I just got from a ski trip this past week (YES, i do work, this was a Christmas present!). I went on the trip carrying some pretty heavy burdens and trying to seek answers for some of them. I'm going to be honest, snow skiing is probably my number 1 favorite thing to do and the first couple days I couldn't turn my brain off and I wasn't having that much fun. I'm in a ski in, ski out, incredible condo on a great mountain in Idaho, all expenses paid, and I was thinking about the stuff I needed to be doing here!! But I kept praying, and kept seeking, telling God that I wasn't moving until he spoke to me. We skied (sp?) Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Friday I decided to go off on my own on the mountain to ski some more advanced runs to really push myself. After I had hit a couple of the black runs on the front bowl (sorry if you don't speak ski lingo!) I was headed back up for more when God spoke to me plain as day. He gave me a picture of me going down the side of the mountain and reminded me of how much harder it is to make it down the mountain when I fight the mountain. When you don't trust your ski's and you try to fight it all the way down instead of allowing yourself to just go down the mountain and let the mountain do the work. He said that He was my mountain and that His will was going to be accomplished one way or another, but it wasn't easy right now because I was holding back and fighting Him. I have a bad habit of thinking that I know better how to get things done than He does (hilarious huh?!?) and not giving 100% of myself to Him. This isn't the first time He's talked to me about this, but this time it was different. It hit alot closer to home and I had more fun that day and skied better than I have in my life. All because I stopped fighting and doubting the mountain and I just devoted all of myself to what I was doing. That's my goal now that I'm back, focusing on Him, but I'm done fighting.....sorry for the rambling, just a thought I had on a lift chair in Idaho.....for what it's worth.
JB
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
12 weeks!
I can't believe my little boy is 12 weeks old today! I need to measure him because he is getting so long. He now weighs 11 pounds and 14 ounces. He really hates being in his carseat because he loves to move around, talk to us and be held. He definitely gets the moving and talking from his dad! This week several things are new in his world: He is drooling a lot, I think the road to teeth is starting (hopefully it'll be slow though because we love his precious gum smile). His lungs are stronger, thus he is a lot louder (there is NEVER any doubt about whether or not he likes something :). He loves to watch his basset hounds (I am sure they are looking forward to him running after them and pulling on their ears). We bought him an activity gym on Saturday because he really liked playing with his friend Christopher's; he is so smart, he immediately started grabbing at the toys hanging from it and will hang on to them. He hardly fits in his 0-3 month clothes now, and isn't quite filling out his 3-6 month sizes- he is just so long! And, I am still amazed at how little sleep he functions on. We love our little boy, and cherish each day with him!
Thursday, January 8, 2009
The Mom Song
A friend posted this on his blog a few days ago, and JB and I thought it was hilarious. Enjoy!
Monday, January 5, 2009
11 Weeks!
Now that I am slightly coming out of my "sleep coma", I realize that time is flying by and so much is happening day to day. I have not done a very good job of documenting, and it's easy to forget when you are functioning on little sleep. So, I am going to try to document better for Harper (and the grandparents, great-grandparents and aunts). For those of you who are not family and could care less, forgive this very motherly post ;)
Harper,
I am having so much fun w/ you, I wish time would slow down! I can't believe you joined our family on the outside eleven weeks ago today. We are so blessed! You change on a daily basis, and so much has happened in eleven short weeks. You have quite the little personality, and are truly your daddy's boy. You weight 11 pounds 5 ounces, exactly 4 more than you did at birth. And, mommy's and daddy's arms can definitely attest to that- you don't like to be put down, and we are really sore!! You found your thumb on the 26th of December and immediately started sucking on it. GB walked into our room and found you on our bed examining your fist, turning it back and forth as you looked at it, on the 30th. Since that day, your hands have become your main source of entertainment, and you love to suck on them. Mommy is very grateful for your swing- it's the only thing besides her arms that you will sleep in sometimes. If I am lucky, you sleep about 30 minutes during the day- only after you have nursed yourself to sleep- and at night you give me about 3 hours of straight sleep. You still like to eat A LOT- about every hour to 2 hours during the day and at the most you go 3 hours at night without eating- but, if I moved and used up as many diapers as you do, I guess I'd need to eat that much too. At night after our last feeding when we go to join daddy in bed, you love to lay awake and talk to yourself. I love to hear your little voice and feel your legs and arms move. You bring me so much joy!! On the rare occasions you are happy riding in your car seat, you love to talk to your pet monkey, but the laughing catepillar really disturbs you. You love to hold your head up and look all around, and you are doing great with tummy time. You get really happy when we sing "You Are My Sunshine", and you like reading your memory Bible verses and singing your kids' hymns with me. Everyone comments on how beautiful you are and how you are so much more alert than any babies they have seen your age. We know God has something incredible in store for your life! And, the favorite part of your day- besides eating- is always when daddy comes home. We miss him during the day, but are so grateful he is blessed with a wonderful job and willing to provide for us. You talk and grin with him more than with anyone else, I love it! We are so excited to see what these next few weeks hold, thank-you for making these first 11 so great!
Love,
Mom
Sunday, January 4, 2009
So many Choices!!
On Thursday (January 1st), Cindy and I went to the movies with her parents to see the new film "Slumdog Millionaire". I know, I had never heard of it either, but Cindy and her mother were dying to see this new film so we took them. The movie is about a boy in India that makes it on their version of "Who wants to be a Millionaire" the game show. As they ask him the myriad of questions from every discipline, he knows each answer from life situations he was put in growing up in the slums of India. He had no schooling, no formal teaching, but had attended the "school of hard knocks" and had picked up a few things along the way. It was a really good movie actually, surprising me, but you'll have to go see it for yourself to see what all happens. The reason I brought it up though is that it brought out a really incredible depiction of how everything in our lives comes down the our choices.....
"Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, that you and your descendants might live! Choose to love the LORD your God and to obey him and commit yourself to him, for he is your life. Then you will live long in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)
One day back in the fall I was driving a patient (now good friend) of mine over to Dallas to see another doctor there. He did not have the means to go and he needed the evaluation and so I drove him myself. As we drove there and back and talked the entire way about our lives and what God had done in and through us and what He was currently doing.....we were both really shocked and amazed at where our choices had brought us. At any one point along our lives and along our paths, we could have made a different choice and everything would've turned out so differently for us. It was the sum of our choices to this point that had brought us to that day and had brought us together to help heal him of the physical ailments he is dealing with (also dealing with choices!!).
Like in Deuteronomy, God offers us the choice every single day between "blessings and curses". That's why it is sooo vital that you are walking daily with Him and being still and listening to His sometimes barely audible voice to give you the direction you so desperately need in the decisions you are faced with every day that you wake up. Walking with God doesn't mean you will be perfect and never make a wrong decision or choose the wrong thing, but it does mean that more often than not you will know which choice will bring you God's blessings and which won't. This may be the biggest problem with the whole idea of God, the Holy Spirit, and the christian life.....the simplicity of it. I think (I know for alot of people I know) that for some, they want it to be much more complex and alot harder to figure out than just saying, "YES!" to Him every day and listening to a God who loves them unconditionally, with only one string attached: saying "Yes" to his Son and giving him lordship over your life. The other thing that is probably so hard is that choice to give up ALL of yourself and to give it ALL to Him so He can bless you and He can use you to spread His love to whomever He chooses.
Proverbs 3:5-6 says: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths."
He wants ALL of our hearts and wants us to give him the reigns and the control of ALL of our ways and situations. But He doesn't force that on us!! Isn't that amazing!?!? The God of the entire universe, who spoke this world into being with a word, who parted the sea for the Israelites to walk across on dry land, who walked on the water to calm a raging storm, who turned water into wine to show his majesty and glory, who sent His Son to be an example for us and to be a sacrifice for all the sins we've committed or will commit, that same God gives me the option NOT to choose His will or to give Him all of me not because He is sadistic or doesn't care....but because He loves us too much to force us to follow Him! Wow!! I think it is so simple, but so absolutely perfect that it's impossible to fathom of our own strength and vision and we have to allow Him to touch our eyes and our hearts to see what He sees and feel what He feels. When you do that though, get ready....the emotions you feel are indescribable. The joy is unbelievable, but the pain is unbearable. I've never cried harder than when I asked God to show me what He feels when I touch people. The pain that people are going through as they choose to operate on their own wisdom (Prov 3:7), and the remorse they feel over choices they made in the past rocked my world.
I think even greater than the fact that God gives us the choice to follow Him or not with our daily decisions, is the fact that when we make the wrong choice.....He immediately forgives us and loves us anyway!!! This is not a license to choose poorly knowing He'll still be there because He knows our hearts, but rather a safely net to know that if we make a wrong step on this high wire act of life and we fall, He'll be there to catch us and restore us if we let Him.
So go check out the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" and see the picture of two brothers growing up under the same bad circumstances and same hardships, but each making different choices and how they turn out. It was a great parenting lesson for me. Really meditate on His word though and ask Him to show you clearly what your choices are....it's when you are closest to Him that your path is the clearest. He never stears us in the wrong direction, we just stop looking at His map!
JB
"Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, that you and your descendants might live! Choose to love the LORD your God and to obey him and commit yourself to him, for he is your life. Then you will live long in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)
One day back in the fall I was driving a patient (now good friend) of mine over to Dallas to see another doctor there. He did not have the means to go and he needed the evaluation and so I drove him myself. As we drove there and back and talked the entire way about our lives and what God had done in and through us and what He was currently doing.....we were both really shocked and amazed at where our choices had brought us. At any one point along our lives and along our paths, we could have made a different choice and everything would've turned out so differently for us. It was the sum of our choices to this point that had brought us to that day and had brought us together to help heal him of the physical ailments he is dealing with (also dealing with choices!!).
Like in Deuteronomy, God offers us the choice every single day between "blessings and curses". That's why it is sooo vital that you are walking daily with Him and being still and listening to His sometimes barely audible voice to give you the direction you so desperately need in the decisions you are faced with every day that you wake up. Walking with God doesn't mean you will be perfect and never make a wrong decision or choose the wrong thing, but it does mean that more often than not you will know which choice will bring you God's blessings and which won't. This may be the biggest problem with the whole idea of God, the Holy Spirit, and the christian life.....the simplicity of it. I think (I know for alot of people I know) that for some, they want it to be much more complex and alot harder to figure out than just saying, "YES!" to Him every day and listening to a God who loves them unconditionally, with only one string attached: saying "Yes" to his Son and giving him lordship over your life. The other thing that is probably so hard is that choice to give up ALL of yourself and to give it ALL to Him so He can bless you and He can use you to spread His love to whomever He chooses.
Proverbs 3:5-6 says: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths."
He wants ALL of our hearts and wants us to give him the reigns and the control of ALL of our ways and situations. But He doesn't force that on us!! Isn't that amazing!?!? The God of the entire universe, who spoke this world into being with a word, who parted the sea for the Israelites to walk across on dry land, who walked on the water to calm a raging storm, who turned water into wine to show his majesty and glory, who sent His Son to be an example for us and to be a sacrifice for all the sins we've committed or will commit, that same God gives me the option NOT to choose His will or to give Him all of me not because He is sadistic or doesn't care....but because He loves us too much to force us to follow Him! Wow!! I think it is so simple, but so absolutely perfect that it's impossible to fathom of our own strength and vision and we have to allow Him to touch our eyes and our hearts to see what He sees and feel what He feels. When you do that though, get ready....the emotions you feel are indescribable. The joy is unbelievable, but the pain is unbearable. I've never cried harder than when I asked God to show me what He feels when I touch people. The pain that people are going through as they choose to operate on their own wisdom (Prov 3:7), and the remorse they feel over choices they made in the past rocked my world.
I think even greater than the fact that God gives us the choice to follow Him or not with our daily decisions, is the fact that when we make the wrong choice.....He immediately forgives us and loves us anyway!!! This is not a license to choose poorly knowing He'll still be there because He knows our hearts, but rather a safely net to know that if we make a wrong step on this high wire act of life and we fall, He'll be there to catch us and restore us if we let Him.
So go check out the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" and see the picture of two brothers growing up under the same bad circumstances and same hardships, but each making different choices and how they turn out. It was a great parenting lesson for me. Really meditate on His word though and ask Him to show you clearly what your choices are....it's when you are closest to Him that your path is the clearest. He never stears us in the wrong direction, we just stop looking at His map!
JB
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