MrsMoneysaver is giving away a 60" tv for fathers day! Go here to check it out!
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Thursday, June 10, 2010
Monday, December 28, 2009
2009: A Year Remembered
The year 2009 brought about the biggest trials my family and I have ever been through. This is a year that in many ways I wish I could just forget or wake up from and have it be a really bad nightmare, but then I realize that I have grown and matured through the trials that we were faced with this year and without these trials I wouldn't be where I am now both mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. If our faith is never tested how does it grow? If we never go through the difficult times how will fully comprehend the love our God has for us? If things were always wonderful and rosy we would never understand our need for the Lord and come to a place where we are able to let it all go and let Him work in ways only He can do.
The first whopper of a trial that came our way was on February 28th. Jon came home with the news that he had been laid off and had one month to find another job. That was at terrifying thing in this economy. Here we were a family of 4 faced with a job search in this pitiful market.
Three weeks later, trial #2 hit us. I went through one of the darkest times of my life when I was faced with my own mom's mortality when she was diagnosed with lung cancer in late March. I am very close to my mom and have always depended on her for so much. She is my best friend and confidant and the one person who can tell me that everything was going to be alright and I knew it would be. She was always so energetic and healthy and to be hit with this news of cancer in her body was beyond my worst nightmare. Before we got the full diagnosis I definitely went through the depths of despair and realizing that I might not have her around for long. Words cannot come close to describing what I felt so I won't even try to explain, just trust me that I now understand what it means to be in the depths of despair. Now my family was faced with losing our income and my mom facing cancer surgery. Whew! Praise the Lord mom's cancer ended up being localized to one very small spot and the doctors were successful in removing it all with surgery alone! It was the very best outcome possible for this situation and I am extremely happy and thankful to report that she is cancer free today! She is still regaining mobility back in her right arm and shoulder but she has come so very far!
Jonathan accepted a 100% commission based job the day of my mom's surgery. Neither of us were very happy about it but it was the only half way decent option and we were out of time. Quickly we realized it was going to take us down a financial road we never wanted to go down. One Hundred Percent commission and no benefits makes for extremely tough times. So tough that we thought for a couple of months that we were going to have to sell our home and move in with my parents and we had to receive assistance from various people to pay our bills...
While we were right smack in the middle of this financial crisis we were hit with yet another massive trial, I think the biggest of them all and most devastating emotionally. On June 26th I got a phone call telling me that Jon's mom has very suddenly and VERY unexpectedly passed away. She was out in Oklahoma helping take care of one her grandchildren while her daughter gave birth to their second child. Nobody was expecting this as we thought she was in decent health and still fairly young at only 59. I was the one who had to break the news to Jon. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. With him working so hard at this new job and it not bringing in enough income he was already very stressed but to tell him that his mother, whom he talked with almost daily and was very close to, had passed away...words do not describe... So we were thrust into this situation that we had never thought we would be faced with at our young ages. I cannot go into all the spiritual and mental and emotional issues that we both went through during this time because we still struggle with her passing even today but mostly because sometimes there aren't words accurate enough to make the reader comprehend the depth of the emotion. I never thought we would make it through all this. There were times I felt I was walking on threads of sanity. I thought at some points that I'd never see God's blessings again, that we'd never recover from all this devastation...
God is good. God is faithful even when we cannot see it or feel it. It doesnt' matter whether or not we believe that He is good or that He is working on our behalf, because whether or not we believe it, God is who is He, never changing, full of mercy, grace, goodness and provision. Jon decided that he had had enough of the insurance job not paying our bills and he did something he never wanted to do again, and that was go back into the cell phone retail business. He realized that he was able to make an hourly wage, have commission and great benefits and that was better than what we currently had. He also was finally motivated and inspired to go back to college and finish his degree in Software Engineering so he could one day have a stable good paying job that would take care of his family and be something he would enjoy. God has rewarded his efforts and suddenly all the money we had been waiting on from the insurance business came pouring in. It was literally like a job experience. We had been in a financial crisis and now we were experiencing a financial miracle. We found ourselves at a point where we were finally able to afford a newer van. (That actually came from me me getting into coupons and cutting our grocery bill more than half which gave us what we needed for a monthly car payment plus some). I found myself stronger emotionally than I used to be and with a deeper ground faith in the Lord. We came through the fire and I think we weren't burned as much as refined! We are still working through things, but I know God is right there with us guiding us, strengthening us and loving us every step of the way.
I think that the biggest blessing this year brought us was Aden accepting Christ as His personal Savior! Back in March when things were very difficult and uncertain I got to be apart of my son asking Jesus into his heart. He asked me on morning on the way to town in the car if he could ask Jesus to come live in his heart. I was overcome with amazement and excitement and of course told him he could. We prayed together while I was driving and right there in his little car seat in the back of the car he accepted Jesus into his heart. This month, one evening while he and Emma were cleaning up their rooms, I overheard him telling her about asking Jesus into his heart and told her that she could do the same thing too because God loves her all the time! Nothing more precious than that!
I am looking forward to a more peaceful 2010 and I believe that God has some good things headed our way. I hope you all have a wonderful 2010 and that God showers you with his love, grace and provisions no matter what you go through!
The first whopper of a trial that came our way was on February 28th. Jon came home with the news that he had been laid off and had one month to find another job. That was at terrifying thing in this economy. Here we were a family of 4 faced with a job search in this pitiful market.
Three weeks later, trial #2 hit us. I went through one of the darkest times of my life when I was faced with my own mom's mortality when she was diagnosed with lung cancer in late March. I am very close to my mom and have always depended on her for so much. She is my best friend and confidant and the one person who can tell me that everything was going to be alright and I knew it would be. She was always so energetic and healthy and to be hit with this news of cancer in her body was beyond my worst nightmare. Before we got the full diagnosis I definitely went through the depths of despair and realizing that I might not have her around for long. Words cannot come close to describing what I felt so I won't even try to explain, just trust me that I now understand what it means to be in the depths of despair. Now my family was faced with losing our income and my mom facing cancer surgery. Whew! Praise the Lord mom's cancer ended up being localized to one very small spot and the doctors were successful in removing it all with surgery alone! It was the very best outcome possible for this situation and I am extremely happy and thankful to report that she is cancer free today! She is still regaining mobility back in her right arm and shoulder but she has come so very far!
Jonathan accepted a 100% commission based job the day of my mom's surgery. Neither of us were very happy about it but it was the only half way decent option and we were out of time. Quickly we realized it was going to take us down a financial road we never wanted to go down. One Hundred Percent commission and no benefits makes for extremely tough times. So tough that we thought for a couple of months that we were going to have to sell our home and move in with my parents and we had to receive assistance from various people to pay our bills...
While we were right smack in the middle of this financial crisis we were hit with yet another massive trial, I think the biggest of them all and most devastating emotionally. On June 26th I got a phone call telling me that Jon's mom has very suddenly and VERY unexpectedly passed away. She was out in Oklahoma helping take care of one her grandchildren while her daughter gave birth to their second child. Nobody was expecting this as we thought she was in decent health and still fairly young at only 59. I was the one who had to break the news to Jon. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. With him working so hard at this new job and it not bringing in enough income he was already very stressed but to tell him that his mother, whom he talked with almost daily and was very close to, had passed away...words do not describe... So we were thrust into this situation that we had never thought we would be faced with at our young ages. I cannot go into all the spiritual and mental and emotional issues that we both went through during this time because we still struggle with her passing even today but mostly because sometimes there aren't words accurate enough to make the reader comprehend the depth of the emotion. I never thought we would make it through all this. There were times I felt I was walking on threads of sanity. I thought at some points that I'd never see God's blessings again, that we'd never recover from all this devastation...
God is good. God is faithful even when we cannot see it or feel it. It doesnt' matter whether or not we believe that He is good or that He is working on our behalf, because whether or not we believe it, God is who is He, never changing, full of mercy, grace, goodness and provision. Jon decided that he had had enough of the insurance job not paying our bills and he did something he never wanted to do again, and that was go back into the cell phone retail business. He realized that he was able to make an hourly wage, have commission and great benefits and that was better than what we currently had. He also was finally motivated and inspired to go back to college and finish his degree in Software Engineering so he could one day have a stable good paying job that would take care of his family and be something he would enjoy. God has rewarded his efforts and suddenly all the money we had been waiting on from the insurance business came pouring in. It was literally like a job experience. We had been in a financial crisis and now we were experiencing a financial miracle. We found ourselves at a point where we were finally able to afford a newer van. (That actually came from me me getting into coupons and cutting our grocery bill more than half which gave us what we needed for a monthly car payment plus some). I found myself stronger emotionally than I used to be and with a deeper ground faith in the Lord. We came through the fire and I think we weren't burned as much as refined! We are still working through things, but I know God is right there with us guiding us, strengthening us and loving us every step of the way.
I think that the biggest blessing this year brought us was Aden accepting Christ as His personal Savior! Back in March when things were very difficult and uncertain I got to be apart of my son asking Jesus into his heart. He asked me on morning on the way to town in the car if he could ask Jesus to come live in his heart. I was overcome with amazement and excitement and of course told him he could. We prayed together while I was driving and right there in his little car seat in the back of the car he accepted Jesus into his heart. This month, one evening while he and Emma were cleaning up their rooms, I overheard him telling her about asking Jesus into his heart and told her that she could do the same thing too because God loves her all the time! Nothing more precious than that!
I am looking forward to a more peaceful 2010 and I believe that God has some good things headed our way. I hope you all have a wonderful 2010 and that God showers you with his love, grace and provisions no matter what you go through!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Madame Deals giveaway
check this out
http://madamedeals.com/2009/12/07/you-ought-to-be-in-pictures-contest-win-a-video-camcorder
http://madamedeals.com/2009/12/07/you-ought-to-be-in-pictures-contest-win-a-video-camcorder
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
MrsMoneysaver giveaway
Check out http://www.mrsmoneysaver.com/2009/12/shopathome-giveaway for a great giveaway! I hope i win!
Friday, July 31, 2009
Starting a 366 day devotional!
I had a random idea come to me this morning that I could write one of those daily devotionals that have a short passage of Scripture and then a few words of encouragement, advice to go along with that passage. It's something that I can do each day and finish instead of an ongoing story that I just don't have the time for with my two young children running around. So I did the first three days of the devotional today and want to get your input...do you think this could be a success? Is it something you would want to read?
January 1
“…These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.”
Mark 7:6b-7
Lord, help my worship to be genuine and heartfelt.
Let my life be an example of You and Your mighty works.
Please help me to not get caught up in the motions
But rather serve you with a committed and willing life.
Are you just going through the motions of worshipping and serving God?
Do you need to experience God in a real way? Make a conscious
decision today to make this year one of true worship and service to the Lord.
January 2
“Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends.”
Proverbs 17:9
Lord, are there any areas of unforgiveness in my heart? Am I holding on to some wrong or hurt that I need to let go of and ask You to heal? Lord reveal to me any areas where I need to forgive someone and mend any rifts between me and my friends.
You may feel justified in holding a grudge against someone for some past wrong, but when you do not forgive a person for whatever they have done to hurt you, you aren’t hurting them as much as you are hurting yourself. Think about God’s amazing forgiveness that He has bestowed on us! If He can forgive us, in His almighty perfection, then we most certainly can forgive others when they wrong us.
January 3
“The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh every morning.”
Lamentations 3:22-23
Thank you Lord for your unending, limitless love and mercy! What comfort I get from knowing that there is nothing I can ever do to make you not love me; in knowing that your forgiveness toward me is immeasurable!
Did you know that God loves you exactly like you are at this very moment? Did you mess up today and do something you regret? Guess what, God’s love for you hasn’t changed one little bit and His forgiveness knows no bounds!
Thursday, July 9, 2009
And Life Goes On...
With the sudden and heart breaking loss of my mother in law I feel as if I am walking in a haze, as if the world I see around me isn't quite clear and not what it once was. I never in a million years thought that I would lose my mother in law only 5 and half years after marrying her son. I never thought that I'd be going through this at age 25, that my children would grow up not having two sets of grandparents. Through Elsie's death I realized how close she and I truly were. The countless conversations about life, God's Word, children, marriage, cooking, decorating, and hopes and dreams... The many outings together... The days of sending the kids to visit her for the day while I had a day to myself... The future plans of going to Disney World and Hershey Park... All of that has come to a sudden end. Death is the one thing in life that is unchangeable. Pretty much everything else you do or go through in life can be changed if you try hard enough. Death cannot be changed, no matter how badly you want it to. I've never been one who handles changes very gracefully. Change makes me uncomfortable and sometimes down right panicky. This is one of life's biggest changes and I don't know how to handle it. I think I am handling it well to all who observe me, but internally it's not going so well. I don't want my mother in law to be gone. I dont' want my husband to not have a mom anymore. I don't want Aden and Emma to never spend time with their grandma again. I don't want any of this and I don't like it and there is nothing I can do about it. Whether or not I am ready for life to going on, it does. When life stops for one, it keeps going on for the living. I know that eventually we will find ourselves in a "new normal". I know that because it's so fresh, and I can't imagine life without her, it doesn't seem that life will ever be normal again, and in some ways it won't. It won't ever be the same, it can't be, but it doesn't mean it can't be good again. I don't see how the ache of this pain in my heart will ever lessen, but I know it will, it does for everyone who loses a loved one. It's hard right now to get out there and do the things I've always done, like clean house, run errands, take the kids to playdates. It is what it is and I won't act like there isn't a big ugly monster named Grief hovering around me.
I know my mother in law would want us to keep living life to the fullest and to grow closer to God and to one another. I know she would not want us to sit around and mourn our lives away, and I have no intention of doing that. I just have to sort out what life will be like now that she isn't in it and that's hard. It's the hardest thing I have ever had to do. This year has been filled with the hardest things I have ever had to live through. I think I've had to do a lot of growing up this year and all that growing is painful. I know that I will see my mother in law again. She was a devout Christian woman and I draw comfort in knowing she is with our Savior now, immersed in His glorious presence, that when my time comes I will see her again. It's not a goodbye, but rather a see you later.
I am not sure where all this was going, other than I just needed to write about my feelings. I pray that the Lord has some better times for Jon and I and that they are coming soon...
I love you Elsie and I will miss you greatly.
I know my mother in law would want us to keep living life to the fullest and to grow closer to God and to one another. I know she would not want us to sit around and mourn our lives away, and I have no intention of doing that. I just have to sort out what life will be like now that she isn't in it and that's hard. It's the hardest thing I have ever had to do. This year has been filled with the hardest things I have ever had to live through. I think I've had to do a lot of growing up this year and all that growing is painful. I know that I will see my mother in law again. She was a devout Christian woman and I draw comfort in knowing she is with our Savior now, immersed in His glorious presence, that when my time comes I will see her again. It's not a goodbye, but rather a see you later.
I am not sure where all this was going, other than I just needed to write about my feelings. I pray that the Lord has some better times for Jon and I and that they are coming soon...
I love you Elsie and I will miss you greatly.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
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