Blessings

So today is my 30th birthday, which gets me thinking about my life. And I've come to the realization that I am truly blessed! I'm 30 years old, I have a wonderful guy that I'm lucky enough to call my husband. He's smart, funny, handsome, athletic, caring, a Christian....I could go on and on. I'm more in love with him now than when we first started dating and I can't imagine my life without him. Without him, there is no me. I have been blessed with 2 beautiful, healthy children who are the light of my world! They're silly, smart, loving. They make my life complete. I have good friends who are always there for me. I have a wonderful, HUGE extended family. :) I belong to a church that I absolutely love! I have a roof over my head, food in my stomach, and clothes on my back. God has been very good to me! I pray that everyone would be able to find this kind of happiness. I may not have a lot of money, but I'm so happy!! I love my life, and I thank God every single day for these blessings He has given me! Our God is an AWESOME God! He listens, He loves! Take a minute and thank Him for the blessings in your life! :)

Weight Loss Struggles

I've been fighting my weight for years. After I had my son almost 4 years ago, I weighed in at 245. Not healthy. Then one day I watched The Biggest Loser results show, and I thought "Some of those people are bigger than me. If they can do it, I can do it." So I started exercising and eating better. That's been my routine for the last 4 years. I go through spurts of exercise and eating better. Then I kind of let it go for awhile. But the times when I let it go, I feel awful. I'm tired all the time, I get winded climbing the basement stairs, I don't have any energy to play with my kids. And I eat so much more than when I'm working out. It's not that I try to eat salads all the time (I'm not that fond of salads), I just don't eat as much. So it makes you wonder why, if I feel so much better when I'm trying to take better care of myself, don't I keep at it? That's a great question, and I honestly don't have the answer.
But this morning I woke with a newfound determination! One that I haven't had before. I've been determined, but it's never felt like this. I just want to be healthy! I just want to be able to be around for my family. At the rate I'm going, I won't be. So I weighed myself Sunday morning and I was at 206.8. My goal is to be at 180 before my birthday (that's January 26 if anyone's interested). I'll be 30, and I want to start my 30s at a healthier weight. My ultimate goal is to be around 160-165. I'm going to weigh every Sunday (provided I remember) and blog it. I have to be accountable for my actions!
Here I go! Wish me luck!

My Mia

This sweet little thing is Mia. We found her about a year ago in the alley behind our house. When we found her she was covered in sap, fleas, and dirt. Her ears had nasty ear mites in them. We cleaned her up, fed her, and gave her a home. She turned out to be the best cat we've ever had. She's sweet, cuddly, never snips at the kids. Mia and I actually have our breakfast together every morning. Well, ok, I eat breakfast, she just sits on my lap and purrs. But it's been our routine for the last year.
Today my son had an allergy test. He's been having horrible coughing fits for roughly the last year. We thought he was just getting a lot of colds. It turns out that he's allergic to animals. Just about any animal with fur he's allergic to. Which means (you guessed it) we now need to find another home for our Mia. I'm heartbroken. I love my cat and don't want to get rid of her. The kids love her. Even Shane likes her, which is saying something. He doesn't really like pets. But our Mia won him over too. So it's a sad day in our household. I pray we can find her a wonderful home with people I know will take excellent care of her. She's been such a wonderful cat.

Here's a thought

So I've recently been accused of being an infrequent blogger. I realize it's been awhile since I've blogged, but I haven't had anything interesting to discuss! Until now...

I'm reading this wonderful book called "He Chose The Nails" by Max Lucado. It talks about the many gifts that God gave us when Jesus was crucified. Yeah, the obvious one was our salvation. But did you know that the only requirement for our salvation was Jesus' blood to be shed? I didn't know that either. So then you may ask, why didn't Jesus resist those nails? I know I certainly would have! It's human nature to flinch when you KNOW you're going to be in pain. Jesus, though, was no mere human, was He? Here's what the book says about it. The soldier went to hammer a nail into Jesus' hand and He turned to look. Invisible to everyone but Jesus and all those in Heaven, was a list. On this list was every single one of our lies, our lustful thoughts, our greed. This list was between His hand and the wood of the cross. It was nailed to the cross and the top was covered by His hand. The bottom of the list was illegible because His blood covered the rest. He opened His hand because He saw this particular list with all of our sins, and He couldn't stand the thought of eternity without us. So, as the book says, as the hands of Jesus opened for the nail, the doors of Heaven opened for us. I don't know about you, but when I read that, I have never felt so much love in my entire life! He knew exactly what was going to be done, and He went ahead and let it happen. At any point in time, Jesus could have stopped the whole thing. He could have pointed his finger at those soldiers who had mistreated Him and the whole thing would have been done. But if He had, where would that leave us? Lost. We'd be lost. There would be no hope. We'd all be doomed. So now tell me, who did He die for? Who did He go through the torture and the pain for? Me! And you! He died with my name on His lips. He died with your name on His lips. He loved us enough to die for us! Don't you think we should show Him how much we love Him too? Don't you think that since He died for us, we should live for Him? I don't know about you, but I think it's a great idea! :)

Update...

So yesterday I spilled my guts, telling about the abuse I once had in my life. I bawled my eyes out writing that, which I considered a good thing. I had never cried over it before. I had never wanted to think about it, speak about it, nothing. It was over and done. Well, my typing all that helped me to deal with it a little. It was suddenly brought to the conscious mind. When I got done typing, I called my mom. I just had this strong feeling that she needed to know how I felt before I could truly begin the healing process. I called her and told her that I had just blogged about something I've been trying to deal with, and that it was very important to me that she read it. I also gave her a bit of a heads up about the resentment I had been harboring for her for a long, long time. So I sent it to her in an email. I was terrified that she would be upset. I love my mom and have a close relationship with her. The last thing I wanted to do was dredge all this crap from the past back up. I know she suffered at the hands of my step-dad too. I believe hers was more verbal abuse than anything else. Bottom line: my mom was not upset at all. She knew that this was something that I HAD to do to begin to finally heal. I'm still a long way off of being completely healed and whole again, but it's certainly a start. I'm trying to let a few of my controlled, orderly things go. Like sweeping the floor every night, making sure the kitchen is sparkling clean, folding the towels a certain way. All that stuff is so unimportant. Last night I did not sweep the floor after dinner, and to my surprise, the world did not come to a screeching halt! And tonight I'm not cleaning up the kitchen. I wouldn't have been able to relax at night before until I had cleaned up the house. Slowly trying to let that junk go...it's kinda liberating actually!
A friend of mine reminded me that God will not give you more than you can handle. I was scared to tell Mom how I felt, but thru the love of Jesus I was able to do it. He gives me courage when I need it the most. And really when you think about it, we shouldn't be scared at all, for He is with us always. Kind of awesome when you think about it. :)

Forgiveness

I had a breakthrough in group last night. I was talking about how everything has to be done a certain way, and how I have to have control and order in my life. I don't deal well with my daily routine being messed up, towels have to be folded a certain way, etc. I was talking about this and about how my step-dad had been mean to me when I was younger. My facilitator for my group said "Do you think that the reason you have to have control and order in your life now is because you had no control over your life when you were younger?" I had never thought about it, but it makes completely sense to me. I also think I figured out why I overeat. When I was younger, I didn't feel that my step-dad loved me, and I also felt that I didn't matter to my mom because she didn't do anything about it. So to fill that void that I felt/feel, I eat. Makes you feel better, at least at the time. Food wasn't going to let me down. Food was there for me. I think that's what started a very bad pattern in my life. Now that I've figured that out, I'm definately going to deal with it.
My step-dad was mean to me. I was 7 when he started, and 14 when Mom and him finally got a divorce. He wasn't mean until my sister was born. I don't know what triggered it then, but something did. I remember one time when I didn't know what chemical to use to clean up a mess where a trash bag had leaked on the basement floor. He kept yelling at me, telling me I was worthless. (I heard that I was worthless on a daily basis for 7 years.) Eventually he kicked me in the back as I was on my hands and knees on the floor, looking at the different chemicals. I ran upstairs to my mom and told her what happened. I remember that she came down and started yelling at him. She always yelled at him, would tell him not to touch her daughter again. It never worked. I remember another time when he picked me up by my head and threw me into my room. I can't remember exactly why, but I think I had wanted to spend the night at a friend's house. I somehow made him mad. I might have lied and told him that my friend was not outside waiting for me, when she really was. I can't remember exactly. Mom wasn't home that time. I remember getting spanked, bare butt with a belt. I couldn't sit down for a couple of hours after those incidents. Most of these my mom knew about.
When I had my daughter I felt the resentment I had built up toward my mom threaten to explode. Here was my precious little baby girl, and I knew instantly that I would throw my life down for her. And I thought "Why couldn't my mom have done that for me?" I'm not saying that I wanted her to die for me, but why did it take her so long to leave? Why did I have to endure the physical and emotional abuse for so long? He was MEAN!!! He yelled at me every single day for years!!! He hit me at least once or twice a week for years! What did I ever do to deserve that? I was a child! An innocent child! If my husband (and he never would) would do something like that to either one of our children, I would leave in a heartbeat!! Every child deserves to feel loved and wanted. I didn't feel either of those.
So now I need to forgive. I want to forgive, so that all this anger can go. God wants me to forgive, or He wouldn't have brought all this to the front of my mind. Remember: forgiveness does NOT mean that we have to like what was done to us. Forgiveness means that we love ourselves enough to be able to let it go. I pray that as I let it go, all that baggage is gone too. I don't want to feel this anger anymore.

Closer to God

We went to church yesterday, and I'm 99.99% sure that the message was aimed directly at me! Right now our series is Distant: What if God is closer than you think? Well, yesterday Jason was talking about getting out of your comfort zone. God is right on the outside of your comfort zone. I have to say, I was intrigued. I'm always praying for God to help me be closer to Him, to show me the parts of my life that need to be changed, etc. Jason said alot of us beckon God closer with one hand and strong arm Him with the other. In other words, we want to be closer, but we don't want to deal with the things that God puts in front of us in order to become closer to Him. This was completely and totally me! I'm more comfortable where I am and not dealing with my issues than facing those things to become closer to God. I don't want to revisit abuse when I was a child, or my anger toward my mom for not doing anything about it. Who would want to face those things again? It was hard going through it the first time. So in the next weeks, I'm going to be doing a lot of soul searching. I believe I need to forgive a few people. The funny thing is, I thought that I had. I'm not entirely sure, since I'm so new to Christianity, but do you think it's possible that you can't fully forgive someone until you have the love of Christ in your life? I think I'm on to something here. I had a friend who I thought I had forgiven before I found Christ. Turns out, I was only telling this person what they wanted to hear. I was still seriously pissed off about how I was treated way back in the day. I even brushed this person off. The day I was baptized, I felt a strong urge to tell this person that I was sorry for behaving the way that I did and for treating her poorly. And lo and behold, I KNEW that I'd forgiven her because it just didn't matter anymore. I have no anger whatsoever towards her. We'll never be best buds, but it's nice to not feel that anger anymore. Imagine how great it would feel to TRULY forgive anybody else that needs forgiveness...I've realized that my forgiving someone doesn't condone what they've done. It's not my saying that it's ok how they've treated me. It's simply me letting it go. And suddenly that particular experience doesn't have a hold on my life anymore. I have a couple of people I need to forgive, and I pray that God gives me the courage to do it! Through God anything is possible!!! Remember that.