My Lifelong Dream {Part 2}: Being a Mom

Yesterday I wrote about the fulfillment to my dream of being a wife.  God has blessed me richly in the man He blessed me with to call my husband.  I am very grateful.

I must confess though that some days I wallow in my grief that now is not God's timing for us to be parents, for me to be a mom.  We have been married for just over two years (I understand that is not long at all), and I am sure you can imagine how many comments we/I get asking when we are going to start a family.  I know they mean well, but this hurts.  It hurts deeply.  I remember hearing people say how hard it was for them to hear these comments, and I now understand.

We want to add to our family, but know that responsibly, now is not the right time.  My head doesn't question this at all.  My heart on the other hand, struggles at times to be content.

Going back to yesterday's post, another recurring thought happens later in the day as my husband drives home from work: "I can't wait for him to get home.  We get to spend the whole evening together!"  I am still slightly {okay, very} possessive of my husband.  I love any, and all, time we get to spend together.

While I so badly want to grow our little family, I don't want to wish these years away.  These years where our family consists of just two adults.  I constantly am reminding myself that we will never get these years back when we are young and it is just the two of us.

In talking to many older and wiser woman, I hear a common piece of advice, "Enjoy these years, because they don't last."  I am in a phase of life right now.  I don't know how long this phase will be, but it is the phase the Lord has me in.  I don't want to waste it wishing to be a mom.

Currently, I am a wife to a wonderful man.  The days will come, Lord willing, when it won't just be the two of us.  Those days are in God's timing.  Until then, I bask in the blessing of marriage and the gift we have in spending time just the two of us.

My Lifelong Dream {Part 1}: Being a Wife

I have recently noticed that I have a recurring thought.  This thought comes to me at least once a week on Saturdays when I am cleaning our small apartment.  The thought goes a little bit like this, "I can't believe I am a wife and get to keep home for my man."  The thought continues with my amazement at my husband and all he does for me.  I love married life!

I have always dreamed of being a wife and mom.  I am a wife right now.  I am living my dream.  There are a lot of days that keeping home and fixing meals is not all that exciting.  In fact, it is stressful and difficult.  I am trying to balance between being a teacher, a keeper of our home, and a wife who spends times with her man.  Many days I am tempted to throw my hands up in the hair and give up because it is too difficult.

Saturday mornings though help refresh me.  I don't always enjoy the action of cleaning the toilet or washing dishes, but it is the big picture that I wouldn't trade for the world.  I am living my dream.  I am cleaning the toilet, and washing the dishes in the home I share with my husband.  I  am living the life if a wife.  I have a home and husband to care for.  For that, I am thankful.

I love being a wife. I love trying to find ways to make our home a haven for my husband to come home to.   I love the feeling of a clean home.

May I be able to use this gift that God has given me to bring Him glory.  May I better understand His love and sacrifice for me, to then turn around and example it in our marriage.

Stay tuned for a sequel to this post.

Lessons from Preschool

I had the privilege of subbing in third grade at our church school yesterday and this teacher's heart was in Heaven.  It had been a rough previous day in the "career" aspect of things as I wallowed in self pity, struggling with contentment over my current job position.  My husband was wonderful [as always] and listened to me while offering calming thoughts, and doing what needed to be done first...prayed.  Amazing how bringing things to the Lord can relieve so much.

Side Note: May I just throw in there how thankful I am that God created the most close relationship to be between a man and a woman?  My emotions and thoughts, as a female, run wild sometimes. The mister offers such sound and calming thoughts.  On the flip side, there are times it helps the mister to get a feminine (aka: more emotional/sentimental) perspective on things.

So back to the post.

I was nervous about yesterday's subbing, but the Lord proved true to His character, and made his response clear to our crying hearts from the previous night.  I had a wonderful day and it was a refreshment to my heart to see I do have a passion to teach.  Right now I am not teaching, but I do still believe He has me in preschool for a reason.

Do. Not. Get. Me. Wrong.  I love my preschoolers, enjoy working with them, and am beyond thankful for God's provision with a job.  I do believe the Lord has me here this reason, and therefore the Lord is working in my heart to make it content.

Despite what it may seem, this post is about preschool (not third grade).  In my pathetic questioning of "why God am I working in preschool when you know my heart is to teach, not just babysit?", God has slowly been revealing to me an important lesson I needed refreshed...

OBEDIENCE

It hit me a few weeks ago how often I say to my preschoolers something along the lines of "You are sitting here in time out because you disobeyed when I told you to [insert situation here].  When you disobey, I cannot reward you and allow you to continue to play".  Obviously there is more to this conversation, but we are constantly stressing to our students how crucial it is that they obey.  This is very hard for them at this age, as they have a very self focused perspective developmentally.

I may be several years older then them, but this was a lesson I needed a reminder of.  Just as I take obedience very seriously with my students and am trying to train them to (1) do what they are told, (2) when they are told (3) with the right heart attitude (thanks Mom and Dad for committing this to my memory), God takes it even more seriously with me obeying Him.

This may seem juvenile, but this was eye opening to me.  I don't think I would have learned this lesson as bold had I been in an older elementary grade.

I needed the preschoolers and my time with them to teach me this.

Lessons in Life: Trust

For anyone who knows me (the Mrs.), you know that I am a worry wort at heart.  I will go to the extent of creating something in my head that will cause worry.  I have known for a long time that this is wrong, but recently, God has been working in my heart that in fact, this is sin.  I hate that word.  In my worry, I am sinning against God.  All praise due to Him, He has been working in my heart in life in a way that has driven me to work on it.  That is what makes this conviction different.

Worry is a sin, because it means I am not trusting Him.

I don't have to tell you that we live in a scary, sinful world.  You read/watch news for five minutes, and you will see that our world is rotten.  For a worrying person (and others, I am sure), that is very scary.  Even though we do not have news, and I rarely actually look up news, it still causes worry.  I can lay in bed at night not sleeping in fear of someone breaking into our home and hurting my husband, and then taking me captive.  As I write this, it sounds silly, I know.  But I will tell you (as some will fully understand), it is very real, and very scary.  I can create scenarios in my mind that will cause such intense worry.

The Lord began to work in my heart convicting me of the lack of trust I had in Him.  In church (around the time of conviction), Pastor quoted Isaiah 26:3

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

That was it.  I was done allowing myself to worry.  This became my verse in fighting against worry.  Here was a promise I had from God that HE would keep me in perfect peace (something I rarely experienced because worry had taken over my life).  This perfect peace comes from a trust in Him.

I have been replacing the worry in my life with quoting this verse as I trust in Him as my rock.  This has helped in my created worries, but then God provided a real life situation where our little family has been forced to place our trust in Him if we have any desire to not worry.

The mister and I were talking about this, in temptation to worry, when we had to realize:  we had been provided an opportunity to put trust into practice with a real life situation.  If we ask Him to take over, and allow Him to do so, He will draw us to Himself and prove Himself worthy of our trust (yet again) in ways we never would have experienced, were we not in this situation.

This causes us to fix our eyes on Jesus, and praise Him for His goodness as He ever so gently works in our hearts in this situation.  We serve a God who works with us where we are at, and provides opportunities where we get to change our head knowledge over to practical heart knowledge.

It is with humility though that we confess, this is much easier to say (and type), then to believe this.  We don't know what will happen, but we do know that:

1. He is God
2. He is good
3. He will teach us

and if we allow Him, He will change us.  He will strengthen our trust in Him.  We are trusting in Him to work in and through us, as He changes my heart from worrying to trusting. 

How has God practically helped you learn trust in Him?  Comment below.

Here is a funny clip of the famous "trust fall".  Aren't you thankful God is ever present and always willing to pick us up after we fall?

To Never Grow Old

I am a newlywed.  More commonly than I should, I hate being called that.  I don't want people to know we just got married in May, but instead for them to think we have been married for a few years.  Another reason I hate people to call me a newlywed is because far too often, I feel belittled by that title.  "Aww, you don't know anything yet." "You just wait, you won't keep that up." "You do that now, but give it time and you won't."  These are the comments that make me hate being called a newlywed.  I never want to grow old to the point that I loose the spark that too many people consider only for newlyweds.