~No One is Immune to Struggle~

We've had our own recent struggle with one of our kids in one particular area. 

Nobody panic...it's not an earth shattering, fatal, self-inflicted or terrifying sort of struggle...but it IS a struggle. 

{just take my word for it}

The thing about hard things, in this case at least, is the fact that WE HAVE NO CONTROL OVER IT.

We don't get to pick our hard. 

We don't get to pick the type of hard, we can't choose when it will come, how long it will last and in a lot of cases, 
the end result.

No one is immune to struggle.

NO ONE is immune to struggle...no matter what social media, a magazine cover, or a movie may imply...

no one is immune to struggle.

My absolute favorite aspect of the Bible, 
(excluding  the revelation of a Savior sent for the redemption of souls)

is the beautiful, simple, AWESOME one liners that jump off the page, cut straight through to my heart, and bring tears to my eyes because my heart resounds with a 
knowing in my gut of the nearness of God to His people.

Daniel. 
Most people know a little or a lot about this man. 
He has a book in the Bible named after him and has a remarkable life story.  

We've been reading this to the kids even though it's familiar. I'm always amazed at how God sheds new light on an "old" truth. Things we've read or heard a hundred times, spoken again in a new season brings fresh new meaning.

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon besieged Jerusalem.

Who wants to be besieged, defeated, and taken over?

nobody last time I checked. 

Chapter 1 verse 2:
"And the Lord gave Johoiakim king of Judah into his hand,"

The Lord GAVE HIM into his hand. 

God allowed it. He allows hard things.

Fast forward to chapter 2. 

King Nebuchadnezzar, has a troubling dream and demands that somebody not only interpret the dream's meaning, but scarier and much more challenging, that this same someone tell him the actual dream.

The consequence of one of his magicians or enchanters NOT being able to do this was to be torn limb from limb and have their houses laid in ruins. 

not a happy prospect.

Listen to their response to the king...can you imagine the panic?!

Chapter 2 verse 10:
"There is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a things of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh."

has there ever been a more beautiful, clear contrast to 
gods and God? 

Our God in fact, dwells with man. 
Jesus was flesh.
The Holy Spirit was given.
God is near to the broken hearted, the oppressed.

So Daniel, knowing the God he served, had a response of "prudence and discretion" when he was about to be gathered up and killed along with all the magicians and enchanters who had failed to meet the king's request. 

He buys some time, delays the impending slaughter, and heads straight to his friends. 
He "told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery" (vs 18)

they begged God for mercy. for help.

and God, 
because He dwells with men, 
because He loves His people, 
because He allowed this suffering to come 
to Daniel and his friends for His plan and purpose, 
heard their cry for mercy. 

He gave Daniel a vision in the night of exactly Nebuchadnezzar's dream and it's interpretation.

Suffering is relative.
You could have it better or worse but know this:
Whatever your current situation, however hard you hard is, know that {GOD IS IN THE MIDDLE OF IT}

He is right there with you, allowing it for whatever reason. 
You have a choice to please the God of heaven by submitting to Him, submitting to the pain He is allowing you to walk through...or you can get mad, bitter, and defiant. 

the choice is yours. 

My heart's cry is that I, my husband, any my four precious children will choose over and over again to accept the things God gives us and that we honor Him with obedience and joy.

So, this morning, when I sent my big three off to school and I asked, "Okay, _____, WHERE is God?,
 and I got the response (though not overly enthusiastic),
"He's in the middle of the hard"

I smiled and teared up.

God is faithful. 
"and of His kingdom, there will be no end." Luke 1:33b

Merry Christmas!

~stacey

this was too long...and how many times can a person say the word struggle?! you know how if you look at a word long enough, the spelling no longer looks right? that's where I am with the word struggle after this post. yikes.
if you made it to the end, I'm sorry :-)

{what I know and what I don't}

We are in bed, snug as bugs at 8:38 p.m.

We lead a wild life.

Brad has a WWII documentary on, and in an effort to focus on the words I want to put on paper, I have my ear buds in with my ever faithful Pride and Prejudice Film Score Pandora station playing.
It's a winner every.single.time.

The Saturday after the first full week of school is heaven. It's that first after summer realization of, "oh yeah, I remember how this works...I can do this. It's five days of mach 80 but then we get a few hours to regroup before we repeat the mach 80 thing." Even if Saturday is all work, it's still a break. 

Brad and I spent the first hour of the day over coffee, (it's where I get all my words out, he kindly listens to al my woes and worries, and we solve every problem known to man) then we moved to the basement to do a quick but massive purge of randomness. There's not much I love more than a good clean out. Big kids have homework and younger two do their best to stay out of sight, because being seen means potentially being put to work.

A couple things I've been reminded of recently.

None of us like the hard parts of life...the unpleasant bits.
Nobody wants the uncomfortable, the unknown, the what ifs.
Who wants the un-fun stuff?
nobody.
Trials? Challenges? Failures?
no.thank.you.

"Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience." James 1

COUNT IT ALL JOY when you fall into various trials.

Who does that? I mean really...WHO does that?

Just park it there a minute.
When is the last time you encountered something hard and you counted it all joy?

yep...same here but I am working on it. I don't want to live a life where every time I hit a speed bump I immediately press the panic button or become the proverbial ostrich with his head in the sand.

Oh and news flash....this truth also applies to your response to your kids trials and struggles.

Do you believe God for them? Do you believe He can meet them at the place of their need?

Their academic struggles.
Their self worth struggles.
Their friendship struggles.
Their people pleaser struggles.
Their strong will struggles.

All that...if we don't take God at His Word for our kids, then what are we doing?
Take heart and rest in that! 
God meets us at our point of need. What good news.

~~~~~~~~~

I don't claim to know as much as I used to.

I am ever more confident in who God is. He is good and He is trustworthy.
I am less dependent on myself and my own abilities in every way.

No matter how I try, I miss it sometimes.
I may or may not hear correctly what He is saying. 
I ask for direction, but don't always get what I want (what I want is handwriting on a wall).
I'm not sure about the difference between what He directs and what He allows and how many things we blame on Him, when really, we just made a choice that dictated a given result. 
I don't have answers for why certain people are afflicted with disabilities, addictions, mental illness or sickness. 
There are a lot of things I can't make right in my head...things that I'm learning to be content to place in the category of "I have no idea."

I can't tell you how many times my prayers begin with, 
"God help me"
or
"Lord, please  fill me with humility."
or
"God I have absolutely no idea what is going on, but You do."

pretty basic start to prayer for a gal who's been a Believer for a good number of years, 
but I'm telling you, without Him I am sunk.

What do I know? 

I know some good stuff. I know Psalm 103:10-14 
"He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities...
Great is His steadfast love towards those who fear Him;...
For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust."

Read that Psalm in it's entirety...it's a guaranteed encouragement. 

I know that God is near to the broken-hearted.
That He is tender towards His children.
That He never leaves or forsakes them.

I know that His plans are big, that they will not be thwarted.

While His plans are big, He also knows when a sparrow falls to the ground. (Matt 10:29)
He is intimately concerned with the details of our lives and He covers us.

He uses the ordinary and extraordinary hard things to accomplish His purposes and to mold and shape us.

I'm certain that He doesn't wring His hands over anything. 
"God stretches the northern sky over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing." 

Job 26 doesn't indicate a fretful nor an indifferent God.

I know that God is not impressed with your outside...too many Christians fall into perceived spirituality when God cuts right through all that and is ONLY INTERESTED IN YOUR HEART.
That is both comforting and terrifying. 
Ask the Lord to check your motives and purify your heart.

I know that I can have every awesome power, gifting, or character quality, 
but if I don't have love, then I am nothing.
NOTHING.
People in the Christian sector are pretty impressed with wisdom, prophetic gifting, knowledge, faith, generosity, and sacrifice. 
Having the willingness to love, even and especially when it's hard, trumps all the above. 
Crazy, isn't it?
(1Cor.13)

If God has enough love and grace for me, then He has enough for you, no matter your current circumstance or your past failures or hurts.

I can't make everything okay and I think maybe I'm learning to accept that fact. 
There's a lot of freedom and joy that comes from understating that you can't fix everything.

Don't waver on the truth of God's word. 
Put humility and love at the top of the "to do" list.
There's safety there. 

~stacey

Seasons and Scotland

The school year is just about over, and as always, we are coming in on a wing and a prayer. 

In a matter of hours, I'll have an 11th, 9th, 7th, and 3rd grader.

AND... as a result, 

...I'm a little scared to utter the words

but I think

...it seems that...

the crazy train is easing up a bit. 

Well, that's not entirely true,

maybe I've just switched trains.

Somewhere along the way, I got OFF the physical crazy train (you know, the one on which you feed babies, change diapers, pack lunches, and drive people ALL OVER TARNATION to every lesson, class, show, and game in the whole entire world)

...and I got ON the emotional crazy train (the one on which you fret over whether or not you've done a good job, will they make good choices, will you have grace when they don't, you deal with the blah mood swings, you try to resist the urge to swoop in and fix every little mess up so that they learn to fail in non life threatening areas, and where you occasionally stare at them in disbelief, and mutter to yourself, wow...I seriously don't even know you right now and I really hope you grow up a LOT between now and 23ish, because...wow.)

I'm fortunate, and I 100% don't understand how I got four sweet kids...not perfect, but genuinely sweet people who really want to please God and us. (which, funny enough, can actually create another whole set of problems...just not the "in your face" kind)

I love this season of a house full of big, witty, interesting kids who are really fun to talk and listen to. Prime example: In the car, just a couple hours ago, I hear Emma in the back seat, telling a joke to her friend. (except that she didn't say it was a joke, she just asked it like it was a bonafide question)

"Hey, so why is it not good for women to have kids over 35?"

I grip the steering wheel a little tighter, thinking oh my gosh, where did she hear this it sounds so offensive I mean she's 8 why does she think she knows optimal child bearing years??!

I brace myself for the answer.

Friend says, "uhmmm, because they're old ladies?"

"Nope, because 35 is more than enough!"

I laughed out loud.

I wonder how I'll do when they're up and gone...I admit I sometimes hide out just to get a few minutes of solitude, but I truly can't stand the thought of a quiet house...hoping there will be some redeeming qualities when the time comes but I'm skeptical.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a man in his early 60's. He owned a shop I frequented and we shared a love for pictures and places. His wife had passed away a number of years prior and he said something to me I've never forgotten. 

His face was somber and almost pleading.

"Whatever you want to do with your spouse, do it now. Don't wait until your older, because sometimes, you don't get older." 

It changed the way Brad and I think about so many things. Of course you have to plan, save, be responsible, live beneath your means, and be content exactly where you are, but it also means there is no time like the present.

In whatever capacity your sphere allows, spend time with your spouse...if you like them.

...and if you don't like them, maybe spending some time together alone, will remind you why you used to like them...and if not, maybe you should get some counseling....your marriage is worth fighting for. 

go on walks

have coffee together

go out to dinner

slip off for the weekend every once in a while

I remember well how stressful date nights used to be. The first 10 or 12 years of our marriage, "extra money" was in short supply at our house. But because of generous parents, and sweet people around us, we were able to make date night a fairly consistent happening....but it was SO MUCH WORK.

I had a 5, 3, and 1 year old, all of whom preferred me to everyone else in the world. 

Getting the house cleaned, having dinner ready for kids and sitter, getting myself dressed, making a bottle, stepping around little wide eyed, pajama clad babies who knew something was up, then prying one or two of them off me as I walked out the door.....the ride to the restaurant felt more like a ride to my own execution.

 I rode in silence for the first little bit, tried to rid my face of the anxiety written all over it, and without fail, Brad would grab my hand and say something like, "You good? Kids are fine. They will be fine. They are probably playing and happy now. It's fine. Don't worry...they are in good hands."

I would nod in reticent agreement.

Without fail, we would get about half way through the night, whether it was just dinner, or dinner and  movie, and all I could think was, 

this is the best thing ever...I feel like a human being...I am in heaven.

Then I would go home, 

having been reintroduced to my husband, 

kiss my sweet, fluffy, sleeping babies, 

and wake up the next morning ready to tackle the world.

Fast forward 10 years....and I mean FAST forward.

I have a driver in high school, two middle schoolers, and one very grown-ish elementary student. 

It's still a lot of work to leave for a week, but I also still have very generous parents who agree to hold down the fort and do their best to keep everyone alive while Brad and I skip over to Scotland to check off a bucket list vacation. 

A lot has changed in 10 years but the benefit of time together has not.

Not everyone has the desire to travel and those who do, have vastly different ideas of where they want to go and what they want to see. 

If you are someone who

loves natural beauty

has an aversion to crowds

likes to be off the beaten path

enjoys really good food

owns a pair of hiking boots

can handle a 7ish hour plane ride

appreciates the simplicity of people around you speaking english

and is fascinated by history

let me just tell you, Scotland just may be the place for you. 

Scotland is 

lochs and lambs

hills, haggis, and Harry Potter

castles and cows

trails and tartan

steeples, Skye, and Storr

and I loved every single bit of it.

 

  

Just your average Scottish wedding. 

slightly jealous of the hats, kilts, and bagpipes

and not at all embarrassed by the groom spotting 

me and my zoom lens and giving me a hearty wave.

Think I found our rental car for next time...

...until then

~stacey