Daily Archives: August 18, 2011

Confessions of a Christian Wife, Uncategorized

>Lizard Lie

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>Yesterday we had an appraiser coming out to look at our house.
(Yes, we have taken it off the market and are refinancing)

The appraiser is coming, so of course ,we are cleaning the house. Getting everything looking as expensive and perfect as possible.

So she walks in the door and I put our dog up so he doesn’t jump all over the poor woman and then as I am walking down the hall removing all the barricades (the girls’ toy keyboards and our box fan) to the bedrooms (the dog is not allowed in the bedrooms because (1) they are carpet and (2) because he eats things like underwear, socks, plastic toys, and well just whatever he can swallow).

And as I come out of my Bekah’s room there he is… a lizard.
He’s all nice and perfectly still in the corner of our hall. Normally I would scream right now… but the appraiser is in the living room.
I’m thinking “does a lizard in the house decrease the value of a home?????”   

I try to stay calm as I ask Bekah to go get me a cup and then frantically motion for her to be quiet when she comes running up with the cup and goes “what is it? it’s a lizard!” 

My momma “shhhhhhhh” finger goes to my mouth.

I stay perfectly still in the hall staring down this lizard daring him to move until the appraiser goes out the door to measure the outside of the house first. And then the chase is on. Slippery little sucker that he was I could not catch him!

I was perfectly calm at first. Ready to catch the lizard, but the more he escaped my grasp and wiggled and slithered all around the corner I had him trapped him, he just grew more and more ickkkkkkyyyyy!

He slithered into the closet and so I have to start emptying out the contents of the closet as I try to catch him. By this time I am squealing and then my husband comes over to encourage me in my catching as he cheers me on, laughing at me the whole time. So here me and my husband and both our girls are huddled up at the end of the hall with the contents of the closet scattered around chasing a lizard…

Well my husband decides to jump in due to my squealing and in his manly way of catching the thing he cuts off the poor lizard’s tail… which continues to jump and flip in the middle of the hall floor and now the girls are screaming and I am screaming. “It’s still moving! Why is it still moving?”

And yes this is the exact moment the appraiser walks back in needing to get the crawlspace door unlocked…

So my husband goes out to unlock the crawlspace and I am left with the lizard tail and on the search for the rest of the lizard.

The lizard that we never found.

So then comes bed time. Guess whose room is beside the lizard hunt?
Yes, Bekah’s

Who askes if we caught the lizard as I am tucking her in the bed and giving her a goodnight kiss?
Yes, Bekah.

Who decides this might be a good time for what Jon Acuff called “a polite lie”?
Yes, me.

Well, it might not have been a lie…
I simply said “no I didn’t catch him, he went back under the house.”
He most certainly could have went back under the house… right?

Confessions of a Christian Wife, Proven Path Ministries, Uncategorized

>Will You Love Jesus More

>I received this song in an email from my Precept Leader Developer as an encouragement. The song is beautiful and truly shares my heart. This song sings my prayer as not just a teacher, but as a woman of God in every area of my life.

The song is “Will You Love Jesus More”

I realize more and more as I grow in my walk with Christ and as I travel this narrow path that I must decrease and Christ must increase. It is always nice to know that people like you. It is wonderful to know that people love you, especially when those people are your spouse and children and family and friends.

However, if I lived my life and all I have managed to gain is my husband and children loving me… and everyone liking me, then I have failed.

My purpose is to lead my family and all those I know and meet to love Christ more, not me.

How easy it would be to give my children all they want and never expect anything from them. To build myself up in their eyes and try to earn the #1 Mommy of the World Award and convince them that no one could ever love them like I do… but this would be a lie.

There is someone who loves them more than me. Someone who loves them with a love so intense that I cannot even wrap my mind around it in order to even begin to attempt to explain it.
My husband and I have always told our children that we love them more than they will ever understand (at least until they have children of their own) and then we end this with a “but there is Someone who loves you even more than us and His name is Jesus”

You see we have learned that if we leave our children with us alone as their highest definition and picture of love, if we are their litmus of what so great love is… oh my that scares me. We are not as good as it gets. We are flesh. We will have times that we overreact to situations because we are tired or hurt. We will make mistakes in our attempt to love our children the way God desires us to.
We are here to love them to Christ. We are here to teach them to rest and find security in His love for them, because He is unchanging and His love is unchanging.

 “You will give truth to Jacob
And unchanging love to Abraham,
Which You swore to our forefathers
From the days of old.”
Micah 7:20

My goal as a mother is for God to use me to help my children to leave our home loving Jesus more.

************

As a wife, if I look at my husband and tell him that no one will ever love him as much as me, then that is a lie. There is someone who loves him more deeply than I ever will be able to conceive. If my love is the litmus for my husband’s worth then I will fail him.

There will be times that I hurt him out of my own hurt and out of my own overwhelment of life. I will misinterpret his words and respond out of a break in communication. I will misread his intentions and will fail to meet needs that I don’t even know exist. I will never be enough to fill his every longing and secure him in every way.

But there is One that will never lash out at him, or snap at him, or fail him in any way. There is One that will always accurately define his worth and secure him. I am to always point my husband to Christ and draw his eyes to Him and not myself. For Christ alone loves him with an everlasting love.

As a wife, I am to allow God to use me to draw my husband ever closer to Him. If in my death I leave this earth before my husband, I pray that my husband will be able to say that I helped him love Jesus more.

“The LORD appeared to him from afar,
saying,
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.”
Jeremiah 31:3 
My goal as a wife is for God to use me to help my husband to love Jesus more. 
************
As a teacher my goal is not for people to enjoy my class. It is not for them to love my style or even my excitement for what I teach. I teach that they might love Jesus more. If they leave my class only loving me, then I have failed.
My purpose is not to get them to like me and enjoy my company.

My purpose is to so glorify and magnify the awesomeness of my Christ that they do not even see me at all, only Him. I had rather they never even remember my name as long as they leave my class unabashedly and incorruptibly in love with the name that is above all names, Jesus.

“Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love.”
Ephesians 6:24

My goal as a teacher is for God to use me to help you love Jesus more.

************ 

 
My goal as a friend, or even as someone met only once and never seen again, is that somehow God has used me to help them love Jesus more….

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If I myself can remember this, then the enemy cannot shoot his darts of self worthlessness and hit his target.
If I myself can remember this, then I can defeat the desire to receive approval from man, whether that man be my husband, my children, my family, my friends, those who might attend my class, or people I am meeting for the first time.

If I myself can remember that the goal and purpose of my life is for those I come in contact with to love Jesus more then I am free of me…