Every Hour...

I truly am a messed up mama in need of my Savior's grace day after day, moment by moment.  I throw the mean look to the hubs in the middle of dinner, and once again forget to pay the electricity bill (the only bill I'm in charge of!).  Earlier in the day, words to my girls cut like the dirty knives sitting in the sink waiting to be washed... again! 

Kind words, where are you?  Proverbs 3:3 is supposed to be ingrained on the brain, "Do not let kindness and truth leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart."  How I wish they were bound around my neck...

I desire to encourage, not discourage...

Yet in my own strength, I can do nothing.  That's what Jesus said in John 15:5, "Apart from me you can do nothing."  There is such freedom in that!

I read a devotional by SheReadsTruth a few weeks ago that gave the background to one of my favorite hymns and the comfort it brought was astounding.  In 1872, Annie Hawks, a wife and mother around my age, said, "I was busy with my regular household tasks when suddenly I became so filled with the sense of nearness to the Master that, wondering how one could live without Him, either in joy or pain, these words, 'I Need Thee Every Hour,' were ushered into my mind, the thought at once taking full possession of me."

She then penned these words:

I need Thee every hour, most gracious Lord;

No tender voice like Thine can peace afford.

I need Thee, O I need Thee; 

Every hour I need Thee; 

O bless me now, my Savior,

I come to Thee. 

I need Thee every hour, stay Thou nearby;

Temptations lose their power when Thou art nigh.

I need Thee every hour, in joy or pain;

Come quickly and abide, or life is in vain.

I need Thee every hour; teach me Thy will;

And Thy rich promises in me fulfill.

I need Thee every hour, most Holy One;

O make me Thine indeed, Thou blessed Son.

I need Thee, O I need Thee; 

Every hour I need Thee; 

O bless me now, my Savior,

I come to Thee. 

I need You every hour, Lord, to honor and affirm the husband You have blessed me with; to fulfill the divine calling You have given me in Ephesians 5; to love and respect him without wavering; to walk beside him in the calling You have given us.

I need You every hour as I spend day after day with these amazing girls You have blessed us with.  I need Your wisdom to train them to be godly women.  I need Your grace when I mess up again and again.  I need Your strength when all the little frustrations roll into something bigger than I can handle. But then again, may it remind me that I need you every single hour, that I can't do it in my own strength.   

"There is grace that will seep into all the cracks and pained places when we don't understand.  In the places when we don't understand, we get to seek.  And how lovely is one seeking truth." - written by Kara Tippetts, a woman who lived these words to the very end, who clung to our Lord in an unbelievable way, and fully understood what it means to say, "Every hour I need Thee."

Grace Goals for February...

January flew by in a blur.  Sweet memories with my mama, time away, and restarting school with renewed fervor.  Even though I'm still not implementing "early to bed, early to rise" quite yet, and a mornings are not as disciplined as I'd like, I'm thankful for a brand new month to start all over and try again.  

Recapping January Goals... 

1.  Try and implement a new daily schedule - Failed.  Schedule written out, but hardly implemented... New month, keep trying.

2.  Finish The Best Yes and read more of Notes from a Blue Bike (working on my "words") - Over halfway through both of these and sincerely loving the content of each.  Perfect for this time in my life.

3.  Fill out the paperwork and get pictures taken for passports - Appointment made!

4.  Declutter our storage area Purged a lot of girl clothes, gave some away, but much more needs to go!

5.  Order a photobook of 2014 Instagram photos. I ordered it from Shutterfly (thanks to a $20 off coupon) and wish that I could have made it hardback, but also couldn't justify the cost right now.  It has the majority of my Instagram pictures from 2014 and we've enjoyed it so much already.  As much I'd love to scrapbook again, this will do for now.

6.  Love the people in my life and show it through my words - Not perfect by any means, but as said before, an ongoing goal and desire.

 

Grace Goals for February...

1.  More disciplined mornings.  Shower before breakfast. (Don't laugh...)
2.  Finish The Best Yes and Notes from a Blue Bike, and try to start Love and Respect.  (I want to read more books on marriage this year and what a better month to start!)
3.  Begin the process of getting our tickets to Japan.  I'm honestly getting giddy in the knees over the thought of this.  Japan holds such a large piece of my heart and I can't wait to show my girls and Marty more of my childhood.
4.  Eliminate 5 unnecessary piles around our home.  Donate, give away, purge!!!
5.  Focus on loving, encouraging, and supporting Marty more than ever.  Notes, gifts, etc are nice, but over the years I've found that the best gift I can give him is a peaceful wife and home.  When I am stressed, it only adds to the stress in his life.  
6.  Read aloud with my girls on a daily basis. This is one of my favorite things to do, yet days will go by and it doesn't find its place in our schedule.

Grace Goals...

For some, goals may be determined as standards demanded to be met, for others they are laid out as a form of accountability, yet even others find goals to be traps for failure for all those plans unmet.  I can easily fall prey into the last category.  Here it is mid May, June drawing close, and in the blog world, I'm far behind.  But there is grace...  No one else may care whether I blog about goals or not, but it does (in some weird way) hold me accountable, pushes me to step out of my complacency, and strive to just get out of bed sometimes.  

Aspirations for April...
1.  Plan a new spring menu (less grains, more veggies & protein). - almost completed!  
2.  Point my girls to the real meaning of Easter. - not as I had hoped, but yet no regrets. (read more about it here.)
3.  Start every day with a clean kitchen table. - I maybe accomplished this goal every other day.  Not perfect by any means, but on the clean days, there was more freedom in starting off with an open surface.
4.  Finish two of the books I'm reading:  Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman & Cleaning House by Kay Wills Wyma. - Whoo hoo!  I read Not a Fan with my homeschool group and it was convicting once again.  I'll try to write more about Cleaning House in the near future.
5.  Truly rest on our little family spring break. - such a blessing!

So for the rest of May and June, my goals will be layered with grace, thought through and laid out with the hopes of fulfilling them, but given wide enough boundaries that I pray God will glorified through them.

Grace Goals for May & June:

1.  Finish our school year well, not just surviving.

2.  Plan and enjoy my 10 year old's (oh my goodness!) birthday party.

3.  Make our summer bucket list.

4.  Read Treasuring Christ when Your Hands are Full by Gloria Furman and A Million Little Ways by Emily Freeman.

5.  Find and try healthy recipes for summer essentials (sunscreen, fruit wash, insect repellent, etc).

6.  Declutter my closet.

7.  Prioritize my mornings.

8.  Open our home to others (& choose to let go of my expectations).

What happens after Easter...

Now that Easter has past, what happens now?  We remembered His death, so amazing, so sacrificial. Those crosses still sit on our kitchen table.  I'm afraid to take them down for fear I'll forget...  for fear that life will go on and that amazing grace will seem lost.  Sometimes the colors of the world stand out bold and clear while the cross and the tomb that could not hold Him seem dim in the background.

May our children remember that it's more than a story.  It's our reason for living.  It's the daily dying to self so that His glory may be proclaimed.  For us as mothers & fathers, "we look to Jesus not only as our example; we also see that He is our power to love God and our children.  Because Christ has done for us what we could never do for ourselves, with His power we can ask forgiveness of our children when we sin against them, because God in Christ has forgiven us." - Gloria Furman

Let the light never fade.  May we teach our families daily to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength... impress them on your children... talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." All day, every day, everywhere! (Deuteronomy 6:5-7)

Treasure the blessings God has given us!  "Because of the gospel, we can rejoice as we find our hands full of blessings in Jesus, because all we know is grace." - G. Furman

Hold tight to family, yet be willing to let them go.  Savor every moment, every holiday, every phone call, and every picture-taking moment.

 

"Let the rest of folks go ahead and pack up their Easter decorations and turn the calendar page over and they can roll up the banners and swags but there's this Resurrection People who aren't going back to before and we refuse to live like that stone's been rolled back.  

He is alive and He is risen and I'm going to keep that on the chalkboard and keep saying it over the burnt pots and the overflowing sinks and I'm going to keep singing it like a refrain:  He is Risen Indeed - because I want Him to be risen in me." - Ann Voskamp

Musings for March

This was one of my many blessings in February - watching the sunrise at Fort Caswell with some of the most precious women I know.

A Recap of my Five for February:

1.  Finish organizing the school room and hang pictures.  No more clutter!

2.  Finish A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot & read half of Cleaning House by Kay Wills Wyma (A Mom's 12-month experiment to rid her home of youth entitlement).

3.  Write 5 letters (real ones with stamps) to other women who may need encouragement.

4.  Take portraits of each of my girls (plus valentine pics).

5.  Focus on words of grace for my family.  

Once again, not 100% complete, but still progress.  

- I don't think I'll ever finish organizing the school room.  Some of you will understand...  

- The biography of Amy Carmichael was deep... but I finished it and so thankful to have read it.  Very powerful book!  

- I'm almost a third of the way through Cleaning House.  Already I'm taking mental notes.  Practical and thought provoking.

- Writing letters is often one of my good thoughts that never gets done.   They say it's the thought that counts... I don't think so.  So, all glory goes to God that envelopes were addressed and stamps were found amid the clutter in my kitchen.  (On a side note, it doesn't have to be snail mail to encourage a friend.  A simple text, an email, or message on Facebook or Instagram can make anyone's day brighter.  I've been on that receiving end several times this month and you ladies know who you are.  Thank you!  You truly don't know how uplifting your words were!)

- My portraits were simple, just up close at a park.  Valentine pics thrown together last minute to arrive to grandparents... late, once again.

- Changing my focus to grace will never be completely crossed off a to-do list.  This will forever be a daily desire, a daily dying to self, and giving of the grace that I do not deserve.  

Musings for March:
1. Teach at least one essential oils class.  Nervous, oh my!
2. Plan (with my older girls) a ballerina/pirate party for my youngest (who is turning 4!!!)
3. Focus on discipling my girls (with an emphasis on Bible memory).
4. Let go of some things of the past... (more may be shared in the future.)
5. Spend as much time outdoors as possible (more bike rides, park visits, picnics, and maybe getting back to running 4 miles again... maybe.)

Enjoy this free spring printable (as I certainly will!)

January's Simple Five

Every year, I feel as though I fail miserably at meeting my goals, accomplishing my resolutions, reading my list of books desired...  Honestly, I'm not sure how to overcome that feeling of failure, except to try something different.  More simple, yet more detailed...  That seems contradictory.  We'll see...

I found this great printable for 2014 goals that I find to be attainable, yet different from the norm.  Marty and I discussed these in the car one day and I still need to write them down and slowly check them off throughout the year.  

Meanwhile, I'm going to try for some simple goals each month.  (Some months, it may not even happen.  Leaving some space for grace.) 

January's Simple Five:

1. Organize our school room.

2. Finish A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot (great book, but it's a doozy!)

3. Find and try 2 new, healthy recipes.

4. Run up to 3 miles again.

5. Devotions daily with my girls.