Where's the beef and then some!

I'm blogging over at the Internet Cafe',

here's a link to my post about being a woman

who is living her faith out loud!

Where’s the Beef?!


And here is another fun guest post by my friend Denise, click on the picture to visit her blog.

Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for
they shall be satisfied.”

It is summer vacation here on the farm with our four boys. The first day after Memorial Day Monday when I heard the other local bus go by and know I didn’t have to take my boys to school, ah, pure bliss.

I looked forward to days of beach time and fun with my boys and pure laziness….well, as lazy as you can be with four boys and a busy husband and the huge garden and baby chicks and so on and so on.

All that ended that very first day mere moments after I made my boys chocolate chip pancakes. “I’m hungry”, one of them said and soon they were all asking if they could have a snack, if there was anything to eat, if I had more cookies, what was for dessert…..

To give you an idea of how much they ate, on one morning I made them oatmeal for breakfast, they ate half a bag of apples and one and half bunches of bananas BEFORE lunch.

I am pulling my hair out.

I made my famous chocolate chip cookies and HID half of them to last for another day.

By dinner time when my husband gets home from work I am totally frazzled. Years ago, when my husband’s dad – who made all the meals for the family - was alive, I would hear how my father in law would have nightmares of not being able to feed his family of four kids. I always thought that was overkill. I suddenly understood what he had been worried about. I timed my boys, they completely cleared their plates of food (as they had for lunch and breakfast too) and exactly HALF AN HOUR LATER they were asking for something else to eat.

I was bemoaning this fact to someone I had called for a recipe (go figure). “Well,” she said, “they are more active now. They require more food.” I hadn’t thought of that. I was trying to figure out why the sudden huge jump in appetite from when they were in school and this made a lot of sense. More activity, more need for food. Kinda makes me want to make them sit quietly in the house…as if that would ever happen!

As I was making brownies for my boys, a verse popped into my head all of the sudden. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

Our youngest comes in the kitchen and asks for chocolate milk and I thought “I am the bread of life, he who comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.”

I was wishing God would send some kind of manna or something like that so that my boys wouldn’t be hungry and thirsty all the time. As I was thinking how grand that would be, I also got to thinking how I have been anticipating this time, this time alone with my boys, for ever so long. I have grand plans, to get back into doing a devotional with my boys, to read a long list of books together, to just ‘be’ with my boys. To reconnect after a hectic school year so we can go into next year ‘filled’. My boys aren’t getting younger, my time to ‘train them in the way they should go’ is now.

I spent some time in the kitchen chatting with Son number three about how God cares even about the baby bunnies we found in the field, and for my son to remember that God cares for Him. I may be running out of ideas to feed my kids, but I can still be feeding their minds with God’s word as they help me in the kitchen.

I want my boys to hunger and thirst for God. I pray my boys find their ‘fill’ in God. Somehow, I want to instill in them a desire, a hunger, for them to want more and more of God and never think “yah, I’m full” and walk away from Him. Do you understand what I am trying to say here?

And then, as God always seems to do with me, He made it personal to just me. When was the last time I felt like I was hungry for God’s word? To thirst for Him? When was the last time I was starving to get closer to my God, looking to Him to fill me? Beth Moore talks about filling your ‘love bucket’. If I’m not spending time being filled with God’s love, how am I supposed to share God’s love with those who seem to be draining it….like my family?

Things I am contemplating as I bake some more food to fill my growing boys.

July Praise and Coffee Giveaway!!

This month's Praise is this devotional on praise:



You'll also get "Praise and Coffee" label coffee!!
You're going to love it!

PLUS, our good friends at Bayview Cards are giving you a beautifully handmade box of cards!

TO ENTER DRAWING:

~> Post a comment to THIS post telling me you favorite type of book-or name of book you are reading. (I love non-fiction informational books about faith but enjoy Joel Rosenberg's fictional series also)

~> Please make sure that I have a way to contact you-PLEASE!

~> If you have one of my "Praise and Coffee Giveaway" buttons on your blog, let me know and you will be entered twice. Here is a link to all my buttons: Blog Buttons

Are you unforgettable?

Just a simple thought for today...
What are you doing to captivate your husband's thoughts?

I don’t want my husband walking out the door for work and forgetting about me all day, I want to be on his mind. I want him to miss me when he’s gone.

Let’s be unforgettable women!

Abandoned But Not Forgotten

Lauren loves other little Asian girls. She is drawn to them as if some imaginery cord ties the daughters of China. She immediately points them out in public and tries to find a way, clumsy at times, to connect with them.

I wish I knew how much of her first 2 years living in an orphange she remembers. She loves to read her books about adoption and drinks it in when I tell her how we flew on a big airplane to bring her home. Her books tell of little girls living together with their nannies waiting for their Mommies to come for them. She beams when we turn the page to Mommy holding her new little girl.

She is often upset to see a child on tv standing alone or crying for any reason. She asks, 'where is their Mommy?' and won't let up until I explain exactly where Mommy is and that she will be there to take care of her baby.

I felt so bad recently when I walked out of the room while she was watching the movie "Homeward Bound." I completely forgot about the part where the little girl is lost and alone in the woods. I came back into the room to check on her and she was about to burst. Her little face was beat red and she was crying so deeply that her body was quaking but the sound had not made it out of her mouth. I grabbed her in my arms and she started to wail, she was inconsolable. I felt awful and of course I burst into tears right along with her.

It's times like that I wonder what fears still haunt that little mind. Did she know while she cried in her crib those 2 years, that the ache in her heart was for the comfort of a mother? Did she see others leave as their Mommies and Daddies came and wish she could leave also? I'll never know.

However I do know that God intended for this little girl to be redeemed from the steps of a Buddhist Temple that she was abandoned on. He planned from the foundations of the earth that she would be brought into our family and loved as one of our own. She may have been abandoned, but she was never forgotten.

Neither are you.

Feeling Emotionally Beat Up?

Without God, we are lost. We are not equipped to walk through the trials without Him.

So often people spend all their time trying to figure out “why” something happened to them, and they do not walk in the protection and peace that God can give them. Not only does He offer us peace, but like the verse says, He promises to be the lifter of our heads.

Psalms 3:3
But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me;
my glory, and the
lifter up of mine head.
KJV

When I think of Him being the lifter of my head, I picture myself emotionally beat up, tired and battle weary with my head hanging low.

But then, He takes my chin in His loving hands and lifts it so gently until I’m looking into His eyes of love, and He says:

“Child you are mine, look up and square your shoulders daughter because you ….are….mine.”

Hot Topics ~ Jon and Kate

I admit it, I do not watch Jon and Kate + 8. Of course I've heard about them, I'm an avid news watcher and their mixed up lives have been all over the news lately.

Last night I was on Twitter reading tweets from Iran. (Yes, this is what I do in my down time.) And I noticed that Jon and Kate were trending #2, so I figured that something must be going on. I clicked on the trend and read what people were saying about them. It is amazing to me how these 10 lives have affected so many people.

I really did not want to watch the impending news of their divorce, I knew it was going to be very sad and upsetting. But then people kept tweeting about this woman's dirty feet and I started to get curious- how dirty can Kate's feet really be???

So I changed the channel from Mark's war stories show and saw the last 15 minutes of the program (he begrudgingly let me!).

We both sat there and watched this couple explain to millions of viewers that they were divorcing. They each shared all the silly little cliche's that people do when they have nothing else to say, for instance:"things will work out, we'll get through this", "change is hard but it's good - right?" And so on and so on.

It was awful. I was so sad about what a mess their lives were, and watching them in the past-playing with the kids- just amplified this, so much so that I forgot to even look at her feet.

In 15 minutes I gathered that these are obviously two very deeply wounded people who don't have a clue what being married is really all about. And I'm sure that the lights of Hollywood have dimmed the truth that they may have known at one time.

It seems I've heard that they were Christians??? Not sure, but I thought someone told me that once, but I don't see the evidence of two people bulding their lives on the proper foundation so I wonder. Like I said, I have never seen the show before so I can't comment on that.

But I will say that if Mark and I were sitting down with them to talk about their marriage, we would say the same thing that we have said to countless other couples facing an impending divorce....

The marriage problems are not the problem, they are a symptom of a greater problem. The real problem here is Jon's individual relationship with the Lord and Kate's individual relationship with the Lord.

If you deal with the symptoms, you'll never get to the real problem and you will repeat this cycle in your life...in many different ways....until you address the actual cause of all this pain.

It's kind of like having two broken legs and putting a bandaid on your knee. It won't help you walk. Your legs are broken! Deal with the broken part and then you can walk.

This couple is broken. There is only One that is truly equipped to "fix" them. He can and wants to heal these shattered lives.

And of course, we would say: "Stop the show, deal with your lives." Did the show cause the divorce- NO. But it's certainly not helping. The TV show exposed what was in their hearts. That's what pressure does, it squeezes out the true motives and agendas that are inside of us and exposes our hearts. The good, the bad and the dirty feet-out there for all the world to see.

I believe that if this couple would humble themselves before the Lord, they would start their healing. They need individual healing first and then healing of the marriage.

I pray this happens.

What do you think??

Summer's in full swing!

Busy, busy, busy!
We are having a good time so far this summer.

Starting with swimming lessons...

And Princess Camp!!

All ready for the ball!

Tip toe-ing through the tulips...kind of.



But don't let the dress fool you! She would much rather be riding her quad all day long!

Also.........

Want to help some city kids have a good summer??

The Fresh Air Fund is looking for host families and donations.

Click here for more info:
Fresh Air Fund