Random Picture Challenge 7.0

I'm getting back on track with the random picture challenge... September 2007, 11th picture in the folder:


Ah, yes, the Annual Read Across Iowa Bug Parade! At the start of the school year, the 2nd graders set "read across Iowa" reading goals, and when they meet their goals, they're the main attraction (okay, the ONLY attraction) in a VW bug parade, complete with a police escort, that loops the loop several times, honking and waving at whoever will pay attention. And believe me, they draw some attention!

Mrs. Ribbens (one of our all-time favorite teachers!) is driving the black bug, and even though you can't see him, Ethan is in the backseat, grinning and trying to see and be seen over the side of the car from the confines of his seat belt. Good times.

Is it just me?

Just wondering if it's my own visits to my blog that have actually crept the counter up past 100... That would be sad, but not impossible.

Overwhelmed

Let me just begin by telling you (and reminding myself) how grateful I am to be a SAHM. It would tear me apart, both emotionally and physically, if I had to work a full-time (paying) job. There is nothing I would rather do than what I'm doing right now. If someone is going to mess up my kids, I want it to be me! :) But my passion about this role as SAHM is also one of the things that makes it so difficult, because I'm never able to do it as well as I intend, and often not even as well as I should. Today, the half-joking line about messing up my kids feels all too accurate.

Seriously, I'm totally overwhelmed by the fact that I'm expected to be responsible for the character development of 4 precious little people. And somewhat discouraged by the awareness that my own spiritual health is a huge indicator of how well I will do that.

Because I am fed up. Spent. At the end of my rope. I feel like every day I face a list of about 30 hours worth responsibilities to handle in a 24-hour day. And every day I start with the greatest intentions to control my tone of voice, do first things first, catch up on the "musts" so I can get to the "shoulds," the "I'd really like to's" and maybe even some of the "wouldn't that be fun's!"

And every day I lose my patience (usually before the kids are even out the door for school!), finish maybe 10% of what needs to be done so I start the next day even further behind, and seldom figure out in the midst of that how to squeeze in the spontaneous and fun things to make our family life more joyful.

If I weren't too vain, I'd post a picture of what my home looks like right now.... Fruity Pebbles crunched on the floor from the breakfast spill, counters crusted with drips from yesterday's meal group cooking and this morning's milk spills, laundry everywhere in piles and baskets and overflowing hampers... I could go on and on. Some days that list just feels like my reality and I can just live in the midst of it, completing small jobs one by one as time with the baby allows. But today it really just makes me feel like crying.

I find that I hit this overwhelmed point at 2 recurring times:

1) When things come up that really NEED doing, things that are important, urgent, or just really valuable and have time constraints on them. Things that I care about and feel called to do. Things that can't keep being pushed back from one day's "to do" list to the next. And I simply don't have time to do them, and feel like I have no one to help pick up the slack so I can without feeling further overwhelmed by the day to day.

2) When I attempt to bring greater self-discipline into my own life and behavior. No matter how early I get up, one child or another seems to wake up earlier. No matter how intentional I am about asking God to order my day, I end the day feeling like important things are being left undone. No matter how determined I am to get enough sleep so I can be as patient and gracious as I wish to be, I find myself awake into the wee hours of the morning trying to finish the "musts" for the day.

Yes, I know all the right questions to ask about why I'm feeling like this. What are my expectations? Why? What are God's? What is truly important? What do I need to let go of? What selfishness or other sin plays into these feelings? How is the Enemy trying to steal my joy?

But some days, even those questions are enough to wear me out. Some days, just putting one foot in front of the other (or one load of laundry in after the other) is all I can handle.

Random Picture Challenge 6.0

I know I missed a couple, and the blogger who hosts the challenge didn't post a new one this week because of computer issues, so this is a week belated. But here's random picture for you nonetheless.... January 2007, 3rd picture in the folder:


Don't ask me what they were doing... some combination of dress up and just plain wackiness. Anna is wearing my slippers, summer pj shorts, a too-small stocking cap, and.... a jump rope. Like I said, don't ask me. And it looks to me like Ethan just didn't want to be left out of the picture so he pulled a silly pose!

And yes, the chair in the background is where I lay clothes that need to be taken upstairs and hung in closets. It almost always has a pile hanging off the back of it. Just keepin' it real for you!

Right back where I started

Well, maybe not exactly, but the territory sure looks familiar.

I remember Beth Moore reminding us in one of her studies (I don't' remember which one because I've done so many in the last 5 years!) that if the same issue keeps coming up in your life, then God isn't finished with you in that area. He will (graciously) keep bringing it to the forefront so you can move out of your "desert"...pass the test, learn the lesson, be healed... whatever it is that still needs doing in your soul.

She also teaches in her Daniel study, which I'm currently in the middle of, that we also can find ourselves back in familiar territory because the Enemy loves to send us right back into our areas of captivity, and he is wily enough to attack those areas in our lives that are inconsistent, weak, and not well-protected by our spiritual armor. (Ooh, I hate him, by the way!)

Evidently God decided now would be a good time to give me a retest on some things, and/or my armor has just a few holes that the Devil is trying to poke through....

First, it feels like our family life is in a similar place to nearly a decade ago. I'm adjusting anew to the role of SAHM to an infant with little "freedom" or participation in life outside of my own 4 walls. Steve is busy and somewhat stressed at work. Our finances are stretched to the max. All of these issues characterized our early years of marriage and parenting. Somehow 15 years and 4 kids later, we're right back there. (Praise God for those areas in which He's already changed and grown us so we don't repeat ALL of the same mistakes this time!)

Another area in which I feel like I'm just driving around the cul-de-sac over and over on is in one significant relationship in my life and the way I often respond in and to it. Again, I have to thank God for the things He already has healed and changed, because not all that long ago my emotions were in constant turmoil, my heart very seldom was right toward this person, and all of it was trickling down into my immediate family relationships. God has performed great things in my life regarding this relationship. But just lately, it seems that the condition of my heart toward this person is coming to the forefront once again, because I can't leave an interaction with this person without feeling irritated or agitated or just plain YUCKY.

Finally, I must have made the mistake of getting mentally lazy and thinking things were going well with our kids, because whenever I do, some ugly issue that we have to discipline our kids over comes up. And often, that points back to some failing of mine/ours in the way we've trained them so far. It can easily stir up in me discouragement, resentment, shame, guilt... all sorts of emotions that certainly don't aid in parenting well and don't reveal a strong faith in God when it comes to my role as a mom.

(You wouldn't think there is an emotionally healthy bone in my body reading this marathon-length post, would you? But that's why this is my blog... if you didn't read my early warnings about the nature of this blog, you may want to do so now.) Anyway....

I have to ask myself what God is trying to further redeem in me, and how the Enemy is trying to drag me back into old patterns. I think I'm seeing the answer to that in some small ways, but I, of course, try to analyze it with my own little human mind. I have to remember that God's ways are not my ways and be aware that the Devil is tricky, deceitful, and just plain evil, so it is likely much deeper than first glance might suggest.

Really, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this return journey, because before Tori was born, I felt like God told me through scripture He was going to use this season in my life to prune me. I'm so thankful that He also promised that the pruning was for the purpose of bringing greater beauty. I'm not exactly sure what that means, and I'm quite certain that we're still in the cutting back stage of pruning and not in the beautiful new growth stage yet, but I'm holding on to that promise. I may not ever fully know how God's purpose will play out, but the one thing I know for sure is that I don't want to miss His purposes and I don't feel like I'm "getting it" yet.

What struck me about this whole idea of ending up back where you started is this thought: When I'm driving, if I drive the same route repeatedly, after a while I don't even notice where I am. I drive out of habit and sometimes end up at my location with no memory of passing the landmarks along the way.

I wonder if that isn't also true of my spiritual journey; am I somehow missing the "signs" along the way because the road is so comfortable and familiar that I'm not fully aware of where I am and where I'm headed? Am I running on autopilot and missing some turnoffs or even u-turns that God wants me to take? I'm thinking if that's true, I'll just end up coming right back to this same place again.

I've probably given the wrong impression. It's not that where I am now is horrible, or even that it's a bad place to be. I already have a beautiful life in so many ways, and God has been faithful and good. But God has promised even more. More pruning. More growth. More beauty. And that's the destination I want to be moving toward.

February Scripture Memory 2

It's not too late to join.... commit to memorize 2 scriptures a month for the year. (I'm sure you could even memorize a few extras to catch up if you're one of those for whom it wouldn't feel complete starting partway into the year!) I've got one down, 21 to go (I'm choosing to let good enough be good enough and not give up if it's not "perfect," so I'm going with 22 rather than 24 since I joined late.) Here's my second passage for February:

Let them praise the Lord for his great love

and for the wonderful things he has done for them.

For he satisfies the thirsty

and fills the hungry with good things.

Psalm 107:8-9 (New Living Translation)

But I never win anything!

One day a while back, I was reading about an intriguing sounding parenting book on Bring the Rain (one of the blogs that originally got me hooked... check out the older posts about their journey with Audrey Caroline--incredibly moving). Anyway, the blog author Angie Smith was hosting a contest to win a copy of the book Parenting the Way that God Parents: Refusing to Recycle Your Parents' Mistakes. Bring the Rain has a huge readership and receives hundreds if not thousands of comments on each post, but this book sounded great, so I decided it wouldn't hurt to leave a comment to "enter" the contest.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to last night. I was browsing Bring the Rain again to find out how to create a music playlist on a blog like she has on hers. The book contest hadn't ever entered my mind again since the day I commented/entered. But as I was scrolling down the screen, I saw the name "Tiffany" at the end of the list of 10 winners.

"You're kidding," I thought. "I wonder if that could actually be me? There are 2031 comments/entries into the contest, so odds are it's a different Tiffany somewhere out there in Blogland. Because I never win anything! But I may as well check it out." So I scrolled through about 1800 of the 2031 comments and found the "Tiffany" comment she was referring to, and believe it or not, I won! "I guess I can't say I never win anything anymore."

Oh, my, but I'm afraid I can. I was really just quite tickled about it all.... until today, when I figured out that I did not win. And on top of that, I had already sent a gushing e-mail to the author, letting her know where she could send my book. Just a tad embarrassing, wouldn't you say?

I discovered my mistake when I went back to the contest post today to see what my comment actually said (Something about it being unlikely I'd win with the volume of comments she receives. I thought it would be so clever of me to add that to my blog post announcing that I actually won!)

I scrolled through those 1800 comments again, and somehow, what last night was clearly my comment linking to my blog was now a comment left by Tiffany Carter. What in the world? Seriously, I am so certain that last night I found the comment, clicked on the link, and saw a picture of me and my cute little family, confirming that I was indeed the winner. Yeah, well, today, I saw a picture of Tiffany Carter and her cute little family.

Maybe I shouldn't be browsing blogs so late at night because clearly, my tired mind couldn't handle the excitement of potentially beating the 10 in 2031 odds to win a book. (Unless my conspiracy theory that someone somehow moved my comment so they could win the book is true!) I guess I'll put this book in my Amazon shopping cart along with the 5 dozen other books I have saved there and see if I can find a little cash to buy it sometime. Bummer.

So, even though it turns out my not-winning streak continues (losing streak sounds so negative), this whole thing has really got me thinking. Since my blog is so new and I haven't done nearly as much posting as I hoped, I haven't written much yet about our family's, or perhaps it's primarily just my, journey this past year and a half since the surprise of discovering Tori would join our family. And quite a journey it's been.

But you'll have to check back later to hear more about it. No telling what might happen if I try to blog late into the night again.... And I don't want to give Tiffany Carter a bad name.