There goes half a year...

Oh boy, if I could put an ashamed face here, I would.  I can't believe it's been 9 months since I blogged-I'm a bad blogger!  In my defense, it's been a busy year.  Those years just keep getting busier the older I get.  So, it's September, and the kids are back to school, and life is swinging back into that semi-crazy rattle of homework and school and after school activities, and I've been thinking that maybe I can do it better this year.  Maybe I can be less blow uppy with the kids, and maybe I can be more enthusiastic about work, and maybe I can lose these 15 pounds-and then I think, maybe I just need to shift my perspective.  You see, I've been pushing my kids this past week with school starting and all to be thinking of God first and others before themselves, but I tend to get  a big FAIL in that department myself a lot of times.   Kids are such mimes, and they really do absorb what they see.  It just made me realize that I need to be burning for God, I need to love Him with my heart, might, mind and strength, because He's God and I am created by Him, and because my time with these precious little munchkins is already half gone.   I don't want to let life get in the way of God anymore, I want God to get in the way of life.  I want to be so passionately on fire for Him that every thought, word and action is no longer quite my own.  And lastly, I want to live so abandoned to Him that I actively long for His return while joyfully pursuing the lost and broken to tell them of this great Savior who can make them whole again-that is my wish list.  It's definitely going to take God to get me there :)  But isn't that what life is about?  Learning how to pursue the One incredible, magnificent, mind blowing God that we have-and THAT'S what I want my children to come away with when they're 18 and heading out the door to the rest of their lives.  I pray daily that it is so.  Shalom in Yeshua :)

rambling....

So here I am.  With a blog. With nothing really good to say.  Does anybody else ever feel obligated to fill a blog page with something when they have nothing really good to write?  I dunno...maybe I'm not cut out to be a blogger after all!  (and by the way, 15 years ago, bloggers didn't exist, because I was in high school then and if you know my kids then you also know that that was, like, a MILLION years ago in, like, the stone age-and mom, did they even HAVE playgrounds back then? uh huh, yeah, real question)  I think I need bullets or idea lists or something.  Like my son's creative writing assignments, only he's a lot more funny than me. 
So I found out a couple of weeks ago that the new "cool" is "sick" , as in "that's really sick".  The sad thing is, this took me a little bit to figure out that they weren't talking about GETTING sick, they were talking about something BEING sick, in a good way......well, you get it.  I felt old.  And being as those moments are coming more and more often, it must mean something!  Does something magically happen when you turn 30 and have children over the age of 5?  Suddenly, high school kids are really "kids" and not almost contemporaries, irresponsibility annoys instead of excites, and bedtime is wonderful instead of awful.  When it comes to going out or staying in with no kids, well, need I say more?  And that has NOTHING to do with any younger behavior!  It has EVERYTHING to do with fuzzy jammies and movies and a couch!  And then you start getting the questions..........everyone that has kids know about the questions.  So, here's what I would love to see.  Everyone who reads this blog please post a question your kids asked you that made you realize you weren't a kid anymore-here's mine:
Keith: mom, how do you type so fast?
Me: well, I took a keyboarding class in high school, where we learned to type on typewriters
Keith: what's a typewriter?
Me: it's a keyboard attached to letters that type on a piece of paper
Keith: how do you play games on it?
Me: you didn't
Keith (looks horrified)
OK, now YOUR turn!

Relationships-run!! (a confession to God)

I've been thinking a lot this week about the whole meaning of life thing (I know, dangerous!) but God really kind of brought it front and center for me this week and I'm trying to go with it because-well-let's face it, I'm not the best when it comes to listening!  He said something like "Hey!  Hey you!  Can you hear me now?  (ok, maybe he didn't say THAT-but....) Did you forget that I created you for relationship?  Ummmm, see, I've been sitting up here waiting for you to stop talking and going and doing and start listening.......and that's what your kids and your husband and your friends are waiting for too.  Yeah, life is all about relationship, Mine with you, and as a picture of that perfect relationship, yours with your husband, your children, your friends, and My lost sheep.  And when you get that, I get to do some work through you.
Um, ok God, yeah I know that, but it's kind of hard to REALLY get it, you know?  Number one, I'm shy.  Yep, I've got a major case of fight or flight going on-I don't know if I'm the person You think I am, and I know intellectually that You know me better than I know me, but boy my emotions don't say that.  Second, I'm lazy!  I'll admit it-I don't like to work hard!  Not whining-now THAT'S the hard part.  Daily slogging through old english? Yep, it's hard for me.  Remembering to stop my plans and talk to You and then listen to what You have to say?  Hep, hard.  I'm ashamed to admit that, but there You go.  Third, sometimes (ok, a LOT of times) things just don't make sense.  I can't see the end result, so I just don't get it.  Fourth, I am a rut sort of person.  I like safe, comfortable, and known.  I like to have my safe little adventures between the pages of books, and not in my own life, where the bad stuff that always leads up to the good stuff can actually hurt me.  Yeah, lame, but there You go.  Do I get kudo points for being honest?
OK, so that's what You have to work with.  And the funny thing is, I have a feeling that most other people are like me.  I'm fairly sure all those old testament guys were......I mean, there are some pretty glaring mistakes and I can read them and think-wow, where were your heads?  But then I think, uh huh, yeah, I GET that-and I can't be all high and mighty because someone reading my life hundreds of years from now would say the exact same thing I just said.   Wow, she really messed up that time!  But then You always forgive and guide and lead and give-I mean, the really beautiful part is watching that relationship unfold in those stories-You never give up on them, and they never gave up on coming back to You.  Relationship.  So I look at my husband, and I look at my children, and I think that yeah, I'll mess up, and they'll mess up, but I'll never give up on my relationship with them, and I hope that my kids will get to see this same picture, and this same beautiful love that shines through all the old english and funny wording, and that they'll try and show that themselves.  I want to make God real to them, but most of all, I want to make God real to me.  I want relationship. 
So God, if you can work with a recalcitrant, hard headed, forgetful, lazy, and fearful person, then I'm all Yours.  But I have to warn you, I'm a lot of work.  Eh, You probably already knew that.  That's why You are currently yelling at me about relationship!  I can hear You saying "don't forget, my child, to always come back.  The only thing I can't work with is you completely giving up on coming back to Me-everything else I've got covered."  Thanks, God.  From the bottom of this broken heart. 

Into the unknown

This should be interesting.  I am not a computer savvy person-case in point: I was at a restaurant with the girl yesterday and saw an older lady texting away on her phone while waiting for her food.  I happened to mention that I have never texted before and she looked at me with incredulity, "how do you live without it?" she exclaimed.  I really have no idea.  Apparently I'm missing something big.  So, I decided to stick one more foot out into cyberspace and start a blog.  I don't know if it will be good or not, but it's something new and, hopefully, fun. 
The title is something I'm trying to focus on right now-it's from a Lincoln Brewster song. "Today is the day You have made, I will rejoice and be glad in it"  I am currently at home with the boy on the floor yelling at the girl, who is soaking the sleeves of her pajamas and asking me if she can take a bath with her clothes on.  Uh, no.  But you can take a bath with your clothes off!  And you can watercolor in the kitchen instead of the livingroom floor, and you can cut snowflakes out of daddy's coffee filters only if you take a few and leave some for him.  And you can stay just the way you are because I love you -just.for.you.  And I'm sorry in advance for when I forget and get upset.  Because not every mom out there is as blessed as me, and not every woman out there gets to be a mom. So I will try and remember to enjoy you in all the little silly quirks and dervishes and delerium you stir up-because you're here, and you're mine, at least for now. 
Signing out for now, with more to come later.......