Life

Today I am thinking about the chosen path for my life right now, I have chosen to be a stay at home mom and house wife, and I will probably follow this path for the next 10-15 years.  Now I know in the grand scale of life that really is not a long time but from where I am sitting it feels like an eternity!  I went to college and I have a degree but I did not do anything with it until after school and it is less then useful with out a nice resume behind it.
I struggle with being a stay at home mom sometimes because this is not where I saw myself as I was growing up, that said, I do actually love being home!! But what I am going to do when all of my kids (if I have more) are in school?  Well, start over and try and find a career that I can start later in life or stay a house wife and volunteer, and I suppose I could just run our home and knit and read all day when I am not baking and cleaning.  So many choices and right now I want the easy road.
My husband just graduated a program that took him 2 years and more hardship then I can barely believe, but he now has an epic career and I am so proud of him!! He did not take the easy road, by any stretch of the imagination, what he accomplished very few people ever even attempt.  I struggle with the motivation that he has! I tend to want the easy answer and can not focus and do that hard work to achieve that goal I want, I usually give up after a small amount of time and go on to the next thing.  I can learn so much for him.
Right now I don't even know what my goal is!! It is hard for me to sit down and work hard when I am not even sure what the end will look like, so I come up with fantastical plans of what I could do, never follow through and just sit and wait for something amazing to fall in my lap.  This all sounds silly after realizing that I had to live with my husband while he was working for his goal.
So, how did you pick your career? Or, like me, are you still dreaming about what you will do when you grow up, all the while your life is not standing still?

God is real, and He has feelings

Last night I started reading Disappointment with God, by Philip Yancey, mostly because I am struggling with that very thing.  Yancey has written several books and I respect his thought process because he seems to think like a normal person and not a super-spiritual-know-all-the-answers person.
 
I learned that God is a real being and He has real feelings!!

This insight is causing reverberations in my soul that will continue for months!  Do you get that? I mean do you really understand the implications of the Fact that God is real and he has feelings?  I don't think I am even close to grasping what this actually means but the knowledge is seeping into every corner of my life and I am trying to soak it all up!!  I tried to explain to my husband what I have been dealing with, but Yancey describes it best when he says (paraphrased) 'that I had an expectation when I went into this relationship with God and his actions are not what I expected', hence the disappointment.

Surprise!!! the answers to all my questions are in... The Bible!!!  Who knew?!

In the 13 chapters I read last night, Yancey summarized the entire old Testament.  It was amazing to read versus that actually describe God's feelings and his mercy and his actions from a person who has dealt with disappointment.

I am still disappointed but I think the direction of those feelings are shifting away from a God who actually loves and cares about me, to focus on the earthly circumstances that just are.  Today I am choosing to believe that it is ok to be disappointed with the situation but I am learning that life got me here and not God, and He will help things turn around.

"In all their distress he too was distressed" Isaiah 63:9

P.S. Did you know that God tells us to test him and see if he will follow through with his promise? Malachi 3:10 says that if you tithe, God promises to bless you, and then he says "Test me in this"  I am chewing on this because I have asked for a 'sign' and here is a very big promise.  What do you think? Do you tithe?

This, too, shall pass! I promise!!

My little boy is 19 months old, not yet 2 but getting close.  I always thought that "Terrible Two's" was an urban legend.  As S started getting a little bit older, more toddler then baby, I started seeing less and less of children his own age out in public.  It seemed that I always saw babies and older kids but I could never figure out why I rarely see kids his age  Sure I would see families with multiple children, and they include a 2ish kid, but you don't ever see an only child his age.  WELL tonight J and I solved the mystery, those parents learned that the only way to stop the disaster that was our dinner tonight, is to not go out.
We went to a large group dinner and S melted, it was like I have yet to experience; blood, no eating, screaming, anything you can think of!  As I sat there trying to quickly finish my food, i was looking around and no other children were melting.  But now that I think about it all the families has multiple children or only one young baby.  So I don't think that I am a terrible mother, but I have never done this before, but tonight I felt totally incompetent!  Lots of things in our life have changed recently and the place we went was way more crowded then places we have gone before, and I know that all these factors contribute but Oh My Gracious!!
The hardest part I think about this is feeling helpless and the stress it places on J and I.  Neither of us know what to do, how to react, or how to help S calm down.  So we get stressed and frustrated and take out our crazy emotions on anyone and everyone close by.
All this to say that I sometimes wonder why I has a kid, I love S and he is apart of me that I can not live with out, but on days like today it helps me to stop and really think hard about why I spent 4 years praying for S.  I can't really put it into words but the feelings are still there and I hold on to that vison and promise and love when I want to pull my hair out and throw up my hands in defeat.  I sure have been doing that a lot this past month and I know, as with the previous hard times, this, too, shall pass:)