, by the time we pulled back into the neighborhood, the same group of moms was waiting for the bus to come home.(And no, I don’t think they had been standing there all day.)  Again I had the thought, “You got to spend all day by yourself.”  I asked the Lord to forgive my jealous thoughts and was immediately guilt ridden for feeling that way.

When I got home I called and talked to my best friend about my thoughts, she brought out a few things that I needed to think about. And yes, I felt much better after talking with her. See the issue was not my jealousy (God dealt with that separately. ) or how my children were educated. I was one of those moms, for 5 years my children attended public school.  And if I wasn’t at the school helping, I was feeling guilty because I couldn’t get there that day to help or assist, or go on the field trip.

It seems that no matter what my choices are as a mom, Satan is on the prowl to steal my joy.   So the real questions here is not to homeschool or public school, but rather, “Am I going to allow Satan to steal my joy as a mom – period?” Because Satan will attack in any area of your “mom life.”  Well, for me the answer is a resounding “NO!”

No, I do not have all the answers.  No, I do not make every decision with complete confidence. No, I don’t get my housecleaned everyday. No, I don’t handle every situation with patience and a calm voice. No, I don’t get it right all the time.(whatever “it” is)   No, I don’t wish for time by myself everyday. And No, sometimes I don’t listen to God like I should over what the world seems to be screaming at me.

BUT

I do love my children. I do try to set an example of how God loves, hopefully demonstrating that lesson to my kids (somedays are better than others). I do pray about most decisions in life.  I do spend time teaching my kids and therefore sometimes the house has to be let go.  I do try to get away from the world screaming in an effort to hear God more clearly.  And I do know that I am a sinner saved by grace and that for that fact alone, God loves me and guilt does not have to be a part of everyday life.

So NO, Satan you can not have my joy!  I am MOM and My God is the Lion, hear Him roar!

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:5

Have you ever dipped your finger in warm soup to taste, or maybe cake batter, or  _____________. (you fill in the blank). Whatever bowl of food you dipped into, I will bet that you didn’t dip your finger until the ingredients were at least stirred up. I feel like God has stirred up so many things in my life right now.  They are not all great.  But if you are stirring up chocolate chip cookies you are not going to taste the baking soda by iteself, right?  No, you are going to wait until it is mixed up to make that smooth batter wrapped around each little chocolate chip. That is exactly the way life feels right now.  The Lord is soooooooooooooooo good! Things in my life are not perfect, but I believe that God allows things to be in my life to help mold me and make me into who HE wants me to be. Were I to taste of those things by themselves, they would not be good.  As God himself adds ingredients to my life and begins to stir, only something sooooo delicious could be what comes of it.  Psalm 34:8 says “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”

God began to stir and as of late has added ingredients or should I say situations or circumstances that are simply making life sweet: missions in general (not just this trip), deeper relationships with my children, His word in a new light, a broken heart of someone close to me, a need of many that are close to me, breaking my heart for these orphans, my Bible Study girls, stretching me to ask others for help, our new church, my extended family’s health, my LifeGroup, the continued blessing of my husband – these and many more are the ingredients in my life and I can say that “the Lord is good.”  ”Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare.”  Psalm 40:5

My heart is so overwhelmed today at the Lord’s goodness.  I am 2/3 of the way of having the trip paid for.  I am hoping to have a bake sale on Sat. and have some items for sale that will contribute to the trip.  Please pray along with me, that those items will sell and that the bake sale will be well attended.

I hope God is adding new ingredients everyday to your life — bitter and sweet – and that you will “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Much love!

Last Friday I took the kids to a “mock” County Fair.  Some of the families had been to see the play “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday. We are going the first week of May to see the play.  So we went to the Fair.  The kids played relay races, participated in the Cookie Walk, the Cookie Stack, had lunch, and won blue ribbons at the craft show.

So all in all I think it was a pretty fun day!  Enjoy a few pics.

KK is such a good big sister.  She ran a bucket for herself and then helped Logan carry a bucket of milk for his turn.

RileyGrace did well in the Cookie Stack.

Yes, this is our Children’s Minister showing Logan how to look like a walrus with Cheetos!  :-)

Of course Logan tried it, wouldn’t you?

And finally the Blue Ribbons for some art work the girls did.  RileyGrace’s art was an ink transfer and KK’s was a free handed painting.

I actually wrote this a few days ago and had decided not to post it.  Last night I was talking to my friend, Amy, and she was talking about how she was cleaning out, trying to get rid of more than she ever had before.  She used the exact phrase I had written in the post, “I feel like all I do is manage my stuff.”  And she was thinking along the same lines as the conclusion of this post.  So here it is – enjoy reading!

Why is that cleaning out your house also cleans out your mind? It is such a mental relief to get stuff out of our way. For me, this has taken on many different methods over the years.  I’ll never forget when I first started, we had been married for awhile and there were household items from when we first married that I didn’t want anymore.  My style had changed, I now had two children and some things were just not practical.  I also wanted to simplify life.   So I literally started in one corner of the house and went through every room.  It took a few weeks.  By the time I got finished, I felt like  I needed to do it all over again.

I will admit the first time that I cleaned out so drastically, most of the stuff made it to my garage.  When my garage got too full, I a huge yard sale.  After that I faithfully had one every spring and sometimes fall.  I felt that I had gotten pretty good at keeping things cleaned out, but I STILL always had stuff.   It perplexed me that I could sell so much and turn around and within just a few months I had more stuff.   I’m honestly not a spendaholic, you can ask my hubby.  :-)  But I do have a large, generous family and they were always giving me stuff.

First I had to admit that although I’m not a spendaholic, I had to take a look at the stuff that I did buy that I didn’t really need.  The hardest part of breaking the “stuff” thing in my life was to find a way to very politely and kindly thank my family for thinking of me but to say “no” when necessary.  When we moved four years ago we had a large yard sale. It was fantastic not to have to move that “stuff.”

I committed at that moment that I would not let our new house get into this state.  I was determined to park in my garage (which I still do), something we didn’t do at our old house. (of course our old house had a small one car garage.)  So with the current house came the 3rd child and yep – you guessed it – more stuff.

Well, I’ve honed my cleaning out skills again and though they are far from perfect, still came in handy in this last stage of cleaning out.  I’ve done consignment the last four years and kept the kids toys and clothes weeded through, but OH MY GOODNESS stuff still accumulates.

This time it was different.  We got rid of books, clothes, and wires (don’t ask me what kind, I have not the slightest idea.  B just said they didn’t match anything we had so I took the opportunity to get rid of it.), we got rid of so much.  It was wonderful.  And I was able to make some money to go on my mission trip.

So now we are to the heart of my thoughts today.  I’m praying that the Lord will help me be more “stuffless”.  I don’t want my mind or my life, or my house for that matter, to be cluttered again because it keeps my thoughts occupied.  If my thoughts are occupied with stuff then they are not occupied with things that are eternal.  I want to be about the business of helping my neighbor, praying for my friends, loving my family, and bringing glory to God.   And no, I don’t do that right now as much as I should… and sometimes it’s because I’m too busy managing my stuff.

I will still allow my children to have things.  I’m not going to force my husband to get rid of something that holds significance for him.  But there has to be a healthy way, a Godly way to deal with this stuff.  I am about to go to Africa, where a bouncy ball would be a prized possession.

So I will keep searching God’s Word and praying to figure out how to be reasonable and Godly about our stuff.  I am praying  for you too to find ways to be “stuffless.”

So you won’t to save money but aren’t really thrilled with the thought of clipping coupons.  Maybe you really don’t mind the coupons you just forget that they are in your purse or even better, you leave them in the car. Well here are some things that you can do to cut your grocery budget.

1. Eat your leftovers. We waste so much food. If you have cooked a pot roast and your family didn’t eat it the next day, you can freeze and have it next week.  OR If you made pot roast with potatoes and carrots, then a couple of days later have open faced roast beef sandwiches with brown gravy.  (This is a favorite for my family.)

2. Use your freezer. Put leftovers in it (not everything freezes) but remember to use up what you have in there as well. I have 3 bags of corn from the garden that spoiled because one was simply there too long.  And the others because they were in there long enough that the seal was broken from being moved around.  If I had just cooked them sooner, they would taken place of some other side that was honestly not as healthy as a great fresh grown vegetable.

3. Rotate your pantry so that  you only buy items when they are on sale.  Almost everything rotates to be on sale every 8 to 12 weeks.  So if you can do without it simply wait for the item to be back on sale.   You can see great savings with this simple test.

4. Eat proportionately! OK don’t roll your eyes at that. :-)  It is not written anywhere that you must clean the bowl.  It is ok to have leftovers. They will keep for a few days – but then make sure you go back and finish them up a few days later.  I will admit this step and eating your leftovers are both habits.  Our grandparents and great-grandparents would laugh at the fact that we need to be told these things.  For them these steps were a way of life.  If they didn’t do these things, they didn’t have enough to go around.  With this economy we would do well, to borrow some of their habits.  :-)

5. Plan your meals by the sale paper. This will also help you to stick to Step 3.  Planning your meals by the sale paper of your local grocery can be a great way to stick to Step 3.  You can combine this with what’s already in your pantry and really save.   Suppose meat is on sale in the paper and you have rice and a vegetable in your pantry.  Go to allrecipes.com, and type in your ingredients. It will give you some options of dishes you can make.

6.  There is a thing such as downloadable coupons.  In certain areas of the country (unfortunately not everywhere) you can download coupons directly on your grocery’s loyalty card.  For me this is Kroger.  I download coupons on my Kroger card at ShortCuts.com.  When I check  out at Kroger and scan my Kroger card, the coupons are automatically deducted for the corresponding products that I bought.  I print off a list of what I’ve downloaded and keep in my purse, so that I can remember what coupons are on my card.  This is very easy, nothing to keep up with but the list in my purse.

It may sound a little too simple, but I can testify it works.  If you have your own tips, please share in the comments, we all need to learn from one another.

Last night in our LifeGroup we discussed God’s Word.  We discussed it’s presence or prominence in our daily lives, how much we do or don’t spend time in it, and how inadequate we sometimes feel in knowledge of it.  One person pointed out that knowing God’s word is not a test, it’s a relationship.

Our pastor said yesterday morning that most people spend an average of 20? something hours a week watching TV.  And that it only takes 72 hours reading slowly to read the Bible from beginning to end.  I was terribly convicted by this.  In my Bible study, a book titled “Crazy Love,” by Francis Chan, I am being challenged to not stop at the conviction but rather to be catapulted into action.  So I am placing my schedule before the Lord, to ask where I am misusing my time.

For example: I was reminded of  instructions like that in Duet. 6. “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”  (vs. 4-9)

The question is do I spend enough time in God’s Word to know it well enough to “talk about them when I sit at home, when I walk along the road, when I lie down and when I get up?”  NO.  A resounding NO.  And Satan will not win here anymore.  He will distract me from time to time, I know this.  But I am asking God for a thirst for HIM, for His Word, for His presence, for His spirit, for His heart.

Francis Chan writes, “God doesn’t want religious duty. He doesn’t want a distracted, half-hearted “Fine, I’ll read a chapter….now are You happy?” attitude. (addition by me, neither does God want us to read a chapter so that we can check it off our “to do” list for the day.) God wants His Word to be a delight to us, so much so that we meditate on it day and night. In Psalm 1, He promises that those who do so are “like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.” (vs. 3)

He continues, “People who are obesessed with God have an intimate relationship with Him. They are nourished by God’s Word throughout the day because they know that forty minutes on Sunday is not enough to sustain them for a whole week, especially when they will encounter many distractions and alternative messages. ”

I have thought quite a bit lately on how we hear God admist the distractions and alternative messages. I know and have been challenged to put into action that one for sure way to hear from God is His Word.  His Word is the living breathing word of God – so it always speaks.  Whether or not we get anything from it, depends on whether or not we are listening when we read it.  God promises us that His Word will not return void.  So we must spend time in God’s Word.  So that when we “encounter the distractions and alternative messages” during our day we will be able to weed out what is false and know what is true.

Somewhere last week I read, “do you know how to tell how crooked a crooked stick is?  You lay it next to a straight stick.” God’s Word is that straight stick that we can use to judge other things in our life to see if they line up.

As I prepare for Africa, please help me listen more Lord, as I truly desire to know you more!

I’m in the moment between awake and asleep and I’m realizing that I have slept a little too long this morning. Brandon is kissing me good-bye to leave for work, so now I know I need to go ahead and get awake.  I’m thinking I love Thursdays – no where to go, nothing pressing. A few minutes later Brandon is back telling me the bug man is here andwaiting outside.  OK, now I’m up going down hall and putting on pants at the same time, calling for the girls.  I tell them to get everything off the floor of their bedrooms so the bug man can spray. So fast forward a tad -

I made the beds, ate breakfast, cleaned up breakfast, started school, built a train track for Logan, taught piano lessons, helped with Language, checked Math, taught History, rebuilt a train track with Logan, got a battery for the train, checked email, sorted laundry, played with the train track with Logan, checked comprehension on reading with each of the girls, helped Logan pick up the train track, ran to the bank, stopped by the post office,  stopped by Kroger, unloaded groceries, put in the next load of clothes, returned phone calls, checked email, tried to read my Bible study, built towers with Logan, put some things in storage, checked more school work, folded a load of laundry and then……..

I made lunch.

I guess it’s a good thing that I didn’t have a “to do” list for today.  I love laid back Thursdays.

I started writing this last week when LeighAnn was in Haiti but my thoughts felt really scrambled, so here is a more collected thought.

My friend, LeighAnn, is Haiti right now working with orphans.  She went with a team from our church to help with the orphans.  There are children who are withdrawn and do not talk and sometimes they will latch on to someone on the team.  This happened to LeighAnn today.  A little boy came and sat beside her and the longer he sat, the closer he got.  He eventually ended up with his arms around her waist. He just needed to be close to someone.

I started to wonder with so many children and so many needs, how long has it been since he was able to get next to someone who would hold him, make him feel secure and loved?  My heart is breaking for those children.  God is so much bigger than I can comprehend and His ways are not my ways and I do not always understand.  And yet, I find myself wondering, “How will God love all of these children?”  ”Are there enough arms to go around?”  ”Who will step and go?” “Should it be me?” “How long will people go, and be, for the moment –  the absent arms?”  ”How must it feel to just have another person come and go in and out of their lives?”

In human love – this would not be done very long .  Most of us will go back to our lives after reading about it or watching the news.  Well, I don’t want to be part of that “us” anymore. I don’t want to let my heart just sigh as in “oh how sad.” But even in this, I –  we must trust that God is in control.  And that  - His ways are not our ways.  I have had to say that over and over again lately – His ways are not our ways!  God is in control and so we must listen and go when he says go. And we must wait and pray when He says wait.  Through our faith and trust in Him, His love will be the hands and feet.  His love will be the absent arms.  His love is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

My pray in this is that I will be ready to go when He says go.  That God alone will show me how to be His hands and feet.

Tonight I was in the kitchen as Brandon was saying, he needed to go finish some work on the computer so that he wouldn’t be up late.  About 5 minutes later, he was in the living room floor playing blocks with our 3 year old Logan. “I thought you were going to work,” I commented.  He replied, “He was standing at the door knocking and smiling at me and said “please.  What am I supposed to do with that?”

Well, you are supposed to go sit in the floor and build blocks.

Last week on a business trip a man that took Brandon and his boss to dinner told him “I have one piece of advice that I like to give young men and that one piece of advice is: Do what is important, not what is urgent.”

We have both pondered this statement. There is definitely some wisdom to be had from that. I know I have made just a couple of choices differently than before because of that statement and I see my sweet husband doing it too.

So I’m passing this very wise piece of advice along to you – Do what is important, not what is urgent.

The other day, after I had graded a couple of days worth of work for the girls, I sat down with them to look at anything they missed.  I had put a red dot beside anything they missed on homework, so that they could rework it.  I want to make sure that they are comprehending the concept, not just checking it off as another page done. Sometimes we have to revisit an entire concept.  Sometimes, especially with math, it is simply that they have forgotten a step.  But the formula is just as important as the answer because it shows the relationship between the numbers.

The other day after working through one of these recheck days with the girls, we got a little hung up on math with my younger daughter. We worked through it but not without some sweat. :-)

Later that day I was struck how much I am just like that with God. I truly desire to do what God is asking me to do or teaching me to do. But sometimes, I catch myself relearning certain steps or concepts that God has been so patient to teach me.  I can just hear him, “Ok Darlene, let’s try this one more time.”  And like my daughter, I reply to God, “but I’ve already learned that can’t we just move along?”  God reminds me that I have forgotten a step or maybe I missed it altogether.  The proof is just not there that I’ve gotten it yet.

He reminds me that what I am learning through the process is just as important as the final result.

It is little moments like this that I realize God had a much bigger plan, than my being obedient in homeschooling the kids. He has so much to teach me (if I will listen).  I’m praying that I don’t miss any of the red dots he has marked.  I pray that I will approach these lessons with a more willing spirit to relearn the things I thought I’d already learned.