count it all joy!

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty excited to see February go! Why you ask? Well, February has been quite an interesting month for me…car wise that is.

Earlier this month, on one of the most brutally cold days we’ve had (it was around 15 below if I remember) my lovely little car battery decided that it was just going to bite the dust as I was trying to start it up to drive home from work. Thankfully one of my kind co-workers spent 20 plus minutes helping me jump start my car to get home (yes, it was THAT dead, usually it only takes like 5 minutes, EKK!). My handy dandy hubby and I went to buy a new battery, and he was able to change it out himself (thankfully!). About a month before my car battery died, Scott’s had died and my father-in-law taught the hubs how to change them out! What can I say, this Minnesota winter has been brutal on car batteries, and with both our vehicles being around 5 years old it was time to change them both. Bummer that it happened so close to each other, but that’s kind of how it worked out, such is life! After that little hiccup, it had been smooth sailing…until this morning.

I was pulling out of my driveway on my way to work early this morning and my car just felt weird as I was driving it. It was making a weird noise and something seemed off to me. Now, I don’t know you about but I am totally clueless when it comes to cars! I never know what should make noise, what sounds normal/abnormal, and so on and so forth. I pulled quickly over to the side to check my front tire and it looked fine to me so I kept driving. As I pulled off my side street on to the main road the noise got REALLY bad and I just knew something wasn’t right so I decided to turn around and take the husband’s car instead of my car to work. (Side note: this is when it’s REALLY nice that he now works from home!) I was still right by my house so it only took me about 2 minutes to get back home and once I pulled into the garage I went to look again at that same tire and it was totally flat as a pancake! YIKES! Not how I envisioned my morning going at all!

At this point I knew that I had two choices, I could either let myself get really frustrated and annoyed with the situation, or I could choose to laugh it off and count it all joy. As I was thinking about all this stuff God gently reminded me in my heart what it says in James 1: 2-4, and it was just what I needed to be reminded of in that moment! Love how He does that!

James 1: 2-4 (MSG): “Consider it a sheet gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all side. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”

I decided to not this situation that was thrown at me from the enemy ruin my day or steal my joy. I began to laugh it off as I switched out of my car into my husband’s. As I was driving to work and spending time praying and talking with my sweet heavenly Father (as I do every morning) my joy became fuller! Instead of choosing to complain and give voice to all the things that I felt went wrong this morning, the Lord instead prompted on me to give thanks for all the things that went right, so that’s exactly what I did.

I started listing off all the things that I was thankful for about this situation:

-I am so thankful that my tire went flat right by my house instead of on the freeway, or at work would I would have to try and change to the spare. (Lord knows that would have been REALLY bad!)

-I am so thankful that I was completely safe and sound in getting my vehicle home and that it happened to go flat perfectly at the right time.

-I am so thankful that I was able to swap cars with my husband and not be delayed in any way in getting to work.

-I am so thankful that my husband is working for home so that I could take his car and that today wasn’t a day that he needed to go into the office.

-I am so thankful that we have two vehicles that are (usually) in full working condition and that each time we run into an emergency we have a back up to rely on.

-I am so thankful that we have the finances to go buy a new tire tonight (in cash, not credit) and that we do not have to sweat out how to cover the cost of the repair. I know many people aren’t in that position and I am so thankful for the blessings we have!

In every challenge that we face, we always have the option to choose our attitude, as well as choosing how we’ll respond to adversity that we are dealing with. Let me be the first to say that I am not perfect!! There are WAY too many times when I choose the wrong attitude. I automatically get frustrated and start complaining, doing the whole “oh poor me, I don’t deserve this” thing and so on, and so forth. However, I am thankful that God never gives up on me! He is always working gently to correct and remind me of the things I need to change in my life and I am thankful that He was quick to show me this morning the right way to deal with this situation. It’s so awesome to be His child!

With all that said, here’s hoping the rest of this week is less eventful!!!! :)

the social networking battle

For the month of October, my church did a church wide fast to spend some time praying for the upcoming elections. Although the main reason for the fast was to pray for the upcoming elections, which I certainly did, God always finds a way to teach me something that I wasn’t expecting to learn. Immediately when my Pastor made the announcement about this fast, I knew in my heart that God wanted me to give up social networking. For a few months previous to that, God has been working on my heart about my constant “need” for Facebook/Twitter. I didn’t want to admit that it consumed more time than I would like it to, and I always kept making excuses that it wasn’t consuming my time, but in my heart I knew that I needed to make a change and this fast just completely confirmed that to me.

First, let me make it clear that I am NOT opposed to social networking…in fact I think it’s one of the greatest things that technology has provided to us. However, what I am opposed to is letting it control my life, my emotions, my thoughts, and most importantly my relationships. Honestly, it had come to that point and I just needed to break away from it all. At first, I thought it would be SO hard to step away, but as days went on I hardly even noticed the break. To be truly honest, I felt somewhat relieved to not know every person’s up to the minute update on their life. For me, not being so focused on all of that stuff gave me time to reflect on myself, and let God speak to my heart about some things that I needed to address in my own life. There are so many thing that Scott & I are praying and believing for in our life, personally, financially, and spiritually that this was the PERFECT opportunity to spend time seeking God on those things. Taking a break from social networking was the best thing that I have done in awhile, and it completely opened my eyes to a lot of things that I never knew I felt and thought, as well as how much I was letting really unimportant things effect my life.

I don’t know if I am the only person that feels like this, but sometimes Facebook/Twitter can make me feel like I am back in high school where people are always competing and trying to out do the other with what cool things they do, or have, and so on and so forth. This part of it I hate the most because no matter what you say we all have the tendency to join in on this “game”. I sure know that I have done it! However, from here on out I refuse to be apart of this “game”. As my wonderful sister-in-law mentioned in a similar blog post, after all it’s not a fair fight to engage in. We all are in different places in life with different view points and challenges so to try to compare our lives to each other is just stupid.

Another thing that I hate is that there are times when I would feel like maybe something that someone posted was directed at me...although I am sure that there are times where it wasn't and it was purely just how I took the comment, since things via the internet can easily get lost in translation. Bottom line is that I was letting these things effect my feelings, and how I would talk or think about people that I haven’t had face to face interacting with in YEARS. It was to the point where it was just plain ridiculous. Over the past month, I have had a lot of time to think about these things, and how I didn’t want it to be this way anymore when I started back on social networking.

Well, today is my first day “back” at it, and within minutes of getting back on I felt all these things coming back up to the surface for me. The one thing that is always true is that whatever God works on your heart to teach you and change you in something, you can bet  that instantly a test will come to see if you are going to follow through with your word. Boy oh boy that happened to me this morning!! It was SO easy to slip back into those old habits after a few minutes of being back on it, and I honestly had to log off, step back, and nearly slap myself in the face to realize that I was letting this happen.

With all this being said, I have decided that I am going to continue to social network, but I am going to have to make some drastic changes. I realized that there may be some “friends” that I need to remove from my accounts, not because I have any ill feelings towards them, or to be catty, but because the only solution that I can think of to keep from moving backwards in things is to remove the situation all together...and in this case removing the situation means "removing" people. But truly, in all honesty, this really isn’t even about those people, but rather this is about me (as it should be) growing in the things of  God. I don’t want anything or anyone keeping me from growing in the Lord, and growing in life, and there is just SO much that I won’t get into here because it’s truly, truly personal, but in order for me to move forward in my life some of these things just have to go. And honestly I really don’t care how people may think this makes me look, or what motivation they may think is behind my choice to do this, because only I know my heart about this and the people who truly matter to me know my heart about this situation, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters to me.

I’m fairly sure that some of the people who I am “friends” with currently who truly don’t care for me, or find what I say to be annoying, and honestly, all I pray for them is God’s best in life. I truly don’t have any ill feelings towards them whatsoever, but I don’t really see the point in letting them see the details of my life. I wouldn’t do that with a “friend” who I spent time with face to face who felt/acted that way towards me, so why do it over the internet?

My husband, my family, and the personal things in my life are more important to me than anything else in this world, and I try to protect and treasure those things as much as I can and to the best of my ability. I feel like in making this choice to remove some people from access to my accounts that it is the best decision to honor how I feel. I only want people in my life who want to see me succeed, and pray the best for my family, and so I just feel so at peace with making this decision. And after all, at the end of the day I do this stuff for my enjoyment, and if it’s not enjoyable for me to have access to some people, or for them to have access to me, then why continue doing it?

The battle of social networking is one that I know is not yet over. I will have to continue to face these challenges as I continue to choose to use this outlet. However, I feel so great about the place that I have come to today with it, as well as the choices that I have made to deal with the difficulties I have faced. I truly have peace and joy about it, and therefore I know it’s the right thing to do.

is it really worth it?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the perfect marriage. Yes, there are days when I may think I do, but sure enough a moment comes along and I realize quite quickly that it is far from perfect. I have moments where I am down right imperfect. I have moments when I get angry, frustrated, selfish, mean, and nasty, (although I’m sure none of you know what that feels like). What can I say, I’m still a work in progress!!!


It seems to me when Scott & I fight that it’s always about the stupid little things in life.  It's the insignificant petty things that always turn into an argument, never the big important things.  And the other night, we had one of those times. I don’t know if it was just that I was extremely tired from working all day and then volunteering at church all night, but I must have just had a short fuse and he must have had short fuse from the day he had at work.  Anyways, it started off as an easy conversation about his day at work, and quickly became one of the most stupid fights that I can ever remember having. I was tired and trying to get him to tell me quickly a “long” story about a situation at work (long according to Scott, but I think anything beyond 5 words is a “long” story to him ). I kept giving my opinion on this work situation and he kept telling me to calm down and quit having such an attitude, which I wasn’t even worked up, but nothing irritates me more & gets me more worked up than when someone else tries to tell you how you feel about something. 

Well, I bet you can piece together how the rest of the conversation went. I didn’t quite hear the whole “long” story, because the conversation ended up with me storming off to bed, and him stewing irritated at me for the rest of the night.  Honestly, there is nothing I hate more than going to bed angry. I think God was “in the know” when He said that whole thing about not letting the sun go down on your wrath. Man, He’s smart! :) I just hate the feeling of not having a kiss goodnight, or saying I love you to each other. I always have in my mind that life is so precious, and each and every moment is a gift. I hate wasting even one of life’s moments being angry! Unfortunately, this tension boiled over into last night, and we had yet another bad night of being angry at each other.  Nothing is worse than when a stupid fight not only ruins one night, but two nights in a row.

Finally, this morning, I had to stop and think about the past two days and for me, it all boils down to one thought….is this really worth being angry about?  It's the same question that I face in every situation like this and  I’ll give you a hint at the answer.....it's no.  Every single time I ask myself that question, I come to the same conclusion that it’s just not worth it.
 
Regardless of the situation, I can never seem to find a valid reason to stay upset & angry about something. Trust me there are plenty of times that I have tried! I try to argue my case over and over again in my head, trying to convince myself that I am right for wanting to be angry, but always God finds a way to get to me and show me how silly I am acting.  Even in the times when I may be "right" in my reasoning, it's never okay to justify holding a grudge with someone. There are so many times throughout my life that I have truly done stupid things. Things that I was 100% wrong in doing, and things that were worth being upset over, but God reminds me that He gave me His grace and forgiveness that I needed (& didn’t deserve) in each and every one of those situations. He was able to extend His love to me, when I truly was not worthy of it, and I will always need to do the same for others.
 
This is something that sounds easy, but isn’t always easy to live. I try to be a Godly loving wife, but I am still human and still need God’s grace to help me attain some of those attributes in my life, especially in this area. However, one thing that I am completely convinced on is that it is God’s plan is for me to love my husband with His amazing love, and if God has called me to do it then He surely has equipped me with everything I need to accomplish it!!  Let me tell you, it’s not always easy to love Scott with the love of God, especially when we have moments like we had this week, but at the end of the day it boils down to choosing love over choosing anything else. 
 
Scott & I are two imperfect people who made a covenant with each other to be husband and wife and that promise we made to each other will always find a way to bring us through the trails that we face as we walk through life together.  Despite it all, even on our worst of days, I still would rather have him by my side than anyone else.  :)