Family Blessings

I am in Dawsonville, GA this weekend with most of my immediate family minus my Chad and my dad but all my sisters and their families are here along with my brother and his family and my grandparents. We also have five generations here this time too, the last time we had five generations was when my great grandma was still alive. Our number will total more than 30 when we add in all the boyfriends and girlfriends.

What I love most about my family is that years and years can pass and we won't see each other and then we'll get together and it's like no time at all has passed. The ease, the comfort with each other is still there and I look at them all and marvel that this is my family and that these are the people that I get to call my own while we are here on earth. Seeing them play with my kids, seeing their kids growing up and meeting the people that they will start their families with and being able to remember the announcement of their conception and that time they spit up on me or when I walked them around and around our house when I was 12 and helping my mom babysit.

I love my family so much and miss them when I am away from them. But this weekend I'm going to enjoy every single one of them and appreciate what they add to my life. And when I say goodbye I'm going to cry but I'll know that the next time I see them I will hug them and be right back in the familiarity that is family.

Do y'all ever stop to think about circumstances surrounding bothersome incidents in your life? Last week my car battery died and I mean that thing was deader than a doornail. It happened on Friday morning around 11:30 in the morning. And it sucked! I had planned a fun day of shopping with my mom and Matthew and Austin and we had just finished our first stop and when we got to the car it was dead. So, I had to run in and find someone to tow us and then we had to go to Wal-Mart and get a new battery and just made it to pick up Morgan from school without being too late. It also put us back $120.

But...the week before we would not have had that $120 in the bank. Period. No credit, no help from parents, nothing. We couldn't have paid for it. But this week, we had a cushion to help out and it didn't set us back too badly.

And...I had also worked all that week and it didn't die on me at 7:00 at night when I got off work or at 2:00 in the afternoon when Morgan needed to be picked up so that means that it wouldn't have been a mad rush to get me home from work to pick him up or have Chad load up all three boys in a car with not enough car seats to come and get me.

I really appreciate the fact that even in the little things God helps out. Because they say that there are no coincidences and this is just too coincidental for me!!

I'm missing my old life...

It was so nice to putter around all day with the kids and visit all my online blogging friends every spare minute I had! But, I'm finally feeling like my life is adjusting to the new normal of me working full time. I still really like my job and I'm making some new friends. None that I would hang out with outside of work since most of them are in their early 20s but the socializing at work is enough for me.

I don't have anything to say, I just wanted to touch base with my regular readers and tell you I'm still here!

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!

I seriously could not be any happier. :)

I know I've been a slacker...

I've been looking for work. Online all day sending out resumes and calling people...ugh, is there anything worse?? But...today I have an interview at a bookstore. I WANT this job! Please send up a prayer today that this is where God wants me to be. Because I really want to be there!

Lessons from the kitchen table...

I named this blog for my Grandpa. About 10 years ago, I would go over to his house every Tuesday night and we would go through the Scripture line by line and we would discuss each passage. He gave me insights that he had learned through years of study. Insights that always made such perfect sense to me. I was thumbing through my bible looking for a verse that would set me off on a tangent that I could translate to a blog entry and instead I started noticing all the notes I had. Of course, I was in Romans and anyone who knows Foy Martin, knows that Romans is his favorite book. He's the one that first explained grace to me. Anyway, so I thought I'd write about my notes.

I'll start with Romans 3:23-24, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." Grandpa told me that justified meant "just as if I had not sinned". So basically those verses mean that we all have sinned but with God's grace, those sins are gone as if they had never happened.

"Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produce perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." Romans 5:1-5. That's just a really good verse!

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39. Although I do believe that the one thing that can separate us is ourselves. We can choose to not accept that love.

To be continued...

Collectivism

Collectivism is a term used to describe any moral, political, or social outlook, that stresses human interdependence and the importance of a collective, rather than the importance of separate individuals. Collectivists focus on community and society, and seek to give priority to group goals over individual goals. The philosophical underpinnings of collectivism are often related to holism or organicism - the view that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Specifically, a society as a whole can be seen as having more meaning or value than the separate individuals that make up that society. (Wikipedia)

I agree with this line of thought. Think about a society on a much smaller scale, your family. What's more important? That you or your husband or your children are happy or that the whole is happy? I know that means compromise and someone not being happy 100% of the time but the goal is to make sure that everyone is happy. I've seen the Nanny 911 shows where from the outside the kids are having a ball because they rule the roost but when you delve deeper, the whole family is miserable so what has to happen for happiness? The parents have to stand up and consistently work on the kids setting boundaries, following through, etc. And the kids? They are just generally unhappy because while their little minds crave boundaries, having to actually live in them is another story. So what's better for the family? Thinking only of yourself and being miserable or thinking of others and being happy? I would think that's a no-brainer but obviously after watching SuperNanny and Nanny 911 and shows like that, today's family has not one clue how to do that. How to put others above themselves. It's that verse again, isn't it?!?

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."

Philippians 2:3-4

I belong to a public group who interacts through a message board and one of those message boards is called Hot Topics. The kind of topics that will create a debate and once I discovered that place, I was hooked!! I love debating! I love getting the different insights into different topics and the topic that brought about this whole entry on my blog was about legalizing prostitution. I was just going through in my mind the reasons people had for legalizing it and I came to this conclusion, if we treat people as bodies or entities then we don't have to worry about their soul. And for right now, I'm not talking about the soul that needs to turn to Jesus, I'm talking about the flame that makes us who we are. Yes, by all means let's legalize prostitution and let's let generations of women know that we don't care what they do to their bodies, our job is to only make sure they are disease free. We don't care about the spirit. What about abortion? That's another spirit killer that we've legalized. Thousands of women every day go and abort their children because all we care about is that it's their body and their choice. We don't care that they are cutting out a piece of their heart that they may never get back. We have to care about others because they don't care about themselves!! Don't you think that's why Jesus went to the woman by the well? Who else was going to talk to her about Him? What about the woman who was going to be stoned? Jesus came to her because NO ONE else would have. We have to put others above ourselves. We have to try to take care of the ones who can't take care of themselves.

I know it's so hard to do that but you know, small steps lead to bigger steps. I took a small step yesterday and I didn't do it so I could point out what a great Christian wife I was, I did it because that's what my God wanted me to do.

Okay, I think this post is getting away from me because I can't gather my thoughts anymore, they've splintered off into 20 different directions and I've noticed that the more I get into God's word, that that's what happens!