I just noticed that I haven't written anything here in a month, so I started thinking back through May to realize that I cannot put into words all the changes that have happened in me during that time.
My writing interests were very dry over the last weeks. I didn't even write any articles for Examiner.com (I hope that I am still 'employed' there!), but I can see now that my focus on life has changed and again the good Lord has been working on my heart as I strive to be ever more like Him. Almost every morning over the last 5 months I have eagerly gone to Him and spent time with Him learning how to pray and learning from His Word more and more about Him. On Sunday mornings my heart yearns to worship Him at church (although health issues cause me to feel absolutely terrible while there) and to sit under the teaching of my pastor who has a fiery love for God that encourages my heart and makes me want to spend even more time with the Father.
As I have shared in previous posts that I have been reading more, I am finding my thirst for Christian books to be insatiable. I want to become more and more like Christ, and the more I read and the more I spend time with Him, the more I want! I find my hunger for the Lord to be so strange, yet so wonderful that I just can't describe it. I pray that my love for the Lord will be seen by all and that others will be encouraged to want the same thing, too. Break my heart, Father, for what breaks yours... Everything I am for your kingdom's cause...show me how to love like you have loved me. Amen.
It's been pretty quiet around here as of late. We had a very nice spring, and a lot of nice days to sit outside and read some great books. We even started digging a spot for our new vegetable garden, and it's coming along. We are about half-way done digging, but the weather has now turned rainy, cold, and windy, so we've had to put the rest on hold while we wait for it to warm up a bit.
The kids are doing well in their school work. We just finished the longest time span of five weeks before a break and the week off went very fast. We're now on our normal four-week stretch but after this we'll go down to three weeks for the summer months. In mid-August, we'll take three weeks off before we move up to the next grade for both of them. It will be interesting to see how that goes since we have only taken off three weeks once before and we were extremely busy during that time helping friends move, but this should be a little more relaxing so we'll have more time to get in each other's hair!
One of my favorite books that I just finished reading from the last grouping is The Forgotten God by Francis Chan. If you have not read this book, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy and make sure you have a nitch of time set aside every day to read it until you're done. It's a book I intend to read at least, oh....a dozen more times. I am still in the process of reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Captivating by John and Stasi Eldridge. I have about 52 books in my wish list right now, so I think I'm going to need to get motivated if I'm going to read them all before I add a whole bunch more. It's kinda funny, but I used to hate reading. It was very difficult for me because I have a learning disability in reading comprehension and retention, but I have learned over the last several years how to work beyond it all and reading has now become one of my pastimes I really enjoy. I just thank God for that because without Him being in control of that I doubt if I would have ever picked up another book after college.
I am still writing for Examiner.com, but not as often as I'd like. I did pick up another examiner title, too, so now I am also the Minneapolis Natural Health Examiner. They've gotten very picky about articles being local, however, which makes it a bit difficult to always keep natural health local as well as debt examiner(my other title). My writing "well" as dried up a little because of that, and I don't write as much as I should be.
Well, I am off to spend an evening watching a movie with the kiddos. It's rainy outside and only 40 degrees, so not much else to do tonight!
Yes, more exciting news! My daughter, who accepted Christ as her Savior back in January, has chosen to get baptized, and it will happen this Sunday! We are all very excited around here...not only will she get baptized, but a dear friend and her whole family as well! This friend has also asked me to help our pastor baptize her, and I feel so honored. I cried the day she asked me if I would, and I'll probably cry all of Sunday morning -- tears of happiness and joy. My hubby will help baptize our daughter, and we have invited many friends and family to come and be witness to her public profession of faith. It is going to be one awesome morning is all I can say! God is good!
Today I'd like to highlight my pastor's blog. His insight has always been encouraging if not convicting, and I enjoy checking in there often. You'll also find it over to the left and in my first grouping of blogs. It has been a joy to be under his teaching over the last year and a half, and I must say I have learned more in that time from him than I have during my whole Christian walk. Pastor Matthew deeply loves the Lord and he does not keep it hidden for anything! He also posts his weekly sermons on his blog. I guarantee you'll be blessed if you watch them.
My brain seems to be on overdrive lately, but in a good way. I just wish the bleak, dreary days of winter wouldn't be so, well, bleak and dreary, making my S.A.D. seem not so, well, SAD. But I still have a positive outlook and waiting and watching for the first signs of spring that will happen in just a couple short months. To bide my time, I have many things I am working on to get more organized and feel like I have a handle on a few things.
Over the last couple of days, I've been working on my kids' homeschool lesson plans for the next nine months, and I'm about halfway through...it's at times stressful, but I am liking the feeling of having it all organized and done so I won't have to do it again until the fall. I'll work on the other half next week.
To help me from going stir crazy and fight off cabin fever, I've been snuggling up in blankets and doing a lot of reading over the last month, and just finished Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller. Before that I read Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Both outstanding books, and both very convicting. My heart and soul are thirsting for more God-glorifying books like these, ones that grow me and encourage me to be more like Him every day. Mr. Keller has opened my eyes to just what I value, and it wasn't what I thought it was. The Lord opened my eyes to see that there are many distractions in my day that keep me from Him, and I have been working to change that in my life so that I can be spending more time with God throughout my day...not because I am 'supposed' to, but because I want to.
I did also read another book during the last month that was a good read; Glenn Beck's Common Sense by Glenn Beck. I got it for a Christmas gift and it was quite thought provoking.
In my attempt to be reading a lot of books about getting out of debt, I just recently borrowed from our church library Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University CD's to listen to. I haven't started listening yet, but I hope to fit it in somewhere in my already busy days. There are 13 lessons, each about an hour long. That's a LOT of listening!
On the positive side, our debt picture is stabilizing, and we're starting to work our way from negative to positive. I have a spending plan in place and I am keeping track of every single penny that leaves (or comes into) our bank accounts. I am also preparing to sell a lot of homeschool books and other items on ebay within the next week or two. It will be nice to have that extra cash to put toward our everyday expenses so that we can focus on getting rid of debt. In a few months we will have a loan paid off that will help our debt reduction immensely and hoping to be completely debt free (barring no complications), including mortgage, by June 2015, Lord willing. In the meantime I've really tried to put a limit on our spending. We're eating from the pantry as much as possible this month since I have a nice amount sitting on the shelves and in the freezer, and hoping to eat out very minimally if at all. We did eat out the first of February, but we paid less than $1.50 for a meal for all four of us at Burger King with free kids meal coupons. The young man who waited on us was nice enough to let us adults have free kids meals, too! We splurged and I got an apple pie since I don't eat the fries and shared them with Jeff and the kids.
The only setbacks we've had so far this year is our dog Asia (standard poodle) had her ears act up again and had a yeast infection in one of them, and some appliances. Four of our appliances are acting up, but we're going to try to get the parts ourselves and see if we can fix them. It should save us about $150-200 to do it ourselves, and according to my brother, all of the problems are easily fixed...just need the parts. The vet visits and meds have been pretty spendy, so that has taken a nice chunk of change.
I am also still freelance writing to try to bring extra income in. Hopefully I can set a day aside next week to write several debt-related articles for examiner.com so all I have to do before I post them is one last edit. That would help out a lot so that I can feel less time crunches to get articles in.
Overall January hasn't been too bad. We did spend a little more in some areas than we wanted to, but we're working on doing better this month. I got a lot of reading in and it is helping prioritize things better, and I am starting to feel that February should be an okay month, and time to start planning for more spring and summer things like gardening and camping...ooooooh.........camping...... :-)
My daughter came to me tonight and asked me at what age I accepted Jesus into my heart. I told her I did when I was 31. She asked me if it would be okay if she beat me to it...my heart skipped a beat...did she mean now??? I asked her if that's what she meant...YES!!! SHE DID!!! We talked....we prayed....we cried. What a joyful day - knowing that she will be going to heaven too!
I have been silently praying since the moment she left the room that I can be a good discipler to her, and that my life can be even more Christ-like than before so she has a good role model. The song from Phillips, Craig, and Dean keeps running through my head now..."Lord I wanna be just like you, because he wants to be just like me, I wanna be a holy example for his innocent eyes to see...Help me be a living Bible Lord, that my little boy can read, I wanna be just like you, 'cuz he wants to be like me." I of course am singing with she in place of he, but I also pray, pray, pray, that my son will realize his need for the Savior as well.
What an awesome day! What a Savior! God is good, all the time.
I apologize for not being around in a while. I've been here, but only to check up on other blogs, so yep, I've been lurking on my own blog! The holidays have kept me extremely busy, and I have just not had time to consider writing (other than for examiner.com, and even that's been limited).
We started back to school today after a nice three-week break, and the kids actually did pretty well. My son wanted to buck the system a little bit, but once he realized Momma wasn't going to budge he decided to do what I was asking. This evening he gets to play his dad's xbox360 while big sister and Dad go on a date. It's nice because it gives me a bit of breathing room, too, and I can catch up on a couple of things I've let go by the wayside.
Things are going alright here otherwise. I will try to update my health blog with the latest on me as there have been some developments on my longterm health issues, but the doctors are still trying to come up with a diagnosis. I've also been very busy updating our spending plan and preparing to upgrade our old Quicken to the 2010 version. I still am smart shopping and our storage room and freezers are looking good as well.
A fun thing my daughter and I just did before the new year is do the Pantene Beautiful Lengths for Cancer hair donation. I had 11 inches cut off, and she had 8. You can see the pic below. It's been taking a bit to get used to the shorter hair, but it was for a good cause, so more than worth it.
Posts
