Category: The Life of Surrender Blog Post

Well, we have officially been on break from school for one week.  We have run the gamut of emotions: joy, happiness, frustration, crabbiness, and boredom.  I get so excited for these breaks from school and all the time with family.  I often forget that extra time with family doesn’t always look how I pictured it in my head.  The past few days it seems like we have been living in time out.  There is rude talk, fighting, and whining, and Peter and I have had to remind ourselves and each other that our family and home is our children’s practice field.  They are not going to be perfect and behave perfectly all the time and it is our job to teach them what we expect of them.  The process can be difficult and not look at all how I pictured our Christmas break to go.

The above picture is how our village looked after Christmas this year.  Luckily, I have a talented husband that glued them all back together again!  I feel like my soul sometimes looks like it’s been through the runner after Christmas as well.  I think my attitude often needs adjusting and I need grace from God so that I can give it back to my children.  I think I get very focused on my children’s behavior and how they are frustrating me and I often forget to think about why they might be acting that way.

I was driving my son to grab some pizza on the day after Christmas and he talked my ear off the whole way there and the whole way back.  I realized in that moment that even though we are all home together, I am not putting in intentional time together with each child.  With our 1 year old it is easy because she follows me around and begs for my attention all day long.  I think I often let Peter interact with the older two because I get so busy with Nora.  Our oldest daughter has been whining and talking unkind and it all came to a stop today when I got down on the floor with her and wrestled and tickled her.  I didn’t hear anymore rude talk the rest of the night.  She just wanted her mom’s attention.

Remain in me, and I will remain in you.  John 15:4

We also need to be intentional with God.  Jesus tells us to remain in him.  When we are focused on him, our earthly problems seem to disappear.  Just like Emily stopped talking unkindly when she got some attention, we also have better attitudes when we remain in God and get his attention lavished on us.  He is not withholding his attention, we are running away from it.

Remaining in God is the best way to get our broken pieces glued back together.  That is my wish for everyone this Christmas season.  Let’s lean into God and let him make us feel whole.

Today marks the second week of Advent.  Even in this Advent season, people are feeling hurt, broken, afraid, sad, and unsatisfied with their lives.  This world can be a very difficult place to be.  I think we have all felt like we have wanted our wounds mended, our souls healed, and to live in happiness.  We also want these things for our loved ones.  I absolutely hate to see my loved ones suffer for any reason.  I hate to see them get their feelings hurt or feel unappreciated.  I hate to see them feel any pain.  I hate to see them feel even the slightest discomfort.  I ran home last week to get my daughter’s sweatshirt because I hated the thought of her sitting in her classroom uncomfortable and cold.

What I am realizing is that God will allow our loved ones to walk through hard things.  Our loved ones will not have a perfect life, just like we will not have a perfect life.  It is in the struggles where we grow and learn to trust God in everything.  When I try to step in and “save” my loved ones from walking through a hard thing, I am stepping out of God’s plan and trying to form my own plan.  My loved ones don’t need me to rescue them from their struggles, they need to know that I am praying for them and asking God to draw them nearer to Him.

A few years ago, a family we knew was going through a big heartache and struggle.  I told my mom that I just couldn’t get them out of my mind.  It was so hard to fathom what they were going through.  My mom wisely told me that the reason I couldn’t get them out of my mind was because God wanted me to lift them up to Him.  Every time I thought of that family I should pray as hard as I could.  That conversation has been in my mind quite a bit these last few years.  My biggest defense against the struggles of my loved ones is to turn those people over to my Heavenly Father.

This world is full of hurting people.  It can be very discouraging to feel like we can’t be there to help everyone.  The idea that I can lift all of those people that enter my mind over to God gives me peace.  I have really been enjoying Ann Voskamp’s Advent videos.  The second week of Advent represents peace.  Peace can sometimes be very elusive.  We see all the headlines around us and it is hard to be peaceful when this world feels so broken.  Ultimately, our only peace is resting in God through prayer.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ.  Philippians 4:7

This holiday season I want to have peace by putting my cares where they belong, with God.

Dear Lord,

   Please be with all of our loved ones this holiday season.  Help them to feel your peace and bring them closer to you.  Help them to feel your presence in their lives and help them to walk in your ways.  Most of all, Lord, help them to feel your love for them, your perfect love.

We love you,

Amen

We have begun our Advent season and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have been lacking some zeal.  Today was our first day back at school after Thanksgiving and it is always hard to go back to work after a long holiday weekend.  The atmosphere in my soul felt very heavy last night.  I was talking to Peter about it and I think we concluded that I am clinging to the wrong things in this world.  In general, I want my life to be nice and easy.  The reality is that my life can’t be what I want it to be because we live in a sinful world.  When I feel burdened, it is because I am relying way too much on my circumstances to make me happy.

I think it is hard to go back to work after a break because my circumstances feel good during break.  I love to get to spend all that extra time with my family and be able to relax.  I love to not have to answer to the clock and have more freedom to do the things I want to do.  These holidays and breaks are a beautiful thing and I think they help us replenish.  We are not meant to live in “holiday mode” our whole lives.  I have been thinking of it like church.  Church is a gathering place for one day a week to go and get filled back up after a long week of following Christ.  I need to put in the hard work to get to the payoff (or enjoy my payoff fully).

Now that Thanksgiving is over, Christ is wanting me to go out and do his will for my life.  Fortunately, I live in the time of the Holy Spirit and I am able to feel his presence right within my soul.  God’s people were so looking forward to Christ coming to be with them.

The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel which means, “God with us.”       Matthew 1:23

We live in a time where we can read all about our Immanuel or our “God with us” in the gospels.  We also have the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us through our days.

I was watching  Ann Voskamp’s first week of Advent video and it is all about hope.  The sermon made sure to emphasize that it is not just remembering that God’s people were waiting for Jesus to come the first time, but we are also waiting for his second coming.  It is a time of preparation for us to be ready for Jesus’s second arrival.  At that time we will get to spend eternity with Him and be done with all the pain and disappointment here on Earth.

Peter and I have been reading in Matthew and chapters 24 and 25 are all about being ready for Christ’s second coming.  These have not been my favorite chapters to read, but they are very important!  The wording always seems a little menacing to me, but I think it is because he wants us to know that we need to be prepared for him.  It is so easy to get swept up in this world’s distractions and not be prepared for our King!

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.   Matthew 24:42-44

I can feel that I am not fully prepared for his arrival when I am relying heavily on my emotions about the circumstances that surround me. This week I will be focusing on hope for my future in Heaven.  I want to remember that Advent is not just a remembrance of Immanuel coming the first time, but also preparing ourselves for his final arrival.  The hope of Heaven and eternal life with God is the greatest hope of all.

I absolutely love a good hymn. I have been wearing out my Joey + Rory Hymns That Are Important to Us album and every song on there speaks to my heart and soul.  When I sing I Need Thee Every Hour I have been feeling that it is what my life should look like but it isn’t always what my life actually looks like.

I need Thee, oh, I need Thee; Every hour I need Thee; 

Oh, bless me now, my Savior! I come to Thee.

I need Thee every hour, Stay Thou near by;

Temptations lose their power When Though art nigh.

We have been watching some Joyce Meyer broadcasts and on one she talked about having trouble brushing her hair and she felt like God was telling her to ask for help brushing her hair.  At first, she didn’t want to ask for help, but later decided to.  I think my initial thought is that God doesn’t want to hear from me on the trivial stuff.  What I am coming to realize is that when I bring everything to God, he will choose to work through me.

Just last week I was searching for items in my house in two different instances.  I was looking for my one year old’s shoes and my oldest daughter’s library book.  In both instances, I stopped searching frantically and sat down and prayed about it for a few seconds.  In the case of the shoes, it took a little bit. In the case of the library book, I found it a few seconds later.  If I were a betting person, I don’t think I would have found the library book right then had I not stopped to ask God’s help for it.

We wrote a family mission statement and the first thing we need to remember is to humbly acknowledge our brokenness and rely on God’s strength.  I love that relying on God is the first item on our mission statement.  I feel like we can’t accomplish the other items until we are able to rely on Him. I have the best intentions to not rely on my strength, but on His.  I can wake up in the morning fully aware of God’s presence in my life and completely forget by the time I walk out the door.  Just yesterday I was sitting in church struggling with my children’s behavior and not even thinking to ask God for help!

I have seen what God’s power can do in our lives.  I have seen God work through people in amazing ways, but he is not going to do it if we don’t go to him for help.  Going back to the song lyrics: I Need Thee Every Hour.  I am not sure that there has been a day in my life where I have been focused on God every hour.  I think there have been scary times for my family if someone is in the hospital or we are waiting to hear test results where I am very aware of God’s presence in my life and then things work out and I go on with my day depending on myself.  How arrogant and entitled I must seem to him.   Still, he wants me.

With November being the  month where we focus on thankfulness and how much we have, I also want to focus on how much I need God.  I am going to try to say a little prayer when the clock strikes every hour.

I want to say:

Dear Jesus, another hour is passing in this day and I need you.  I need you every hour.  Please help me to work for you and not myself.  Please help me to fix my eyes on you.
I love you,

AMEN

My hope is that God will be an even bigger part of my day and my life.  I want him to be my whole life. Peter and I have been reading in Matthew and Jesus has some pretty intense things to say about our lives:

Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.  Matthew 10:37-39

I have tried too many times to count to “find my life” in myself and my own pursuits.  I have tried to find my life in relationships and circumstances.  It is time that I find my life in Jesus Christ because I do need him every hour.

There are times in my life where I feel like God is allowing me to walk through something because he knows that it will bring me closer to him.  I usually refer to these times as pruning from John 15.

Tonight while driving home with our one year old shrieking from the back seat, I realized how much we have grown in parenthood.  She had thrown her favorite blanket on the ground, (which she does repeatedly every car ride.)  This time her blanket was trapped in an area that I couldn’t reach.  She started crying hysterically when she realized that I wasn’t making a move to get it.  As I sat there listening to her pleas for help, I realized how far we have come in parenthood.  About five years ago, when our oldest was a baby, I would have had a hard time letting her cry.  I didn’t enjoy when she was uncomfortable and it absolutely made me fall apart when I felt like there was nothing I could do to help her feel comfortable.

As our one year old cried, I thought to myself, I think it’s okay for her to cry and feel disappointed.  In fact, it may even be good for her to experience a little discomfort.  There is no doubt that all 3 of our children are going to get knocked down by the world at some point.  How much better will it be for them when the world comes to break them, if they have felt a little discomfort in the safety of our parenting.  I want them to know that their dad and I love them, but we aren’t able, and won’t, provide them complete happiness 100% of the time.

It is very easy to spoil our children and give them things or allow them to get away with behaviors because it makes them happy.  The problem with this is that they don’t understand that we live in a sinful world.  We need discipline and a lifeline to God to make it through to our eternal home.  They don’t understand that if we give them everything they want, it won’t lead them down the path to happiness.  They don’t know that these things they are chasing are not what is best for them.  It is then our responsibility as parents to guide them to what they do need.  Are they going to be unhappy with us?  Absolutely!  Will they thank us for it later?  Probably not, but we can always hope :).  Do I feel like it will lead them to a closer relationship with God?  Yes.  I think that is the ultimate goal, isn’t it?  I would certainly allow my children to walk through some disappointment, hurt, and plenty of other yucky feelings if I felt like they were walking to God on the other side of it.

I do know that it is terribly hard to allow our children to walk through these things.  I think it is hard for God to see us walk through hard things as well.  I am pretty sure that we would love having our kids come to us for comfort when it is all said and done and even through the process.  God is wanting the same thing from us.  When life gets hard, He is there.  He is willing to walk us through all the hard stuff to get to Him.  How much better it feels on the other side when we can run into our loving Father’s arms for comfort.

So dear children of mine, are there going to be times when your dad and I allow you to walk through hard stuff without rescuing you?  Yes, there will be plenty of times and those days are going to be hard on all of us.  Just know that we love you unconditionally and that you will have a deeper understanding of God’s unconditional love for you as well.  An easy life is not always the most life giving.  Walk the hard roads and lean into your Creator when you do.  We love you!

Yesterday was one of those days.  I am sure you know the ones.  It seemed like Peter and I were carrying one kid off to time out on repeat and then when one would settle down, the next one started in.  Ugh!  There was lots of disobedience, whining, crying, and just general anger/crabbiness.  I felt like I held my cool for awhile and then I came unglued and was crabby, whiny, and angry.  I didn’t deal with my children’s disobedience in the way that God is calling me to deal with it.

When my children are having rough days with their behavior I seem to end up sinning by acting in anger, expecting my children to behave well and stay self-controlled when I am not, and not taking a break and praying before dealing with their behavior.

Then I feel the shameful thoughts and fears and worries rush in:  I am a terrible mother, I am worried about my children’s souls (Thanks, Mom, for that line!), and I just feel like God is ashamed of me and I am a failure to him.

I have been trying to surrender my emotions to God but sometimes it feels like he is so far away.  I think after days like yesterday it is easy to slip into guilt and shame.  I know that God does not want me to run from him.  I know that he wants me to repent and draw near.  So that is what I am doing.  I am laying down my sins and my fears.

I get them sometimes, the icky days.  I know that it is a part of living on this Earth in all it’s broken glory.  The icky days usually don’t announce themselves until they arrive and I often feel frustrated with these uninvited guests.  Sometimes they come from a failure to plan, or when I feel like I have nothing to look forward to, and sometimes I just wake up feeling icky.

Usually when the icky days come, my first instinct is to call survival mode and break out all of my comfort items.  It does feel nice in the moment to eat junk and watch way too much television, but it does nothing for the long term.  It doesn’t fix the underlying problem in my heart and it usually leaves me with guilty feelings that aren’t nice to fight off.

When I say icky days, I am referring to days that I feel “off” or just not awesome about life in general. I am not referring to depression and severe anxiety that I know are real in people’s lives.  I know that those are things that can’t be just shaken off and may need more help than what I am suggesting in this post.  Here are a few things that I have been learning lately about how to care for myself on days when I feel icky.

1.)  Talk to God about it.  I know that God already knows how I feel and my day was written in His book before I even had the icky feelings.  I do think that just having a chat with Him about how I am feeling gives me courage and makes me feel less alone.  Before the icky feelings have a chance to take over, talking to God helps us to combat them and put them in their place.  Satan would like for us to let these feelings take over and cause us to sin.  We know that we serve a God who can help us through anything and also cares for us deeply.  What a wonderful gift that we can turn those feelings over to Him and not be stuck in the lonely icky feelings by ourselves.

2.)  Make Good Choices.  Like I said earlier, when I feel my day starting to feel yucky, my first response is to want to eat a bunch of junk food and sit on the couch watching TV.  While this may feel good in the moment, in the long term it is really hurting me.  Instead of letting our feelings rule us and in turn feeling worse later, we can make the choice to eat foods that are going to make us feel good and be present with our children rather than watching TV.  We can make the choice to get the laundry and dishes that we don’t want to do done and we will be so thankful that we did later on.

3.)  Plan.  I think sometimes my icky days come from lack of planning.  I feel that looking ahead to potential problems in your schedule is a good way to combat having off days.  If you see that your schedule is too packed or too wide open, you can look ahead and do something about it before a problem arises.

4.)  Look Heavenward.  I also feel like these days can come after I have been doing something I enjoy and it ends.  For example:  My husband and I are huge Olympics fans and our favorite thing to watch has been the swimming.  We have pretty much lived and breathed swimming this past week and when it ended, I felt a little bit of a let down.  I felt like there is nothing to look forward to and I then felt that I had to fill the void I felt with something else.  What really should have happened was that in these moments when I am making something way too important, like swimming, I need to take a step back and realize that there is way more to life than watching swimming on television.  Yes, it is fun and we sure enjoyed it, but my response when it was over tells me that I was making it an idol in my life.  Recognizing these times before they end is a great way to combat those feelings when they are over.  We need to have spiritual tunnel vision and know that all the things on this Earth will pass away and we have Heaven to look forward to.  When we focus on God and our eternal home, the little nuisances here on this Earth don’t seem as hard to deal with.

Parenting recently has been a little bit brutal.  I have one child with emotional breakdowns and some attitude flaring out of nowhere, I have one child that likes to attack the youngest and has some passive/aggressive defiance going on, and my youngest abounds in energy and is into EVERYTHING!  It is easy to feel deflated at the end of the day thinking that our parenting is getting nowhere.  Usually I will then turn to my parenting resources.  I absolutely love reading parenting books and moms blogs and getting tips on how to combat bad behavior.  While I love getting a new tip and having it work, usually it is short lived.  I think I can get lost in all the parenting resources and become very confused on what I should be doing for discipline.

Yesterday was pretty rough.  I would like to say that it ended wrapped up in a pretty bow and we all had feel good feelings at the end of the day.  That is not what happened, but I felt less pressure and stress on myself because I spent the morning throwing my hands in the air and saying, “God, I can’t do this alone.  I have no idea what to do with this child right now and I am turning this situation over to you.”  I don’t feel like an answer came floating down from Heaven and I don’t feel like I am on top of my parenting game, but I do feel like the situation is out of my hands.  (Which it is anyway!)  I feel so much better when I place my children’s lives into their creator’s hands.

Parenting has been something that I will occasionally turn over to God and then I will get a little too self-reliant and take it back.  It is very illogical to think that I can do better for my kids than God can, but I think that is what I am saying by my behavior.  By taking back my parenting worries, joys, concerns, etc, I am taking God out of it and setting myself up for failure.

I am not saying that having a program, schedule, or using parenting resources is a bad thing.  I believe that God sends us these things for support in our lives.  What I am saying is that we need to relinquish our illusion of control over our children’s lives to God.  After we have turned over our cares for our children in prayer, then we can listen and see how God wants us to proceed.  God may then have us implement a schedule, program, or use a parenting resource, but we can’t replace God with these things.

When I think about my ultimate goal as a mother, it would be to have my children come to know Jesus and love him with all their hearts.  I pray this over my kids mostly everyday.  I know that only God is in charge of what my children believe.  When I turn them over to Him daily, then I know that they are in His hands and he will bring them to Him.  No parenting book, diet, family rule book, or schedule is going to enter my children’s hearts like Christ can.  I need to remember to go to Him before anything else, and that is the best parenting tip I could give to anyone.

I have been thinking recently about my sinful nature and how it manifests itself in my life.  I believe that we are all programmed to sin in a certain way.  For me, I put comfort in front of Christ.  I will go to great measures to make myself comfortable.  In fact, I sometimes think if I could lay in a nice comfy blanket all day everyday I would have it made!  The truth is, I wouldn’t have it made.  While it would feel great to lay in a blanket all day, at the end of the day I would have feelings of guilt for not getting anything done in my day.

I feel like God has been telling me recently to take the hard road instead of the easy one.  I know the easy road looks really appealing in the moment, but it will end up leaving you with feelings of emptiness.  Taking the hard road can look different for everyone.  Taking the hard road could look like doing that good deed even though you know you aren’t going to get the credit for it, sacrificing your own comfort to help someone out, forgiving people for wrongdoing, and a million other examples.

In my life, I feel like taking the hard road looks like not drinking 700 Mt. Dew’s per day to combat tiredness and my artificial feeling of comfort.  Being a mother of 3 there are not as many times in my day where I can kick back and relax like I was able to in the past and it can feel really hard to stay present and in the moment with my children when I want to take a few minutes to myself to kick back and relax.  The big thing I have been working on this year has been to surrender my feelings over to Christ.  When I start to feel jealous, angry, lazy, self-deprecating, or filled with worry, I think the hard road is to surrender those feelings to Christ rather than to wallow in them.  There are many times in my day when I don’t “feel” like making a meal, doing the laundry, or playing with my kids.  I do know that I will benefit from fighting through those feelings in prayer and just doing them.

Taking the hard road has one huge advantage and that is being connected with our Lord and Savior.  I believe that Jesus is still with me when I take the easy road, but I need him way more when I take the hard road.  When we face challenges of any sort, he is there to work through it with us and his power is made perfect in my weakness. (2 Corinthians 2:9)