Grace

Things have been a little hectice here for the past month, to say the least. We have hopped from one thing to another with very little break in between. We have enjoyed the fellowship and fun for a week of Pandamania Vacation Bible School (which Connor LOVED and still talks about! PTL for filling my son's heart with the joy of Jesus.) Then we had a week home that was chalked full of cleaning, laundry and errands. All getting ready for one of our many annual trips to Walt Disney World. As always, Connor loved it and I had a ball watching him as he grew more and more excited about seeing characters and riding new rides or seeing things he recognizes from movies we let him watch. Another week home with cleaning, laundry and re-packing means we are leaving tomorrow morning for the Jersey Shore on another family vacation. This one should be the most mellow of all the summer week's we have had so far since we have zero plans but sitting on the beach, playing in the surf and soaking up the sun.

But as I look at the past 4-5 weeks of running, busting my rear-end and juggling everything on my plate, I realize I have been wiped out, bummed out, broken down. It's a ton of stuff constantly going on. Remembering snacks for Connor, all the needs of an infant, all the what if's and just-in-case clothes and medicines. I am not complaining, but reiterating where my mindset has been and why I have such a lack of energy, motivation or desire to do anything lately. I mean, let's face it, in the perfect world our husbands would do 50% of the work around the house because you mutually live there. They would shoulder 50% of everything that happened inside the home or with the family and in reality, that's just not the case. Now, Ben isn't useless...please don't let this come across that way. He is great about playing with the kids when he gets home so I can have some down time, he will put Connor to bed at night so I can get an uninterrupted shower, he takes care of the lawn and other things here and there but in all truth, I am the heart of the household and the majority of things fall upon me. I am better at remembering all the sippy cups, diapers, ear drops, calendars and schedules, Dakota's vitamin, you name it...the little "mundane" day-to-day operations of the house. But this is where the blog post comes in.....grace.

According to the Bible, grace is God's voluntary and loving favor given to those he saves. We can't earn salvation, nor do we deserve it. No religious, intellectual, or moral effort can gain it, because it comes only from God's mercy and love. Without God's grace, no person can be saved. To receive it, we cannot save ourselves, that only God can save us, and that our only way to receive this loving favor is through faith in Christ.

I love and am thankful and humbled by God's grace....so if he continually showers me with His grace and mercy, why do I not give myself a little grace?

Give yourself a little grace. Give yourself a little wiggle room to not beat yourself up when everything doesn't go according to plan. Let yourself breath a little and enjoy and savor the moment instead of rushing through the diaper change to get lunch on the table to shovel the kids off to naptime so you can clean the kitchen and blah blah blah blah blah......

Grace is compassion, gratitude, surrender, faith, forgiveness, good manners, reverence and the list goes on. It's something money can't buy and credentials rarely produce. Being the smartest, prettiest, the most talented, the richest, or even the poorest, can't help. Being a humble person can and being a helpful person can guide you through your days with grace and gratitude. Thank you Philosophy ;)

The Freezer Challenge

When we moved here, I finally convinced Ben to buy a freezer. We have zero room in our stacked fridge/freezer inside the house and so some more room was a definite must. Now that Alaina is getting ready to start solids and I am committed to making baby food at home, I had the idea of freezing some meals to help fill the shelves of this freezer. Let me tell you! Fill 'er up I did! We have no space now in any freezer.

I don't know about you, but some days I totally forget to pull out something to thaw for dinner until it is WAY too late or there are some days that I have been running around like a chicken with my head cut off and have no desire to cook...this is where freezer meals come in. In the span of 4 hours this morning and a couple hours of prepping yesterday, I successfully froze sweet potatoes, pears and squash for Alaina, two meals of homemade pasta sauce with meatballs, 2 meals of shepherd's pie, 2 meals of meatloaf, cream cheese chicken, brown sugared short ribs, manicotti, almost lasagna, cola chicken, teriyaki chicken, taco pie, salisbury steak with gravy, candied chicken and cheesy ham with potatoes. An entire freezer stocked with food for my family for almost 3 weeks on a morning of time and less than $250! SWEET!

Now, let me tell you....I will NOT be depleting my frozen meals and repeating this process once every 2 weeks. Heck, no! Maybe once a month is more appropriate for my calendar/schedule/needs. The clean-up was monsterous and creatively packing the freezer was a little bit of a challenge but (hopefully) it will be well worth it in the end with the overall goal being saving money in the long run and not going out to eat on the spur of the moment anymore. I guess time will tell!

Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep

Have you ever watched the Christmas movie, White Christmas? It's a beautiful story and one I watch every holiday season. I had never actually seen the movie until after Ben and I were together and, while spending Christmas one year with his mom, we watched it and I was immediately hooked on my "favorite Christmas movie" of all time (to be tied with Polar Express). One of the songs I love the most in White Christmas is when Bing Crosby sings "Count Your Blessings." The lyrics go like this: "When I'm worried and I can't sleep, I count my blessings instead of sheep, and I fall asleep counting my blessings. When my bankroll is getting small, I think of when I had none at all and I fall asleep counting my blessings." I don't know how many times I have tried this technique. When all the stresses of life lay on my heart and head in the middle of the night, I try to count blessings. Do you know I can't get very far! It's not because I don't think my life is blessed, I do. I truly think I am blessed child of God. I have a family I love and who loves me, my husband has job security, I have healthy and happy children, we have people we can call "true" friends in our lives, among many more things. But it seems as I am laying silently on my back, staring up at the dark ceiling, nothing comes to me. Or the big, overall things to be grateful for...you know, the obvious ones are said and then I get to blessing #12 (still not asleep) and out of ideas.

I blogged a long while back about using an "attitude of gratitude." It the sermon topic one Sunday at church and I was so motived by the thought of literally being able to change my life if I would just change my outlook. If I would just look at everything from a grateful perspective. Every relationship would shift (for me). The way I viewed the world around me, would be sunnier because I took the time to notice the blessings in it...not just rush by it all and try to come up with something to be grateful for at the end of the day. The main point Reverend Hasty was driving home that particular Sunday was that your heart wasn't going to adopt the "attitude of gratitude" because you told it to. No, it was like every other part of your life. It was going to take work to make gratitude a natural habit. So, I took out one of my old journals I had collecting dust under the bed, ripped out all the past entries and started a "Gratitude Journal." I was going great the first day, still going strong on the second, oops, forgot to add anything on the third, was too busy to notice on the fourth, found one thing in the busyness of life on fifth and you see the pattern. It's a tough habit to form and it's even harder to train your brain to look for and find things to be grateful for; especially on those days when the kids are pushing you to the brink, you ran out of milk, the dog is whining again, the laundry pile is so high you are tripped on it it to get to the refrigerator for the umpteenth snack of the day...AHHHH! Life. In retrospect, I know exactly what to be grateful for...children when so people are unable to have any, money ti purchase milk and a car to drive to the store to get it, the ability to cloth our children and keep the clothes cleaned. I should be grateful for the laundry detergent that I have. Grateful for the electricity to clean the clothes for me so I don't have to spend all day collecting water and hand-washing play-stained clothes. But alas, in the midst of chaos we tend to see the next step and that is all we can focus on. We have such a hard time taking a second to give thanks for ANYTHING (unless it's the kids momentary silence) because all we can see are the tantrums, the messes, the lists of to-do's, the breakfasts, lunches and dinners that need to be made.

So, here is what I am doing. I would love to hear if you join with me on some or all of it. I am pulling out my Gratitude Journal. We are going to try again but this time, I have a new method to remind me to stop in my middle of the hustle and bustle and craziness of life to be grateful for things. I found my son's little smiley face stickers! They are magic secret. I remember my step-mom doing this when we were kids. She put a smiley face sticker in her car right in front of the odometer and everytime she looked at it, it reminded her to say a quick prayer of thanks. I am using some of these fun and colorful smiley stickers and placing them strategically around the house. Some of the most obvious of places where I will see them constantly, the refrigerator handle, the coffee maker, the bathroom mirror. Others I want in places I don't go very often. Everytime I see one of those stickers, it will remind me to stop for 5 seconds and offer up a praise of thanks for whatever is going on around me at the time.

The Scales Have Tipped

And no, I don't mean the weight scales....although, I wish they would tip in my favor. I have big dreams of losing weight Biggest Loser style. Walking up to the scale after a week of working ou and having Alison Sweeney tell me I've lost 7 pounds. But alas, it isn't the scales for my weight or body fat I am speaking of.

No no no, friend, it is the scales of balance. I feel like they teeter-toter and one slight movement throws the whole thing off. Connor is my example for today. I have never been so frustrated with one person as I have been with him the last few days. Working out has been great, personal image issues have been getting better, getting housework done and my relationship with my children is terrible. It seems like I can't have it all. Whatever it all is or means. If I devote energy and attention to one thing, the fragile scales tips in that direction and I lose whatever was balancing me out on the other side.

I am going to admit something to you, I don't know if I should be ashamed of this or not....I have been tivo'ing Oprah's last season. Yep, not gonna lie. She has had the most incredible shows and incredible guests on over the past couple months because it's the 25th and final season of the show. So, yesterday, I was watching and catching up and I heard something that has stuck with me and I have been thinking about. When you are strong. No, scratch that...when your roots are strong, your tree can grow and flourish. The breeze, the hail, the storms may come, but when you have that strong and stable anchor, your tree won't blow away. Maybe that's what's going on with me....my roots aren't strong enough. Maybe I have lost focus on what my roots should be and where they should be growing. I keep trying to spread more and more branches and it isn't providing me any true and lasting satisfaction because my roots are shallow to the surface and I need deep and thick roots growing in my soul.