But as for me, afflicted and in pain— may your salvation, God, protect me.-Psalm 69:29

We are having a rough weekend here in our household. Friday morning our dog, Haddie, was acting very lethargic and so we decided to take her to the vet thinking that is probably just a minor illness that could be easily fixed. To our dismay, we found out Haddie had Chronic Renal Failure and was in really bad shape. The vet told us that we could follow through with some treatments that would help prolong her quality of life but only for a few weeks. She also told us that we could choose to euthanize her. We took her home to spend the weekend with her knowing full well that we could not afford the various treatments the vet was suggesting but yet hanging on to some hope of a miracle to heal her. Tonight as she lay here beside me burdened to breathe and no sign of her sweet, hyper, joyful personality to be see I realize we are in a very hard place.

I've spent some time today reading online about renal failure, the symptoms and euthanization. My heart is overflowing with grief. How do we do this to her? We don't euthanize humans, why animals? I have always just accepted it as the norm, what you do to help a suffering animal. But why is it the norm? When did euthanization begin and why do we commonly do it for animals but not for humans? If you were in your dying hours, so sick and lifeless would you want to be "put to sleep?" Or would you rather hang on to those last moments of life to be with your loved ones even if that meant suffering? I don't know. I can't decide for myself, how can I decide for this precious puppy? Why does it feel SO wrong? Why does it feel like I am the one that is going to kill her? How do I call the vet to make an appointment to end my dog's life? It seems cold and callous!

On the other hand, how could I let her suffer? Is it only society that has told us that this is the humane thing to do or is it truly humane? I don't know.  Everything that she has enjoyed in her short life she can no longer take part in. I am sure she is sad and scared but is putting her to sleep ok? Furthermore, how does God feel about this? Is it ok for us to take her life into our own hands? It hurts and I just don't know what to do for my little baby.

Sweet Haddie, short for Haddassah (Esther) who saved the Jews from certain annihilation. Haddassah was strong and so was our dear sweet girl. Always looking out for us. Strong to protect us but tenderhearted and loving, especially toward children. We love her dearly. We pray that God will give us guidance in such a hard situation.


Until next time, may Christ's love and blessings be upon you and yours.

God's time is not our time.

One of my deepest longings is to have another child. I think about it a lot, dwell on it and sometimes even let it consume me. There was a time that I let it sink me into depression but God's great hand was able to pull me out and let me see that I needed to move on. For a while I did. For a while I carried on normally, I was able to push the desire away and be happy. In the past few weeks or month the desire has resurfaced again accompanied by mixed emotions including a multitude of sadness.

      Tonight as I was driving to the grocery store (on a whim, in search of fruit) the preacher on the radio was talking about God's timing. He was saying that we see time in a matter of seconds, hours, weeks, years. God sees time in a matter of eons. We need our answers or our demands met immediately but God knows what we need at any given moment and when exactly we need those things.

Do you ever have those times when you just *know* that God is speaking directly to you? That was my moment tonight. I knew what God was saying, "Just wait, be patient, in due time." I heard His answer to me tonight, His message.  What will I do with it? Will I hold on to it, accept it and put my focus elsewhere? Or will I brush Him off and continue to desire something that is not currently within reach? If I do the latter I am certainly subjecting myself to hopelessness. If I choose to embrace His message to me, continue to pray earnestly and set my sights on His will for my life, I know that I will assuredly be filled with His peace. And so I choose peace. I choose patience and longsuffering. My God is THE GREAT GOD and I know His plan for me is so much better than my own.

I encourage you to remember God's time is not our time. God does not see or live in seconds, minutes, hours, He lives in eternity.

Until next time may Christ's love and blessings be upon you and yours.

In Celebration

It's December and this absolutely, positively my favorite time of year. I love the cold (or rather cool) weather here in South Texas. An escape from the humidity and steaming hot temperatures. I love the cozy feeling of having the Christmas decorations up. Something more important that I love is the time of renewal. The time to re-evaluate your traditions or even your life. This year we are doing Christmas in a whole new way. In the past, although in the back of our minds we never really took time to appreciate "the reason for the season." Christmas morning we have always taken the time to read the account of Jesus' birth but aside from that there was no true examination of what we were celebrating. **note: I know that this is not technically Jesus' birthday HOWEVER I do think it is important to take time to celebrate the day that our Heavenly Father came down to earth in human form to make the ultimate sacrifice and this is the time of year we choose to celebrate.**
So, this year I really started to ponder what traditions, values, and ideas I wanted to instill in our dear son during this season. For starters, I desperately wanted to get away from the materialism of the holiday. Unfortunately, I was not as successful as I wished to have been but I did manage to get my shopping just about finished before this month so that my focus can be on actually celebrating (rather than rushing frantically around trying to fulfill wish lists). The second thing that we are doing is a Jesse Tree. In case you are not familiar with this (I had never heard of this until a few weeks ago, thanks to my SIL) a Jesse Tree is meant to be an Advent celebration. Each day of Advent you place an "ornament" on the "tree." Each ornament is a symbol representing some aspect of Christ's lineage. Along with the tree we are doing a daily devotional that relates to that days symbol. We started these studies yesterday and all of us had such a great time doing it I am excited for the rest of them.

--As the Christmas season progresses I hope to come up with more ideas to emphasize the aspects of the holidays that I want to embrace, while I work to minimize the aspects that society has pushed us to embrace.

May Christ's love and blessings be upon you and yours. 

Hey Money Savers!

My cousin has an awesome blog for all you who love to clip coupons or just save money! She also has some great recipes on her site. Check it out Also Known As Mom

Snapshot Saturday

     Clouds from the cold front.

      Ant's view.

        Daddy & A.

  What would a day without Starbuck's be?

   Enjoying the view.

         Neat.

What's down there?
                                                                            

 

Peeking through the brush.

   



 Throwing rocks.

                                                                                

    It's a bird. It's a plane.

   Beautiful flowers.

    My dear boy.

     Even the birds were enjoying the view.

      Windmills, windmills, everywhere.

...And be thankful. -Colossians 3:15

Between this being the month for Thanksgiving and the month for Veteran's Day, I can't help but to examine the things for which I am thankful. How about you? Do you take time this month to truly think about this? There are so many verses in the bible that talk about being thankful:  Colossians 3:15, Colossians 3:16, Psalm 69:30, Psalm 95:12 and so on. With so many verses like these it is safe to say that God desires us to have a spirit of thanksgiving toward Him and toward others. Today begin to contemplate not just only what you are thankful for but also who you are thankful for. Give thanksgiving in prayer to our Lord for all of these. Also, consider calling that person you just couldn't live without or sending them an email (better yet a card) to say that you are so blessed to have them in your life and thankful for all that they do!

Here are some things and people for which I am thankful:

•  A home to keep me safe and warm
• My husband, so supportive and loving
• My dear son who always keeps me smiling
• A soft place to lay at night
• My animals who are the best listeners (and cuddlers)
• Transportation -the ability to get wherever I need to be
• Health
• Friends that give me a good laugh or hug whenever necessary
• Family -all of those that support me and love me no matter what
• Freedom to believe and worship any way I choose
• Freedom to read my bible, whether at home or in a public place
• All the Christians out there loving our God with all their hearts despite severe persecution (http://www.persecution.com)

There is so much more that I am thankful for but I will stop there.  I want to leave you with Psalm 100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.

May Christ's love and blessings be upon you and yours. 

With your morning cup of coffee...

You may want to check out this site: girltalk

The ladies from this site were featured in the current issue of Home Educating Family. I had not heard of the site before and checked it out this afternoon. I love it. It is realistic, really down to earth. The site is run by a mom and three adult daughters. As one of the daughters put it, "Think of this site as your seat at Mom's kitchen table."
There is a great blog filled with amazing photography. Tomorrow morning when you are sitting down for a little "me" time, check it out. I bet you will be glad you did.

May Christ's love and blessings be upon you and yours. 

She makes linen garments and sells them...

WHAT!?
There is much to be learned from the Proverbs 31 woman, much to which we should aspire. It is apparent to me that this woman was a fine seamstress. So in my quest to be a Proverbs 31 woman (or in my search to cure boredom) I decided to take up sewing. First project? A costume. I really wanted to be Queen Esther for Halloween but I doubted Esther would have worn anything that would have left her as scantily clad as most of the woman on the fronts of the costume packages. Alas, I decided I MUST learn how to sew and I should start with  making my costume. So just 4 days before I was to wear said costume my feat began. Fortunately, with the help of my dear mother, (who may or may not have wanted to throttle me as she tried to teach me over the phone-- from 500 miles away) I finished this project:

 

Sure it looks fine at first glance but please don't look closely! At the completion of this project I vowed I would never thread another bobbin or complete another backstitch.

Fast forward one week. There I sat wishing I could sew something just a bit (or a lot) better than the last project. I decided I should sew an apron. And here I sit today after my 500th attempt to make the first part of this apron, a ruffle. It is now I realize how the Proverbs 31 woman procured all of her wonderful qualities: she started sewing! In learning how to sew, you must keep your patience, your arms get strong (v. 17) from all the cutting and pinning and your dignity(v. 25) is most certainly tested (there may have been some yelling and tantrums during the completion my first project).

I may never sell my garments and my merchandise may never be profitable but one day I will learn to sew and on that day I will surely have gained some biblical qualities.


May Christ’s love and blessings be upon you and yours.

To vent or not to vent?

Occasionally in life we may have to stop and wonder whether or not something is sinful, especially when we feel it is something so normal. One such area is complaining. Our human nature tells us we must vent our frustrations and I think that can definitely be healthy but at what point does it become sinful. A close friend and I were discussing this recently and it really made me stop and think. I really like to share my frustrations with those closest to me, the reason? Maybe I like to get feedback or maybe it just feels good to whine for a little bit. However, 1 Corinthians 10:24 says, “Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.” You could apply that verse in this way, when you are complaining or venting is it bashing the person you are complaining about? Does complaining lift up anyone or is it good for anyone aside from yourself?  How you answer these questions would help to determine if what you are doing is sinful or not. Verse 32 says, “Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God--” Consider these questions. Does your complaining cause another to stumble? Does your venting turn into a gossip session? I’ll leave you with this verse to get your wheels turning. “Don't grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged.” –James 5:9 

I just want to add a side note and say, I, too, complain and I find myself wondering if I am guilty of a sin because of it. I am not approaching this with a self-righteous attitude. Nor am I saying that I will never again express my frustrations. What I am saying is that the next time I start airing out my tensions, I will try to make sure it doesn’t amount to just another gossip session. I encourage you to do the same.

May Christ’s love and blessings be upon you and yours.

You become what you gaze upon...

Or listen to. Or read. Or watch.

The conviction of trying to keep a pure heart and mind is something that has been weighing on me lately. Romans 12:12 says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” What this verse says to me is that we are no longer supposed to do things that this world considers acceptable. We are to change what we watch, read,  listen to, even how we treat others.  

Why is this? We live in a dark world and we are the light to this dark world (Matthew 5:14). We have to set ourselves apart.

This is not an easy task but Christ never promised that it would be. In fact when He was here on this earth He told His disciples (including us), “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (John 15:19) From the moment we choose Christ, we choose to be set apart, to be different. We need to read the Bible and find the truth that Christ calls us to, find your convictions and stick with them. Even if sticking to them means being hated by the world (and even those close to you). People will probably treat you unkindly when you say you don’t want to read the book or watch the movie that you consider to have elements that are not Christ-like, but in the end you must decide which is more important, the approval of this world or the approval of Christ.

May Christ’s love and blessings be upon you and yours.

The beginning.

I have had previous blogs, all of them needless ramblings of various aspects of my life. Topics flowing from cooking to homeschooling to being a mom to reminiscing and on and on. I never kept up with any of these blogs. A few months here and there and then nothing. I hope that this blog is different. I hope this blog finds a deeper purpose than just an outlet for my thoughts. You see just the other night my husband and I were discussing "being great." He says, "I've always had the drive to be great at what I do." "Really?" I reply. "I have never had that desire, I've always been just average." "What am I good at?" I asked him. "Writing, you're good at writing," was his response. I have never considered myself a good writer. I always made A's on written assignments but they never had any heart in them. This conversation got me thinking, what AM I good at? What do I desire to be good at? I didn't come up with an answer that night. A few days passed and my cousin was asking me about a question about starting a new blog, I decided I, too, would start a new blog. I didn't know what about at that time, just another blog for babbling on about my life. While I was thinking of a title for this blog, it hit me, the thing at which I wanted to be great. I wanted to be great at serving Christ in my daily life. I wanted to be a great Christ-like mother and wife. I wanted to conduct my household with His greatness. And thus this blog was born.

My hope is that this blog would speak to other women whose goal it is in life to be the woman described in Proverbs 31.  For those of you not familiar with this passage its specific location is Proverbs 31:10-31, I encourage you to pore over this passage and examine your heart. Is this the type of woman you strive to be?  Some of the characteristics of the Proverbs 31 woman are: trustworthiness, diligence, hard-worker, strength, generosity, dignity, wisdom and kindness. As v. 10 says, "she is far more precious than jewels."

These are the things I seek to be, greatly be. I diligently and earnestly pray to be. So as the days go by I will be posting here, my thoughts, opinions and experiences as I continue along my journey seeking to be a great servant of Christ right here in my very own home.

May Christ's love and blessings be upon you and yours.