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!))

Headline: Little Philosophers Avoid Chores. Mom in Stitches.

Chores are always a battle around here. Today I was tired of telling the kids to clean (after the first 100 times you tell them, it gets old.), so I summoned up my best "Mean Mommy" voice and declared, "You clean your rooms RIGHT NOW."

As I stormed off into the other room, I heard them start debating.
Ari: "When is 'right now' anyway? Like, 'right now' isn't 'right now' anymore by the time you say it."
Christian: "Yeah, it's totally a relative time frame. How are we supposed to know when to start?"

If I wasn't laughing so hard from the hallway, they'd have been in deep trouble.

Facing into death

Mom's death has forced me to face into fears that I hadn't considered before. I've never been scared of death. Mostly, I only worry about what will happen to my kids if I die while they are young. I live differently when I have kids to live for.

Thinking about death since my mom died has weighed me down. Beyond the loss of not having her here, it's made me face my own mortality more. She asked me lots of questions while she was sick. She wanted to know what my plans were. She wanted to know what I believed. She warned me about pitfalls that she thought I'd encounter in life. She asked and warned and prayed because she loves me and wanted to help me process death better, and also because she wanted to leave a last bit of legacy in my life.

This is what I've learned:

-I'm more scared of death than I thought.
They say that times like this make you face into the truth of whether you really believe what you say you believe. While I know the "God of my daily life," I've seen Him work, I talk to Him constantly, and I trust Him with the things I hold most dear in life, I have no experience with the "God of after death." I know that's an odd (and not theologically sound) way to define God, but there's no way to experience the afterlife other than to, well, die. There is only what God has said and revealed. It sounds stupid, but I'm so comfortable with surviving in this world that going to the Unknown is a little scary, even though I know Who is there. I laugh even writing this. Who would worry about going from the "Shadowlands" into "reality"? If this world is only a shadow of good things to come, why the hesitation? Maybe I am holding onto a false sense of control here. I don't like leaving my past. I take thousands of photos, keep silly mementos of past times, and value my "history." If my house was burning down and I could save one thing (other than my kids), I might die because I wouldn't be able to choose between all of my precious mementos and photo albums. Leaving all this "life" and stepping naked into the Great Unknown is a tough thought for me.

-I'm scared of not living well enough in the time that I have here.
At the end, I guess it really doesn't matter in a way. If I love God, I live forever in Heaven. I could be miserable, or evil, or kind, or loving, or selfish... no matter how I succeed or fail, as long as I love God and end up in Heaven, I win, right? But I don't want to leave a legacy of broken relationship, wounded hearts, and disbelief either. I don't want to have people shrug or even sigh in relief when I die. Not that I care on a selfish level, but how have I wasted the hours of my life if my love hasn't reached others? Death is final. There are no do-overs. You can't reload the game and try to play it differently the second time around. I want to be strong and deeply beneficial to the people in my life. In the battle of life, I want to be a good warrior, not just some weeny who enlisted and wore the uniform, but didn't really contribute to the unit. I want to be the one who makes people feel stronger when I am fighting at their side. I want to leave a legacy of hope and life.

-I'm scared of not being able to tell everybody everything that I want to say before I die.
Which is also a little dumb. Who do I think I am to think that my words are so valuable? Mainly this is directed at my kids, I suppose. I always hate when I'm reading a book series and the author quits writing before I feel satisfied with the outcomes for all the characters. What if that one girl doesn't find love? What if that guy never finds his father? I want to know that they all lived "happily ever after." I want to see my kids grow up, live well, be happy. I want to snuggle my grandkids and to see them grow up and be happy. But none of this is my job. It's cool if things work out that way, but I'm not in charge of the universe. I have to trust God enough to trust him with my children's future, and their children's future, and their children's children's future.

I think this whole ramble boils down to one thing: Losing my mom has shown me that I have too tight of a grip on this world and not enough trust in God. If I really believe what I really believe, I can rest in the knowledge that God is in control. My job is to spend all the hours He's given me wisely. That is all.