Last year was crazy for my family. To look back on our calendar is almost embarrassing. Our days and weeks and months were so packed that it took us over a month past our middle child’s birthday to even find an open date to celebrate. However at the same time 2013 was good… crazy busy… but still good.
My husband and I set some financial goals several years ago and we met them in this year. In 2013 we paid off two vehicles and a land loan and saved all our Christmas spendings… this is the second year in a row that we have charged nothing in order to purchase Christmas gifts for our family. We now have three paid for vehicles in our driveway (yes they may have 100,000 miles on them, but they are paid for) and our plan for this year is to pay down one last line of credit that remains from the financial issues that hit us from 2006 through 2010.
God has been faithful.
What I learned through these years of struggles is that there are no shortcuts and when someone offers you good advice… take it.
A wise man will hear and increase in learning,
And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,
Proverbs 1:5
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,
But a wise man is he who listens to counsel.
Proverbs 12:15
My family is not all that big on resolutions. We just keep taking one day at a time. We have life goals and all the years just seem to run together. The days and weeks and hours are hard for us to keep up with. My husband works a swing shift and we homeschool so our “Friday’s” can be any day of the week. Our “weekends” are not tied to Saturday and Sunday. Schedules in this house are examined and adjusted quite frequently. Regular routines really don’t happen here and that’s because too many things have to be shuffled according to who has what commitments where and when.
As a matter of fact our life was so tightly scheduled in 2013 with all its “stuff” that opportunity for spontaneity was non-existent.
This made me crazy… really almost crazy.
By the end of 2013 I was in tears with my husband as I broke down over the way the past year had played out. My health was declining and my mind was blown. I couldn’t even complete a sentence or remember what I was doing as I walked from one room into the next. I had watched several loved ones say their last goodbyes to husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, friends, sisters… and all I could think about was how precious time is… and how I never had enough of it.
It was as if my whole life was just going from one event to the next… my concern of taking on the position of Children’s Ministry Director at my church was losing my own relationship with Christ. In October I went to a conference and one of the quotes I wrote down was, “Is the work I am doing for God destroying the work of God in me?”
I have to say this past year the answer to that question for me feels like yes…
So 2014 must be different.
I cannot be so busy doing the work of the Lord that I forget the Lord of the work (another quote from the conference)
I was full when I began this call, but this year ended with me empty… completely poured out… and weary.
This last month has been spent on the couch… having been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and having to have my husband and children literally carry me out of places due to the lack of my own ability to walk and also having sickness with a cough, fever, and congestion.
Our family will bring in the new year with antibiotics and cough medicine… but we will still bring it in together… and that’s what is important.
The past month of sickness has given me the opportunity to just rest. I have not set an alarm clock with the exception of Sunday mornings this entire month… but also in not doing so my “quiet time” with the Lord and my writing time has suffered. I had planned to do a lot of writing this month on Devotions From Exodus Part Two… but this body has not allowed it.
I debate almost daily on dropping this blog and social media thing and going back to the days of keeping all my thoughts and prayers safely tucked away in my spiral notebooks… it doesn’t make anyone mad there and I never flip back through the pages to see if anyone “liked” it, but so far I keep pecking away on this keyboard… hoping that with it someone will be served, encouraged, exhorted, reproofed, rebuked, taught, strengthened, or maybe even just made flat out mad by the realization that someone cared enough to “judge them” and force them to look at something in a different way.
As I stare at 2014 from the view point of my living room loveseat sickbed… I ponder how to do things better… allowing room for spontaneity and interruptions… because too often those are the God moments we miss because it’s not in our plans. I want our life to be open enough to go when He says go, to not quench the prompting of the Holy Spirit because we have to be somewhere at a certain time… but at the same time not to live aimlessly with no purposeful intentions.
I look at my girls and I know that we are over half-way on our opportunity to teach them and love them in the way this space of time allows us. It won’t be long that they will be out making their own choices and living with the consequences of them… I know that at any point and time what my husband and I teach them can become irrelevant to them. At any time the enemy could snatch their attention away from us and lead them into darkness. At any time… so that means we have to take advantage of this time, this day, this moment. This is our opportunity to build them up and train them and cover them in the armor of God before we shoot them into this world to be an example of Christ.
So for 2014… my goal is to slow down and be more here, just here.