Consuming Love -Dave-

When I first fell in love with Cindy, my whole life changed. I was consumed and moved by how much I loved her. I walked, talked, thought, and acted differently. My priorities changed, everything I did was in relation to this overwhelming love I had for her. I still find myself consumed and moved by the love I have for her and also now for Alanna. Isn’t that what love is? It isn’t just a word-it moves you, controls you, consumes every resource you have, whether it is time, energy, or even money.
As I was coming home this evening listening to a song by Sidewalk Prophets, “You Can Have Me”, the chorus reminded me of this controlling love discussed above:
When did love become unmoving?

When did love become unconsuming?

Forgetting what the world has told me...

Father of love, You can have me...

You can have me ...
Father of love, you can have me. You can have me. Your love for me moves and consumes everything that I am, and causes me to love you, your mission, and your people in like manner. Paul said it this way to the Corinthians, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”(2 Corinthians 5:14-15 ESV).

You see the truth of the gospel is life changing. Christ, the perfect, sinless man, died as a ransom to sin, so that all who believed, would no longer be controlled by themselves. They would no longer think, walk, talk, and act according to their wants and desires, but that they would live for Him. This concept is the nuts and bolts of being a disciple of Christ. He controls those who are His. Their life reflects His wants, His desires, His mission. This is not some game to play on Sunday, but this is a life fully devoted, controlled by the Savior of the world.
You might be saying, "yeah, that is for some people...those super spiritual, pastor, elder, lifegroup leader types." Well, you are wrong. There is no halfway with Jesus. You are in or you are out. You are either controlled by His love for you, or you are controlled by the love for yourself. There is no middle ground. When did God’s love for us, our love for Him, His mission, and His Church become unmoving, unconsuming, lackluster, flimsy, and fake?
I wrote this as a note of repentance. I repent of my unmoving, unconsuming, lackluster, flimsy, and fake love I have for God, His mission, and his people. I repent for taking for granted the Gospel-the sacrifice of Christ on my behalf. I turn from that, and turn toward God. I have concluded that “one has died for all, therefore all have died”….and I no longer live for myself, but for Him. The love of Christ controls me, consumes me, and moves me to obey Him. I am asking each of you to join me. Let us all repent together and live for Christ, on mission with Him, for His Glory and Honor forever and ever. Amen

Homeschooling

Homeschool presentation with the Butterfly Lady

Homeschool Girl's Club Pumpkin Party

Homeschool History Fair Presentation

History Fair Certificate :)

Great Wolfe Lodge with our favorite homeschool friends

Gingerbread House with the same favs

Coop Christmas Party relay race

Coop Christmas Party "snowball fight"

Christmas Party craft

Homeschooling was something I always thought about, but never dreamed I could do.

I don't do it alone. In fact, Dave probably does 75% of it. And of course, we have God on our side as we believe this is His path for our family.

Homeschooling works out well for us because we have so many activities in the evenings. Mondays we alternate our Adult Life Group, and Dave's FCA/Mine and Alanna's Girl Scout troop. Tuesdays Dave has staff meeting. Wednesdays Dave has school all day then his High School Life Group. Thursdays are fun, this is the day we have our Homeschool coop. We usually let Alanna play afterwards. Friday we have Middle School Life Group. Saturdays I work all day. So, if Alanna was to go to school, she'd get home around 4:30 and have enough time for homework, dinner, bath, and bed. This was the main reason we decided to homeschool.

Some other smaller reasons were:
~We love spending time with our daughter.

~We thought about the whole *our daughter can be a light in a dark place* thing. Well, she's not saved yet, and she is very much a follower/people pleaser. So, that won't work-yet.

~We enjoy being the ones to teach her, and seeing her face light up when she masters something.

~There is a HUGE homeschooling community in the Triangle, and many amazing field trip opportunities. We love our "homeschool group" and enjoy the fact that we know the children Alanna spends much of her time with, and their parents.

Worth Every Moment

Living a Christ-centered, others-centered life can be very uncomfortable, but isn't that what we are called to do as followers of Christ? One of the ways God has taught us this principle is by attending Cross Culture Church. Cross Culture doesn't have a church building, so everything we do except for Sunday morning worship is out in the community. We are constantly looking for opportunities to love others and invite others into our faith community. We find all kinds of ways to reach out. We sponsor a community Family Fun Day every year, a community Easter Egg Hunt/Service, we serve as the "staff" for the yearly Public Safety Day, we do Free Movie Nights for the community, etc.

Though these churchwide events offer great opportunities to serve and love our community, our family has found something even better - "doing life" with people. You might ask, what do you mean by doing life? Doing life with people means as you do life, you love and serve the people around you.

Following is a list of ways our family shows our neighbors the love of Christ:

-Genuinely engage people with conversation.

-Bake cookies for new neighbors/old neighbors.

-Offer to help with their animals while they are gone on vacation.

-Help them move in/out.

-Be available to be interrupted and inconvenienced.

-Help bring in their groceries.

-Take out their trash.

-Invite them to dinner.

-And of course, share Christ with them.

When you demonstrate a real concern for your neighbors, they will learn quickly that you care for them and desire not just for them to be "saved" but for them to also be a friend. Yes, we desire ultimately for each of our neighbors to have a relationship with Christ, but I am convinced that in our post-modern world, we must first be a real friend. As a result, our neighbors know they can knock on our door for anything, and they do. We are truly blessed to be a part of each of their lives. Yes, living a Christ-centered, others-centered life is very difficult, but oh is it worth every moment......

Overwhelmed

David and I have just been overwhelmed the last 2 weeks.

We've been overwhelmed by stress and overwhelmed with appreciation. We've been overwhelmed with a new appreciation of the Father's love for us and by those who have shown the Father's love towards us.

Most of you know what went on with our daughter the last two weeks so I won't go into details here. We are just so extremely thankful that she is almost 100% better. It was devastating to watch her suffer with pain, fever, nausea/vomiting, etc. It was hard when it lingered after it shouldn't have. Praise God for quick intervention and answers.

I just wanted to take the time in this blog to thank all of you. Thank you for the prayers, the texts, phone calls, messages on facebook, emails, meals, visits, gifts. Your support and care for us and our baby really helped get us through.

David and I have discussed and just want to share our newfound appreciation of God's love for us. At work, I watch families suffer as they watch their children from ages 5mos-65years suffer. I always hurt for them, but there is something to be said about walking in their shoes, even if it was only for a couple weeks. Can you imagine what it was like for God to send His only Son knowing all the while the reason He had to come into this world? Jesus would suffer more than anyone, yet He did nothing wrong to deserve such torture. He did this all for us-to save us. We are God's children, and He loves us so much that He sent his only Son to pay the ransom for our sins. I can't imagine sending my daughter to do that. I can't imagine how God aches when we take this gift for granted.

Thank you Lord for the gift of your Son. May it continue to change my life everyday.

The Night Before Christmas - Brandon Heath - w/lyrics

Love the music, love the words, love the song. :)

Sweet Girl-Not rehearsed :)

Like Father.....Like Daughter.....yeesh...

Christ-centered Home

http://www.gospelcentereddiscipleship.com/making-christ-central-at-home/

We've had some struggles these past few months......July-One of my dearest and older friends finally returns home from a year in Africa. Sarah has been with me through everything. She was home for maybe a month? And we weren't able to cross paths before she upped and moved again, to California. Praise the Lord social media and email helps us keep touch.

August-My dad calls when we're on our way to see Dave's best friend before he moves to Connecticut. My granny had a biopsy and it was positive for cancer. She'd already had some health struggles for the last year that made her quit work--at 80 years old. Granny is the center of my dad's side of the family. She means so so much to me and all of us. Luckily they found it very early and she only needed a lumpectomy-Praise the Lord. Now we're praying it doesn't return and that she can get through these other, non life-threatening struggles she's having.

September-I begin having my own health problems. David and I go to the OBGYN thinking we'd been having a miscarriage that just won't end. We find that our baby is still there and it's a tubal pregnancy. The doctor sends me to get lab work and I refuse to miss David's ordination in Virginia that weekend. We pray pray pray that we won't need intervention and it'll resolve itself, which doesn't usually happen. Sunday afternoon I realize I hadn't had any pain for the first time in almost a month. We go to the doctor Tuesday and the baby was no longer though. Bittersweet, but an answer to prayer. Praise the Lord for God's healing hand.

October-My mom is suppose to come for a visit and we have all kinds of things planned. My Great-Grandma Kitzmiller falls ill at 100 years old and enters the hospital. After a week, mom makes the difficult decision to change her airline tickets and after another week grandma passes away. Praise the Lord she was still living on her own (assisted living) and she wasn't sick and suffering very long.

A week before mom's trip she calls us. To say my mother and I have had a rocky relationship might be an understatement. I can't remember if I was pregnant with Alanna or it was after she was born when Dave tried to make me call her after not really speaking for a very long time. I wouldn't and he did anyway and we began talking on a very surfacy level. She met Alanna for the first time when she was 10 months old. We had a pretty good relationship which started to get deeper after I got saved in Dec 2007. If you know anything about Dave you know that you can't be around him very long without talking about Jesus. Mom started asking a lot of questions and really getting interested in the conversations in 2009-2010. We found her a Southern Baptist church in Iowa and she bravely started attending on her own. Something she never would have done a few years before. She really started learning and began meeting this past Spring with a lady to study Ephesians. She called early this month to see if Dave would baptize her while she is here on her trip. PRAISE the Lord. Her trip included lots of good conversations about Jesus. She's studying His Word every chance she gets.

We've had lots of darknesses these last few months and were able to find little dawns in all of them. And sometimes after a lot of darkness and years of waiting God will bring you a really BIG dawn. God makes all things work together for our good. I can see how years past have brought me to where I am today. And how what I'm going through now is going to help Dave and I in our future...now that I realize that HE is in control and has the blueprint of my life. I heard a quote last night: "There's no such thing as the end, there are only new beginnings." Praise the Lord!

Keepin' it Real

At work the other week, we were at lunch discussing Christmas gifts.  One of the girls and I were talking back and forth because we both have 6 year old girls.  She was talking about how she went overboard when she was looking at her closet she couldn't believe how much stuff she had bought.  I replied something to the effect of "yeah it can get expensive." And she said "yeah and then you have Santa and.."  I said "Well, Santa doesn't come to our house." 
Her: "Santa doesn't come to your house!?" :::Extremely confused look on her face:::
Me:  "Noooo.."  Could feel how red my face was..
The guy with us:  "What are you Jehovas Witness or something?"
Me: "No, I don't think they celebrate Christmas."
The guy: "Well exactly you don't do Santa Clause."
Me: "No, we celebrate Jesus's birthday."
The guy: "Oh,ok. Keepin' it real, I see."
As I thought on about the conversation and still think about it, I LOVE that he said "Keepin' it real."  The culture does not want us to keep it real at Christmastime at all.  I don't even HAVE TV and I'm tired of all the "Buy this Buy that" commercials on the TV from my stents 2 days a week in patient's rooms.  I could go on all day about the culture's idea of Christmas, but I won't.

I think I get so upset about the Santa thing and "Culture Christmas" because I got saved at Christmas.  I was standing in my bathroom around Christmastime thinking "It's Jesus's birthday!  I GET IT!  God came down in the form of man to RESCUE us."  I always knew the story of the baby born of a virgin, but never ever really sat and contemplated it.  I even BELIEVED it in my head, but it never entered my heart.  December 2007 is when I finally got it.  So Christmas is really special to me.  I ache when I see others celebrating it so "surfacy." Presents, Santa, Jingle Bells, no no no.  JESUS.  The last thing I want is Alanna's idea of Christmas to get skewed.  So that's why we "keep it real."