So it seems that another week has crept up on me!  I am sitting in my red chair listening to Zachary practice his piano.  He and his two sisters have lessons today.  The rest of the kids are busy doing their school work.  Levi is doing his Algebra 2, Emma is reading her General Science and Joy is trying to wrap her head around Algebra 1/2.  Josiah, Nate and Zachary have their second draft of their term paper due tomorrow.  Their teacher at coop is such a stickler for deadlines and details!  Yep, I am their teacher!   

It is a beautiful sunny day here in the Mid-west!  Bright blue skies with a temperature of 55*.  My toes are cold so, I know autumn and winter have finally arrived!  I love this time of year.  The smells, the food, the planning.  Oh, the planning!

There are specific planning stages I go through.  I think I pretty much have them down to an art at 39.  Phase one: I get really excited about something.  Phase two:  I get really stressed about something.  Stage three:  I get sick.  Stage four:  I manage to pull it off at the last minute.  Now, you have to understand, I work very well under pressure.  I am the queen of emergencies… getting everyone calmed down, pointed in the necessary directions, going to the correct place as quickly as possible.  So, why I try and plan way ahead of that ‘something’ I have no idea! 

My excitement right now?  I am so very excited about my brother Stacey, sis in law Beth and their two boys, Aaron and Sully, plus Aaron’s girlfriend, Maggie coming to our house for Christmas.  I love Christmas.  I mean I really love Christmas!!!  And to have family here for Christmas… Oh wow!!  I am already looking at menu’s for Christmas dinner, making plans for the kids, making plans for the older kids, making plans for the two married couples… I am so excited.  Then… Then… I start thinking logistics.  I think my life quote is “where there is a will there is a way”  or as my principal used to say, “make it work!”  And I wholeheartedly believe that!  So… logistics.  We have a medium size house.  3 bedrooms upstairs and a partially finished basement.  I have six children.  I have five people coming to visit.  I will put Stacey and Beth in the office, Maggie in with the girls, and Aaron and Sully downstairs with my four boys.  Simple… until… until… my perfectionist side kicks in.  Oh yes ladies, I am afraid I have a bit of melancholy added to my choleric personality… so technically I go around in circles really fast!  LOL  

And then… I looked at the calendar.  I have to finish up school this semester with my kids and the kids I teach at coop.  I have a major Coop concert to pull off December 3rd.  But before that is Thanksgiving dinner… and then I have to grade nine 10 page term papers.  Hmmm… and my company is not coming till December 21st.  I am done with all of the above by December 10th.  That gives me plenty of time to prepare for all my most wonderful guests! I do not have to ‘plan’ right now.  I can take everything else a day at a time.  Enjoy Thanksgiving, enjoy my choirs and voice students, enjoy grading the term papers (I know, I am crazy!), enjoy my wonderful six kiddos and hubby!  I do after all love this time of year.  There is no use in getting stressed.  It would be dreadful to ruin a perfectly good autumn and winter due to my freaking out!

Today, I will finialize the order of my concert.  I will go to the chiropractor to fix my neck and hopefully this headache, I will fix my family lasagna, salad and homemade herb bread. 

It is a beautiful sunny day here in the Mid-west!  I do love this time of year!

Blessings to all of you!!!

I attended a Women of Faith Conference for the first time last year.  I was a bit skeptical because of my very conservative Baptist background.  But I came away refreshed and renewed.   This year, I was planning on going as well.  However, I almost did not attend because of my trip to New Jersey/New York the previous week.  I was so tired from that trip, I just knew that a weekend conference all day Friday and most of Saturday with church on Sunday could wipe me out.  Especially since I already was feeling like I was coming down with a cold. 

I decided to go!  After all my BPFF was going and I could not ask her to go alone, could I?  As usual I was blessed.  I am amazed at how the right message I needed to hear has been there both years in a row!  Those who read my latest blog could see I have been struggling.  This week there were messages on God being sovereign, messages on looking for the strengths in people and yourself and building upon them, messages that God loves you and is not out to get you, messages on how sometimes we do not always see clearly and things can be distorted.  I was like a big bull’s eye and they were shooting spiritual nerf darts right at me!  Needless to say, many of them hit the bull’s eye of my heart. 

I am a controlling, conniving, selfish individual… I am a woman!    I want to have my hand on everything to navigate it to the place I want it to go.   I am a mom, of course, and the last 16 years of my life I have navigated six little souls.  What I often forget is that these souls are on loan from the great Captain of the Universe and that he has an assignment for all of his crew.  OH… God is so in control… he is a much better controller, manipulator and much more concerned for his children than I!   Each of my babies were given to God as soon as I knew I was pregnant.  They are God’s and God’s alone.  He already knows their whole story.  He already knows what it is going to take to refine my children into gold!  So, what is my job?  To praise them for their strengths, point them out if necessary.  Enjoy my children, they are after all a blessing from the Lord who makes all thing beautiful.  And yes, I am to discipline them and train them in the way they should go… using God’s word, prayer and wise counsel.  But I am needing to put more emphasis on the first two.  Sometimes, I allow the third to become so overwhelming that I neglect the others.  Love one another as you love yourselves.  That is a lot of love people! 

Another thing that I am going to implement in my life is to examine the strengths that my creator has given me.  He is a master craftsman, after all!  He has gifted each one of us with strengths and weaknesses and I am going to chose to use and build mine.  I am going to chose to put my neck out and try even if I get my neck whacked!  I am going to put in all my energy when I do those things… wanting to serve and impact my world for Christ.  We are not weak… we have the power of Christ in us to will and to do the impossible!  

Amazing how God works things!  Today’s message at church was from a missionary to Brazil.  His message was not on salvation or missions as their messages usually are.  His message was on the power of the tongue.  The power of your words.  And that we should always use our words to speak love and kindness, mercy and truth.  I can have an impact.  Me… a very busy mom of six kiddos… Me… an almost 40 year old woman… Me… a child of the King!  Me… a Princess of the King of Kings!!!!

Blessings to all who read!  May you dare to dive into all that God has prepared for you!   

Cari

I have been feeling rather clueless for that last couple of months.  Have you ever thought you had it all together but then something happens and you begin to question things you have done for years?  Doug and I have spent a lot of time on our knees praying, going to seminars, reading books on how to raise our children.  And all the while knowing we were not perfect, but thought we were doing an okay job.  Then WHAMMY!  The poop hits the fan and we are left starring dumbfounded with poop all over our faces.  A situation with one of children just recently did that to us.  We were left wondering what we had done wrong, what we had missed, and where in the world do we go from here.  Crazy as it sounds, though we have been in great emotional pain lately, there has been an odd grace.  Not that we are feeling great, but at least we are feeling as though we might survive. 

I have always planned on letting go of my children.  I have even looked forward to launching them into their adult lives excited to see what God had in store for them.  I did not expect the ‘letting go’ to sneak up on me so fast.  I did not expect my child to want things that we did not think he was ready to handle.  I did not expect to have a constant fear of losing my child now permanently instilled in my heart.  I confess, there have been times when I have felt entirely helpless.  I did not know whom to talk to or what to even say.  I knew that no matter what choice we made we would be criticized by ‘well meaning’ friends and family.  But what was most important to me, what was imperative was that I needed to keep my son’s heart.  I did not want to lose him! Whatever I needed to do in order to keep his heart, I was going to do it. 

It does amaze me though, that if someone else would give me the scenario of what has gone on in my house the last couple months, I would have told them to SIT on their child.  Take everything away and give him no room to breathe.  I completely believe that I would have lost my son forever had I done that and in the process one of my other five children as well.  So, for now we are taking it a day at a time, taking a deep breath every time there is a new situation or problem or poor communication.  We are trying to give our children back to God minute by minute if necessary… and their have been days it is necessary. 

There is a peace that God has already been here… that He knows where we are headed.  I just have this prayer that my children will not have the pain and ‘baggage’ that I have had due to my poor choices.  But in the end it is their choice… and I will meet them on the other side!

Blessing to all of you!!

Cari

My dear sister in law, Beth, has done a blog for years now.  I have often gone on and read her menu’s, prayer requests, and happenings.  So, I thought I would give it a try.   I know I do not have much time, but maybe I will be able to put something on here often enough.  Thank you dearest Beth… we will see how it goes!

So, for those of you who do not know, which will not be many, I am a mom to six wonderful children.  Josiah, is sixteen, Nate is fifteen, Zach is fourteen, Levi is twelve, Joy is eleven and Emma is ten.  I have home schooled all of them for the last eight years.  It has been a roller coaster ride of learning, mostly my learning.  I have often said this was not my plan, to home school my kids.  I had envisioned being the mom that had cookies and milk ready when the kids got off the bus, ready and willing to help with home work.  Not being the teacher, doing the cooking and helping with the homework.  It is hard work.  It is not an easy commitment to make.  You do not have the free time of other stay at home moms whose children are in school.  You do not have the luxury of just going shopping all day with a friend.  There is no vacation days you can take with pay… pay!  LOL  There is no pay.  At least not the monetary pay you would have with a regular job.  There is to come a far greater reward.  The fruits of our labor are to come… at least that is what I am told!  I am at home 24/7 with my children trying to teach them not only book learning but life learning.  Preparing them for the future lives they will live.

I am also a wife to the most wonderful husband in the world.  We have certainly had our bumps in the road, some of which I am sure I will share since I have a blog.  But those bumps have made us stronger, closer and more in love.

Most important I am a Christian.  I have learned in my short 39 years what that really means and it is nothing like I first thought.  I am saved by grace and grace alone.  It matters nothing at all what I have done or will do.  He knows my past, my present and my future and I have nothing to fear.  Doug and my Bible verse when we got married was “God hath not given us the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  It is on that verse we have survived many things!  I praise him that he has never given up on me or my family.  We are still a work in progress!

Anyways… that is me in a very small nutshell!~! HA!!

Blessings!

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