When You Feel satan Winning

Shout out to Jon Acuff by giving satan the middle finger with the lowercase s.

This morning started out so great. Milly let me sleep a little more than 5 hours. That's Rip Van Winkle sleep when you have a newborn. She got up at 6:30 to eat and was finished with everything by 7:00. I took her back to our room and let her wake Daddy up by being adorable right in his face. Mentally, I was fist pumping. We had time to both take showers, get everyone up, fed and dressed and still get to church without a huge hurry. Daddy got in the shower and I laid down with Milly to wait my turn.

I was just going to rest my eyes.

At 8:30, I woke up and began the mad dash. We left the house at 9:30. The kids ate cereal bars in their carseats and Milly wasn't wearing any of the cute little headbands I bought yesterday. I didn't shower. I really wanted that shower. We threw the kids into the nursery and crept into our Life Group. For the rest of the morning, I felt like satan and I just headbutted.

I'm still in a foul mood but I feel God nudging me. Unfortunately, I'm reacting like Sophie does when she's in a bad mood. I'm ignoring Him. When He does get an arm around me then I yell, throw it off of me and tell Him to go away. I don't want to be comforted. I don't want to learn anything. I don't want to work. I don't want to be loved.

Can you guys pray that He doesn't let up? Please?

Sin is a Cancer

Steve Stroope is an amazing pastor. Every time I walk out of church I am bursting with new ideas and thoughts to wrestle with over the week. Yesterday he began a new series called " Community with God". During the sermon he made what seemed like a simple statement but it stayed with me. He was talking about how much God hates sin. He said that God hates sin the way a parent of a child with cancer hates the cancer.

This struck a chord with me because of my sister. My little sister has a life-threatening disease that affects her liver. She was diagnosed in 7th grade and has already had a liver transplant. The transplant is not a cure but really just a kind of mega-patch. The disease is still there. She takes some serious medicine to keep herself well. Before the transplant, the pills were even worse. At her worst, she lived with our parents. Every morning and night my mother would go to her with a handful of pills. These were pills that my mother knew would make her baby girl throw up, tremble, make her bones brittle, make her hair fall out, gain weight and just do awful things to her body. They would also keep her baby girl alive.

The treatment may be terrible but the disease will kill you.

God is the same way when it comes to sin in our lives. I've asked God before why He's putting me through certain trials because they hurt so badly. He's God! He could take this away! Can't he see how this is affecting me?! However, God doesn't just throw those pills at me and say DEAL WITH IT. He wraps His arms around me and tells me that it's for my own good. He cries with me when I hurt. He comforts me and tells me to hang on just a little longer. This is going to be worth it.

I watched my mother tuck quilts around my shivering sister. I watched my mother spoon broth into her mouth when her hands trembled too much to hold a spoon. I watched her sit next to hundreds of hospital beds for endless hours waiting on doctors and tests. I look back now and I can see my mother glorifying and personifying God with her actions.

Now I'm the mother holding my children down while nurses stab them in the legs with viruses. Then I get them up, wipe away their tears and tell them that I do this because I love them. I do this for their own good. Then I pray to God that He keeps giving me my pills and shots. But please keep wiping away my tears, too.

First Day Back

This is really the first day the kids and I have had alone since...Christmas break? The last few months have been a whirlwind of broken schedules and water heaters. We've gotten a new car and a new baby. Bedtimes and naptimes are whenever we unearth a bed and make sure someone hasn't peed on it. There have been so many doctor appointments and emergency visits that I really should have my own parking spot with a glitter banner and litter carriers waiting there with Starbucks. (We actually have another doctor appointment tomorrow!) We've had to scramble to spend days at my mother's, my grandmother's and my sister's because something went wrong again. Sometimes it was the whole family and sometimes it was one or more of the kids. I've had to call my husband home from work more times than I like. (Which is "zero" by the way.)

If there is one thing in my life that is constant, it is that I don't like to be a burden to those around me. I feel guilty if I have to ask for help with my kids and I feel even guiltier if I have to ask for help for myself. Basically, I can ask from God. He's the most powerful being in the universe. Heck, He created the universe. I don't feel bad asking Him for help. Plus He tells me over and over in the Bible to ask for help.

Unfortunately, He also has this hang-up about "humility" and keeps insisting on using people in my life to help me causing me to swallow what I thought was "consideration for others" but is actually "pride". It seems He also has a thing about "pride" as well.

We're easing into it today. The kids are watching Sesame and Movers while eating Cheerios and bananas. The baby has had two bottles and two diapers. Gideon has already found his talking Elmo doll and Sophie is singing the birthday song at the top of her tone deaf / Japanese exchange student accented voice. I've done 2 loads of laundry and 2 loads of dishes and I'm about to start making schedules that I'm sure I'll write "BE FLEXIBLE" across the top in an attempt to remind myself that kids rarely stick to mother's schedules.