We ate a tree: Our journey to the fasted lifestyle, pt.1

The past year and half has been tough.  If you have been keeping up with this blog or our lives at all, we have been in a serious funk.  Which is sad because this started a loooooong time ago.  Way before burdens came.  But I wanted to share what the Lord is doing in our hearts over the past month and a half.

A few months ago we filed our taxes and with taking a loss on our business we were able to get some money back.  We had invested alot of our personal money to the business and did not make near enough to cover expenses.  We got a nice little deposit from the government, invested back into the company and decided what we would do with our personal portion.

Well we have this tree. It is a beautiful mighty oak in our front yard.  We have two actually.  The one I'm speaking about is actually really close to the house and it's messing up our foundation.  I love this tree as I love the other.  They are old rooted trees that provide an amazing amount of shade so our electric bill stays low.  I fought to keep the tree until I found out our foundation was cracking in two places.  Sorry Charlie, that's a deal breaker.  You are out of here!

The one on the right is the tree in question

We decided that's what the bulk of the money will go to as well as a new computer.  Our old one crashed and were borrowing a friends laptop to do business.  (Love you Cat!) We are serious this time! What we purpose to spend our money on, we will. No if's and's or but's!

Well that didn't happen.  We have a little problem.  We don't like spending our money on gadgets, the latest clothing trend, or many material things per se.  We love to eat.  And eat.  And eat.  Not just eat as in make nice meals, but eat at restaurants and fast food. A lot.  Almost once a day in fact.  Whataburger, no brainer! Yes. Chips and Queso, um you know the answer.  Yes.  Fajitas for two, of course. Yes.

By the time we were prepared to contract with a tree service we look at our bank account and there is hardly anything in there.  Hmmmm, how in the world did that happen?  $15 to Whataburger.  $30 to El Bosque.  $12 to Sonic.  And so on.  You see where I'm going with this?

So essentially, we ate a tree.  We ate the money that would provide the service that would take care of the tree.  What do we have to show for it?  Not fun new things that we can play with or wear, but fatter bellies, bigger butts and a skinny bank account.  We have had a problem with this for years.  We eat our money and we are broker than broke because of it.  Yes we are essentially on a meager income as I was laid off in late 2010, but we do not treat our income the way it needs to be treated.

My heart could not take it anymore.  We lack so much discipline in this area!  I said that is it, no more eating out!!!  Yes, I used three exclamations in my spoken sentence.  Conviction had taken up residence in my heart and mind, not just rattled around as a thought of "oh we need to be better".  That was our last straw moment.

The Lord laid it on our hearts to make it a month without eating out at all.  So we began our journey which I will share.

I want to tell you that this is not about weight loss or saving money at all.  It is about obedience to what the Lord has commanded us to do.  Our main goal in this whole process is to seek His face and grow closer to Him.  Eating food is not a sin.  Eating the way we had been was.  We were blocking our hearts to what God has for us. He had to shout to us through this circumstance to get us to listen because we had removed ourselves so far from His presence that it was hard to remember what He sounds like.

I will give you a sneak peek though.  We are almost on week 5 and what a ride it has been!

The Juggle

Woke up way later than expected. A major storm washed through our area in the wee hours of the morning. All the cacophony drowned out our alarm clock, our little girl. Thus begins the mom guilt for the day. I pray that she wasn't awake for a long time and crying and that she slept in like we did. I apologize profusely throughout the morning while I'm feeding, changing, and playing with her.

Then the cleaning begins. We have had a series of illnesses throughout the last 3 months that have circulated in our house and I am DONE! D-O-N-E! No more illness in Jesus name. I work my hands to the bone in the breakfast room and kitchen. I will eradicate germs in Jesus name!!! Scrubbing and washing. Sweeping and mopping. The hubby works in the living room and entertains our little one.

Most days we are so blessed to have daddy at home during the day. It is such a big help! He plays with our ginger bear and I can work on orders, website design, cleaning, cooking or whatever. We are always sad to see him go to work in the late afternoon.

Cleaning continues and my posture becomes yucky. I begin to rage at how "filthy" our house is, how I'm always the one doing the cleaning (totally not true), if I was a better wife/mother things wouldn't pile up so bad, how I want a break, etc, etc, etc. Guilt trip total of the day: 2

All chores cease at an abrupt halt, we have to shower and get ready to take hubby to work. I have to use the car this evening (we share one car). We rush around even more to get out the door with lunch packed for hubby, diaper bag ready for ginger, and grocery list in hand. We stop at a fast food place for lunch, which I hate! We are so bad about running out our time we only have time for fast food. So unhealthy and so expensive! My heart hurts just thinking about how poor stewards we are with our money and how we abuse our bodies with this trash. Guilt trip of the day: 3

We say bye to daddy and head to the grocery store in the rain. I don't like going to shopping centers at night especially with my little one without my hubby. It just doesn't seem safe to me. We get to the store, it's barely sprinkling. Hallelujah! Small victory:1 I get inside and notice I have forgotten the list. Nooooooo! I scream in my head. Oh well, Lord help me remember what was on the list.

I'm booking it through the store. Ginger bear is fading fast. She wants me to carry her, but that is not possible at the moment. She is so ridiculously sleepy. Why do I have to drag her out in this weather, when she is so sleepy, and looks like a mess from eating fast food in the car? Guilt trip of the day: 4

We make it to the end of the store and I believe I have everything. I get to the register. The total is making me a little sick. Yikes is it really that much? Did I need everything I bought? Am I spending wisely? Although I do know that everything I bought was in our meal plan for the week and neccessary, it still hurts. Guilt trip of the day: 5

We start walking out of the store and we are almost to the car and it starts pouring again. Great! Running to the car, strapping my girl in so she doesn't get much wetter. The back of my shirt is getting soaked from bending over strapping her in, then throwing everything in the trunk so we can take off. A good mom would have remembered an umbrella! Guilt trip of the day: 6

Ginger bear passes out in the car on the way home which is literally 5 minutes from our house. I talk to a friend about my crazy/hectic/stressful day on the phone on the way home and sitting in the driveway while the torrential rain passes. I venture out and run ginger to the house. I put her immediately into her crib praying that she will fall back asleep. 9 times out of 10 that is highly unlikely. The wailing begins and my heart starts to break. Guilt trip of the day: 7

I run back out and load down my arms with dripping wet bags from the trunk and I begin to haul everything in. After 3 trips my spotless kitchen is now covered in wet leaves and wet grocery bags. Anything with a paper wrapper or bag is soggy, our produce looks wilted, and I'm furious cause it's more cleanup than I wanted to do. As I'm unloading all our purchases, the wailing becomes sporadic and eventually subsides. Hallelujah! Small victory: 2! So Guilt:7, Victories:2. That seems wrong, don't you think?

Then I begin to think, why was today so hard? The simple answer is this, my heart is filthy. It's not my house I need to worry about. Although a clean house is nice, it's a distant second to a clean heart. I could have saved us ALL a lot of drama if I would have had the right heart posture. If I can stop complaining, then beating myself up for every little thing, and start focusing on the victories instead our lives would run so much better.

Sometimes I feel like I'm juggling 6,7, 8 balls at a time trying to maintain our lives. I'm trying to control the aspects of our day and make sure things run smoothly. I'm trying to CONTROL our lives. When a ball falls out of my hands I take it hard. If I could have controlled that one aspect better, and so on. I always laugh at myself when I have this realization, which is often, because who do I think I am that I control anything.

After today, I feel that I obviously need to spend more time in prayer and the Word. I also need to capture my thoughts and reaffirm what I know to be true, which is something I am not good at. What I know to be true is that I am cherished and loved by a sweet husband, an adorable little girl, and most importantly the Creator of the Universe! And that's despite my messy house, crazy schedule, or unconvential methods of doing things. I'm loved and the rest will fall into place in time and I don't need to worry about it. God's got this! And I don't and I'm totally ok with that.

What a difference a year makes

I feel renewed. I feel peace. I feel I'm coming up from the wilderness.

If you would have asked me a few days ago, I may have had a different answer. The Lord brought us through the most challenging year of our lives and we are seeing the amazing transformation He has set up for us from the beginning.

I will be blogging more in the new year as the Lord leads me on an amazing new journey. I can't wait to reveal the things He has for me and maybe you too.

This post will be kind of disjointed, but that's because I'm super tired and wanted to get this out quickly.

A few resolutions:

Read more, play on the internet less
Eat healthier (pretty much every year, lol)
Study the Word more (this is NUMERO UNO)
Choose joy
Love more

That's all I have for now. I will be posting soon about the first part of some deep revelations.

Birthday Girl

Today is our sweet baby girl's first birthday! Where did the time go? Really... Where did it go? A year ago, I was holding her fresh out of the oven. Today she is a fast, talkative, smiley bundle of fiery haired passion.

The past twelve months have been the most challenging and rewarding of my life. Today was wonderful day of redemption. A year ago today, we were blessed with the most precious gift the Lord can bestow, but it was also fraught with turmoil. I won't go into details, but relationships amongst various family members were strained for a very long time.

Instead of joy on that day, there was alot of tears of anger and sadness. Oh, we were joyful for our wonderful daughter, but we were angry at those that would steal that joy.

Today however, the Lord redeemed the day. He always wins. We had the joy we should have had back then. We got to celebrate in a whole new way. I am so thankful! And I rejoice in the Lord's goodness! He also revealed many things to us today about the direction we need to take with Zoe and any future children. All in all it was a marvelous day.

Here are some highlights.

Zoe at 7 Acre Wood at the petting zoo. She LOVES animals!

My first cake! She fell in love. She has had very limited sugar until today.

Getting ready for bed and a story in my Narnian bedroom.

Happy birthday Zoe! Mommy & Daddy love you!

Open the eyes of my heart

I run slides at church on Thursday nights. I enjoy it typically, but tonight was hard. I struggled the entire night. It was so overwhelming that I wanted to run right out of the prayer room. A cacophonous assault of anger, frustration, rejection, and offense berated me. I couldn't hear anything else.

I wanted to enter into worship. I prayed and prayed that I could let all of it go, but it did not. I feel like the Lord was opening up my ears to the things that plague me all the time. The questions of "why am I left out of everything to do with these people that I want to grow to know", " why can't they just like me", "what's wrong with me", "why can't I move past this", and so on and on and on.

I felt a great measure of freedom back in August and felt I was completely free. Of course I felt tested in that freedom. Then I was ill for all of October and most of November. I was homebound for 6 weeks with little to no contact with them. I felt like an island. It was extremely lonely.

When I came back I expected a level of awkwardness, but I wasn't expecting the barrage of attack I would feel. I desperately wanted to run away, just like tonight. In my sense of freedom, I became complacent. I let my guard down to the enemy and I was infiltrated. The loneliness I felt was amplified. I felt like I had left my island, entered the heart of New York and was completely lost with little to no help.

Pretty pathetic huh? I feel lame just writing about this. I know in my head that I have help, but my heart was being squished and wouldn't accept the help. I hate when my heart is wrong and it wins over head knowledge. It never allows that knowledge to sink into my heart which trumps it for good.

So that's where I'm at as we end this year of ups and downs. I want the Lord to open the eyes of my heart. So that I can fully know His goodness and trust in Him. I no longer want to struggle with what I have been for a long time. I want to walk in full freedom and my heart be so full of love for the Lord that nothing else matters.

I want to worship more fully. Live for Him. Tear down the idols in my life. Lord, help me to get to this place where I come up from the wilderness leaning on my Beloved.

Thanksgiving Fun

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you all had a great time and lots of turkey! I know I did . We decided to host Thanksgiving at our house this year and it was really fun. I loved it and was so happy to have friends and family join us for such a special occasion.

Here are some highlights...

Zoe and Grandad

Turkey Napkins

Zoe and Aunt Sandi

Declutter

So my stress level for the year has gotten to me. I have had shingles for almost a month now. Too evaluate what has been going on, I have to back up a couple of months.

September was probably one of the hardest months in our marriage. We went through some really rough stuff and the Lord helped us through. We had another miscarriage and we both were at opposite ends of the spectrum of how we felt about it.

When we suspected we may have been pregnant, I was scared. I cried ugly tears. How could I be ready for this when our daughter is still so young? I was emotionally not ready for this at all. I was still trying to adjust to our girl because we have had a roller coaster of a time with her. I felt like I was spinning out of control.

Please don't get me wrong. I had settled in my heart that if we had another baby so soon, we would love and accept it. But my initial reaction was panic rather than joy. I hate even admitting that, but I am human and I am not perfect. In a perfect world, I would have been overjoyed at the surprise. And please know that I have settled all of this with God as well.

So I took three tests, the second one having a faint blue line. The other two nothing. I don't think my hormone levels elevated enough to register for a solid yes. So two weeks after my missed period, I miscarried at church. That was a surreal experience. I had no idea what to feel at that point.

I got home to my hubby and baby and told him what happened and cried on his shoulder. I was not relieved, I was sad. I felt guilty for having fear over having another baby so soon. I felt crushed. I did not know what to do. But this miscarriage was different in the fact that the time I had to grieve was in short increments. My daughter needed her mom so I had to proceed with business as usual and when I got the time, I could cry and process.

My husband on the other hand, was less affected. Which upset me. I know it shouldn't as men tend to process and accept things differently. I know all these facts about "a man doesn't feel like a father till the baby is in his arms", "men don't process a miscarriage the way we do because they don't feel the same bonds we do", etc... I had a hard time telling him how I felt when I wanted someone to say I know how you feel (which is highly unrealistic since he could never really know how I felt), I know your hurting, I feel the same way you do (again, not realistic), etc. I also felt like he blamed me for the miscarriage since I did not react so favorably to the idea of being pregnant again. Guilt has a way of making you feel that everyone around you is mad at you.

We finally worked it all out, but it took a few weeks to get there. We were able to express how we felt and what we needed from each other in times of crisis. Which is a great thing and it has helped us communicate better on other levels.

In the midst of all of this I was working on my second craft fair inventory and rushing to meet deadlines. I got sick in the middle of it with a sinus/upper respiratory infection. The stress of the miscarriage/marriage trial, craft fair, crazy deadlines, and illness exploded the day before the craft fair. My right shoulder and right side of my neck were ON FIRE! It felt like pins and needles shooting flames under my skin. I went to the doctor that Monday afterwards and turns out I have shingles. YAY! Not so much.

Shingles takes a long time to heal and you can't be around people who haven't had chicken pox or the vaccine. So I have not been out of the house (except walking with the hubby and daughter) in almost 4 weeks. I'm heavily involved with the kids at church and can't risk giving it to them...unless their parents want them to get chicken pox. Then they can come to me, lol.

So what have I used the past four weeks to do: Get my life right with the Lord. And deep clean/purge my house. All this busyness, stress, and distraction had left a huge whole in my life. I had not spent time with the Lord. I had let so many other "obligations" take over my time, that I had forgotten what was important. This was manifested in my home life. I was not communicating with my husband, our house was literally a wreck, I was spending less time with Zoe so I could do other things, but mostly I wasn't praying. We weren't praying as a family.

The Lord in His exceeding graciousness, found a way to get my attention and bring me back to my first love... Him! So that's where I have been and now where I am going. Back to the beginning.