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New Years day was spent first at home getting ready for church… which we managed to do without any yelling or meltdowns and we only pulled into the parking lot 5 minutes late…
Then at church the last gifts to be studied in my spiritual gifts class were discussed and we left small group to head to “big church” to listen to one of the cutest couples I have ever seen share about their missions adventures in Guatemala.
Then we were off to spend the rest of the day at my in-laws.

My momma-in-law had a copy of The Help, a movie I had not seen but had wanted to, so we popped it in. PG-13 should be fine with the kids running around… right?
I cringed with the first “gd” and hoped there would not be another… there was, but they never fell when the children were in the room (whew).

Then Bekah, tired and not feeling all too wonderful yesterday crawled up in my lap while the movie was playing… in closed-caption I mind you…

Her first question came.
“Momma why can’t she go to the bathroom?”   

So the explanation of the civil rights movement began and as I spoke my child’s beautiful innocent eyes looked at me with utter befuddled confusion. The fact that someone could be treated so horrible simply because of the color of her skin was completely foreign and insane to her. Proof that racism is taught, not natural.

Her next question came.
“But why Momma?” 

My only answer.
“Foolish ignorance and human self-righteousness”

The next lesson my youngest child learned from The Help was just as upsetting to her… and me.

While watching the movie, the time of Minny’s revenge came, and at this time my little one decided to enter the room once again… and at the exact time that (in closed caption) Minny says, “Eat my s**t”. To which I look in horror to my child who is watching (and reading) and then turns to me and says “Momma what’s s**t?” 

Really?!?!

So I have to take my young beautiful innocent child to another room and explain to her what s**t is. I laugh in uncomfortable situations. So now I am trying to explain the seriousness of why we do not use this word without my uncomfortable situation laughter, because in truth my heart is breaking, and I feel like I have failed my child.

She asked, “Momma if it is just another word that people use for poo-poo what’s so bad about it?”
I then have to explain about profanity and what God says in His Word about speaking with these words and how this is not a word we are to use.

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So 2012 has been handed over to my God and already laid at the foot of the cross of my Savior. Time is not mine. Life is not mine. I am simply a receiver and a beholder by the grace of Him to whom all things belong.

If I could play this song out loud from the heavens you would find me standing in my yard with my arms lifted high and my voice singing His praise as I spun in circles with uplifted hands and face, worshiping my God for all that He is! Singing up to the highest heaven my song of adoration and knowing that from the highest high He hears my song. My song of praise, thanking Him for making me a new creation, and thanking Him for reminding me that I am always a work in progress. Thanking Him for reminding me that though I continue to walk through the valley of the shadow of death here on this earth,.. yes I have no doubt that there will be days of darkness to come… but it is His Light in me, with me, and behind me that cast the shadow. I never walk alone! Oh how I dance for Him! 

All that I can do is give it back to You!
You’ve taken my old skin and made it new again!

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I saw this video today and I was overwhelmed with Him. Overwhelmed that He would trust me with His children. It hit me again like a brick in my chest, that my girls are not mine. They are His. He has allowed me the honor of being a steward over them… and the privilege of being called Momma, but they belong to Him.

I remember talking with some parents one day, they were women that I did not know, and may never see again… and as we talked they were shocked that our girls had chores, that they washed dishes, did laundry, their children where in high school and they did nothing but get waited on.

One thing my husband and I knew from the beginning was that our girls were not just our children. They were a future wife, a future mother, a future employee, a future employer, a future servant of the Most High God. We knew that it was our job to get them ready for life…

The burden became even heavier when the eternal weight began to hit us as we have grown in our own personal walks with the Lord. God has allowed us to babysit His babies. Our job is to train them up in the way of their Father.

I have taken care of other people’s kids my whole life. The first thing I always ask is what are your rules? What are they allowed to do, eat, drink? When do they sleep? What are they allowed to watch, read, listen to? How do you discipline? Where are the boundries? Because I want to honor your rules for your children.

If my girls are not mine… if they belong to Him… then I should be asking these same questions to Him. And I should honor His rules for His children. He is watching. The secret camera footage is being stored up. I am being recorded as I love and care for His children.

Sometimes I have to remember that they are my Father’s in heaven… it helps with my own attitude with things. It helps me to remember to cherish every moment with them and to make the most of every opportunity. To always point them to Him, their Eternal Father.

I look at my girls and the time is going by so fast… I remember seeing the imprint of their tiny feet pressed up against my skin from within my womb and now they still manage to get up under my skin, but it’s more the head-jerking, eye-twitching, pull my own hair out kinda under the skin 🙂

So when I have those moments (the head-jerking, eye-twitching, pull my own hair out kinda moments)… and God knew I would have these moments… yet He still chose to trust me with some of the most unbelievably precious girls I have ever known.
Yes, I am overwhelmed with Him.
Overwhelmed with His grace and His choosing…

Dear God, don’t let me screw this up!

Me and my dreams… I will never be a Jacob or a Joseph or a Peter… I will never be someone who could trust that a dream was from God. I dream too crazy. I think even the Almighty fears what goes on in this head of mine when I lay down to sleep, (just kidding, I know He fears nothing!)

So it is… what? Four days until Christmas? Yep, Four days. I have zero, count them… 0… gifts wrapped. Our tree has been up since the day after the infamous Iron Bowl, and it stands all lonely with it’s skirt undecorated with boxes, and bags, and bows… I don’t believe I have even taken a picture of it this year. December has been one big blur… just like all of 2011 and the end of 2010 has been.

But back to my dream…

Let’s see I recall walking in the back door  and turning out of our kitchen and into the dining room to see a big white ceramic bowl that was purchased for my husband’s stepmom (this bowl is not a real gift we have purchased, I don’t know where it came from).
I ask him why in the world the bowl is out?
He says, I used to it to make the chicken wings. I needed a big bowl to mix them in the hot sauce.
Well now he is in the hot sauce!
I come up to him and begin hitting him on the shoulders with the dish towel that I have in my hand while I yell, Now I have to go back to town! You know I hate shopping! Why in the world did you do that! I can’t believe you!
He of course is laughing at me the whole time, which just makes me madder.

So I go and grab all the rest of the gifts and go to hide them so I can get them wrapped before he gets a hold of another, then I can’t figure out where to do this without my kids, because I don’t want them to see their gifts.
So I find a room at church (yes now I am at church) and plan to hide in there to wrap, but then somebody sees me and asks me to help with something for a minute… I look at my gifts, sigh, and go off to help.

The next thing I know I am surrounded by crying kids who can’t find there baseball that was hit into a thicket of pine trees (Christmas trees I do believe) and I have been recruited to find the ball. Somehow I now have the ability to walk around in the tops of the trees and search out the ball. I am surrounded by green pine and then those trees turn into something like astroturf and I am up under it grabbing hold of the ball and pop out triumphantly holding it… although for some reason it is quite squished.

Now I head back to tackle my gift wrapping and remember that I still have to replace the big white bowl!

So I look at my gifts again and sigh and head off to the stores, yet I am in shoes that make my feet hurt, so I am quite grumpy… pouty… and frustrated.

Somehow in the midst of all this I also end up on a road trip with my in-laws and I am refereeing my girls on who is going to get to push the elevator button and all I can think about are the gifts, unwrapped and hid in the room, waiting on me.

Finally, this morning, my husband comes home from his nightshift and wakes me up from my craziness and guess what…

Those gifts are still in a room hid, unwrapped, waiting on me.
And yes I still have one more shopping day I have to take.
And I must ditch the kids in order to do all the above.

I awoke to discover my nightmare was not a dream, LOL!
Tis the season to be jolly?

>A gift is a gift, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a crushed bunch of flowers yanked from my own garden, a half-eaten cookie, or color-smeared little hands dropping M&M’s directly into my mouth. The presents I receive are always a reminder of how much I’m loved.

We serve a Lord who is the Author of creating and giving gifts. His own Word declares, “Whatever is good and perfect comes to us from God above” (James1:17).

(quotes from Fierce Beauty by Kim Meeder)

Tonight a very sweet couple that I know will be saying hello and good-bye to their 5 month old in the womb child. They will discover if their precious little one is a little boy or a little girl at the same moment that they are stroking a beautiful face that they will never hear laugh or even cry…

But even this child, this moment is a gift from our God, and this little one is perfect. Even this little one will serve a purpose, has a purpose, this little life that grew and developed and lived within the safety of his or her mother’s womb for a purpose. However brief this child’s life was…this child has impacted the hearts and souls of many.

This precious gift was given to this wonderful couple for them to immediately return back to the One who fearfully and wonderfully knitted the little one in the womb.

This is one of those moments when we ask why…

My heart is heavy for the couple for several reasons…

One, I am in a time of grieving for the children I have not born and will not bear because I chose a permanent birth control that I wish I had not… and I grieve.

Two, I have been there… almost. I lost a child when almost in my 4th month. I still wonder if my child was a boy or a girl… and I miss not knowing my child. My baby that would be 16yrs old this year.

Three I have given birth to two beautiful ones and I know how hard it would be to have had to say goodbye to them… to lay them alone… my youngest still hates sleeping by herself.

So my heart breaks… I have been crying for this couple and praying for this family since the news hit my cell phone in a prayer request.

And I think about the gift.
This beautiful gift of life… of a soul.
And now more than ever I rejoice that my God so loved the world that He too gave a gift.

>FYI: the Ladies Only warning is for mine and my husband’s young men of God that we claim as our own who sometimes check out my blog… just a little heads up for them that this is gonna be a major girl post and they should proceed with caution or not at all 🙂 

Well I sit here at the computer at 3am debating on whether or not to go to the Emergency Room. There just is nothing like getting woken up to the need to pee a half a dozen times and then finally getting aggravated enough to turn the light on and discover that you are passing blood clots…

At first viewing, I thought, great! I have started my period again! Really? It’s not even been  two weeks and I have never started in the middle of the night, never in my whole life do I recall that happening. Then as I get more woken up and wonder why in the world it is hurting so bad to pee, I realize that maybe I have not started my period.

After several toilet paper checks to confirm my suspicions I come to the computer to google blood clots in urine. And it says seek emergency care now… ugh.
Hello it’s 3am!
And I have church in the morning and I teach a Precept class in the morning…
And I hate the ER…
Who wants to leave their warm house to sit in an ER where they are going to treat me like I am an inconvenience and just had nothing better to do than drive to the ER at 3am.

So I have sent my husband back to bed and told him I would be fine.
I deem to be woman and wait on urgent care to open.

I mean what if my toilet paper checks have been faulty and really it is just my period… we women get accused of that alot you know… like we are so stupid and have only experienced a menstrual cycle every month for the past how ever many years, that we can’t tell which area the blood floweth from… geez louise!

Then what if it is something embarrassing…

Or you know I did fall off a stool not long ago and hurt myself pretty good. I broke a toe and my tailbone… and I have googled to learn that I could have hurt my kidneys as well…ugh.

Or what if it’s nothing and I have already done all the hard work myself here in my bathroom at 3am and I pay an ER copay and doctor’s bill for some stranger to pat me on the back and say, well Mrs Vaughn, your on the downside, take some tylenol or motrin for the fever, you’ll be fine.

So I sit here now, with fever and chills, that I thought was just the result of being really cold… because I flat out get cold to the bone and can’t get warm sometimes, but nope tonight it’s a fever with chills. And debate on whether or not to suck it up and head to the ER or wait on Urgent Care to open, or suck it up and wait on Monday, so I can go see my regular doctor…

I reckon I shall let pain be my guide.

Right now, pain says, I can tough it out until urgent care opens. 
I might can even try to nap on the couch until the next “urge” hits…

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>Yes, devastating news… you read that correctly.

Yesterday during world history I am teaching on the first printing press. We are discussing how before the print a Bible was more expensive than a house. We discussed how they were so precious that they were chained to the altar of a church so that they could not be stolen.

We talked about how most people, even kings, in Europe didn’t know how to read before the day of the printing press. Before the print no one had books, so there was no point in learning to read.

I looked at my girls and as we are discussing these dark middle ages and discussing how no one had books and no one could read, not even the Bible, and how very sad that was… then the devastating news slammed me in my chest.

I look to my precious Shelby and I see in her eyes that she shares my grief and she exclaims how awful it would be to not be able to read and not to have books and I look over to my Bekah to expect the same distraught agreeance and she sits grinning and says “I don’t see the big deal, I don’t like to read anyway” 

AHHHH GASP!!!!

What?
A child from my womb?
A child that I carried for nine months, birthed in hard natural labor, the one the epidural wore off on before delivery… this child of mine does not like to read????
Flabbergasted!
How could this be?

It’s her father’s fault I tell you!
How dare she get this part of his DNA!
Inconceivable!
Unacceptable!

Oh me…
Yes, devastating news.

Now I am panic stricken.
How in the world am I going to figure out how to make her love to read?
How am I going to be able to teach a child who doesn’t like to read?

But now all those times that I have become frustrated because she could not “get” the instructions that I have made her read at least twelve times is now all making sense. Her brain just does not comprehend the information from reading like mine and Shelby’s does…

I have my work cut out for me with this one 🙂

>I think anybody who has ever undertaken a work for the cause of Christ has felt that kind of discouragement: the sense that you work and work and the product seems so paltry. You pour yourself into a thing week after week and month after month and the fruit is so minimal. Then you look back in history or across town and see the grand achievement of others, and your temple seems so trivial. And you get discouraged and are tempted to quit and put away your aspirations and drop your dreams and put your feet up in front of the television and coast. Who wants to devote his life to a second-rate temple?
~ John Piper

There is a principle here that applies to you and me: God takes small, imperfect things and builds them into a habitation for his glory. O, how we should take courage in our little spheres of influence! And is this not the message of Advent and Christmas? What more appropriate word could God have said to Mary as Jesus was growing up: Take courage, young mother, you build more than you see. And so it is with every one of us. Nothing you do is a trifle if you do it in the name of God. He will shake heaven and earth to fill your labor with splendor. Take courage, you build more than you see. ~ John Piper

These are a couple of quotes that grabbed my heart as I read Take Courage by John Piper.

I don’t know about you, but as a wife and mother and servant of Christ and His church, I often find myself doubting my significance in this big ole world. I wonder if the sacrifices I make, the efforts I put forth, will ever show fruit or be of any use to God or anyone else.

As a mother when I have to repeat and reteach the same things over and over and over and over I wonder if anyone is really even paying attention to anything I say or do. When I read how the mom over there has managed to get their kids to music lessons, science fairs, dance lessons, sport activities, and they field trip once a week and the child is stylin’ and profilin’ in the latest Justice apparel with a feather in her perfectly styled hair after eating her four star breakfast, lunch, and dinner and mom has still managed to get them in bed by 8pm with a bed time story to boot…
I wonder am I getting anything right?

As a wife when I read how this wife over there is up at 4am showered and dressed and made-up and donning her newest outfit with heels to fix her honey his breakfast and give him the June Cleaver kiss on the cheek and wave as he goes off to the office and turns back into the house and her dress spins and poofily swirls about her as she skips into the house to grab her feather duster and float through the house removing all the grime of life…and never, ever, ever does she loose her temper… and well supper is always on the table at the exact right time, and never burned… and its been planned out all week, and the underwear is always clean and in the drawer, and never does anyone yell wet and naked from the bathroom, “Are there any clean towels?!?”
I wonder am I getting anything right?

As a servant of Christ and His church and I hear how so and so has this many who come to class and this ministry has exploded and I watch the church down the road grow and grow and I know what God has to offer through the servants and ministries of my local church and I wonder why people leave or don’t come or don’t serve or don’t shout with praise over and in the Word and why you just can’t seem to make them happy no matter what you do or change…
I wonder am I getting anything right?

Then I have my little one’s come running up and grab me and tell me that I am the bestest Momma ever!!! They think I am marvelous, even though it’s one sport at a time with a break in between, hand me-down clothes most of the time, frozen waffles or cereal for breakfast, and yes I will yell after the second time I have repeated myself…

Then I have my husband lift my chin and look me in the eyes and tell me that he loves me, and when I am complaining about how I feel as though nothing is ever accomplished, he looks at me and says, “I see when the sink is empty, I notice when the laundry is all done.” It’s absolutely crazy how much that means, that to know that he notices, that he saw, made it an accomplishment. But maybe it’s not so crazy after all…

Then I get the random text from someone whose life I have poured into and they ask me to pray or are just needing to vent or are excited because they have just gotten involved with a certain ministry or area of service and just wanted to share it with me, or when a precious one I taught in VBS comes running up to me and wraps thier little arms around me and says “Hello Mrs Nicole!” then all the hours, frustrations, prayers… they’re worth it… always worth it.

I have realized that when I look at others all I see is what they want to show. I don’t always glimpse the behind the scenes. I have learned that we all have our issues, and what’s even crazier is that I have learned that there are others who are looking at me and thinking the very same things that I think when I look at them… no matter how perfect things and people may look from the outside, we all have our issues…

However, we are all here for a purpose, even with our issues, and we are here in this time around this group of people for a reason beyond our own comprehension and understanding.

You are not here by chance but by God’s choosing. His hand formed you and made you the person you are. He compares you to no one else. You are one of a kind. You lack nothing that His grace can’t give you. He has allowed you to be here at this time in history to fulfill His special purpose for this generation. It is encouraging to know that we do not have to be perfect to be memorable and to be used by Him. Perfection is over-rated.
~ (from my birthday card from Precept)

So keep building that temple, for it’s His and for Him…
Keep putting forth those efforts, keep pouring out your heart, keep serving, for you build more than you can see.

Your weaknesses.
Your failures.
Your struggles.
Your seemingly unnoticed efforts.
Your thought insignificance.

Lay your measuring cups and spoons aside.
Stop comparing your Monet to Michelangelo.
Live purposefully and intentionally and obediently to your calling in your sphere of influence in this day and know that the Grand Weaver is at work… 

Take courage you build more than you see.
You sphere of influence reaches further than you realize.
Your temple is more beautiful than you know.

As a matter of fact, I would bet that as you sigh and look across the way and admire the temple of another and consider yours so small and second rate compared to theirs, if you were to turn around there would be one behind you doing the same as they compare their temple to yours and then if you could walk across the way and speak to the one you are admiring you would most likely find them staring across the way…

That’s why God says