Changes

I'm in the process of combining my two blogs.  I need to simplify and limit my time on my computer.  I plan to combine this blog with Mother of Seven.  The devotions that I usually publish here I'll be publishing on Thursdays, Lord willing, on Mother of Seven.  So to all my loyal readers, please come over to Mother of Seven and begin following.  I appreciate each of you.  Your encouragement through your comments means a lot.  Thank you for sticking with me as I work to find what works best for my family and blogging.  God Bless!

Letting go of the Reigns

We have a budding teenager in our home.  Although we've experienced this before with our oldest two, this one has presented new challenges.  Lots of times I simply don't know how to handle situations.  It seems I always say the wrong things.  My husband and I have discussed the matter over and over.  I usually end up getting upset.  Finally, I told him, "I don't know what to do.  I need you to figure it out.  I need you to handle it.  I need you to be the one who handles discipline issues when they come up."

So that is what my wonderful husband has been doing.  He has ordered some books on parenting teens.  He has been brainstorming ideas for how our young man can gain more freedom and privileges by being responsible.  He has taken over handling the correction. 

I should be happy.  Instead, I'm frustrated.  When my husband discusses his ideas with me, I want to argue and disagree with him.  Frankly,  I'm having a hard time letting him be in control.  I finally realized the problem a couple days ago.  I have run the parenting decisions in our family for a long time. Now I find it is difficult for me to submit to his headship in this area.

Don't get me wrong, I hadn't willfully taken the parenting decisions from him in the past.   Many things we decided together.  It's just that I'm here 24 hours a day and naturally have dealt with the parenting issues on my own much of the time.  My husband even had specifically asked me not to leave all the discipline issues for him when he came home.  I learned to deal with problems and find solutions.  He entrusted this job to me.  The problem is now I need his help and his leadership, and I'm having a hard time submitting when he makes decisions.  I want to think my way is better (even though it wasn't working).

My husband fulfilling his God-given role to teach his children.

Seeking the Lord in prayer has helped.  Realizing that if I'm not in submission to my husband, then I'm not in submission to God is humbling.  I've had to bite my tongue.  I've said things in response to my husband and had to apologize.  I'm so grateful for an understanding husband who is patient with me.  And I'm thankful for my merciful heavenly Father who is faithful as I struggle to become more of who he wants me to be.

"Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything."

Praying for God to continue to mold me and grant me a spirit of submission.

Linking up with:

He's a Mountain Mover

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble."  Psalm 46:1

 My husband and I spent eight years in the Joplin area.  We attended Ozark Christian College and then held a ministry in Webb City, a city adjacent to Joplin.  The devastating tornado a couple weeks ago has been emotionally moving for us.  We still have many friends in the area, so at first it was the wondering if they were all ok.  Then the scope of the devastation began to sink in.  It is a long road to recovery ahead for this city which was home and still tugs at our heart strings.

Our church sent a work crew to Joplin today and plans to send another group tomorrow.  I wanted to go but was unable due to the number of younger children at home that needed me here.  So, I had offered to help by baking food for volunteers.  This morning I had a phone call asking if I could send cinnamon rolls tomorrow.  I started in at 1:00 p.m. and things were progressing nicely.  I had 10 dozen rolls made by 3:30 and had just popped the first two pans in the oven when the electricity went out.  I waited five minutes, and it still hadn't come back on.  These rolls had to be baked soon or they would collapse.  I called LaVada, a lady from our church, whose house is on the hospital line and often has electricity when others do not.  She had electricity!  So I put the six pans that needed baked first in the trunk of my car and headed to her house.  I had to pull two of the pans out of the oven.  The dough was light and wobbly.  I just knew the rolls were going to collapse, but I had to try to save them.

On the short drive over to her house a Southern Gospel song played in our CD player.  The words caught my attention, "He's a mountain mover, He's a sea walker, He's a lily in the desert, He's the rose in the wilderness..."  Instantly I prayed, "Lord, this isn't a mountain I'm needing moved.  I just need you to hold the cinnamon rolls up so they are not wasted.  These are needed for breakfast in Joplin tomorrow.  So, please take care of them."  I left the six pans with LaVada and hurried back home to finish up another batch of dough I had ready.

My electricity came on about 45 minutes later, and I was able to finish the baking here at home.  My wonderful rescuer brought the rest of the rolls back to my house a little later.  And, guess what?  God took care of those rolls.  In fact, they are some of the most beautiful rolls I've ever made.   

God specializes in the impossible.  Those rolls should have fallen.  The day was warm and humid causing them to rise rapidly.  The road was bumpy.  I've never taken bread out of the oven and been able to put it back in and have it turn out.  Even more meaningful is that God took time to care about something so small as 120 cinnamon rolls.

"Be still, and know that I am God.  I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."  Psalm 46:10

 

Homesick

"But our citizenship is in heaven.  And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body."  Phil. 3:20-21

I've always struggled with open caskets at funerals.  I'm not sure why.  They say it is important to view the body in order to have closure.  The first funeral I remember going to, I was shaken because for the first time I realized the human body is just a shell.  The body without the spirit is dead.  The person I knew and loved was no longer there.  I did not want to remember them as a lifeless form.  I wanted to remember them as a smiling, living, and breathing human soul.

When I was in high school, there were two sweet dear older ladies that I visited weekly.  Beulah taught me how to tat and spent hours telling me about growing up back in the early 1900's.  I was fascinated by her stories.  Ruth liked for me to come down and watch basketball and The Cosby Show with her.  She had a fat little dog that she fed chocolate covered cherries, and she would sit and listen to me talk.  She thought everything I told her was wonderful.  These two sweet ladies both passed away my junior year.  I refused to go to either one of their funerals.  My family worried about me, but I was fine.  I just wanted my last memory of them to be sitting together with them in their living rooms.  I wanted to remember Ruth plunking her dog, Sugar, on the floor, straightening his little legs under his rotund body, and pulling him to the door on his leash.  I wanted to remember Beulah smiling at me over the top of the doily she was tatting as she talked about the latest quilt they were quilting down at The Gold Dust Hotel.  I didn't want to remember a lifeless body in a casket.

On our wedding day Les and I had the privilege of having seven of our grandparents present.  We now have only one living grandma.  I've watched their bodies grow old.  It is difficult to observe the toll that sickness and age takes on a body.  The human body is just a temporary home.  I'm so grateful that God has a new body awaiting me.   Although the human body is indeed a marvel, it is perishable.  My new body will be eternal.  It will be like Christ's glorious body.  In heaven I will no longer have to say goodbye to those I love.  There will be no more empty shells to bury in the ground.  I'm looking forward to that day.

Guess I'm feeling a little homesick today.  Are you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZKXUBomnAg