This is the Bible... Day 2 SRT

Psalm 119:1-32

• To walk in Your ways, to function at all times according to Your word. 
• Keep your eyes OPEN, His word opens our eyes. 
• I will RUN in the way of your laws, as you ENLARGE my heart. Focus my heart in on YOU. 

Isaiah 55:1-9

• Why do you spend money on that which is not bread and labor for things that do not satisfy? Wow. 
• We are HUMAN and we will never think and function as the LORD does. His ways are always HIGHER than ours, and His thoughts are HIGHER than our thoughts. May we ever be aware of this fact. 

There is such freedom in the fact that it is ALL ABOUT HIM. It is not about us and our glory or our perfection or lack there of. It is ALL ABOUT HIM. We need to allow HIM to use us in His story. but we are free to just be used by Him to bring His glory about here on earth. There is no pressure to be the leading lady or the star, because it is all for HIM. 

Gratefulness Day 1...

This is a season of thankfulness. A time of year designated in America for gratefulness. Thank You Lord that you orchestrated this holiday season to slow us down and make us reflect. Even though we should be in this attitude all year long, You know we are not. We struggle, we are so selfish, we are so spoiled.
Me and my family are in such unfamiliar territory right now (literally and figuratively). We are 700 miles away from our family, in a city that we felt You calling us to through a new job opportunity for Dylan. We moved here to Nashville back in February, moved into the home of our dreams in May, and as of a month ago Dylan is without a job.
We have plenty to be confused about, worried about, scared about, anxious about, plenty. But this is not the season of worry or anxiety, at least it shouldn't be. Yet, I let myself CONSTANTLY dwell there. It is not where I want to dwell. Starting today, I am choosing gratefulness.

Inspired by a sweet friend of mine's blog, I am going to write a letter to my God everyday this season to tell Him what I am grateful for. Starting today...

Father,
Thank you for my husband. You brought him into my life and I never thought I would meet a man like him in this world. He is the most kind, most real, most sincere, most loyal, most godly man. I cannot believe we are where we are, here in Nashville, together with our 4 children, it makes me smile just thinking about it. He is such a seeker of You Father, please bless his seeking. Please bring him a job. OK, back to being grateful. I am so thankful to be in a marriage relationship with someone I trust with my whole heart. Thank You Father. Thank You for Dylan.

... Heather

Rough week...

It has been a rough week. It is our second week as residents here in TN, and it just started out Monday really rough. I was just in a bad mood. I am never really in a bad mood for no reason, so I was kinda weirded out by myself honestly.
   School was not easy, Lyric is SO emotional and non obedient right now, and August is not sleeping good during the day. OH and Dylan has been out of town this week, and he will be leaving again in a few days. And we are in an apartment that creeps me out at night and our upstairs neighbors are TERRIBLY loud and I swear they drop 20 pounds weights on the ground and make me jump out of my skin! and it wakes up my baby!
   God I need you, God I NEED you NOW! That is all I know to say. I need scripture to breath life in where there is worn out and tired barely hanging on life. I need you Lord, NEED YOUR LIFE GIVING GRACE AND MERCY.

Taking Control...

So, we have our house up for sale, and it has been for almost 2 months now. We have a contract on another home on 1 acre that we love. We have had 2 showings in 2 months time, and sometimes it is SO hard to be patient. I would say that it is not hard to TRUST that the Lord will do what He wants to do in our situation, but sometimes my actions speak otherwise, and that is what this blog is about.

When we put our house up for sale, 3 friends on FB put theirs up about the exact same time. All three of them sold their homes in the FIRST WEEK of it on the market! I saw one of those friends at the mall today, and it just put me in a spin of: WHAT ARE WE DOING WRONG?

Sometimes as women, our fear makes us try to take control of our situations. And that is sadly what I did today. I came home from the mall, and just started grasping for any reason why our house is not selling, out of fear. I looked at all the numbers, shared it on FB, and then wrote my realtor an email asking for insight into what is going wrong. I was in fear, and I chose to take control in any way that I could. It is an ABSOLUTELY out of my control situation, but I am trying in some way to control it! Dang.

I wanted so bad to take that email back and apologize to my realtor. But as soon as I realized what that email really represented, which was me trying to take control, I asked forgiveness from the One that I really owed it to. If I am going to trust Him FULLY, I need to heed all control to Him. It is out of my control, but my selfishness was trying to gain some. Not cool self. Not cool.

Lord, I do pray that you would forgive me for when I tried to take control of this situation. Help me to see when I do this again, and in other situations. I trust YOU. I trust YOU. I look forward to seeing your love, and faithfulness to me and my family through the outcome of this whole situation, whatever that outcome may be. I love you.

... Heather

Becoming Myself (1)...

I am so grateful that my favorite author in the world decided to come out with a new book. It is called: Becoming Myself. Lord, you have already spoken, uplifted, reminded, and encouraged me through this book SO much. The last chapter encouraged us to write out a list of things that we dream of... What are your dreams? I am going to attempt to write some down. Here goes nothing!

• I dream for all of my children to grow up knowing my God. Knowing You as you truly are, and loving You, and walking with You every day of their lives, through it all. 
• I dream for my husband to LOVE his job. For him to be able to have a job that he can delight in. A job that allows him to flourish in his true self. 
• I dream to always have the self control enough I need to stay a size that I am comfortable in. A size that creates no worries in me. 
• I dream to be able to go on vacation to Seagrove every summer of our children's lives. 
• I dream to be a photographer for a really long time, but to always be able to have a good balance of work and home.
• I dream to have a photo of mine published one day.
• I dream that my children will be successful at their dreams. That they will be able to do the things that they love always. 
• I dream that our family will always be very tight, very close, loving, and a team. 
• I dream that we can have a house with some land. A home that we can grow in and be in for a long time. A home that we can sit on the porch and watch the storms roll in, and just enjoy being with each other. 
• I dream for constant, at least almost constant, joy in our home. That we will laugh more, enjoy more, be more us together. 
• I dream to always take care of my family well.
• I dream to have my own garden and be able to grow some of our own food. 
• I dream to always be an energetic mom, always be my kids cheerleader, biggest fan, yet be good and truthful and everything they truly need. 
• I dream to grow old with Dylan. To be together always, and be able to sit on our porch when we are in our 70's look at each other and just be grateful and joyful for the life that we have lived together. 
• I dream for You God to have your fame spread through me and my family. I desire for you to use us in any way that you see fit, for you to have glory in our lives in every way.
• I dream to always define beauty for myself in a way that glorifies you and in a way that is different to the world. 
• I dream to always embrace the creativity you have placed in my heart, and to always let it shine out and never to be embarrassed of it. To take chances with it. 
• I dream to always have good friends. 
• I dream to play more music, to not neglect that passion. 
• I dream for a new house, did I say that already? ;)

Father, I am challenged by dreaming. It does not come as easily as I would think that it would. That is interesting to me. I want to dream for the things that are of you. I pray that if all of these things you see as good, that they will come true! May it be so! How exciting would that be. I love you my God. You are my one true thing. My constant, and my place, my only place of pure contentment and peace. I know this FULL well. 

A different Kind of Woman... Moses's Mom... Exodus 2:1-10

   " But when she could no longer hide him, she got a basket made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile River."... Exodus 2:3


   As a mom, this story is hard to read. Moses's mom was put in one of the toughest situations that a new mom could face: watch my child die by a soldiers sword or put him in a basket to float to who knows where in the river. Both is those are terrible and hear wrenching options in my opinion, but if there was one to choose, it would be the latter. What a brave and tough thing. What trust in her God that Moses's mom had to have in order to bring herself to the above actions. I try to imagine what guts this would take, and put myself in her situation. 
  Imagine if our Oklahoma government decided that no family was allowed to have any more children, and you had just had another baby. You could watch the government take your baby away, or you could bundle them up in their carrier seat and take them downtown and put them on the train, so be sent to safety who knows where. AND you send your little girl with the baby to watch over him! Your little girl returns to you later that evening to say that the governor's daughter found your baby on the bus and wants you to nurse him until he is old enough to be weened and then you need to give him to HER for forever to be HER child. Ahh! Heart wrenching! Moses's mom was a different kind of woman. 
   Her trust and resolve and bravery is amazing to me, and I can only marvel at it and try to learn from it. And we all know that her bravery paid off, because her son, HER son became one of the most admired men of faith in the Bible. The apple did not fall far from the tree. Moses himself took on some very impressive heroics, but he would have never even had had the chance if it was not for his momma. 
   What a different kind of woman Moses's mother was. Lord please help me to be brave like her. Help me to trust you above all my circumstances, especially when it comes to my children. You have entrusted me as my children's mother, and trusting You with them can be one of the hardest things to do, not because I do not think that You are trustworthy, but honestly I just have a hard time giving up control. Help me to see the bravery in Moses's mom and when You ask me to trust in You to take care of my children, and to loosen what I think is my control. I am their mother, but You are their God. I trust you, please continue to give me grace to Trust You and be brave. 

A Different Kind of Woman... Rebekah... Genesis 24:15-20

^"15 Before he had finished praying, he saw a young woman named Rebekah coming out with her water jug on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel, who was the son of Abraham’s brother Nahor and his wife, Milcah. ¹⁶ Rebekah was very beautiful and old enough to be married, but she was still a virgin. She went down to the spring, filled her jug, and came up again. ¹⁷ Running over to her, the servant said, “Please give me a little drink of water from your jug.”

¹⁸ “Yes, my lord,” she answered, “have a drink.” And she quickly lowered her jug from her shoulder and gave him a drink. ¹⁹ When she had given him a drink, she said, “I’ll draw water for your camels, too, until they have had enough to drink.” ²⁰ So she quickly emptied her jug into the watering trough and ran back to the well to draw water for all his camels."

   Rebekah is my woman of the day. I only read the first part of this story, and could not get past just a few simple things that make a big impression on me as a seeker and reader. So, let us dive into what we can learn from Rebekah about being a different kind of woman...

   Someone was praying for Rebekah. They did not know who Rebekah was, they were just praying that the Lord would bring a wife to Isaac. And Rebekah seems to be the one that the Lord had chosen for Isaac. I love all of this so far. I think I am more of a romantic than I would claim to be, but not a romantic as the world sees it, romance set up and blessed by God! That kind of romance is very exciting to me. Probably because it is the kind that I believe that the Lord gave to me when He set up me and my husband to meet. Rebekah found herself, and had no idea, in the middle of being a very clear answer to prayer. 

   I find it so interesting though that Rebekah had an action that she had to take in order to appear to be this answer to prayer. She was not simply to walk out to the well, this servant of Abraham had prayed specifically that the woman take a certain action of servanthood, to give him AND his camel a drink. Now, I have no idea if offering the camel a drink was a common occurrence, but it seemed quite over and above to me! Where do I go over and above my call to servanthood?

   This really hits home with me. As a wife, and mom of three kids most of my time is committed to serving in some capacity. But, what would "over and above" look like on a daily basis? Would that make me a different kind of woman? And to have the seemingly VERY willing attitude of Rebekah as the cherry on top? Well, let me just look at it practically... Giving Abraham's servant was the easy job, the somewhat clean job, but then she chose to continue to the not so clean, and probably not so easy job of giving the camel a drink. What do I do that is somewhat easy and clean? (Laundry, dishes, all those house chores) What could I be doing "over and above" that is not so easy?Maybe...doing all of the chores with a cheerful heart, treating my kids with kindness as much as possible (I imagine that trying to get a camel to drink is probably about as much as biting my tongue during the day would be when it comes to my children :)

   Rebekah was a "over and above" different kind of woman. And for that she was blessed beyond what she probably ever imagined for herself. The Lord used her to be an "answer to prayer" for Isaac and Abraham, AND that servant! How can we look at our every day situations and choose to be a different kind of woman and go over and above the normal call of duty...

   Lord, please help me to see the opportunities in my day as a chance to be a different kind of woman for Your glory. To go over and above what You are asking of me so that I may be an "answer to prayer" to someone hurting, seeking You, or just needing some encouragement. May it be so in me Father, may it be so.