Are You REALLY Listening?

Since I am pregnant now and due to some health issues due to my pregnancy, I get a little more time with my feet up.  So hopefully I'll get back to my blog more!  I have been blog stalking a lot and spending plenty of time on Pinterest...LOVE.  So for today I thought I would share a post from another blog...I know, but it really touched me.


Simple Mom is a blog I frequent.  She covers everything from homeschool to crafts to being a mom.  But this particular post is actually from a dad.  So just click the link, read, and think are you really hearing?

Just Follow The Link, You'll Be Glad You Did

Before you go about today and you step over your piles of laundry, while looking out your window sighing at the over grown grass and the jungle of weeds;  As you complain about the rain, the sun, the cold, the heat....read this.

We did it!

I have been away for a bit.  Well, not away, away.  But some how this past week or so have seemed to be extra overly filled, as opposed to my usual just overly filled.  But we did manage to do it.

After reading others responses about their dating their spouses, and of course God perfectly placing radio programs about that specific topic (I love it when He does that), how could I not?

We didn't go do your typical date type things.  Originally my husband had wanted to take to me to go look at one of his job sites....uuuhhhmm.  Instead we got a smidge bit more adventurous and went looking at furniture!  I know right!

Don't get excited, we didn't buy anything.  We did find a bedroom set that we liked and one for the girls.  It wasn't hard for us to agree on something.  It seemed to be more difficult to actually find what we liked.

As my husband says, I am a legs gal.  Give me a nice set of legs on that table and I can make it into anything I want, but it's gotta have a good set of legs.

I'm liking the Paula Deen furniture.  Yes, she has furniture too.  It's Paula Deen yall!  (I couldn't resist).  Don't love the chairs, but just look at the legs on that table.  LOVE.

Love the leg detail (can't help it, I'm leg obsessed) and the top one looks more brown, but in person it looks more black.

Yes, this is what we did on our date.  We hopped from shop to shop laughing at some, using the bathroom at most.  We had fun.  We didn't buy a thing, well, lunch.  But so glad we made the time to spend together.  We didn't sit gazing into each others eyes, baring our souls.  But we got to laugh and just hang out together. 

Have you made time for your spouse lately?  Who knows, maybe between all of us, someone will get some new furniture!  (Just send me a picture of those legs).

Do you?

Just never mind, it's too hard.

Not the actual being together (although let's face it...there are days that maybe a struggle too!)  We have never made it a priority or had a routine or ritual.  Life just happens.  He has his own business, which means many a times are we together as a "family" while he is on the phone with clients, other businesses, etc.  It's just how it is.  Since we live in the beautiful north west, weather can also dictate a work schedule. Not that he stops in the rain, snow, or ice, but if it is a nice Saturday or Sunday; he can be found pouring concrete or rolling trusses.

Many a days does he come home exhausted, worn out.  Only to sit up at night working on bids for future jobs, sending emails, getting price quotes.  Then to get up before the sun to head off to put it all together.

He works extremely hard and has sacrificed so much.

Now a days with my sister and her therapy schedule thrown into the mix, it just makes things that much more crazy with the family.  And getting someone to be with  all of them is a little tricky.  There are a limited number of resources available to us while she is in her recovery.

The other day my dad offered to take all three so Ben and I could be a lone for a bit.  He said, "You choose either Friday or Saturday just let me know what day and what time."  Uh....I don't really know what to do with that.

So when I talk to my husband, "Not Saturday, it's poker night."  My husbands once a month testosterone gathering.  Which really is fine by me.  I am not one for wanting to be out late, and by late I mean past 7 pm.  By that time I would much rather be on my couch in my sweats cuddling with my girls.  And I would rather do something during the day anyway.  (Hence us never doing anything!)

It was just too hard to try to coordinate.  So just never mind forget it.

As I am sitting in the car prepping myself for another doctors appointment....I hear it.  A woman, like me.  A wife, like me.  A mother, like me.

Talking about how she has had to fight for that time with her husband.  Not that she was fighting with him.  She says no to others and their things so she can say yes to her husband.

Yet even when offered time away for a moment, it still seems hard...why is that?  Why can I easily fill in my hours of piano lessons, swimming lessons, physical therapy, speech therapy, make dinner, clean up dinner....yet one on one time with the person I have a made a covenant with God to be with forever...eh?

What do you do to make sure you have that time alone with your spouse?

Number 4

On our way home my six year old wants to put in Sanctus Real and listen to "number 4".  (Which is "Lead Me")  We are riding and singing.  There is special meaning with this song for our family.  My mother-in-law had heard this song and thought of her son.  She gave it to him at a season in our marriage that was extremely stormy.  I'm not sure if she knew, or how much she knew.  Doesn't really matter.  The song is written from the heart of a husband and father to God to lead his wife, his kids, and himself.  Great song if you haven't heard it.  But we can all place ourselves in that role somehow leading someone else and the reponsibility that it bears.  My kids saw it touch their mom and their dad.  So they call it "number 4...you know the one you and daddy cry to."

So it is a family fav.

We are singing and driving.  We are at the end of the road and as I turn, I look left.  Wow, bright light.  (We live in Washington so we don't really see the sun for a few more months.)  I turn right and as I look back, I see a beautiful light filled sky shimmering through the back window.  My six year old singing, "Lead me with strong hands, stand up when I can't, don't leave me hungry for more..."  I look again through my mirror to the back.  A window full of little fingerprints and smudges.  The sky glowing a yellow-orange framed by great evergreens.  Why am I so cranky again?  What was that previous post about?

I turn again onto our road.  My daughter still singing onto the last verse, "...To stand up when they can't don't want to leave them hungry for love, chasing things that I couldn't give up."

I look to the left over the little lake that we drive by.  God's painting in the sky soft blue to a glowing amber to burning pink.  Wow.  Thank you God.  In a day that I thought would end on a sour note just because I was in that kind of a mood.  He even takes that and places my little daughters voice to be singing just the words I need to here, in just that moment He designs for me a once in a lifetime sky.  So glad that He is a loving and patient Father.  And instead of getting irritated with me for spilling my own pineapple on the floor, or getting distracted from cleaning my room and playing with the jewelery, He draws me close.  He tells me of a story of two little girls who need a mom who can show them through her own actions and attitude of what a Godly woman is.  To speak His love with her lips.  He tells me of a story of a sister, who needs her sister to put her arm around her and comfort her and guide her and have faith in her.

Shhh.  If you listen and get still, God is whispering a story to you.  What is it?

A Little Irritated?

Do you ever find yourself cranky and not really know why?  Ok, maybe I'm not just cranky.  I am extra, extra irritable today.  Not sure why.  I got the normal amount of sleep...very little.  My kids are normal...well, I am having to repeat a few extra times, not sure if I am just more aware of it today than other days, or that I REALLY am repeating extra.  Things that haven't been bugging me are causing those little ants that crawl on my insides (yes I know that is not normal and there is medication for that...thank you). 

My poor sister I think is hiding in her room.  She came to live with us in December after surviving a ruptured brain aneurysm.  She is on her road to recovery and in the grand scheme of things doing amazingly (truly by the grace of God).  Usually her spilling is just apart of it all and I would rather her be trying and spilling than accepting her current abilities and not trying at all.  But today, a bowl of pineapple (juices and all) are enough to send me over the hill.  As I come walking into the sticky mess, I can't seem to hide my irritation.  Really Lacy?  It's just a sticky floor.  Well, two sticky floors because it was the dinning room and some how a big wide river to the kitchen floor...that was then walked through.  :)  And for some reason it seems to be sticking to me!

My sweet precious angels.  Oh how I love them.  Why when the directions were stated, "Go up and get dressed and start straightening up your room."; did they hear, "Go upstairs and get all of mom's jewelery out and string it in different places in mom's room."?

For some reason today this small little instances (because let's face it, they really are small), seem so big and grate on me.  Not only do they make me fume, but I can't seem to shake them.  Sometimes I can get some perspective and reel myself back in.  You know those conversations you have with yourself?  Tell me I am not the only one that has those right?  I can't even seem to bring myself to want to have those conversations.

I want to wallow in my irritation.  I want to complain and hear the fist pumping "yeahs!" agreeing with me.

Maybe I just need a moment.  Not a moment with that chocolate cake that is sitting on my counter.  Even that is bugging me.  It is so messy and every time someone moves it, it seems to make a horrible mess.  Making it's way to the floor for people to walk on and smoosh into the carpet and wood floor.  Ugh.  I don't know what kind of a moment.  I mean, I don't know what it would look like.

I know, this is all selfish.  Prayin' Jesus doesn't come today, I would probably be irritated by His entrance.

Lessons From A Six Year Old



"Ugh, I'm too big for my clothes, I don't have anything to wear."  It just came out.  Being the mother of two little girls I am usually conscientious of saying any "fat", "ugly", self depreciating comments in front of them. 

I think I might have been digging through a pile of clean laundry in our living room talking to my husband in passing.  I didn't really even notice my girls in the room.

My six year old says, "Stop it momma, you're perfect."

It stopped me in my tracts.  My husband looking at me like, "Mmmmhhhhmmm."  With his eyebrows raised and head lowered.

Here we are trying as parents to raise our little girls to be confident in themselves.  In the perfect way that God has made them to be.  We have even had them look into the mirror at themselves...in the eye, and say, "I love myself."

Don't get me wrong.  Our goal is not for them to be full of self conceit or thinking of themselves as better than others.  But rather to be sure of who they are.  God has created each of us with such love and devotion.  Counting the hairs on our head.  How can I so easily discredit the great creator?

It's so easy for me to find my own faults.  My flaws seem to even glow in the dark.  No really, I can be in bed while all is quiet (my bouts of insomnia) and the weight and brightness of my imperfections are what keep me from slumber.

As I am starting my new adventure of living my life with more eucharisteo.  Giving God thanks in even the very small and simple.  There in my daughters words lye so much more.  Maybe it is time for me to spend a little more time in front of that mirror...