What's up here...

SO I haven't actually been doing much writing here or on my other blog mainly because I just haven't had much to say. Just been thinking alot to myself and haven't wanted to share anything yet. Every year at the beginning of the new year people make resolutions. Well one of mine for as long as I can remember has been, to exercise and lose weight. I would love to be able to say I accomplished that last year! But as you all know last year was a tough year physically with my knee surgeries. In fact today as I was walking home from taking the twins to school I was thinking wow, in just under two weeks it will be a year from when I had the first major knee surgery that basically put a halt to everything for about 6 months of the year. That is a long time to be stuck and honestly I feel like last year was a year of stretching, pulling and fighting. Yes fighting, fighting for everything! God has really been teaching me a lot of things and eventually I will sit down and write out everything I have learned through last year.

It pretty much has not be a quiet new year for us. Sean lost his job in Dec. and praise God started his new one yesterday. It brings with it a very changed schedule for our family. I am not sure how we will adjust. But I am sure we will do fine. We started the New Year with 23 youth at the Rockin Lockin at church. That was a lot of fun, but I realize just how old I am when I was ready to hit the sack and I still had kiddos up and wanting to play games. I sat with 4 boys 6-13 yrs old (none of my boys) playing Uno for about an hour. Ya know something, play Uno with a bunch of boys of that age and you learn a lot about what they are going through and and they open up faster than if you just wanted them to sit and talk to you! So as a hint to those parents or youth leaders out there, get yourself a pack of Uno cards play a game. You may be surprised at how the kids open up!

Since then I have been nonstop thinking about children's church and the change that 2009 brings. I am switching the theme and transforming the room into a tropical rain forest! Yep a tropical rain forest. Why? Well when you wake up in the middle of the night and all you have on your mind is rain forest and can envision exactly what the room would look like then you know you have either lost it or God has shown you what He wants you to do. I believe that later of the two cause personally I know I lost it a long time ago! LOL!

Our best friends, Mike and Marty came to visit us. It was so much fun! We had free bowling passes so we blessed their kids and we took all 6 kids (total) bowling. They had so much fun! We have been friends with them since 1994! We were in or part of their wedding and they were in ours. They have two autistic children and we have our Kris. Kris and Jay are buddies. It is so neat to see them get excited about seeing each other, its like they have no worries cause they get each other! Seeing them is like a breath of fresh air! We leave off like we have never been apart. They were the ones that invited us to go on vacation with them to Gaitlinburg TN this past July. That was so much fun! Would love to do that again sometime!

On Jan 4th Sean and I celebrated 12 years of wedded bliss. Well we should have been celebrating but we had church all day plus we had promised to take the kids bowling. Plus there was some miss communication and well it wasn't so happy. But things were better by the nights end, just we were apart . . . he was at work. But I am happy that we have been able to celebrate 12 years and we have been able to say no matter what; rich/poor, sickness/health, we have weather many different storms and we have made it through another tough one. We are so looking forward to this year being better and different!

So that is what has been going on here. I am so glad to have put my Christmas decor away, but have kept the snowmen out. Being that we have an actual winter compared to when we lived in Florida, I get to enjoy my snowmen all the way till March. This year I may take them down at the end of Feb. We are heading south this year for spring break. The kids haven't seen my family in a year or my parents who they are very attached to. We are hoping to take another trip in the summer to visit Sean's family in NY. We wanted to head to NY but we all voted for somewhere warmer...plus since we will be there during Sean's birthday, we are heading to Disney...if you go on your birthday you get in free! So we are going to go on his special day to save some money . . . hey $60 is $60 but then again it could be more than that. This is all happening as long as we get a nice tax refund this year! Last year we did so we are hoping to again this year! We'll see . . . what ever God wants for our family and the plans we have made are really in His hands. We can plan but we have to let Him control the rudder!

Yahoo!

All I can say is yahoo! Today was a blessed day! You know when you ask God to deliver He does. Not always the way you expect but He does! Oh there's just so much I want to share but I am not sure where to start or what to to say and not say. So I guess I will start with a blessing of yesterday. Sat. morning I got to sleep in. Thank you to my wonderful kids! Jaron got up and said, "Mommy sleep in today I will take Izzy (our dog) out and I will get everyone breakfast...you just rest." He knew I wasn't feeling well. Boy I love that kid! So I slept till 10 am which is the latest I have slept in a long time! Thank you Jaron! (Sean was working for those that don't know.)

Then my darling husband cam home and said we got something in the mail. I was shocked when he handed me a check for $77. It was a settlement with a company we had business with and honestly we never expected it. Now for some $77 isn't much in most cases it won't even fill up you gas tank...specially now that Ike has blown through...which is a whole other part of today's adventures. Anyway, Sat. morning I was figuring out some bills and realized I had two more bills that have to be paid by Tuesday. Well figuring out the budget for the week I figured we would be $75 short. God not only met my need He exceeded it. Thank you Lord! You see in order for me to be able to go to The Unstoppable Conference we have had to pinch every penny and squeezed every piggy bank but I went and we are not at all sorry that we had to sacrifice for me to go.

God knew what I needed and boy has He continued that healing, refreshing and He is still working on me even a week later. I can not tell you the burdens, the chains the darkness that has lifted from me. Yes I still am batting with depression but God is really doing something remarkable with me. I just can't explain it.

Ok on with today...I went expecting God to meet me at the church. When you go expecting you better be prepared to receive! He came in like a holy fire! I am not sure if anyone else felt His presence during worship but I sure did! HMMMMM..... It was SO GOOD! I never get to stay in the whole service. I always take the kids out after worship for children's church. This week was no different. Except...one of my volunteers who helps when I am unable to be there came back with me. She has the desire to teach the kids hand motions to our worship songs, to get them more involved and excited about worship instead of just sitting there the whole time. I think it is fabulous! So she came back with me and I taught the lesson about Joshua and Jericho! HMMM it was so good! I explained to the kids that Joshua had a promise from God that if he followed God's instructions he would take the city of Jericho. So we marched, we shouted and then I had them sit down and we talked about how the Holy Spirit can use them to be an agent for Him. That the Holy Spirit can guide them if they just take time to listen to His voice!

OOhh it was good and the kids listened! We even had some new kiddos show up and a few kiddos that haven't been in church in a while. It was a full room today! YEA! Then tonight, we had our first bells practice. The kids are learning to play bells to music and if we can master this one song then we plan to put on a concert at Christmas time and perform 3-4 songs. We tried to do this back in April. They were not into it and honestly I was so depressed I didn't want to do it and had no patience to even try. SO I said I will wait till it is truly God's timing. Well let me tell you God spoke so clear to my heart at Unstoppable that it was time and that I have to get these kids excited about ministry or I am going to loose them when they get to junior high school age. It was very clear to me. I took the week to pray about it making sure this was the right time. YES! YES! YES! Tonight was fantastic! I had 10 kids come out and 3 that planned to be there but were not able to come tonight. They were fantastic! They listened, hit every cue and I am just amazed! They are so excited about it! We even came up with a great name ~ Christian Rockers! They chose the names and then voted. They came up with the outfit ideas for our performances too...jeans and tie-died

t-shirts with the name on the back and a cross on the front. Now I have to get the shirts and get them made. They were so good tonight. We were able to practice the song straight through once without music and then 3 times with the music. I am just blown away with how things went today! THANK YOU ~ JESUS ~ YOU CAME IN AND TOOK OVER AND JUST BLEW MY MIND WITH HOW VERY THING HAPPENED THIS WHOLE DAY! You know when things move this smoothly that it has to be God moving amongst the kids! It was just awesome!

Now about IKE that devil of a storm! By the time it came up here it was a tropical storm and boy did we get the storm! We have tree limbs down everywhere. Our electric was flickering the whole church service. In fact during Sunday school it went off for a few minutes and then back on. But when I went into town this afternoon to get our new babies (kittens) some food, there was a whole corn crop that looked like a tornado went through it and just flattened a large area of the crop. I am glad we didn't have an official tornado but boy I feel for that farmer. They rely on there crops and his was surely damaged by the storm. W watched during Sunday school as tree limbs were flying and garbage was going from one yard to another. In fact our front yard looked like we had a party in it. A beer party at that. Our ditch was littered with beer cans every where. Funny thing is we collected cans at church for recycling to raise funds for the youth/children's dept. You better believe we are going to turn those in and get the blessings from those cans. So our day was full of adventure from the storms blowing in and the Holy Spirit moving in like fire! I sure am glad I know the God that can say, "Peace be still" and the storm stops! How about you?

What I have learned...

Today ends the 30 day fast that we started on April 1st. We challenged our church to a 30 day fast. We challenged them to hunger and thirst for more of God, to press in when things got tough and to pray harder than they have ever prayed. To dive into the Word of God and truly seek more of Him.

Sean and I chose the Daniel Fast. We could have gotten very strict but we didn't. We gave up snacking, caffeine (me), meat and diary. The most dairy we had was cheese on veggie sandwiches. We allowed ourselves whole wheat bread occasionally. Was it easy..NO! Was it worth it...most definitely! I have craved chocolate and meat. Yes you can crave meat! Would I do it again, most definitely!

There are so many things that I have learned over the last 30 days. Or should I say God allowed me to see. I was fasting for more of God in my life, that He would drawn me nearer and shed light on things I need to work on and let go, for healing of my knees and my health, for direction and open doors for Kristofer's evaluations for autism and for a mighty move of the Holy Spirit in our church. This is what I can see happened this month through our fast; we now have the direction and open doors for Kristofer, YEA!!! We are starting to see the Holy Spirit moving more in our church services...YEA!!!

The biggest thing I have seen these past 30 days is what the Lord is doing in me. You see, I have always been a controlling type of person. Not in controlling of others but in situations. I do not like change, unless I know the outcome, unless I can control the outcome. I have a fear of the unknown. Now don't get me wrong I completely trust the Lord but the fear of the unknown always stops me from doing certain things. Such as seeking the autism eval. for Kristofer. But also in health matters for myself. I guess the Lord has been working on me for about 9 months now on that one.

Case in point, my left knee. I injured in twisting and falling down some stairs at home in Florida about 3 years ago. I put off going to the doctor and when I did I didn't follow the directions to seek counsel from an Orthopedic Surgeon. Now to be honest money and no insurance play a part in that but had I followed the docs orders I would not be where I am today. I got the results of the MRI on my left knee...complex meniscus tear in two places as well as a popliteal cyst and other problems. I could have had it fixed and not been in pain for the last 3 almost 4 years but the fear of the unknown and no insurance stopped me from pursuing medical attention. Now I am facing surgery to fix this and hoping that the damage is not extensive...we shall find out on the 8th.

In the last 30 days the Lord has shown me there are some things I need to let go of from the past (of which I will not discuss here). But also that I have got to face the unknown and tackle the health issues that I have. So I am going for a physical in the morning. I have not had a true physical in well probably since I was a child. Oh I went to the doctor when I was pregnant with all of our kids and have been going to the doctor for my knee but I have not gone for a true physical and had the blood work that I need to have. Am I worried, yes you betcha. But am I ready to face what ever surfaces and get healthy...yes! So tomorrow I face the unknown and face it ready and armed. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "Plans to prosper you and not harm you plans to give you a future and hope." I am standing on that promise tonight. I am believing that God has ordained this time and place for me to face the unknown, face my fears and deal with what ever surfaces with His strength.

I have learned more than just this but for now this is what I will share. Oh and for those that care...I have let go of 16 lbs since Jan 1. YEA! This is exciting considering up until March 18th I was not allowed to do any exercise and have two bum knees! Thank you God for helping me face my fears and for helping me to let go of the weight of many things!

Made "New Again"

Today is Good Friday. I am so thankful for what my Jesus did for me so long ago. He touches my heart everyday and gently guides me when I have decisions to make. The biggest decision I have ever made was accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. NO my life has not been all happy and a garden of roses. Remember every rose as thorns! I challenge you to just try God! He will radically change your life if you truly seek Him and follow His teachings in the Bible. I can't promise that everything will be pleasant and cheery but I can tell you if you place your trust in Jesus that you will have peace that passes all understanding through the toughest times. I have and I know this from experience. Today I plan to just go spend time at the alter, pray, sing some praise songs and then sit and wait on the Lord. Later this evening we are having family communion for the church, we look forward to serving communion to the members of our church and praying with for them. Take time to think about what to day means!

Barking Dog

Yesterday afternoon I took time to go over to the church and pray. I highly recommend going to the prayer time your church has to offer or take a lunch or dinner break and go spend time at your church at the altar and pray. There is just something about being at the altar and praying that makes a difference for me when I pray. Don't get me wrong praying during my quiet time is always good when I am not being interrupted by the kids, my husband or just family life stuff. Being at the altar is a special place for me. Anyway on Tuesday nights we have designated it as Praise n Prayer. Occasionally we have one other person that shows up besides ourselves. Yes that sounds bad and yes it does upset us that no one comes out. Does it shock us, not really we generally only have 10 people come out for mid week services. Our largest services are our Sunday morning and evening services.

Anyway, the last few months have been rather difficult on me personally. With my gall bladder surgery and my knee problems and now my surgery coming up on Monday I have just been in a funk mentally. So I went to spend time alone with God, just Him and me at the altar. It was so good. In fact I plan to go this afternoon before our midweek service just to pray and give God the praise He so deserves. But I have to tell you sometimes when you are at the altar its not always a nice feel good situation. Sometimes you get rebuked by the Lord and that doesn't always feel so good! That is what happened to me yesterday.

You see behind the parsonage and next to the church is another home and a caged, mean pit bull. Now please don't write me and tell me you own a pit bull and its a sweet loving dog. I know that all pits are not mean. But this one is and has attacked other dogs and has bitten at least one child. Why it has not been put down I don't know, but we are constantly stressing to our kids to stay away from the cage and they are basically scared to even be on that side of the back yard anyway. This dog does nothing but bark mostly at his shadow but he is always barking at something usually at 3 in the morning or some other odd hour of the night. Anyway, what God showed me was rather hard to accept but I realized He was right. You see while I was praying the dog started barking again. It was a distraction to me and it really was bothering me.

That is when the Lord showed me that my focus has not been on Him the last few months. I wanted to argue but realized it was the truth. He showed me that satan is just like that barking dog. He barks and barks and barks and instead of believing on the promises of God, praying and reading His word I have been letting the barking of satan dictate my life. You see satan does all he can to distract us by barking. Those barks (noise) can come in any form he can imagine and he is not that imaginative he uses the same tactics all the time. His favorites to distract me are: financial problems, health related problems, self esteem issues, my weight, past hurts, ect.

What God showed me is this: satan is going to keep barking!

We have to decide if we are going to listen to his lies

or are we going to listen to God's promises?

As for me I am taking a stand and plan to use God's word as ear muffs to block the barking of satan. I plan to stand on God's promises and not satan's lies. I am a child of the King of Kings, the Creator of all things, The Alpha and Omega. His Word tells me that the steps of a righteous man/woman are order by Him and as long as we are following Him and seeking after Him for direction then whatever comes our way is not a surprise to Him and we can rest assure that He has a plan to get us around, over or through the difficult times. Sometimes you have to walk through the fire - He will be there, you'll not be burned! Sometimes you have to walk through the waters (floods) - He will be there, you'll not be drowned! For He is always with His children!

There is a song we use to sing in church it goes a little like this:

Whose report will you believe?

I will believe the report of the Lord.

His report says I am healed,

His report says I am free,

His report says victory!

So who do you plan to believe today?

Do you plan to listen to the barking dog?

Or like me do you plan to listen to God's

promises and make your stand?

Christmas Break starts early!

Today was suppose to be "my" big day! My day to just relax, get some much needed quiet time for me, a day of gift wrapping, studying for my big "preaching" moment on Sunday with Sean and talking with someone from the National Office about my ideas for clubs type activities for smaller churches.

THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED!!!!

No instead Sean and I were up at 3 am with Sara, she was burning up and crying her head & tummy hurts. Take her temp to find its at 102.1 UGH! Why does she have a fever?? She just finished her antibiotics of Zithromax??!! Not no more than 10 mins. later I find myself sitting in the bath room with the hot water on full steam ahead! Eli is up coughing uncontrollably. I immediately think croup and there
we sat for 15 minutes. I had to open a window and the door a few times. The moisture was just too much. But it helped, he stopped coughing and was able to breath better. After giving him some cough medicine so he could rest I was back to Sara. I ended up sleeping with her and Sean was with Eli in our bed.

Needless to say I barely got anything done. Thankfully they both slept in and Sara continued to run a low grade fever. Eli has not coughed all day well until tonight. No fever just a runny nose...he has gotten Sara's cold...just in time for Christmas! Sara on the other hand played all day like nothing was wrong but once again her temp went up tonight. I know enough that this must be viral cause she has some strong antibiotics in her system right now. We will see how she is and I may have to call the doctor tomorrow again.

I am proud to say I did get my part of the sermon for our Christmas Candle Light Service done!!! YEA! Or at least the rough draft. Now I can go back and fine tune it with the Holy Spirit's help! Maybe tomorrow I can get some wrapping done....yea right!

I was not able to talk with the Nat. Office person due to her illness. It has been rescheduled for tomorrow. Which is better for me, now I can spend the morning fine tuning what I want to share with them...hopefully.

This weekend will be busy for us. Not only has the kids Christmas break officially started tonight but so has the last minute Christmas rush events for church. Today our church assisted the school with their Christmas Basket give away. Sean made some great contacts with some needy families in our community. We hope that we can continue to minister to them this coming year! It is an honor that the school would allow us to help them with this endeavour. Friday we have our "Christmas Blessings Baskets" to assembly at church and then deliver on Sat. morning. We have as of right now 10 families we intend to bless but it seems like the list keeps growing. I believe we are prepared for at least 2 more families for a total of 12 this Christmas. Sunday is our main Christmas service. Both Sean and I will be preaching that morning. I am looking forward to it. I don't normally get to share in the main service and for Sean to allow me this honor is exciting and a bit nerve wracking. I believe I have a message from the Lord for our congregation, I only hope they receive what I bring forth with the Lord's help. Then of course we have any final preparations for our family Christmas. Sean has to work Sunday over night and then also Christmas eve. Thankfully he does get Christmas off so we will have fun that morning.

We so wanted to be in Florida for Christmas. We even were planning to surprise my family....surprise family!!! BUT with my impending knee surgery we decided it would be better to use Sean's paid vacation and sick days for that time. SORRY GUYS!

There are so many thoughts going through my head. So much has changed this past year. Last year was the first Christmas break we have spent with out my neice and nephew! It was so crazy last year, we were still unpacking and getting things moving around here that we didn't have time to really think about it. This year is different. Even Jaron asked me today what Kaelyn and Brock were doing for Christmas break. I always enjoyed having them with us. I will miss that a lot this year!

Then of course we have the New Year approaching. Can you believe its actually going to be 2008?! Man I remember when I was a teen and would think when its 2008 I will be turning ..... ok I am proud to say I will be turning 38 this next year. But where has time flown?? I mean honestly Sean I will celebrate 11 yrs of marriage Jan 4th. So much has happened since we got married. It's just mind boggling!


New Year's resolutions......another blog I think all in itself. If you have started thinking about yours...I hope at the top of your list is this:

1. Got to Church more
2. Make a real commitment to Christ
3. Draw closer to Him

As for me the third on this short list is my top priority as for the rest....I am still contemplating that. I'll get back to you on that!

Laughter and fun

Today was our women's ministries luncheon. We had a blast! Last year the ladies kidnapped me and took me to lunch with them. We had just moved from Florida and had only been here in IL for 3 days but here I was climbing into a van as snowflurries whirled around my head and I was freezing because I had no coat! This year was much different. Oh, I was still climbing into a van, literally, my poor knee was screaming the whole time. But as I looked up into the van that had 12 other women waiting for me I realized, "Wow, It's been a year!" Someone who had gone last year made that same comment as I was thinking it. Or at least a comment close to it.

So off we went 13 ladies, me sitting in the middle of the van able to hear and try to be part of the conversations going on in the back and in the front. The funny thing being a pastor's wife is that the women often times get real quiet when talking about the previous pastor or if they plan to attend another churches Christmas programs. I did my best to reassure them that Sean and I support what other churches are doing and that they should not be afraid to say they plan to attend another church for this program or whatever. We know they are faithful to our church and more importantly faithful to God.
So off we went, driving east towards KY. Yes, these ladies drive 1 1/2 hrs away for food. But boy is the fellowship fun. I brought along a Christmas song game, "Thanks Mom- It was hit!" We laughed and they were really good at getting me to slip and give them the answers! All well we still had fun.

Our destination was Patty's Settlement in Grand Rivers, KY.

http://www.pattis-settlement.com/main.htm .

Each room is decorated in a different theme for Christmas. Beautiful!!!! I mean out of this world beautiful! I mean better than Disney at Christmas beautiful. Did I say it is beautiful?? Even better it is owned by a Christian family so there are lots of rooms centered around Christ! Plus the fun candy room, the Christmas fairy room and the Santa room. They have out of this world food and to die for desserts! They have this lemon merange pie (or lime, chocolate or cococut) and the merange stands 6 - 8 inches high! I am not kidding! You know the old Wendy's commerial, "Where's the Beef?" well with this pie you can say, "where's the custard?"

One of the women wanted to cut part of the topping off the pie and as she did it landed in her lap. Well if that wasn't funny enough, she then went to pick it up and it landed in/on her daughters purse! Oh we laughed so hard!!! We really had a good time talking and laughing at and with each other. As I sat with the ladies around this large oval shaped table I began to realize just how many of the m were related, whether by marriage or directly (mom/daughter, sisters, cousins) and I realized how much I wished my Mom or Sister could have been with us. Last year I felt like an outsider, I knew no one, had no idea what they expected of me as the PW and I was so full of emotions just from moving, the holiday season and honestly just plain tired. This year to be honest I still felt like an outsider. These women have either known each other all their lives, grown up together, went to school together or are family. Here I am the PW and I still don't feel like I click with these women as much as I wish I did. I am sure as time goes on that will change....or so I hope. Small towns like ours are tight knit and the women in those small town churches are even tighter. I do my best to be honest, open and giving. Maybe too much but that is who I am.
All in all we had a great time and everyone said they wished we had more time. The plan is to go out and do this more this coming year. I think the more we do it the more I might fit in...and if I don't that's ok too.