Questions for Heaven

It's been a little over three months since my mom finished her battle and got to go home to heaven. The kids wanted to go "say hi" today, and they were really excited to see the new stone. They traced all the grooves with their fingers, asked if we could write notes on it with chalk, hopped on it to "make sure it was solid enough," paced around it to see how many steps it took, and were generally too energetic and squirmy for a cemetery. I was glad that nobody else was around to be offended.

But for a few moments, they held still. They sat beside the stone (or on it, as the case may be), and they asked questions:

- Is it fun up there, Moogie?
- Do we look funny down here?
- Do you miss us? Because I miss you.
- Can you ride jaguars and tigers up there?

...and they they started wiggling again. But that one, still moment of questions has had me grinning all day. Things look so different through the eyes of my kids. Thank God for children and their perspective.

Mystery group strikes again!

This week was CrAzY. As in, I forgot how many hours of overtime I worked, I forgot that it was Easter until the day before, and I may have forgotten my name once or twice through my haze of fatigue.

At one point I was sprawled on the floor in the middle of the night, surrounded by Legos and laundry. The kids were asleep for the night, I had worked a full shift and should be asleep too, but I was trying to catch up on some of the housework. I had no energy left to even get up and brush my teeth for bed, much less conquer the mountain of laundry that was on the couch. I whispered, "God, if I could just have a couple more hours in the day, I might be able to keep up..."

A few hours later I woke up and crawled into bed. 

The next day I got a phone call. As it turns out, a mystery small group from my church had answered my prayer without even knowing how specifically they were blessing me. They literally gave me some extra hours in my day in the form of housekeeping services to come over and help me catch up. When I realized how amazingly precise of a need this had met, I burst out laughing. I am still grinning ear to ear. 

You guys, I don't know who you are, but you answered my midnight prayer. So, thank you! I can't wait to tackle some Spring Cleaning with Theresa. Catching up on the housework will be amazing, but what I can't stop smiling about is how amazing God is. He heard me and answered through YOU. How AWESOME is that?!?

My Baby is Turning FIVE!

It seems like just yesterday that I was pregnant with Ariana and cuddling this sweet boy.

Then, on Easter morning, my little baby bunny was born. 

She was teeny-tiny, but oh-so-precious. I hadn't settled on her name yet, but as I held her in the special care nursery and sang her to sleep, I kept thinking of the story of Hannah from the Bible. She dedicated her son, Samuel, to God's service, actually leaving him to grow up living in the temple after he was weaned. I looked down at my precious daughter, the one I had prayed for, and I couldn't fathom giving up my child. She was MINE, right? But I did want her to be set apart for God's use, so I named her "Ariana," which is Greek for "holy." Her middle name is "Lindsie," which technically means "island of the linden trees," but I like to mash up her two names to mean "A holy island." 

This morning she will turn 5 years old, and she wants to be dedicated to God on her birthday. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. "I don't know for sure," she shrugged, "But probably an astronaut, doctor, or school bus driver." 

One thing I know for sure, whatever she ends up doing as an adult, I pray that her life will be set apart for God's use, special, and different from the chaos in the rest of this world. 

I love holding her, but I am learning that God is really the One in control of her life, and His love is so much greater than mine that she couldn't be in better hands.

She will always be my little girl, but I love that she's also a PRINCESS, by right of being a daughter of the King. Her identity should primarily be as His daughter, not mine. 

This is Ari on her first birthday. She was so chubby and sweet!

She turned TWO, and the fun continued...

She turned THREE...

And last year she turned FOUR, and our love for her grows more and more.

Tomorrow my baby turns FIVE, and I am learning to hold my little ones with open hands, trusting their lives and experiences to the Father who loves them more than I do. 

Happy birthday to my sweet, sassy, silly little princess!

Glimpses into the future

  I just had the sweetest moment with my son. I was helping him put his socks on for school, and he spontaneously threw his arms around my neck and held on tight. "It's going to be hard to leave you someday, Mom."
   "Yeah? Where are you going, Son?"
   "Well, my kids are going to need me a lot. At the dinner table they will want me to sit and talk with them, and they will want me to build lots of Legos with them. Can we save all my Legos for my kids, Mom?"
   "Sure! We'll keep all the best ones and they can play with them when they come over to visit my house. Then I can tell them, 'Grandma and your daddy used to play with these Legos when he was a little boy.'"
   He hugged me tighter. "I'm going to miss you, Mom."

I am Sparta too!

   I've always fussed about how the men in most churches get way cooler retreats than the women do. Sure, the women's retreats are usually decorated better, more comfortable, and they usually smell a lot better, but the guys always come home posting pictures of awesome adventures. I sit there and look at images with sweat dripping from their Spartan brows, and I fume. I am Sparta too! Why can't we play fun games like the boys?

   Well, this year, they did it! It was amazing! There was lots of girly bonding time, but there were lots of adventures too. (With a theme of "Brave," how could they not spend some time practicing archery?) I wish every women's retreat was like this.

LOVE AMBUSH!

   So, these sneaky friends of mine blessed my socks off today. <3 I called AutoWorks Plus to see if they could clean the chocolate protein shake that Ari spilled all over the front seat. But when I got there, my sneaky TintPro friends had arranged for them to detail the ENTIRE INSIDE of my car, put 4 new hubcaps on to replace the set of 2 that I was sporting, and fix the ceiling of my car that was loose and hanging down despite my efforts to fix it. It sparkles! I don't know if I will ever let my kids in it again. To top it off, these sneaky friends of mine would not let me pay. Not even one dime.

   And I was totally at a loss for words. I am NEVER at a loss for words. I could feel my eyes filling up with tears and my heart filling up with love.

   As I blinked in shock, they pointed out that that the exterior still needed work, so they'd drop me off at work tomorrow so that they could finish it while I was working.

   I still don't have the right words to say "Thank you," but I love you sneaky, wonderful people. <3 ((Hugs!))