Hope & Humor for Single & Divorced Parents
Thank you so much for all YOUR prayers! I’ve been blessed by all your sweet encouraging words and prayers as my family deals with my Dad’s failing health! God has been so very gracious and kind to us all! It’s very difficult but His faithfulness abounds!
Thank you again!
I hope you enjoy this post for MomLifeToday. 🙂
In His Care,
Sue
“Momma, I don’t want grandpa to die, but I know he will feel so much better in heaven.” My sweet 12 year old son uttered those words as we sat in an Urgent Care waiting to see the doctor for the two of us, and while my father lay in a hospital bed waiting for… Continue reading hospice, hope and healing
I just found out that Sonoma Christian Home website posted one of my articles! Single Parent Swim! I hope you enjoy it!
Peace. That peace symbol is all over the place. I see it on everything. It’s difficult to avoid sometimes. I don’t particularly care for it to be honest. It doesn’t really speak peace to me. It reminds me more of a time when there wasn’t peace…when people stood less for true peace and more for… Continue reading My Peace Symbol
As I’ve been preparing for my talk at the MomLife Bootcamp this weekend, I was once again reminded that my life is not conducive to completing projects in a timely and organized manner. I used to be an organized person…or at least I used to be able to appear like an organized person. In my… Continue reading The Most Important
Endurance: n. 1. The act, quality, or power of withstanding hardship or stress. 2. The state or fact of persevering: continuing survival. This past weekend I was blessed to hear a sermon about endurance. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take notes because I’d left my purse, Bible and notebook in the car in my mad… Continue reading Joyfully Enduring
This month at www.MomLifeToday.com we are dealing with that age-old mommy problem – anger. Mom’s March MADness!
I know that I struggle with this…it’s so easy to get overwhelmed and feel frustrated. There are days when fire and smoke spew from my ears and words I’d rather keep to myself spill from my lips. It’s definitely a huge prayer in my life…that God would give me the strength to rise about the frustrations. I would like to really show the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22). After all God has already given them to me…why is it so difficult to use them, show them, and offer them? I believe this is another one of those things I do in God’s strength…with God’s perspective. Let us join together and pray that God will give us an overflowing of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives so that we can bless our children. And maybe stop the smoke and fire :)!
Happy 2013! I saw something funny online yesterday. It said, “My New Year’s resolution is to remember to write 2013.” Wouldn’t it be nice if that was all that we needed to resolve to do? I have so much I want to change about my life that I shudder to think what my resolution list would… Continue reading Hope in the New Year
It will come as no surprise that since I wrote about peace my life has been anything but peaceful. Seriously, why is that? Whenever I lead a Bible study, I live the lesson. Apparently, my blogging experience is going to be similar. So, this week….peace did not transcend all understanding at all. There have been… Continue reading Peace Part Two
Recently I took my 5 sweeties out to dinner. It was an unexpectedly delightful evening. I even had a lady come up to the table and comment that my children were very well behaved! Wow! Did the earth stop rotating for a second?
Usually when all of us go anywhere there is a fair amount of noise, confusion and general bedlam. I have one child in particular that knows how to bring the “party” – and by that I mean the chaos. Her parties completely stress me out. How can someone so small cause such mayhem?
She is challenging and sometimes a bit rotten. And I love her fiercely. God has put a very special affection for her in my heart. I know that He made me specifically to be her Mommy. I’m comforted and blessed by that because sometimes I feel inadequate to the task.
Tonight I had an epiphany. I was praying for my youngest daughters at bedtime. Just moments earlier she was having a fit – being openly defiant and talking back. I was remaining calm (praise God!) and praying that I was responding appropriately. I finally convinced her to be still and I got on my knees between my little girls’ beds and began to pray. I was praying for God’s peace which passes all understanding to guard her heart and her mind in Christ Jesus and then I remembered that the first part of that passage of scripture applied just as much to the current situation. Philippians 4:6-7 ‘”Do not be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
The last couple of days have been very difficult ones especially with this beautiful little person. She has challenged all that I thought I knew about parenting. And I’m pretty sure she enjoys every minute of it! Sometimes I can become very anxious about our future – hers and mine. I worry what the teenage years are going to be like if I don’t figure out how to deal with some of her stuff…and my stuff. Tonight when I was praying for peace those words about not being anxious came back to me. It struck me that I was allowing fear to get a foothold. I was holding tightly to my anxious thoughts instead of praying about them.
He says to not be anxious about ANYTHING and to pray to Him about EVERYTHING. The cool thing about God is that He doesn’t exaggerate ever. He tells it like it is…always. He can use words like anything, everything, always and never with abandon because He means it. I can’t say “always” or “never” because I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next 30 seconds much less beyond that! God doesn’t want me to worry about anything in my life. He wants me to let Him handle everything and that includes my littlest girl, my two teenagers, my middle schooler, my kindergartener…and me.
Then God makes it interesting – He doesn’t just say to pray about everything – He says to be thankful about it all too. I’ve shared before that God has shown me the beauty of being grateful. It’s amazing how I can find things to thank Him for when I actually look. So tonight instead of complaining about how difficult it is to parent my children, I thanked Him for each one. I thanked Him for my children individually and for how they had changed my life for the better. It was such a refreshing time of rediscovery. Sometimes I get so mired down in the day to day living and dealing with things, that I forget to really look at my children for the blessings that they are to me.
The final part is the best — “and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” — it isn’t just going to cover you or fill you, it’s going to guard your heart and your mind. Wow! I never thought about that before. Those two parts of me – my heart and my mind – need some serious peace. One is broken and one is questionable in is functionability. I think I’m going to take some time to check out exactly what all that implies for my life, but this post is already way too long. So tomorrow (or someday soon when I have a minute or two) I’ll share what God shows me about His peace and what guarding my heart and mind really means for me – and you!
I pray that tonight God’s peace will pour over you completely, fill you to overflowing and guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus!
uptomytoes 