A day at the zoo

Matt is off for spring break and we have been enjoying some precious time together. Today we took the kids to the zoo. We have a membership and I love that we are just a short drive away. Everytime we go to the zoo the kids have a new favorite animal that they want to see. One time it was lions, then elephants...but for some reason this time Elijah really wanted to see the bears. The bears usually aren't very active, so I wasn't expecting much... But today the polar bear was so funny. He came right up to the glass and pressed his face and big paws against it and put on a little show. He was playing with his water toys and diving and rolling around in the water! We were so excited. That was definitely the highlight of the day.

The battle is the Lord's

As I was driving this morning a song came on the radio called The battle is the Lord's by Yolanda Adams. I have heard this song several times before and it's one of my favorite gospel songs. One thing that most people don't know about me is that I love gospel. I will put it on when I am doing chores around the house and it just lifts me up and helps me praise God and have a good attitude while I do my work. A lot of times I'll be singing and dancing and "having church" while I am working and Matt and the boys think it is real funny...but that's ok. I know I can't sing or dance that well, but I can praise God! Ha.

The point I'm trying to get to is that God placed someone on my heart this morning when I heard this song. It is my sister-in-law, Teresa. Through the years I have been married to Matt I feel that our friendship just keeps growing and I am so blessed to have her in my life. She is married to a great guy named James who lives in Nigeria. They have been married for over 2 years now and the U.S. government has already approved his visa, but the Nigerian government denied his visa. So as of right now he is unable to come to America and join this family that is waiting for him. I know that this must be disheartening for Teresa, but she is strong and our family is strong. We will continue to pray for God's will in the situation and I pray that Teresa will be reminded daily that this battle is not yours- it's the LORD'S. This goes for anyone else that is struggling out there. We all struggle at times, I know I do. But God is faithful. He hears our prayers. He knows our innermost thoughts. He is our comforter, our rock, our shelter, our protection, our strong fortress, and our shield. Praise God!

Don't Get Me Wrong!

Please don't get me wrong about what I wrote about the mission of motherhood. I was not trying to complain and I definitely do not view my children as a burden. What I was trying to do is give examples of how easy it is to slip into the world's mindset and how I, as a believer, am trying to daily transform my mind and heart to align with God's word.

This past weekend we went to our first war reenactment. It was the Revolutionary War Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Before the reenactment they had a little village set up with people dressed in the time period clothing and performing various tasks. Elijah was particularly fascinated with the cordwainer (shoe maker), which we learned was different from a cobbler (shoe mender). I just always thought a cobbler made shoes...but anyways we watched him make a sheath for a tomahawk. They also had woodcrafters, potters, seamstresses and fabric merchants, bag makers, weapon makers, etc. We also entered the encampment and talked to one of the reenactors who gave us a detailed tour of all the weaponry and let the kids hold some cannonballs, which they loved of course. The actual reenactment was great. We had great seats on a hill so we were able to look down at the battle. I had to reassure Elijah that the soldiers weren't really dead, but they sure did put on a good show! I almost believed they were dead! Caleb just picked daisies the whole time. ha. It was very exciting and we will definitely be attending more of these in the future.

"On March 15, 1781. the largest, most hotly-contested battle of the Revolutionary War's

Southern Campaign was fought at the small North Carolina backcounty hamlet of Guilford Courthouse. Major General Nathanael Greene, defending the ground at Guilford Courthouse with an army of almost 4,500 American militia and Continentals, was tactically defeated by a smaller British army of about 1,900 veteran regulars and German allies commanded by Lord Charles Cornwallis. After 2 1/2 hours of intense and often brutal fighting, Cornwallis forced his opponent to withdraw from the field. Greene's retreat preserved the strength of his army, but Cornwallis's frail victory was won at the cost of over 25% of his army.

Guilford Courthouse proved to be the highwater mark of British military operations in the Revolutionary War. Weakened in his campaign against Greene, Cornwallis abandoned the Carolinas hoping for success in Virginia. At Yorktown, seven months after his victory at Guilford Courthouse, Lord Cornwallis would surrender to the combined American and French forces under General George Washington." - taken from www.nps.gov/guco

Mission of Motherhood

I have started reading a book called The Mission of Motherhood: Touching Your Child's Heart for Eternity by Sally Clarkson and I must say that this book is convicting me in so many ways. I don't usually read many mothering books because I have found that there aren't too many good ones out there. I find most of them cheesy and fluffy or they make me feel like if I am not the perfect Proverbs 31 woman then I am not adequately doing my job as a mother...but this book is none of the above. It came highly recommended to me from several sources and I am so glad that I decided to read it.
Psalm 127 has always been a favorite in our family. It says "Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors; For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep. Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; They will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate."
I have read those verses many, many times. God says children are a blessing, a reward, and a gift. And even though I would definitely agree with God, I realized that I do not always treat my children as such. In her book Sally talks about straying from God's perspective on children and she says a "... consequence of straying from God's plan for children is that they come to be regarded as a burden, the often-inconvenient by-products of sex. When the mission and reason for having children is lost, they easily come to be seen as a time drain, a monetary expense, a career impediment, and a curtailer of personal freedom." I don't think that I have ever thought of my kids quite so harshly, but in moments of selfishness I have sometimes thought that they are inconvenient. For example, when I am grocery shopping with 3 kids- I often think that I could be much more productive and efficient if I was by myself or there are some days when I have had about all I can handle of making the toy animals dialogue between each other and I get tired of having endless conversations with people under the age of 5. Sometimes I just want to have a normal adult conversation. My kids follow me like little ducklings around the house- they go wherever I go and most of the time this does not bother me, but there are times when I just want to take a shower or go to the bathroom in peace. There are times when I want to get in the car and drive away for a few minutes so I can think my own thoughts without being interrupted; and I sometimes find it frustrating when I clean the house and the very next day all my work gets undone by little hands. So, in reading this book I have come to realize that there are times when my perspective on children is closer to the world's perspective rather than God's.

I have been thinking a lot about why God considers children to be a blessing, a reward and a gift. The most important reason I can think of is that God teaches us about our relationship with Him through our relationships with our children and spouses. I don't think I fully understood my relationship with God until I got married and had children. God expresses Himself through relationships, which is why all through the bible he uses the child/parent bride/bridegroom analogies when he teaches us about how we are to relate to Him. Now that I am a parent I completely understand how frustrated He is when we are disobedient and how glad He is when we are obedient. I understand through my marriage how God desires intimacy and He wants us to seek Him and long for Him. And I understand through my husband and my children how badly God wants our hearts. God blesses us with marriage and children because they are a reflection of our relationship with Him. So, I have decided that I need to daily and prayerfully surrender my selfishness and give myself wholeheartedly to my family. I want my heart to be aligned with God's perspective on children and marriage, not the world's.

A visit with Uncle Seb

Last month I got a membership for our family to the Natural Science Center of Greensboro. We have been several times already and are looking forward to taking advantage of going to some of the reciprocal museums through our museum passport program. The first trip I decided to take was to see my brother. He lives about a mile away from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh. I had no clue what to expect but I was shocked and amazed when we got there and I saw how big it was. We spent a good 5 hours there and probably only saw 1/3 of what the museum had to offer...and it is free to the public! We had so much fun. The kids spent most of their time in a hands-on, interactive discovery room for younger children. We probably could have spent the whole day just in that room. They had about 12 animal costumes with masks for them to try on (which they loved of course)...and they became these animals and were creeping and crawling all over the room, which was really funny to watch. Then they had these "discovery drawers" and each drawer has a theme...for exm. one drawer is about animal coverings and it had several different animal furs and they had to try and figure out which animal belonged to which fur- others had animal bones, feathers, animal tracks, etc. and they had about 25 or more different drawers. One of my favorite things that we saw was this huge bee colony under a big, clear glass wall and we could watch the bees busy at work and observe all the different stages of the growth and development of the bee from larvae to adulthood. It was fascinating. Then we went to a show called "meet the animals" and we got to meet and touch 4 animals from Africa: a hedgehog, snake, lizard, and a disgusting hissing cockroach. We loved it so much that I am going to try and go there at least once a month. We will have to go several more times just to see the whole thing! It's always good spending time with my brother. I enjoy his company immensely and the kids love him so much and think the world of him. He is such a good uncle and I am glad he was able to slip away from the Ph.D world of academia and spend some time exploring the museum with us.

Marvelous Matthew!

I just realized that February is over and I only made one post on my blog. However, it is with good reason. Matt has been working like a dog on the computer almost every night for the past two months. As most of you already know, Matt is only 2 summer classes away from completing his Master's Degree in Secondary Ed. He was supposed to be doing his student teaching this semester, but he took the braver route and took a teaching position instead. He is teaching World and US History at Dudley Highschool in Greensboro. He was offered the position in December and he started in the middle of January. We were both very excited about this opportunity, but I don't think either one of us realized what he was in for. I guess it is the life of a first year teacher, but Matt hasn't had a moment to rest since he started the job. He goes to meetings early in the morning, teaches all day, tutors after school, comes home to eat dinner and play with the kids for a couple of hours before we put them to bed and then he works all night until midnight or later and gets up and does it all over again. He doesn't complain and he gets it all done, but sometimes I worry that he's burning the candle at both ends. I think the planning and having to know the content for 2 different subjects is just a lot of work...and then there is the added pressure being placed on him to get a certain percentage of his students to pass the EOC for his US History class. I am so proud of how he is handling it all.
For those of you that know Matt, you know that he is very calm, stable, sensible, rational, not easily overwhelmed... (which is almost the complete antithesis of me!) He is the source of strength and stability in our family. I appreciate that he took the harder road for us. He didn't have to, but he recognizes his responsibilities as a provider and I respect him so much for that. He put us before himself. That is his heart and that is why I love him.

Still Technologically Challenged!

Well, I thought I was making big improvements when I learned how to attach things to an email and when I learned how to create this blog or when I learned how to make a slideshow and post it to my blog...but today I just realized I am still very technologically challenged! I decided a while back when I got a comment from a random guy in Brazil (he didn't say anything inappropriate) that I should up the security on my blog and moderate the comments just to make sure that everything met my approval before being posted. When I did this I wasn't sure how I was going to be notified about comments, but I thought maybe I would get informed through an email or something. Well, tonight I was going to create a new post when I realized there was a section called "moderate comments" in big blue letters right in front of my face and I never realized it. I found 2 months worth of comments...So I apologize to all of you who have been making comments- I truly appreciate your feedback and encouragement...I guess I still have a lot to learn about technology!