My Hands, My Life

Furious streams of heated tears fell down my cheeks.

I don't want this anymore. I'm exhausted. I frustratingly thought to myself.

Ashamed at the knowledge God knew my thoughts, I prayed for patience and to be better than myself. To be more like God. To love so effortlessly and so self-sacrificially like God. Like Jesus.

My heart ached in pain.

I never thought of myself as selfish until I became a parent. Motherhood demands all my waking moments and a decent amount of moments I'd prefer to be asleep.

I desire so fervently to give my heart and soul to my children but burn-out hits me ever so often that an emotional release weeps out of my being.

I need to get out more. I need time away from little voices that demand answers to every question imaginable and from little souls that deserve and beg for patience and understanding.

In God's perfect timing and in a few short hours, I heard a man's testimony about how a distracted anesthesiologist's negligence caused him electrical surges of crippling pain from his spine and would in a few short years bring him to eventual paralysis. I watched as his facial expression and body posture mimicked joyful elation and slowly turn to anguish. As rolls of sweat dripped down his forehead, it became abundantly clear the dire physical toll it took for him to stand upon us. His spirit sustained him as though he knew there was a much bigger struggle that needed more healing than the pain that resignated from his core.

He further talked about the struggle he lived with and how his life-changing journey went from bad to worst. The physical toll cost him his employment, his health insurance excluded his condition, and due to the fact that another doctor caused his condition many other doctors were prevented from treating him whatsoever due to their policy. The very threshold of his former life slipped beneath the soles of his feet and solid ground ceased to exist.

He further explained how easy it would have been to be angry and to lean on our own understanding of the ways of God. He confessed he had his moments of frustration and angered questions that simply demanded the answer to, "why?"

Yet, I watched this man stand for over half an hour in excruciating pain to bear witness about how amazing and faithful God is. He glorified God with his spirit and his words helped heal my own.

Sometimes we examine our own pain and hardships so microscopically that it becomes all we see. It becomes a monstrosity in our imperfect minds and often when we compare our own tribulations with others, we begin to see clearly that ours are quite minimal in comparison.

Raising four young children all under the age of six is difficult and my heart will forever go out to a mother of small children. But tonight, I realized how truly blessed I am.

The only hardship God has placed in my life is the joyful exhaustion of raise four beautiful, amazing children.

I do not have an ache that will never cease. I am mercifully free from physical pain. I do not need the assistance of others to care for my basic necessities.

I see now that God has chosen my hands, my own life, to be available. I can either be in need to help. Or I can be helpful. I can be an instrument for others to show God's love. Or I can be an instrument to show other's God's merciful and faithful love.

My job, a mother's job, a Christian's job, is more pressing and consuming than simply raising good, law-abiding citizens.

Our jobs are bigger than that.

We are commanded to shed our old self and demonstrate God's wonderful, patient, merciful love to others, our children exceptionally included.

And yet, the beauty of a commandment is our obedience forces a growth in our hearts and by miraculous design, we become more like the one we fervently admire.

Our hearts mold.

Our souls change.

And we become more and more like our Lord, Jesus Christ.

happy

Have you ever gone through the ebbs and flow of your daily life and feel that life has not changed much, yet life feels so extraordinarily different? This post is going to be one in which some will nod their heads in agreement and others may roll their eyes into the back of their heads.

As a (humbly self-professed) "writer," I dare to stay clear of those glorified cliques of life when I write. But this time, I can't.

The only words that filter through my thoughts and onto this page is, "I once was blind and now I see."

I've not only accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior but have fully allowed the fruition of the Word to mold my heart and my life.

My life has completely been turned upside down and yet, life remains the same. My perspective on time, life, family, my marriage, God, and the meaning of life has changed.

I'm happier than I've ever been and possess a peace that I've failed to know.

I'm incredibly thankful that this new path has also been accompanied by my husband, Jarod. I'm guilty of previously skeptically nodding my head in politeness when hearing other Christians say that if they focus on Jesus their marriage grows stronger.

Uhh huh, suuure . . . crazy.

And now Jarod and I have joined the "crazy" group. If this is crazy, I never want to be "sane" again.

So thankful for it all. God is amazing.

i've changed.

It's been weeks since I've written on here. I've spent the last few weeks really evaluating my life, myself, and consequently, this blog. What do I want in life? Who do I want to become?

As you can see by the enormous weight of these questions, it hasn't been an easy feat. How do I write about my day-to-day life when so much inside of me was changing? I couldn't.

I considered shutting this blog and erasing it from the world. I bought a notebook journal and thought, maybe, I'll keep my thoughts to myself. But writers, myself included, have words and the incessant desire to be heard. Who would read my story trapped inside a closed journal that will one day be thrown into the back of my closet? No one, for it never even had a chance.

Also, I love the exchange of thoughts the internet, blogging, and vlogging so easily allows us to exchange. There are bloggers and vloggers I've read and watched for years; somewhere down the line I've grown a fondness for them as if I actually know them in my real-life. There's a craziness that's equally beautiful in sharing your life with other people, even strangers, on the internet. I believe sharing your story can help others, even if only by allowing one person to not feel so alone.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter helped me heal some deep-rooted pain simply because I read a story about a woman who remained true to herself even after experiencing crippling isolation and rejection from the world around her. A book written by a man, written in 1850 was powerfully therapeutic to my soul. I will never meet Hawthorne but it is to his credit that I am not a bitter, hateful person.

Words are powerful. The simple ability to enter the mind of someone who has long gone or you will never meet is astonishing and only possible through the use of mere words.

But my main point is I came to the conclusion that I will keep this blog up. 

But another problem posed itself: what would I write about?

This blog started as a mommy/ family blog but as my oldest inches to the age of 6 and heightened reading ability. I question how much of my kids' lives I should put on here. There are stories I wish I could share, especially of a certain someone's first love, but I can't.

And then there were posts where I felt like I just b*tched and moaned a whole ton but that now goes against the better person I'm striving to become. I figure if I spend my valuable time, because all of one's time is invaluable, doing something, doing anything, should be productive, positive, and beautiful.

Thus, the direction of this blog is changing because I'm changing. I hope you'll stick around :)