“A wise woman builds her home, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands.” Proverbs 14:1
Heat flooded my face. To say I felt angry would have been an understatement. The hard closing of the bedroom door, a firm period on the end of a statement, declared my stance -“I am right and you are wrong.”
An overwhelming need to get away pulsed through me. I wanted to grab my keys, hop in our van, and drive away. No real destination. Just somewhere that was not my house – a house suddenly filled with tension and hasty words.
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Gratitude is the word I’ve chosen for 2013.
My goal is to carefully add one area of life each week until I have added intentional gratitude to every part of my life.
Great idea, right?
Until January started with an attack on my mood and my attitude. I plodded through days marked with sad anniversaries. I was anxious about aches and pains, and well it’s January in the Midwest. Gray and cold. Yuck.
My state of mind definitely did not match my good intentions.
But intentional gratitude is not about my mood or emotions. My circumstances or memories.
Intentional gratitude is:
- Thanking God in all things – not just the good and happy, but also the hard and sad.
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Written on
January 20, 2013 by
Kris in
Blog
“Come messy”, That’s what I read right before I closed the book for the night. I took a photo of the words and tweeted them out to anyone who might need encouragement like that–because honestly, more than I care to admit, I do. I seem to need constant reassurance that my cluttered heart, and my messy emotions are ok to bring before God.
I remind my children all of the time, that God sees everything–that there’s no place they can hide from Him and how that fact shouldn’t be scary, but instead ought to be a comfort. But when it comes to my own messy parts, well, suddenly, I’m not so sure anymore.
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I didn’t really want a dog. 
I’m not a pet person. But something about the floppy ears and the big brown eyes even melted this always-sanitize-after-petting girl. Don’t buy me an “I love my Lab” t-shirt yet, but I will admit I strongly like my dog – most of the time.
My husband recently installed an underground electric fence. Our poor pooch, Comet, gets a little jolt any time she comes near the gates of our wooden fence. That Houdini of a dog has escaped the backyard more times than I can count and once was caught by animal control. So we had to do something to keep her safe.
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My three year old struggled tonight.
Tired, but full of excuses why he couldn’t get into bed yet. He kicked and screamed, back arched, yelling “don’t talk to me!” He didn’t want me to hold him. Didn’t want me to sing. Didn’t want me to do anything.
I sat on the bathroom floor next to him while he flailed, wailing. And I waited.
He eventually calmed down and climbed into my lap, resting his head on my shoulder. I said, “do you want me to sing to you?”
His whispered “yes” put a lump in my throat. I sang “Jesus Loves the Little Children”, “God is so Good”, “My God Loves Me” and “Amazing Grace”.
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Written on
January 10, 2013 by
Dawn in
Blog
Photo Credit
Many are the plans in a man’s heart , but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:21)
So here it is a new year and you are adding more and more to that list of things you want to accomplish than you ever intended. Everywhere you turn there is a new suggestion and they all sound good, helpful and deep inside you do want to improve in the area mentioned. Well before you take on one more thing, might I suggest the one thing that might help you along all of the paths you have chosen?
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Before becoming a mom, I assumed mothers exaggerated how many times they heard the exclamation each day. I even remember having to force my jaw shut when they would ignore such a plea.
Now that I’m privileged to be put to the test, I see clearly why some would wait until they heard the “magic word.”
“Mom, look at me, pleeeeease!”
It takes going through it to realize how much energy it takes. To fully experience how hard it is to look on with excitement and portray what they’re doing as new. unique. special. Each and every day.
We really do change little over time, don’t we.
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I was eight months pregnant with my second of four babies. I had stayed up late one night to paint our master bedroom, that made more sense being a playroom. I fell in love with a simple motif on the curtains I had purchased for the room — primary color squares with childlike drawings of animals and letters. I wish I had a picture to show you, but it was during the era of 35mm film.
I endeavored to re-create the squares as a border around the room by hand-painting them. It was a more tedious job than I imagined, and took much longer than I thought to hand-paint a drawing in each one.
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