No More Bunnies

With Easter Sunday, coming up I have been thinking a lot about what Jesus had to go through.   I want to mention again that I believe Christians should talk about it all year, not just at Easter time, but I think it is good to have a day set where we give Jesus special honor.  Each year that goes by, I really want less and less to celebrate the holiday in the way my family has traditionally celebrated, with baskets, candy, and a chocolate bunny.  I feel that it is disrespectful to Jesus. For a Christian to celebrate in the same way as a non-Christian just seems wrong to me.  If you are not a Christian, I have no problem with you celebrating any way you want.  I don't want to get legalistic and create rules about how to celebrate Easter, but for someone who has given their life to Jesus, to celebrate the weekend He went to hell and rose again by eating chocolate bunnies doesn't rest well in my heart.  I think that each person must really search their heart and pray about this for themselves.  I really struggle with it because my family has always looked forward to a basket of goodies, so in the past years I have given in to this tradition. I need to figure out a new way to celebrate.

I have been reading the passages of the death and resurrection to my kids and it really has gotten to me in the past few days.  Mark 14-16 is what I read to them, but basically if you read the last 3-4 books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, you will get the story.  

In one of those strange God coincidences, yesterday when I read to my kids, we really focused on His prayer in the garden before he was arrested.  Then, at church last night, the pastor talked about that very thing.  There are so many aspects of the entire story that he could have mentioned last night, so for him to mention that, I believe, really shows that God wanted to emphasize that part of the story.  Jesus was a man.  He was God and he was man. When Jesus prayed, he asked God if there was any other way to do what needed to be done.  He agonized about what was about to happen.  He prayed for God to take this burden from him, yet still yielded to God's plan.  I would have been terrified to go through what he went through.  I had an anxiety attack before I went into the O.R. for the C-section of my youngest child.  I knew what was coming and I was scared.  That was just for the birth of my child.  I didn't have to be tortured and beaten like Jesus was. I can't imagine what Jesus must have been going through before he was arrested and the night began to unfold.  Jesus had emotions.  He loved to visit his friends and have fun feasts, he got sad when his friend Lazarus died, he had compassion for those who were sick and hurting.  He must have been so scared.  

Today when I was reading chapters 15-16, I realized something. Jesus probably wasn't afraid of being beaten and killed.  I think it was horrible what He went through, but he suffered through all of that silently.  The only time he cried out is when he was separated from the Father.  

34 At three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” This means “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?”Mark 15:34

My personal belief is that Jesus was terrified because he knew he would have to spend time away from the Father.  He would have to go into hell by himself and battle the real enemy.  The horrible things that the Roman guards did were nothing compared to what he would have to experience in the two days after his death.  He had to feel the weight of every sin that was ever committed in the world and he took the punishment for each and every one.  That is why Jesus cried out in the garden for God to find a different way to save us.  But there was no other way.  Jesus let himself be the sacrifice to cleanse us from a lifetime of sin.  

Don't let his death be for nothing! Live your life to honor His death and the time he spent in HELL for YOU and ME. Don't be ashamed to talk about what He has done in your life. 

I know this is a really heavy blog post.  It has been really heavy on my heart and I think it needed to be talked about.  I really would like to hear your thoughts on this topic.  Share something that Jesus has done for you personally in your life.  Honor Him! I also would like to hear ideas for Easter traditions that point to Jesus instead of the Easter Bunny.  Ok, its your turn: GO!

Substance

Several years ago, my marriage was not a beautiful picture.  In fact, lots of arguments, followed by weeks of extended silent treatments, were the norm for my life. I could see a layer of tension settle like dust after each fight.  We were in an unhealthy cycle of pretending everything was ok for a few weeks, then we would plunge right back into the fighting, and then the silence again.  I felt like my life was out of control.  The weight of the stress made me feel like I had the entire earth on my shoulders.  Just to walk across the street took so much effort because of the toll that this lifestyle was taking on me.  So I prayed a simple prayer, "Help." That was the entire prayer. I had learned lots of fancy prayers in my lifetime, but those really didn't make a difference in my life.  It was all I could do just to get that one word out of my lips, but it was enough. 

I was lying on my bed crying and feeling hopeless when I prayed that prayer.  God whispered to my heart that things would get better.  He put his arms around me and told me to give Him all of my troubles.   So, I did.  I felt the weight lift off of my shoulders and I had a picture in my mind of Jesus standing above me with a huge trash can just throwing it all away.  Then I felt his arms around me.  I felt peace for the first time in years.  

Things didn't get better right away, but I held on to the promise God had whispered to me that things would get better.  I knew it just as much as I know right now that I am sitting on a couch holding my laptop.  It was real, I had no doubt.  

    Now faith is the substance 

of things hoped for, 

the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

You may have heard this verse before.  I had heard it many times before, but when I went through this experience, this verse became very real to me.  Faith as substance is a hard concept to grasp.  Something that has substance in the natural world is usually something that you can touch or see. You can hold it, measure it, or examine it.  Faith is something that you can't see or touch.  Faith is kind of like a feeling, but so much more than that.  

Faith is knowing something is true no matter what the circumstances around you are telling you.  It isn't just hope, it is the solid evidence that is created when God himself speaks to you.  It is the substance of things hoped for.  Just like the evidence in a trial is something the jury can see with their own eyes, faith gives your spirit eyes too see what God has said to be true. 

I can hope for rain,  but I don't really know if it is going to rain. The 6 o'clock news can tell me that there is a 60% chance that it could rain. But I will not know for sure until I feel rain drops on my face, or see them from my window.  Faith is more than just hope alone.  It is the evidence that what you hoped will come to pass.  

I waited for about three years for God's promise to come to pass in my life.  I was able to wait because I had evidence that what I hoped for (a better marriage) was going to happen because God told me.  Christian faith begins when you learn how to see God's truth instead of your circumstance.  One way to see God's truth is to hear it whispered to your heart like I did when I prayed.  But that is not the only way; you can read about God's promises in the Bible, or by talking to someone that you know has a good relationship with Jesus.  What it all comes down to is trusting Him with your life.  Let it all go, into His hands, and He will give you peace.  Have faith that God will always do what he says he will do. 

Violent Love

First of all, some of you need to get your mind out of the gutter... I know that to some, the title may imply something inappropriate, but this post is not about some strange fantasy, so just forget about that! But since the title brought you here to read this post, stay right here, I want to talk to you about something for a minute.

I woke up this morning with something on my mind and I have been thinking about it all morning as I went about getting ready for the day.  I don't know if I will even be able to write my thoughts in words, as they were mostly images on the movie screen of my brain.  

I have been reading a book about martyrs that have given their life for their faith and that has really been getting to me... deep.  Thinking about what they went through for their faith and what they sacrificed has just really shaken me.  It makes me feel so guilty for complaining for anything in my life.  They were put into prison, beaten, sacrificed, burned to death, be-headed, stoned to death.  All so that other people can know the love of Christ.  

That's not something I have really heard much about in church.  What I have been taught most of my life is how to be a good girl.  But if you read the Bible, really read it and study it, following God is not just about being good.  Many people think of the Bible as a sweet story book, but it isn't a fairy tale.  If you compare it to any storybook, the Old Testament is really more like Grimm's fairy tales. Except that this is not fiction, but a historical account of the nation of Israel.   It is very beautiful, but can also be very violent.  There are stories about rape, entire cities being slaughtered, many many wars, murder, the list goes on.  So, where am I going with this? I feel that most of what I have been taught is something that is just not real.  Or, at least not the whole picture.  That is why so many people reject church.  So many churches are just not real.  Many churches choose the happy verses and leave out anything negative. 

 It reminds me of watching an episode of Barney.  I can't stand watching Barney.   I know this is a strange example, but I have little kids so I think about this stuff, lol.  I love watching Sesame Street with my kids, and one day I was wondering why I liked one show so much and despise the other.  Then I realized, its because Sesame Street has happy characters and grumpy characters. You have sweet happy Elmo, but you also have Oscar the grouch.  Sometimes they are sad and experience emotions other than just being happy. Seeing all different emotions makes them more loveable because we have different emotions.  Barney is just happy all the time and it is hard to swallow. The Bible is not Barney or Sesame Street, but it is a very small example of the difference between too much happy and something that mirrors real life.  People need something real, the good and the bad. 

 There are so many good things about God, He is perfect, but when we ignore the things of the Bible that are not as pretty we are missing half of the picture.  People don't really like to talk about Jesus dying on the cross because it isn't pretty.  We talk about it at Easter because that is the appropriate time to talk about it, but then for the rest of the year, we don't think about it.  Not really, if you are honest with yourself.  It's not fun to think about.  I know speaking for myself,  I don't like to think about it.  I don't like violence.  I don't like blood.  So, I think about it once a year during Easter like a good Christian girl and forget it the rest of the year.  

But for some reason this was on my mind this morning: 

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities

Just that part of the verse kept going through my head all morning.  So I looked it up on Biblegateway.com and read a little more, then a little more.  The whole chapter where this is found is really good, but I really like these surrounding verses: 

Isaiah 53:4-6

New International Version (NIV)

⁴ Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, (sins)
    he was crushed for our iniquities;(sins)
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

God loves us passionately, but it isn't always pretty.  Jesus went through a very violent death because he loves us so wholly and so completely.  Nails were hammered into his hands and he was beaten terribly. He was made fun of during the beatings.  He was treated so very badly that is hard to really  realize what he went through.  I have never been through anything even close to what he went through.  

In the Old Testament, wars were fought because God promised land to the Israelites.  They had to fight for their promise.  It wasn't easy and it wasn't pretty.  In life, we go through hard times and it's not always pretty, but God promises to love you and give you peace.  We aren't always perfect.  Like it says in v6 above, we ALL like sheep have gone astray.  All of our sins put him on a cross.  He died because of us.  

God is good and he always fights for the good of those who love him.  Time after time in the Bible, God sent his angels to fight battles for his people.  There may be a lot of violence, but behind that passion and violence is a God who loves you and is willing to fight for you.  He never harms a hair on the head of those who love Him.  He is fighting FOR us.  It is the people who are opposing and oppressing His people that God always opposes and attacks.  I think when we really think about this and meditate on how deep His love is for you, it will stir you soul.  It will change you from deep within.  

John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 

Why I Stopped Homeschooling and Put My Kids Into School

  I couldn't sleep so I thought I would write out my thoughts just to keep them from rolling around uncontrollably.  (It may help, anyways)  I don't usually write about personal matters on my blog, but I just needed to get all of this out and didn't really know where else to do it.  

The girls did their placement testing for school this week and we got the results yesterday.  My oldest is 11 and is supposed to be in 6th grade.  She is reading at an 8th grade level! Yay! I was so proud of her.  She was a little behind in math, though. We decided to go ahead and place her in 6th grade math and utilize the amazing tutoring program that they have in place at the Middle School.  They have two math lab classes for struggling math students and tutoring before and after school.  So with all that help, she should catch up in no time.  My second oldest did good in math, but is a little behind in reading, which I already kind of knew would happen.  We decided that since most of the subjects require reading, to keep her home the rest of the year.  Since I have two  in school, I can work with her one on one and get her caught up and hopefully she will be caught up for next school year.  

I was thinking about our four years of homeschooling and everything that has happened with our family and I am glad that my kids know anything at all with everything that we have gone through.  One year into homeschooling my husband had a heart attack and was home recovering for about 6 month afterwards. About a year later he went for a checkup and discovered that the blockages in his heart gotten much much worse, so ended he up getting a quintuple bypass surgery.   A few months after the surgery I had a baby.  Not long after that hubby went into a rehabilitation program.  Then we split up and the kids and I moved to north Louisiana and he moved to a small town in the center of the state.  We met almost every weekend in a town in the middle to let a kid or two go visit him for a week, alternating between the three oldest kids. The baby was still breastfeeding and I wasn't ready to part with her.   After doing this for  almost a year, God began to heal our marriage and our family.  When we first split up, I thought we were going to get a divorce, but God didn't let that happen.  He brought us back together.  So the kids and I moved to live with their Papa.  I am amazed that we are not only back together as a family, but we are really doing good! God has made it better than it was before all of this happened.  

I am not telling you all this to make excuses.  I take full responsibility for my kids education.  I did the best I could do under the circumstances.  I know there are people who are thinking that I should have put the kids into school a long time ago with all this that has happened to our family.  When Papa's heart attack first happened, we couldn't look into the future and know that all this was going to happen, so I thought that it would just blow over and we would get caught up again, but then the next thing happened, then the next… the problems just didn't stop coming.  And I am going to say something that you may disagree with and I am ok with that.  I believe that there are things in life that are more important than academics.  Now, before you completely bash my head in, let me explain.  I know that you must know someone who is so completely intelligent, but you find yourself saying about them, "He is so smart, but he just can't get his act together." Or, "She did so good in school, but now that she graduated, she just can't live in the real world." or "he is the smartest dumb person I know," you know, something along those lines.  People can have a lot of knowledge, but don't know what to do with it and it really does them no good.  You can have the knowledge of a brain surgeon, but if you don't know how to handle everyday life, you may end up flipping burgers at McDonalds.  I feel that I have grounded my kids in the word of God, I have taught them coping skills to get through extremely hard situations in life. I have been there for them to cry on my shoulder when Papa wasn't there.  They know that bad things can happen, and that life goes on and you just do the best that you can, and that will go so much farther in real life than knowing algebra.

Math can always be learned, but a broken spirit is hard to mend.  

There is also a group of people who are thinking that I should not put my kids in school and keep homeschooling.  I am still a huge fan of homeschooling.  I love it.  Even with all the bad things that have happened, I loved homeschooling.  But as a wife and a mother, I have been pushed and stretched to the very edge of my sanity and I need a break! Lol!  I really tried to search out every avenue, and there are absolutely no homeschooling groups that I can find. We live in a small town that is just not a homeschool friendly town. And there is just not much to do here.   After 8 months of the kids being cooped up in the house with Joey and I, having no friends and nothing to do, we decided it was best for the mental health of our entire family to enroll our kids into school.   At first I fought it, but finally I realized that is really is the best thing for us right now.  And now I am looking forward to having a break.  I need it.  I feel that one reason that God brought us to the slow pace of Winnfield is so that we can just rest.  Our whole family needs to recuperate from the stress of the past 3 years.  I am looking forward to sending my kids to school and being able to just breathe for a while without having to worry about being solely responsible for my kids education.   

We are beginning a new chapter in our family and I can't wait to see what God has for us.  Hint: He told me it was going to be awesome!

...And is Kind

 ^"Love suffers long and is kind"  1 Corinthians 13:4

I have heard the "love verses" millions of times, but this morning when I read it, this portion of the verse jumped out at me.  This is something that I needed to hear.  The translations I usually read have the words "longsuffering" or "patient" instead of "suffers long" and for some reason when I read this NKJV version, it spoke to me in a new way.  Love suffers.  The word suffer is not a pleasant one, it's meaning, of course, is to experience pain, illness, or injury.  Love will experience all of that for another, just as Jesus experienced pain and injury for you and me.  

However, there is another definition of the word that really cut deep: to submit or be forced to endure .  Not only does one experience pain for another, it is chosen.  And is kind. If you are human and have ever experienced pain, you know that while you are experiencing it, you are not kind.  Pain and suffering usually bring about rudeness and lashing out at loved ones around us.  When I am suffering a migraine, I do not want anyone to talk to me, be near me,...breathe too loud.  I am not a nice person when I am suffering.  

When my husband and I are going through hard times, the paycheck isn't exactly stretching the way we would both want it to and we are feeling stressed, we are feeling a whole different kind of pain.  At that moment we are to be KIND to each other.  You married folks know how completely easy it is to be kind to your spouse when you don't agree how the paycheck should be spent.  Right?!

For my unmarried friends, let me bring up another scenario.  Your car runs out of gas on a busy highway and none of your friends or family are answering their phones.  You have to walk half a mile and back to put gas in your car.  You are not happy.  When you finally get back home, ________ (fill in the blank with room mate, boyfriend, mom, ect.) says, "How was your day."  You want to lose it and give them a piece of your mind after feeling deserted all afternoon.  That is the exact moment you are to be KIND. 

These scenarios aren't even THAT bad.  Consider what so many of the Christian martyrs went through.  That is real suffering.  And we can barely get through our cushy little day being kind to each other.  What if you were in an arena filled with thousands of people who are cheering for the hungry lions to come and eat you.  Think you could be kind to anybody at that point? 

Love suffers LONG.  It not only endures pain, it will do it for a long time and yet still be kind.  That baffles my mind.  How can you do that? I am not the expert on this because I am still trying to figure it out myself.  I do know that a heart full of Jesus can give you the endurance to suffer long, to love, and be kind.  When my husband and I separated and the Lord brought us back together, we had gone through a world of suffering.  I felt Jesus put his arms around me and I knew that He would put my life back together.  My life isn't perfect and it hasn't been easy over the past couple of years, but I have so much peace about everything.  I can sit and enjoy his presence and it doesn't matter where I am or what has happened in my life.  That presence is what makes me able to endure any amount of suffering.  It is only with His strength that I can look past my suffering and have any ounce of kindness left.  I can't argue with a Bible scholar about the truths of the Bible, but I know that my experience with Jesus is true and no one can take that away from me.  

Thread of Life

I have been thinking a lot lately about hard times.  A couple of weeks ago my pastor preached a sermon about staying strong when you go through trials.   This is something in which I happen to have a lot of experience, but honestly, I am glad I have gone through everything that I have gone through.  God is weaving a unique story with each day of my life.  Throughout my life God has been the thread, the very fiber, woven into the months and years that make up the whole of who I am, and there is no other story exactly like mine.  And that, no one can take away from me.

Just like a tapestry on the wall of a castle can be intricate and beautiful, God only creates quality pieces of work.  There is no trash, no junk, in his kingdom.  The process of making a tapestry is long and tedious, seeming like each thread that joins its mates are not making a difference to the size of the tapestry.  One tiny thread doesn't seem to make a difference, but when combined with thousands of pieces, it creates pieces that can span an entire wall. Each day that has gone by in my life has seemed like a mundane piece of thread, but it is building up to something extraordinary.



The Lord takes such painstaking, mechanical, detailed attention to every fiber of who you are.  I have heard before that when our life seems hard, it is because we are just seeing a small piece of the larger picture.  I believe this.  In weaving, the weaver begins with a picture; a piece of artwork, a photograph, or drawing that will be transformed into a tapestry or fabric.  This is enlarged to the size that is needed for the piece, then is placed behind the loom so that it can be seen through the threads.  The Creator has a masterpiece in mind before your life begins, although instead of a two dimensional tapestry, He is creating a life.  Besides the fact that he created your physical body, which is amazing in itself, the Lord is sculpting an emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimension to you as well.  This goes well beyond the three dimension movies we watch in theaters.  There is so much that goes into who you are.  He has a picture of what he wants you to be right there in the loom of who you are.  However, He is not creating a piece of fabric, but a human who He graciously allows to make its own decisions.

A weaver may have hundreds of colors that go into a single piece of tapestry.  As he is working on it, he may have many of them attached and hanging from the loom while he goes back and forth to create a work of art.  Ten colors over here to create a butterfly, five next to that to create a flower, twenty-three on the left side to make the log cabin, and three shades of gray will make the smoke billowing from the chimney.  Add to that fifty different colors for the scene of the children playing in the field.  The weaver knows where each piece of thread needs to go.  He knows how much of each color and in what direction it should be woven.


At all times, the Lord has hundreds, thousands of threads attached to you just to keep you alive and breathing.  He is constantly creating and re-creating you, all while you are making decisions that could completely change the direction of your life.  But He has a plan for that, too.  He simply re-draws and re-plans the picture and begins His work again.  He is constantly working on you. The most beautiful of God's tapestries are the ones who submit to His will and allow the Weaver to just do His work.  They begin to ask Him what to do in their lives.  Sometimes He needs to undo some sections and re-do them because of bad decisions or things that happen that are out of their control.  Some tapestries need more re-doing than others.  But when the human tapestry submits to Him, they can know without a doubt that it will be absolutely breathtaking.

The hard times I mentioned earlier may just be some of the darker thread that is needed to highlight the brighter areas of the work.  How exciting would an art gallery be if the artist only used one color paint for all of his art? We need the good times and the bad to make us who we are.  Psalm 11:5 states, "The Lord tests the righteous," and James 1:2-4 says,^"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." I think that these dark  times are refining us and removing our impurities.  If all you can see is darkness around you,  rest in the truth that God has a large view of your life, and he doesn't just see the dark time, but the entire picture.  He loves you and is creating something breathtaking in you.

Super Glue for my Broken Heart: Pain

Super Glue for my Broken Heart: Pain: I place my pain                           on a platter, And ice it like a cake. They eat it up and love it so  Cuz they don&#39...