It is a time fo renewal for me. Cross Country is over, the crazyness of the beginning of the school year is over and I am starting to settle into a regular routine but I have a feeling that life will be different for me beginning now. Part of it is I am tired of being sub-standard and having a sub-standard life. I want to get everything our of life that I possible can. I turn 35 tomorrow. I am comfortable with where I am in life. I feel like I have something positive and valuable to share. Part of my renewed interest in my blogging is my wonderful husband has set up my blogs and website so they are all linked. I also want to start running again and start reading my Bible on a regular basis again. I am tired of existing. I want to live.

I have not blogged in two years. I've been busy living life without necessarily experiencing it. I am tired. I've been journeying without a real destination in mind. It is surreal when you think about it. I really don't remember much of the past few years. I've been to busy to truly appreciate life's worth. I will not do that any more. No matter how tired, no matter how much I think I need to do, no matter how busy my life gets, I will slow down and really live the life I want to live. I am tired of a half ass existence. I want to pursue life and all of its passions. I want to deeply drink the wine that life has to offer. I want to pursue my relationships with a passionate heart. I want to be closer to God, I want to be closer to my husband, I want to be closer to my girls, I want to be closer to my family, I want to be a better person, a better teacher, a better mentor, a better neighbor, a better friend. I want to read as many books as I can read. I want to look at the world around me and just take it in and appreciate the God created beauty that is all around me. I want to take pictures.  I want to write. I want to do what I am doing right now.

I am watching the cars drive by my house. I am watching a little boy ride his bike up and down the street. I am swatting the mosquitos that think I am their dinner. I am listening to the very noisy birds. I am watching my cat roll around on the sun warmed sidewalk. I am looking at the beautiful blue sky which is slowly turning shades of a very light yellow as the sun  is setting. I smell the pretty peonies with their glorious sweet fragrance.

I am sitting on my front steps.

I am watching the world go by.

Well, it is that time of year again when we feel the need to reflect on the past year and look forward to the new one. I've been thinking a lot lately about this past year and the problems and issues. It hasn't been the greatest year, it probably is one of the worst as far as life and my attitude towards life goes. I've decided that I will change this year. I will lose weight. I will run regularly. I will have better relationships with my friends and family. I will be a better wife, mom, daughter, niece, granddaughter friend and teacher. I will finally get this house how it needs to be. I will have a better relationship with God.

Everything hinges on the last two things that I mentioned. This house is my achilles heel. This house feels like the world and I am Atlas trying to carry it on my shoulders. All of the junk, the clothes, the toys, the books. The clutter, the nastiness, the disorganization, the WASTE!!!!

I feel like my life is being wasted because of this house. It is preventing me from doing the rest. I have to get this done!!!! I must get this done. I must change!!!!

I took a bunch of pictures of the house. I also found pictures of me and my family (both good pictures and bad pictures). I created a motivation folder on my computer and every time I feel unmotivated, every time I say I can't do it, I will look at these pics and say to myself - are you satisfied with this or do you want something better? I want something better and I will do whatever I can to get it done.

I have been thinking a lot over the past couple of days (since school is out for Christmas Break). I've been thinking about my family and about what I have and about what I've done and I have come to realize that I do have joy, I just don't think about it.I tend to focus on the negative(and goodness knows there is enough of that) instead of the positive.

I have three beautiful daughters.

Maddie is 13 and growing up in her own individual way, she always marches to the beat of her own drummer. She is unique and confident in her uniqueness. She doesn't care what people think about her, she is comfortable in her own skin. She is creative and intelligent. She's an honor roll student and is fiercely loyal to her friends and family.

Alana is 7 and she is the sweetest little thing. She is a helper. She wants to help everyone (except maybe helping her sisters clean up). She is my mini-me. She wants to be like me (at least right now she does). She loves order. She is compassionate and friendly. She is studious and loves school. She is an artist. She loves taking pictures.She has a beautiful smile that absolutely lights up the room that she is in.

Seanna is 4 and is my adventurer. Every day is a new experience. Whether it is exploring the back yard or woods or creating a master piece of art on the wall when we aren't looking, she is always active, always creating. She is also an artist. She loves to draw (on everything including herself). She is creative, she drew on herself this week and said it was Indian War Paint. She has JOY in everything from the snow that fell earlier this week to putting up the Christmas tree to cuddling with me. She loves and trusts in an uninhibited way.

I have a wonderful husband.

Yes, Kirby is wonderful although he drives me craze sometimes. I take him for grated sometimes. He stopped going to college so I could finish and then he stays at home so our children can have someone at home to get them to school and is there when they come home. He is there to take care of Seanna while I'm working. He has a ministry that helps people who are typically rejected by the typical church and he has an online ministry that reaches out to the unsaved on the world wide web. True, he doesn't usually do what I ask him to do while I'm at school like tidying up and washing clothes but he does try to remember to do that occasionally.

I have a wonderful life.

I have clothes on my back, a roof over my head, a car that mostly works even though it is 10 years old and has a few dents. I have a job that I like and a coaching assignment that I LOVE! I have my family at home and my family at school with all 70 kids that I currently teach (with 70 more next semester).

Most importantly, I have a Lord that loved me enough to die for my sins and open up heaven to me so that I may have eternal life and joy.

Circumstances may be hard and try to steal my joy. There is not enough money to go around and I worry about things that are both within and outside of my control. I worry that my house will never be fully cleaned and organized. BUT I have joy in my heart and peace in the fact that God loves me and looks out for me and is there for me in both good times and bad.

Be JOYFUL!

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 2

This is one of my favorite poems. Life is all about choice. What do we choose to do with our lives on a daily basis.I have made so many choices in my life. Some choices were bad, some were good. Over the past ten years, I have tried to focus on choices that would lead me along the Road to Christ. I sometimes feel like I have not succeeded very well in pursuing that road. I want to have a better life. I want to have a more personal relationship with the Lord. I want that so badly because I feel like that will lead me to have a better relationship with my husband, my daughters, my family and my friends. I just wish, hope and pray that my life would stop interfering with the life I want to have. I feel like I am stuck in a rut in the middle of the Road. I could always go back where I came from or I can try to get out of the rut and continue to pursue my Road. God, please help me pursue the Road that leads to your Way, the only Way. Amen!

Today at church (www.commonwealthchapel.com), my pastor, greatly challenged my heart. Today's message was about Hope and how advent, which begins today is the season of Hope, leading up to the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. It got me thinking off on so many different tangents. I got to thinking, do I have hope? Where is my hope placed? The illustration that he used came from the book of Isaiah 11:1-10. It says, "

1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. "

This passage is about the hope that comes with the Kingdom of God. I feel as though that I am not a member of that Kingdom at times. I feel like I do not have my roots in the Lord. I am a stump and my roots have withered. I believe in God, I believe that the Lord Jesus died for my sins.

However, I believe that in the kingdom of God , I am the very least. I don't pray regularly, I don't read the Bible regularly and lately I have not even been going to church lately. I am financially at my wits end, we have not money, not even enough to pay the bills. Part of the reason that we haven't gone to church very much is because we don't have the gas money. I look around at the people at church and their lives seem so perfect, so content. Surely the Kingdom of God is with them, I just don't see it with me.

We have no money, we are majorly in debt, our house is worth less than we are paying, we can't use half of our house because it is crammed full of junk that we will never use, we are disorganized, I got a pay cut at work, my oldest daughter has no real relationship with God, my middle daughter is struggling to see where she fits in, my youngest daughter still isn't fully potty trained and can't or won't get dressed herself and making her clean up after herself is like fighting a battle.

My relationship with my husband is not as strong as it needs to be. My relationship with my family is not what it needs to be and I have no real, close friends to just hang out with and talk too. I don't know how to socialize and interact with other people. I feel like I am not good enough for anything and that I am not interesting enough of a person to be anyone's real friend - not that I would know what that feels like. I feel like I don't fit in anywhere. I feel so worn down that HOPE has left me long ago. I do not feel the hope of the Kingdom of God. I want too feel the hope, I want my life to be better, I want the lives of my children to be better, I want a richer and stronger relationship with my husband but I don't know how to achieve that end.

How do I get hope? How can I feel the love of God's kingdom? How can I be a better wife, mother, daughter and friend? I really don't know. I don't feel hope - I feel lost.

My little Sea Monkey is getting so big. She has been so cute today. She is learning how to really pretend and she makes up all of this random stuff and acting like it is real. She then takes her dolls and stuffed animals and makes them talk and play. She is so creative. Now if only I could get her to use the potty by herself.

Today at VBS, the Comedy Sports people were putting on a performance. They were asking for names that were single syllable that they could rap and rhyme to. Madison got picked and she said "Orange". Only my Maddie would give an answer like that. That's why I love her. She is so unique.

My Dear Alana,

How many ways do I love you? There are more ways than there are stars in the sky.

I can't believe that it has been almost a year since I've blogged. I would like to become a regular blogger but I haven't figured out exactly how I'll be doing that yet. I'll try and see. This week is Vacation Bible School. I'm helping out with the 1st graders. They are so cute. The kids are learning about their talents. It is fun helping them out. Alana's talent is definitely art. Madison's is probably evangelism and Seanna - well, I have no idea yet.

Last week were were at Creation Fest. It was AWESOME. The music was great, the teaching was great but I didn't feel very focused on God. I was too busy taking care of everyone, cooking and making sure we had everything that we needed.

I want to focus more on God and then just maybe, my life will start to get better. Right now I feel kinda bummed. I feel like I can't focus on anything because I'm focused on everything. I've been living the same, wretched way for 5 years now and I can't seem to get a breakthrough. I feel like I can't get rid of the chains that are holding me down. I pray for the GRACE of God to set me free from these chains.