Thursday, January 31, 2008

Sharing a little of His word....

I just wanted to share a few thoughts that keep ringing in my head from some bible study and preaching I heard yesterday and last night .... I wanted to share these in case it touches someone else out there ....

I recently started a Beth Moore bible study, Living Beyond Yourself. Yesterday I was reading about living a crucified life: living not for your own will but dying to yourself and living for God's will. There was a statment that just keeps ringing in my head. She said,

"Never misunderstand pain [emotional, physical, spiritual] as permission to forego the will of God."

"Never misunderstand pain as permission to forego the will of God."

I just thought that was a powerful statement because so often people say, "Oh, well, God would never want me to suffer so I'll...[you fill in the blank]." But what God wants is for you to keep His word ... even when it's difficult.

Another interesting thing I heard was last night while watching a show featuring pastor Henry Wright from Pleasant Valley Church in Thomaston, GA, author of A More Excellent Way. The focus of his book is connecting the dots between our sins and our diseases. It was a very interesting discussion. My husband borrowed this book from a friend but had to return it and now we are thinking about buying a copy of our own.

He was talking about blessings and curses. He said that when you follow God's word, He will fullfill His promises and offer you blessings. However, when you don't follow His word, you are essentially following a different word (Satan's word) and as the consequence, you receive Satan's "blessings" (aka curses).

... kinda makes sense ...

He also talked about how he did a word study and looked up the word "if" as it applied to the scriptures in Deuteronomy about blessings and curses. IF we obey the Lord and follow His word, we will receive blessings - he found that this "if" meant quickly, we'll receive the blessings quickly - but IF we do not follow His word, we will receive curses - he found that the different word "if" used here meant slowly - we will recieve curses slowly, in time... which is how diseases work.

.... hhmmmm...

...just a few things that I thought were interesting and I felt the urge to share, just in case it touches someone else out there...

Additional note:
Please don't get angry with me if you have an ailment and say "I'm not a sinner!" We are all sinners. I think we need to all pray and ask God to reveal to us how we can better follow His word. I'm doing this myself...

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Flannel Sheets - You Are My New Love!

Haaaallelujah! Haaaaallelujah! Hallelujah!Hallelujah! Hal-leee-luuuu-jaaah!!!!

Ahhh!!!! Flannel - my new love!

Every night as I sit like a moron at this computer until 1:00 a.m. ... 2:00 a.m., rather than going to bed at 10:00 p.m. at the LATEST (I've obviously not yet successfully achieved that goal for 2008), I freeze my butt off here in the dark and then eventually get into bed. I lay there like a popsicle, trying to snuggle up to John to tap into his body heat (without waking him up from a jolt of cold toes... wait, who am I kidding?! NOTHING wakes him up!), yet continue to shiver out of my skin until I have put on three pairs of thick, zero-degree hiking socks and retrieved my beloved fleece throw from the hall closet. Finally, I then have some relief and can drift off. I had considered using an electric blanket. However, after going up into the attic to dig out the old gotta-be-over-30-years-old-electric-blanket-of-my-youth from a box and plugging it in to see if it still worked, we felt no heat. Instead, I placed both of my hands on the blanket, paused, looked at John with my head tilted a little and said, "Do you feel that?" He placed his hands on the blanket feeling around for the eluding warmth and said, "What?" "That." He paused a moment and then we both realized that the "tickle" that I was feeling was ELECTRICITY!!! "AAaaahh!" I jerked my hands back, a little freaked by the feeling of live electricity crawling under my fingertips! So, uh, no electric blanket for me, thank you very much! We talked about buying a new one but then the whole electric-current-running-over-my-entire-body-thing flashed cancerous thoughts through my head (yes, I realize this is going overboard but that's what went through my head) and I wasn't as excited about the idea anymore.

Flash back to Christmas. Abigail received flannel Dora sheets for her bed. Followed were several 3:00 a.m. visits over the course of the next month, "Mommy, come sleep with me." Here I am zombie-shuffling to her bed answering, "Okay, but just for a little while, sweetie" (actually thinking "sure, anything, as long as it means sleeeeeep.....zzzzz!"). I realized during those sweet yet sleep-deprived snuggles in her small bed just how warm her bed was. Especially after I would wake at 4:00 a.m. and return to my own cold, cold sheets (repeat process: snuggle up to John for warmth and hope that I don't disturb him with my coldness). So, I was sold. Note to self: add "buy flannel sheets" to my To Do list in the morning.

And then we come to tonight. I finally got the sheets. I finally got them on the bed. I (again) was up too late tonight and therefore partially frozen by the time I crawled into bed. But, aaahhhh - my first socked foot slid under the covers. My other socked foot slid under the covers (yes, don't I just scream sexiness here!). I could already tell the difference! I slid the rest of my body under the covers and layed my head down on an already inviting pillow case. I was already halfway thawed rather than nearly to the deep-freeze stage! Snuggle to John and done. I was thawed and ready for sleep! And I must say the ensuing lightening storm of static shooting and darting around under the sheets as I was sliding in was quite entertaining!!

... then of course I couldn't sleep because I wanted to share my new found joy with the world! So here, again, it is 1:00 a.m. as I sit at the computer! But that's fine. I sit here wrapped in my fleece throw just knowing that I can crawl back into my flannel bed when I'm done (allthewhile giggling at the lightening show) and snuggle up nice and toasty!

Thank you God for flannel!

Monday, January 28, 2008

Quote of the Day

Today's quote is not from one of the kids this time but shamelessly taken from a fellow blogger whose site I love to visit. I just loved this quote and wanted to share:

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." (William Butler Yeats)

...just simmer on that one for a minute....

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Guess what Grandma? I can say Sh*t!!

We often work with the older kids on saying their S's as they both tend to lisp, saying 'th' rather than 's.' This weekend, John had been working with Jared trying to show him how to hold his mouth with his front teeth together to get more of an 's' sound rather than letting his tongue come out and make the 'th' sound. Jared was doing really good. Grandma called about that time and Jared was itching to talk to her as always. The first thing he says to her is, "Guess what Grandma? I can say Sh*t!" Both John's and my head jerked around!! I leaned over toward the phone in Jared's hand and said, "We're working on our S's today. He's trying to say "sit!" I could hear Grandma quietly say, "Ooooh." John and I were silently dying laughing as Jared continued his conversation!

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Wanna Save Some Money?

I was just over on Kisses of Sunshine reading the feedback she received to her request for money saving tips. There were several websites for grocery savings and penny pinching that look great. I'll look at them in more detail later but wanted to share the link to her post "A Pain in the..." from January 7th.

Happy Savings!

2 More Goals

Adding to my list of Resolutions/GOALS.....

The proverbial "lose weight" will be added to my list as I still haven't lost all that 'baby weight' and Rachel is about to turn a year old! I will, will, WILL lose the final 10-15 pounds and will hopefully look half way decent in a swim suit this year - I hope!?! I at least want to fit back into my old clothes and stop feeling the need to "hide" behind big baggy shirts!

I'll steal one from Natalie - I too would like to scrapbook 30 pages this year. That would give me a quantifiable goal to help me on my way to at least making a dent in catching up on my scrapbooking.... which I've not touched in THREE years! I gotta a lotta work ahead of me!

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Resolutions ...er.... Goals for 2008 (and beyond)

While I don't believe in making New Years Resolutions and normally don't make them, Natalie tagged me to list my resolutions for 2008. I don't call these my "New Years Resolutions" but I did actually start a list a couple of months ago of habits I wanted to create, or one could call them my goals moving forward. I guess it's sorta like the difference between calling it a "diet" and a "life style change." I realize the list is long but I've been thinking about this for the last few months and adding to it when I think of something else I'd like to do from now on (another key difference - "from now on" vs "this year")... anyway.... here ya' go.

1. Bedtime 10:30pm (11:00pm at the latest)
2. kids bedtime 7:30pm (8:00pm at the latest)
3. get into the habit of Menu Planning Mondays (plan minimum one week menus and shopping list)
4. pick out the kids M-F clothes on Sunday night
5. fold and put away laundry RIGHT out of the dryer (no more wading through MOUNTAINS of clean laundry)
6. run dishwasher every night and unload every morning to keep kitchen cleaner/nicer
7. limit the kids TV watching time to 2 hrs max per day (and that still sounds bad)
8. moisturize hands every time I wash and every time I can think about it (they're always horribly dry and rough and screaming for me to pick at them)
9. stop picking! (I'm a picker - I pick at my fingers, my face, my lips, anything I can get hold of!)
10. start coloring my gray!!!
11. snack healthier (I'd gotten really slack over the last few months on my eating habits)
12. check my credit card statement online daily to help monitor my spending and maintain my budget
13. limit my own computer time daily
14. exercise minimum 2 times per week, preferably 3 times per week
15. prep/cook 1-2 meals ahead of time weekly
16. get kids up no later than 7:15am to avoid running late every morning
17. be less "busy" and more available to the kids
18. stop impulse buying, even if I have to come back on another (dreaded) trip to get it later after I've thought about it longer and determined that it's in the budget
19. read 20-30 minutes every day (Bible or other Christian material)
20. read to the kids daily (we already read Bible stories nightly but I want to read other books to the kids for their enjoyment and for more focused one-on-one or actually one-on-two time)
21. use coupons more

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Quote of the Day

Scene: Daddy and Jared playing football (in the house no less!!!)

Jared: "You throw good Daddy. Like Me!"