Today at church really brought to my attention that I need to prepare my heart for Easter. As we enter into Holy Week I really want to cleanse my heart and mind and "Get" Easter this year. Not prepare for the Easter Service and the long to-do list that it brought when we were in ministry. Instead I really want to tune my heart into Jesus and come into a reverent spirit as I enter this week. I have just come out of one of the craziest, busy three weeks of my entire life and I regret that I did it to myself. I have run on little sleep. Not been the best mom that I could have been and my eating habits were terrible! All the things I tried to cram into the last three weeks did not get my best because I was "a jack of all trades and master of none." I have lost sleep and my witness in the process. I really want to be better at what I commit to and protect my schedule better. Getting Dalton's birthday party finished as the last thing on my long list of things. I wanted to really focus on taking a deep breath getting my life straighted back out and getting into the Easter Mindset. Other plans were laid out for me and I was blind sided by them starting Friday. I got into a huge fight with Darin that lasted for two days. We never really fight anymore and it started over something so stupid. Then I dealt with bickering siblings all weekend and dropped my I-phone into my coffee. All of these details do set up my story and my lesson that God hit me between the eyes with tonight. Hang with me. I have had a lot of trouble with my oldest this year. He is a sweet tender hearted little boy, but he is strong minded and stubborn. He talks non-stop (do not know where he gets this...), is going to get the last word in, and has been sporting his "I'm not wrong" attitude policing everyone around him. The power struggles that he gets into with his peers and his sisters, over things that don't matter, has driven me crazy this year. I have found myself saying to him, "Why do you do this? This is not helping and makes my job harder when you do this. It does not matter to you and now you are in trouble. Let me be the parent!" This behavior has exasperated me. All of this is all relevant to my lesson.
Today was a frusterating day. Not only did I have a hard weekend with Darin but I have felt let down by different relationships in my life here recently. I have been frusterated and letting it get to me. I tried dealing with it with the best grace I had. I would messure people against my own yard stick and complain about where they did not measure up. The more I vented the more yuck I felt. So I swallowed it and moved on, keeping my own judgemental comments to myself. Then later I got a very accusatory ugly comment on a picture I put up on facebook. So in the best 'turn the other cheek' fashion sent a private email back confronting the person, delted the comment and whipped out my "Holy Meassuring Stick" and pondered all the reasons why that person was wrong. By the end of my rant I felt sick. I knew the enemy was attacking me and I that none of this was by accident. So I called my best friend asking her to pray with me. I could not deal with my frusteration and I did not want the blood of my own sin going with me into this week. As I prayed for wisdom and insight God showed a picture of myself, acting like that little boy yelling at his sisters over them not doing what they were suppose to do, "Mom! Madie's not cleaning her room!" I saw myself in a power struggle with my brother's and sister's in Christ. What does it matter to me who is not doing all that I think they should be doing? What does it matter if someone else sin? How is my pointing it out helping? Just like I have tried to get Dalton to understand that I will deal with his sisters and that his outburts make a bigger mess for me to deal with and now he's in trouble too. God was gently telling me. "Why does it matter to you?" "This is not helping." Lord help me to balance living in peace with my fellow belivers with balancing accountability. Help me to balance mercy with truth. Protect my heart and check my motives. Cleanse me of a haughty spirit and thank you for your lessons.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
This is the Stuff
This song made me laugh out loud when I heard it on the radio. I can't wait to sing it at church! This is my life right now and where God and I am. I hate to admit that I have had to post on facebook for someone to call my phone because I could not find it and I don't have a home phone to call it. I got three tickest the last three months I was in qualifications to become a director. I am sorry I have not blogged in a while. I am having trouble finding time for all of my jobs right now. I want to give my kids the attention they each need. Mary Kay is exploding with my unit and my personal sales. Plus, we are in the final 100 days of the Seminar year and I am finishing both the court of personal sales and recruiting. Not to mention being back in car qualifications for my 2nd free car! Darin is working a lot right now because he is up for another promotion. Baseball season has started again and with two kids in school that is two classrooms to keep up with. From singing in the choir and being in the band at church to planning with our ladies ministry and leading worship at our upcoming retreat, I have no spare time. So blogging has been put on the back burner. I am excited to announce that my 2nd dream will become a reality this summer. We have booked and almost completely paid for our Disney Vacation this summer! I cried on the phone with the lady as we were putting the details together. It is exciting to see the goal that my kids set come to being a reality. They will find out we are going at my debut party for Mary Kay in April! Thank you to all my followers for not dropping me for not posting more.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Sunday Night Confessions-Confession of a broken heart over the sin in my life.
It is with a very broken heart that come back to my blog with this word. Life has been crazy the last few months but God has been dealing with me. What I am about the blog about may lose me some followers. In fact I know it will. This will bother me because I am working on worrying about rejection and would love to see my blog reach 100 followers. Please hear my heart as you read what I am saying. I do not say this out of judgemental attitude of looking down on any one. Nor am I opening this can of worms for debate. I am simply confessing a sin that God convicted me of and has been dealing with me about for a couple of months and it came to a breaking point while I was away at Mary Kay Leadership this week. I have been a complete hypocrite on my blog and the Christian women who read it I can not believe that you still follow me. I am ashamed of myself and the way I misrepresented my Jesus. The one who sacrificed His own life for me. So here goes....
The Lord has opened up my eyes on my obsession with Twilight. My addiction to the books, the story, the characters, the fan fiction website and the harm it has done in my life. Please hear my heart. When some "well meaning" Christian ladies threw in my face the dangers here I was not ready to receive this message. I have no judgment just truth on what God revealed to me. I dishonored my husband by publicly gushing over another man. Now I justified this by saying he was a fictional character. But in my mind he was real. My children knew more about me being Team Edward than me being for Jesus. I was reading fan fiction sights from my phone in every spare moment that I had. These stories started out as just continuations of the story but I began to reading more and more of the sexual acts of the main characters. I found myself being less bothered by the deviation these stories showed to even the act of the characters drinking human blood. I had decensitized myself and was battling a major out of control demon of lust. When I started the latest Beth Moore study, Revelation. I was again convicted. I have always wanted to be a bible teacher someday and have a powerful women's ministry. But then I was faced with the question. "Would Beth Moore have any part of this?" I knew the answer and I told God. "Well then maybe you are not calling me to this anymore." I said I would give it up after the last movie came out and the hype dies down. That would mean two more years!!! It got to where I could not pray. I could not worship in church. I just shut down. I felt guily and powerless. I have never rebeled. I followed God in highschool. I did not party when I got away from home. I have never openly rebelled against God and what he was conviting me of. I have never been "addicted" to anything like this in my life. God brought me to a place where I had to chose. I could live in my own rebellion and he would not allow another woman to come into my Mary Kay unit. This is a stupid book series! Fiction not real and I was struggling this hard? Was I crazy? I called my husband from the conference crying and confessed to him and apologized for how I had dishonored him. I asked him to get rid of all of my collectibles, books, movies, t-shirts and posters before I got home. I did not want to have a chance to reason it out and back out before I got home. I also did not want to feel guilty because most of it has been gifts from him. I wish I could say that this was easy. That I have not missed it or struggled or that it did not make me sad. I would compare it to a man who stuggled with an addiction to porn. In a way that is what this became to me. Not visualy but emotionally and through reading the fan fiction stories. Women struggle to with this on a different level but the sin is the same. The battle in the mind and emotions is a hard place to manage. It can be kept hidden. My motivation for finally doing it was fear of the Lord. I had a direct word from him and I had to follow. The bible verse that was in my study the week this happened was
Revelations 2:1-5 1 “To the angel[a] of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those whoclaim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place."
I felt like a hypocrite. Two weeks ago I got to see my youth minister from highschool and his wife. I was ashamed of myself when I saw her. I knew she read my facebook, and read my blog. God has revealed to me some very serious things that Twilight has brought into our culture that is against God. It has been portrayed as innocent, harmless and beautiful. But it is darkness. It still is Vampireism. Yes these are fiction books and I do believe in fantasy vs reality. But Twilight was the tipping point that ushered us into a generation that Vampires are everywhere and the extreme deviation of an underground world is more socially accepted in a way than it ever was before. Vampires are a deviation to the blood atonement of Jesus. My heart is grieved and broken for how much I loved this story and used it to escape realities in my life that I did not want to face. A lot of people read these stories and did not fall as crazy in love with them as I did. But as Christian women where to we draw the line of following culture in the name of fun. So there is my confession. Maybe this was just a word for me. If it struck a chord please don't leave me a ranting comment just stop following me. I will as I have time this week post my reason and scriptures of what God has revealed to me. I am going back through my blog to delete older posts about this obsession. I don't want to send a mixed message. I am not sure what can of worms this post just opened up. I just knew God was leading me to this public confession.
The Lord has opened up my eyes on my obsession with Twilight. My addiction to the books, the story, the characters, the fan fiction website and the harm it has done in my life. Please hear my heart. When some "well meaning" Christian ladies threw in my face the dangers here I was not ready to receive this message. I have no judgment just truth on what God revealed to me. I dishonored my husband by publicly gushing over another man. Now I justified this by saying he was a fictional character. But in my mind he was real. My children knew more about me being Team Edward than me being for Jesus. I was reading fan fiction sights from my phone in every spare moment that I had. These stories started out as just continuations of the story but I began to reading more and more of the sexual acts of the main characters. I found myself being less bothered by the deviation these stories showed to even the act of the characters drinking human blood. I had decensitized myself and was battling a major out of control demon of lust. When I started the latest Beth Moore study, Revelation. I was again convicted. I have always wanted to be a bible teacher someday and have a powerful women's ministry. But then I was faced with the question. "Would Beth Moore have any part of this?" I knew the answer and I told God. "Well then maybe you are not calling me to this anymore." I said I would give it up after the last movie came out and the hype dies down. That would mean two more years!!! It got to where I could not pray. I could not worship in church. I just shut down. I felt guily and powerless. I have never rebeled. I followed God in highschool. I did not party when I got away from home. I have never openly rebelled against God and what he was conviting me of. I have never been "addicted" to anything like this in my life. God brought me to a place where I had to chose. I could live in my own rebellion and he would not allow another woman to come into my Mary Kay unit. This is a stupid book series! Fiction not real and I was struggling this hard? Was I crazy? I called my husband from the conference crying and confessed to him and apologized for how I had dishonored him. I asked him to get rid of all of my collectibles, books, movies, t-shirts and posters before I got home. I did not want to have a chance to reason it out and back out before I got home. I also did not want to feel guilty because most of it has been gifts from him. I wish I could say that this was easy. That I have not missed it or struggled or that it did not make me sad. I would compare it to a man who stuggled with an addiction to porn. In a way that is what this became to me. Not visualy but emotionally and through reading the fan fiction stories. Women struggle to with this on a different level but the sin is the same. The battle in the mind and emotions is a hard place to manage. It can be kept hidden. My motivation for finally doing it was fear of the Lord. I had a direct word from him and I had to follow. The bible verse that was in my study the week this happened was
Revelations 2:1-5 1 “To the angel[a] of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place."
I felt like a hypocrite. Two weeks ago I got to see my youth minister from highschool and his wife. I was ashamed of myself when I saw her. I knew she read my facebook, and read my blog. God has revealed to me some very serious things that Twilight has brought into our culture that is against God. It has been portrayed as innocent, harmless and beautiful. But it is darkness. It still is Vampireism. Yes these are fiction books and I do believe in fantasy vs reality. But Twilight was the tipping point that ushered us into a generation that Vampires are everywhere and the extreme deviation of an underground world is more socially accepted in a way than it ever was before. Vampires are a deviation to the blood atonement of Jesus. My heart is grieved and broken for how much I loved this story and used it to escape realities in my life that I did not want to face. A lot of people read these stories and did not fall as crazy in love with them as I did. But as Christian women where to we draw the line of following culture in the name of fun. So there is my confession. Maybe this was just a word for me. If it struck a chord please don't leave me a ranting comment just stop following me. I will as I have time this week post my reason and scriptures of what God has revealed to me. I am going back through my blog to delete older posts about this obsession. I don't want to send a mixed message. I am not sure what can of worms this post just opened up. I just knew God was leading me to this public confession.
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