Do You Ever Forget Just How Powerful He Is?

Do you ever kind of forget just how powerful God is? I mean I know we all know how powerful He is, but do you know it? It's so easy for me to forget about His power because I try to take on everything myself and I don't like handing off my problems. I like sitting around and mulling them over and trying everything possible first before leaving them with the Lord and sometimes I even take them back. (I know I've got it all backward! Prayer should be the first step.)



And sometimes I think in our fast paced world where we don't have the in-your-face miracles of the Bible, it's easy to let it slip by you just how powerful He is. I mean if you were with Moses and saw the Red Sea parted, you would be in awe or seeing Jesus heal someone or make a little bit of food feed thousands. That's power you can see right there. It's hard to believe that there was doubt back then.



Probably the problem in my life I focus on the most is my secondary infertility. I try so hard to get pregnant. I take all the doctor's statistics to heart. Like after my laperoscopy, he said our best chance was in the next 3-6 months. Well, 5 of those 6 chances have passed with no pregnancy. I seriously could just bawl my eyes out over that. I think about how we've been trying so hard every month for 3 years and it gets me down. That's 36 periods I've had that have put me in a terrible mood and suck away at my hope a little at a time. (And, please, no one say that we just need to relax. That's a myth. Infertility is like any other diagnosed illness. I can't just relax my endometriosis away.)



Then, I'm reminded of God's awesome power. In little ways. Like when I was reading BFG's Bible story to her. It was the story of Joshua leading the Israelites into battle and it was getting dark and Joshua prayed for God to let the sun stay up longer. And God did it! He kept the sun up longer! When I read that, BFG said, "Oh, He can't do that anymore." (I think she got that from me telling her that God doesn't talk to us anymore using a burning bush like He did Moses.) I was like "Oh, yes He can. If He wants the sun to stay up all the time, He can." And it hit me---Mama Said, your Lord that you are not trusting to give you a baby in His own timing and way can stop the sun from setting. Ya'll get that? He can stop the sun from setting! When you sit and think about that, isn't that so amazing?



Fast forward a few days, I'm pms-ing and getting down because that fifth chance is passing by. My brother-in-law preaches a sermon about Jesus that has nothing to do with what struck me. But I guess God gives us different pieces of the sermon to take with us. In his sermon, he was talking about how Mary was a virgin. Okay, duh. Yeah, I know this. But I think it's one of those things we hear about so much that we are desensitized to it, ya' know? And the way he said it was different or something. And it hit me---Hello? I am an idiot! Um, God can impregnate a virgin, which I am definitely not. I think He can work around my endometriosis. And He can do it whenever He wants, not just in 3-6 months after a surgery. Puh-lease! What have I been thinking?



I know what I've been thinking. I had let myself forget just how powerful God is!

Mama Said

Epiphany

I had an epiphany the other day while doing the dishes. Two things I complain about the most are cleaning up the kitchen and never being alone. I always rush to clean the kitchen up as fast as I can to move on to the bigger and better things I want to be doing like just sitting down and having 5 minutes peace to look at a magazine or something, which never happens because I’m constantly attending to everyone’s needs.

While I was cleaning up some dishes after supper, I felt a God-whisper that said, “This is your time alone.” And I realized that while I’m cleaning the kitchen, I do have a break from being Mama. Rhett and BFG are usually having a well-satisfied moment in the living room and are playing together. Everyone is out of my hair and out of my way. I realized I have been complaining my way through a small gift of time that God gives me almost each and every day.

I began singing some hymns and thanking God and my mundane, tedious task became a quiet retreat for me. With a change in the way I looked at it (aka a change in my attitude), I was a lot happier doing something I dread doing each day.

I challenge you to look for some island of peace and calm in your day today and praise the Lord for it! It may surprise you! LOL!

Mama Said

My Bah-Humbug Christmas!

Well, between all the mouse po*p and "musical pherafy", I really didn't have much time to post Christmas stuff. But it was probably just as well 'cause I was just one complaint after another. Are you surprised? Yeah, well, me either.

But, really this was a crappy Christmas. It was one of "those" Christmases. You know the ones. Yeah, where nothing is done when it should be, you're running around like a chicken with it's head cut off yet that can somehow miraculously scream at anything, anyone, and any animal that gets in its path. Yeah, that was me. Up late every night trying to cram stuff in even though when you calculate the hours in your head you know there is no possible way to get everything done. The kind of Christmas three years ago I swore I would never have again.

So, here I go again promising myself again that I will not let this happen next year. A nice, normal organized Christmas can be done by me believe it or not. And I much prefer it. But, to be honest, even when it's organized and things are on time and what-not, the whole hoopla still makes me mad.

I just want Christmas to be about celebrating Christ's birth, spending time with family eating food from treasured recipes, and sharing Jesus's love by sharing our wealth and blessings with others. Not all the over-the-top crap we have to do to "DO" Christmas. Not adults buying other adults crappy gifts they either don't want or could afford to go buy themselves. Not all the pushing, shoving, and selfishness at the stores. Not the hurry, hurry, hurry of the season. Not even Santa. Not family fighting over who gets to see who on which day and for how long. All of that part of Christmas is so meaningless. I absolutely abhor the feeling of relief I have on Christmas Day Night. That "whew! I pulled it off. It's over. I made it through another one." I actually crave for Rhett to tell me good job or thanks for pulling off Christmas. That's how I celebrate the birth of my Saviour? It doesn't even make sense. I ache inside to do things differently. But I don't know how to change things without causing a huge family rift. And I really hate to rock the boat when my grandmother is elderly, yet still very with it.

Anyway, it is over for this year and all can do is learn from this experience and move on. So, I share with ya'll what I've learned this Christmas.

• Do NOT take vacation the last week of November and come home in December. It takes a good week to prepare to leave, a week away, and a week to do laundry and unpack. That's 3 weeks of the season gone right there.
• If you even think about taking care of health problems you've been putting off, July is too late to start. You might as well start in January to be sure you will be done by Christmas.
• If you see a mouse in your house before you leave for the aforementioned vacation, bomb the house with poison when you are gone so that when you get back you are not too scared to be up alone after dark and you won't be cleaning mouse po*p out of your kitchen the Sat. before Christmas.
• Don't bother to spend the whole month of December telling your child the truth about Santa. 'Cause ya'll know her cousins are way smarter than you and will unravel everything you've taught in a couple of hours on Christmas eve. Oh, well. At least we can always say we never lied to her.
• If your child's birthday is in November, do NOT have her party in December. Dumb-da-dumb-dumb!
• When Amazon says "order now and have item tomorrow by noon", um . . . I don't think it means the free super saver shipping esp. since it showed up 10 days later instead of 2.
• If you are asked to bring a dish you've never made before to your in-laws, just go get your recipe off of http://www.allrecipes.com/ If 657 people say the recipe is good, it is. If 5 people say it is, don't chance it.
• And finally . . . whatever you do (if you don't do it already), you should add celebrating the Advent to your Christmas traditions. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just done to turn the focus on the Lord. We had the Advent candles and no wreath and the Jesse Tree symbols and no tree to put them on. And ya' know what? It still worked. BFG looked forward to our advent devotional every night. And Christmas Day morning, the first thing she wanted to do was to do our last devotional and put Baby Jesus in the manger of our nativity. She wanted to do that on her own without one word of asking to see her presents. And, bless her heart, it was cloudy on Christmas eve and she cried because she thought it was her only chance to see the star of Bethlehem and she was gonna miss it. So, maybe, just maybe, through all the chaos, we did something right this Christmas. (Well, does it still count if I spent the majority of each day in December screaming at her to leave me alone 'cause I had to get stuff done? I really hope so.)

Happy Blessed New Year, Ya'll!

Mama Said

On-The-Go Gift Wrap

A word to the wise:
If you are giving someone a 5 piece Pyrex gift set that is in a big box, do not and I repeat do NOT buy gift wrap on the way to the wedding shower and try to wrap it in the car. It is so not fun and takes way longer than you think, is so much harder than you can imagine, and it's impossible to to keep the paper from looking crappy. I even think my back is sunburned from standing in a black dress on black pavement trying to wrap this thing on black leather seats!