Like Brother Like Sister

This was taken this morning with the good old faithful cell phone camera, while my other camera is charging.  Morgan was on her play mat and Hunter got down to hang out with her while he played his DS.  Morgan on her own, put her arms around her brother and hung on him while he played his video game.  She hung out with him and even watched him play his DS,  for a good 3-5 minutes.  I'm lovin it! 

Blog in Question:

The blog "Mommy's Little Princesses" is my cousin Brandi who lives in Texas.  I am giving her blog a little make over.  This is her header I have made (all by myself) so that means it is an original and unique header.  I made it from scratch.  She said she wanted pink and black, so I did pink and black and already picked out her background drop to match the header.  Now I am just waiting for her to give me the login info so I can put it all together.  

Anyways, here is the header I put together for her. (Click image to zoom)  These are her two girls Alexis and Ashlyn.  

Today's Quote 

One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody, everything, every night before you go to bed.

Week Two Devotional - Sorry I am late!

Scripture:

I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand and say to you, "Do not fear, I will help you." 

Isaiah 41:13

Wow, I have never fully read that verse before. I have just always known and read verses here and there about "do not fear." I like this one, because I like that He says He will take my right hand, and help me." Now that is a great feeling.

Did you know that the word "FEAR", shows up in the bible 365 times?  God, really must not want us to fear, for he put it in the bible, one for every day of the year.  Check it out here.

Devotional:

It's okay with God for you to be scared to death.  He recognizes our fears and our insecurities.  I feel like the Spirit of God sometimes says to me, "You know Misty, I understand that you're not very happy about this.  I understand that you may be crying over this.  Cry, shake, whatever---but do My will, child.  Do My will.  I have victory for you." 

Discussion:

Okay, so I truly opened my mouth wide, raise eye brows and lean head down on right palm as I read this.  God is amazing.  He knew exactly the words I needed to read today.  I posted a post yesterday, and before I go further, I just want to first say THANK YOU.  Thank you all so much for either emailing me or leaving a comment with prayers.  It really means a lot to me.  It actually feels nice to know that you have people out there really praying for you.  

As I said in my post yesterday, I am broken.  I have been broken for the last year of my life.  No, actually I have been broken for the last 8 years of my life.  My life hasn't been a easy road since the year I had my son.  It has nothing to with my son, it has everything to do with my choices in life and God tightening up the rope and telling me, I have had enough slack, now it times to limit my own freedom.  When I say freedom, I mean, freedom in choices.  I don't seem to do a very good job sometimes with the choices I make in my own life.  

Just when I thought I was finally getting through the 'storms' of my life, I meet my husband, I get married, have another beautiful baby and start living and planning my life.  Notice how I said "my life." That's the problem right there.  I got to a place where things were finally looking good for me, I was blessed through amazing people in my life who help me get back on my feet.  I was getting stable in my beautiful home.  I was working, and traveling.  I was feeling so confident.  Although, I was appreciative for all my blessings, I have lacked giving God my attention.  Why do I always seem to do that?  Haven't I learned yet that if I can't find a balance in my good times in life for God, that he is going to continue giving me the dark days because that is when he most gets my attention. Now, I also know that there will be dark days no matter what, and I am learning to say to God, "thank you for these days too, how can I learn from it." But, let me tell you the truth, I am not so brave sometimes or so sincere when I say "thank you for these hard times, how can I learn."  

I am broken in my marriage.  It has been a full year since Halloween of last year to be exact, that my marriage really started to struggle.  We go up, we stay steady and then we fall.  We have a very crazy cycle of this that we just can't seem to get ourselves out of.  What's really getting scary, is that our make-ups are coming quicker and faster (a good thing), but our down times are getting darker and meaner (almost too painful).  Without exposing my relationship too much, or going into too many details, I will just be "transparent" here and let my life sort of be an open book and tell you, that I AM AFRAID (uncertainty).  I want to believe where my marriage will end up, but I struggle with my fears and doubts.  This is where this devotional comes in and pulls at my heart strings in big ways.

Devotional:

So even though you may be afraid about many things, don't be afraid to allow God to do His work in you, looking into the deepest part of your heart and releasing freedom in your life, teach you how to live in victory.

Discussion:

I feel just by reading that right there, that I have had a years worth of counseling given to me in one paragraph.  God knows where I am struggling, what I fear in my marriage and what I really need to work on.  So, why do I keep trying to figure it all out on my own? I have many insecurities in my marriage, and I have never been one to be or feel insecure in anyway. So why now, and why in my marriage?  I haven't figured that out yet.  

Devotional:

God wants to remove all your doubts concerning who brings the victory in your life. 

Discussion:

What? Let me go back and read that part again. 

"God wants to remove all MY doubts concerning who brings the victory in MY life?" 

I feel like a load just lifted off of my back and now I can go to sleep and make-up for all those endless nights of getting no sleep (especially these last 4 nights).

Devotional:

In the same way, no amount of determination will bring us freedom.  We learn to be victorious by surrendering our lives completely to the Spirit of God, not by gritting our teeth and try harder.  

Pride can lead to captivity. It becomes an obstacle every believer must face on the freedom trail.  What will you learn from the down fall of others?

We fear making sacrifices. But the irony is that we also make a lot of sacrifices when we are not living the will of God. How many things have we placed on the altar to Satan's kingdom? 

Without Christ, every women has intense insecurities.  Unless we find our identity in Him, we Christian women can be just as prone to insecurities about our appearances as unbelievers.  To Christ, the most beautiful person on earth is the one making preparation to meet the Groom.  

Discussion:

Well, that is like walking into a brick wall and having a brick still fall down on top of your head to give you a double bang to make sure you really heard right and are paying full attention.  

I am not really going to put in my thoughts of discussion here....I think this will be more beneficial (and private) if given this part of the discussion with God.  (For All of Us!)

I made a joke to a friend last night in an email.  I told her that I had slept with another man over the last two nights.  Then I continued to explain---- I have been so down right broken, frighten, hurt, disappointed, sad, uncertain, angry, tired, shaky, hungry, lonely, bitter, frustrated, anxious, nervous, worried, stressed, confused, weak.... I crawled in bed with my bible.  I clutched it right next to me, I kissed it, I laid my cheek on it and I shed tears on it (HIM).  Asking for Him to take the wheel, take control, put His hand over me and give me the peace and the courage I need to get through another night by myself, and lean not on to my own understanding of things going on in my marriage, but to give myself totally and freely to HIM.  ( FYI: My husband has not lived home in 5 months now, my daughter is 6 months and 3 weeks old). 

Please keep me, my family and my husband in your prayers.  I don't want to embarrass him by blogging too much about our personal stuff, but the bible says to not be ashamed.  We could seriously use the prayers.  

=========================

I hope this devotional touched you in some way and that it had as much power in its words to you as it did for me.  I feel like I can walk out of my house tomorrow a more free and confident women.  

My friend that I made the joke to about 'sleeping with another man', she sent me some verses to read, and I can't keep them to myself. I want to share them with others that may need to read them tonight also.

 

Psalm 27:1  "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the defense of my life; whom shall I dread?"

 

Psalm 56:3  "The Lord is for me; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?"

 

Psalm 57:1  “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by.

 

Jeremiah 29:11 “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

 

Isaiah 41:10 “…do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”

 

Romans 8:24-26  “In hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

 Last night I did exactly that, I didn't pray.  I just said "Lord please hear my heart", and I let out a big sigh and fell asleep.  And, I had a really good nights sleep.

By the way totally of the subject, but I forgot to post it yesterday.  Morgan, my butterfly has not awakened in the middle of the night for her 2:00 AM feeding for an entire week now.  I only had to deny her, the 2-AM feeding one time.  How lucky am I?  She is sleeping through the night, she is taking more regular naps now....AND....and my little Butterfly's bottom right tooth did break through the skin.  It's so cute. Just the very tip of it is out, enough that you can see it and feel it's edges.  

Yes, yes...I have taken many pictures of it.  I will try to put them together and post them sometime tomorrow.  Morgan goes to visit her daddy tomorrow, and I have a meeting, a hockey game to attend and some laundry to do. Not to mention my nails that I can't even look at right now.  Want to talk about being ashamed, my nails are embarrassing. 

Prayer:

Dear Father, I want to just take this time to say THANK YOU.  Thank you for the many who have taken the time to actually pray for me, my family and my situation, Lord.  What a great feeling that is, knowing that people really do care and the power of prayer is simply that, POWERFUL!  

Thank you for this new day, a blessed day it was.  Lord, I know you know my fears, my struggles and my insecurities. I pray to you about them, but sometimes I probably don't pray the way I ought to.  Lord, I turn over to you all of those things.  I don't want to live in fear, the bible demands that we not do that.  Lord, I don't want to feel anxious, for you will provide my true needs.  I know this, but I allow my heart and mind to take over sometimes, please help me to stay focused on "your plans" in all of this.  Lord, only you know what the out come will be in my marriage and my future, no matter how hard I continue to manage it myself or the effort I put into it.  YOU are in control. Remind me that I need to let go, and take the "uncertainty" of life and just go down the slide, the slide of Your will, Your plan.  

Tonight, I want to give you all of me, the good the bad, and ask that you remove all of these negative emotions from me.  Let me walk in confidence and in peace, because I am a women of GODS.  You are my God, whom or what shall I fear? Right? I will let my light shine on and on and on..... I believe in You and I believe you can make anything happen. I witnessed I think my first real eye popping miracle when I got to read about little Stellan being born healed and perfectly healthy.  A child that was sentenced to death before his birth by a man call a doctor.  A Lord that can perform that miracle right before our eyes, is also the same God that loves me, loves my family, loves my husband and loves my marriage.  And in return the same Lord, I trust and that I love.

Thank you for your unconditional love.  

Amen.

  

 Letting Your Life Speak

On the importance of listening deeply to find your true vocation. 

Excerpted from "Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation" by Parker J. Palmer

I was in my early thirties when I began to wake up to questions about my vocation. By all appearances, things were going well, but the soul does not put much stock in appearances. Seeking a path more purposeful than accumulating wealth, holding power, winning at competition, or securing a career, I had started to understand that is indeed possible to live a life other than one's own. Fearful that I was doing just that, I would snap awake in the middle of the night and stare for long hours at the ceiling.

"True self, when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost."

Then I ran across the old Quaker saying, "Let your life speak." I found these words encouraging, and I thought they meant: "Let the highest truths and values guide you." I lined up the loftiest ideals I could find and set out to achieve them. The results were rarely admirable, often laughable, and sometimes grotesque. But always they were unreal, a distortion of my true self--as must be the case when one lives from the outside in, not the inside out. I had simply found a "noble" way to live a life that was not my own.

Today, some thirty years later, "Let life speak" means something else to me, a meaning faithful both to the ambiguity of those words and to the complexity of my own experience: "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you."

My youthful understanding of "Let your life speak" led me to conjure up the highest values I could imagine and then try to conform my life to them. There may be moments in life when we are so unformed that we need to use values like an exoskeleton to keep us from collapsing. But something is very wrong if such moments recur often in adulthood. Trying to live by an abstract norm, will invariably fail--and may even do great damage.

"Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am."

Vocation, the way I was seeking it, becomes an act of will, a grim determination that one's life will go this way or that whether it wants to or not. If the self is sin-ridden and will bow to truth and goodness only under duress, that approach to vocation makes sense. But if the self seeks not pathology but wholeness, then the willful pursuit of vocation is an act of violence toward ourselves--violence in the name of a vision. True self, when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth.

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what is truly about--quite apart from what I would like it to be about--or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.

That insight is hidden in the word vocation itself, which is rooted in the Latin for "voice." Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.

Behind this understanding of vocation is a truth that the ego does not want to hear because it threatens the ego's turf: Everyone has a life that is different from the "I" of daily consciousness, a life that is trying to live through the "I" who is its vessel. It takes time and hard experience to sense the difference between the two--to sense that running beneath the surface of the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged. That fact alone makes "listen to your life" difficult counsel to follow.

If I am to let my life speak things I want to hear, things I would gladly tell others, I must also let it speak things I do not want to hear and would never tell anyone else! My life is not only about my strengths and virtues, it is also about my liabilities and my limits, my trespasses and my shadow. An inevitable though often ignored dimension of the quest for "wholeness" is that we must embrace what we dislike or find shameful about ourselves as well as what we are confident and proud of. That is why the poet says, "Ask me mistakes I have made."

"The soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions."

I do not feel despondent about my mistakes, any more than the poet does, though I grieve the pain they have sometimes caused others. Our lives are "experiments with truth" (to borrow the subtitle of Gandhi's autobiography), and in an experiment, negative results are at least as important as success. I have no idea how I would have learned the truth about myself and my calling without the mistakes I have made.

How we are to listen to our lives is a question worth exploring. In our culture, we tend to gather information in ways that do not work very well when the source is the human soul. The soul is not responsive to subpoenas or cross-examinations. At best it will stand in the dock only long enough to plead the Fifth Amendment. At worst it will jump bail and never be heard from again. The soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions.

The soul is like a wild animal--tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well merge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek.