Vision of You

It’s obvious that I am huge fan of Shane and Shane. Here’s one reason why:

Vision of You

Come meet us, King Jesus
Oh wind of change blow through this temple
Sweet Spirit of God, come and mend our hearts
For all we have are songs
Unless You come

Awaken what’s inside of me
Tune my heart to all You are in me
Even though You’re here God come
And may the vision of You
Be the death of me
And even though you’ve given everything
Jesus come

Come free us, King Jesus
It’s the only way that freedom’s given
From You and You alone
In the work You’ve already done
For all we have are songs,
Unless You come

Here we are, Lord
In this place
Crying out for
Your embrace
To hear Your voice
More than songs
Please come
Jesus come

 ~

Awaken what’s inside of me, Tune my heart to all You are in me…may the vision of You be the death of me …isn’t that good? It connects with my heart. It’s even more amazing in song. Here’s the video. (Don’t you think you should get this cd?)

What songs connect with your heart?

The Aforementioned Emma-Sized Fuggarugga Doll

The silver skirt is also pictured. You missed out on the sweater.

Not the post I planned

As I pulled cat urine carpet and pad from our living room and hall today I was thinking of new and exciting ways I could blog about cat pee. Looking back, I wish the largest contributing factor of drama to my day was stinky carpet.

One of our window frames is broken - it won’t stay up. It’s been like that since we moved in - there was a piece of wood used to hold the window open. We didn’t think much of it because 1) we hadn’t opened our windows much before the last week or two and 2) it was behind our couch and pretty inaccessible. That is until, today when we were pulling up the carpet.

Emma was looking out the window and we told her several times not to touch the window. I finished telling her for literally the fifth time in twenty minutes, turned around…and heard screaming. She knocked the wood out and got her hands crushed by the very heavy window. I am thanking God that some of the wood got stuck in the window so the whole weight of it wasn’t on her baby fingers. I thought her fingers would be broken because it is so heavy and she immediately had huge blisters and some bleeding. We took her to the E.R. It was our first trip there for one of our children.

The hospital was more tramautic for her than the window incident. It was new and scary, she was in pain and to top it off she hadn’t napped yet today. The poor baby. Through the x-rays and blood pressure tests she kept crying to go to the “Mickey Mousey store” (The Disney Store) as we had told her earlier in the day we would do soon.

We were told a good report: no broken bones! and headed off to the Mickey Mousey store where you better believe she picked out some fine princess goods. She ended up with a silver princess cardigan, a silver princess skirt and an Emma- sized Fuggarugga doll.

As it stands, my baby girls are sound asleep and my living room smells better.

Helping Daddy

To give the moms a break Daniel is leading worship on Sunday for the first time in a looooooong time (since our church closed in ‘06). The girls were helping him practice. Emma was helping strum and Anna was organizing his music.

Discovering Happiness

Note: Due to a lack of color on WordPress I will, from now on, be changing the color of my text and adding pictures with each post that may or may not be relevant to my writing…but is relevant to the addition of color. This one, unfortunately, is black and white but is too appropriate to not use.

I’ve allowed myself to lose my joy over the past couple of years. Overall, I have been fine day to day but every so often it would hit me and I would have a mini-crisis. I would be overwhelmed by the fact that I don’t have any close friends locally (closer than 45 minutes), that I didn’t have a car and I felt stuck at home, that I felt like we didn’t have a clear direction for our future but knowing it was something important.

As of late, it seems that I have been on a God-ordained, outside of my control, course of discovering what happiness really is. Some or most of this maybe seem silly, immature or plain old ridiculous, but I wanted to put this out there because it is real and because I am thankful. I thought that when I got a car I would be able to go places, have variety, see friends and thus solve my problems. Don’t get me wrong, having this car is great, but it has only reminded me of the friends that are not there. (It also reminded me of how much work it is to take two babies out to do anything!)

This is where I will sound shallow and misguided: With or without realizing, I would like to shop if I was feeling blue. (Disclaimer: I do not have piles of new items and hidden credit card bills…I’m not that far off center!). I recently became aware of this tendency and also of the lack of any lasting satisfaction (no kidding, right?).

I was flipping through a book today and read these powerful words spoken by Abraham Lincoln:

Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

 I read these words and thought to myself:

Snap out of it!

I have a wonderful family, a loving and supportive extended family, incredible friends, a great church, many, many physical blessings…and Jesus who has given me salvation, peace and has promised promises that are more than I could dream up. There is nothing in my life to be unhappy about.

The other part of this quote really has my wheels turning as well: Happiness is not a destination. I, of course, know this. Although, I seemed to have forgotten. Happiness will not be when we are in full time ministry, more involved with missions or have the greatest friends living next door. I was suffering from severe greener grass syndrome. I remembered today the blessings from God. My girls will never be these amazing ages again. We will never have this chapter of our lives back…so we need to live this chapter with fullness.

I’ve been on this journey before to differing degrees but am so thankful that Jesus desired to guide my journey of happiness and do a deeper work in my heart.

We’d love it if you came!

So Emma forgot her snack…

…and Anna found it. Ooops.

Summer Love

I got me a Jeep Commander! Before you get to jealous of me, know that it’s only for the summer. Since the beginning of Emma, I’ve not had a car of my own and I was stuck at home more often than I liked (my parents often came to my rescue there). A friend of Daniel’s mom’s is going to Alaska for the summer and needed someone to take over his lease for 4 months, we not-at-all-reluctantly volunteered and I am super excited. It still smells new! The sweet part is that the day before we heard about the car being available I was in a parking lot longingly looking at a Commander. God heard that which I didn’t even pray. So…anybody need a ride?

20 Questions

I thought it’d be fun to play a game so…How ’bout 20 questions?

If you don’t know, here’s how to play:

One player is chosen to be the answerer. That person chooses a subject but does not reveal this to the others. All other players are questioners. They each take turns asking a question which can be answered with a simple “Yes”, “No” or ”Maybe.” The answerer answers each question in turn.  Lying is not allowed, as it would ruin the game. If a questioner guesses the correct answer, that questioner wins and becomes the answerer for the next round. If 20 questions are asked without a correct guess, then the answerer has stumped the questioners and gets to be the answerer for another round.

“Be fun!” as Emma would say. I’ll start…I have my subject. And go…

"When I was young…

…I had to watch commercials.”

I was trying to explain this to Emma as she whined to watch the rest of the show as I fast forwarded through the commercials on our dvr.

I like our dvr.