Baby Girl

On September 17th my sweet baby girl turned 3!  I am constantly blessed by her smiles and laughter.  Her personality and BIG blue eyes and lashes melt my heart to the core!  Thank you Lord for every second that you have let us borrow sweet Naomi!

CLEANING HOUSE

For a year now I have been meeting with my special friend.  My mentor.  God has spoken to my heart to much through her.  She is my Titus 2 woman. "Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled."

(Titus 2:3-5 ESV)

She is a complete example of that.  It was a few months ago I realized that she was not God through watching her let Jesus fight her battle with Parkinson's:) .    Well it seems God had to convince my pea sized brain that it is him that I crave, not her wisdom.  Slowly God has allowed things to be taken away in my life that again my mind and body is convinced that I need, most of these are taken away by my choice.  Food was the first thing.  It has always had a hold on me.  I have found that if it is in the house I will eat it.  It makes my body feel tired and I find that I am so depressed that I have a hard time serving my family.  Then the medicines I was on.  Next FOR ME was Face book.  I found that it occupied most of my time I again "craved" it.  I enjoyed getting on it and escaping my world and going into someone elses for a bit.  At first Ronnie and I decided to be apart of the face book world to be a witness.  We have shared the gospel and have encouraged many many souls as well as my soul being encouraged.  You see Ronnie has come from a place that most don't know.  He has not always feared God as he does now.  For people from his past to see the MAN that he is now and his service to our LORD it causes them to ask a lot of questions and in turn we are able to share with them HOW he has changed.  But in this I got caught up in the everyday montough of people's comings and goings and even posted some of my own.  This past week some comments were posted on FB and I found that I fumed on them all day.  The next day It was like a light bulb moment for me...if I didn't have FB I would have never seem these comments hence I would have not even have allowed them to enter my mind.  Such a simple thing.  I decided to deactivate my FB account.  As I did it I felt nervous...how will I connect?  How will people get in touch with me.  We are talking 600 friends on FB that Ronnie and I read and kept up with!  How utterly exhausting!  As I deleted that account I felt a freedom like no other.  I felt as if I had lost a load of baggage.  The next thing we decided to get rid of is Netflix.  Our family so enjoys watching movies and shows anytime streaming through our wii.  We mostly watch nature shows and documentaries (me).  We are trying to cut costs anywhere we can right now and I thought well 8 bucks a month is not so bad.  But I am convicted...we have plenty of movies and can do other things besides watch Netflix.  Again this is what is working for our family. I am also dropping long distance and caller ID from our phone.  The last and most recent thing is the INTERNET!  Yes I said it.  I need to see if I can absolutely live without it. You may say just limit yourself just don't get on it, guess what I will get on it, I have tried.  Again just like the food, if it is in the house I will eat it, watch it get on it etc.  I have been studying Romans.  It has become clear to me more than ever that I depend on so much more that just GOD.  My top goal in life is to be in a relationship with him...so close that he is more real than the hand in front of my face.  I am excited about this journey.  Will keep you posted.  I will be blogging once a week from somewhere else.  And in the mean time I will also be saving a TON of money and spending lots of time with my sweet precious little girls and preparing our home for their Daddy.

My Deliverer

I am so thankful this morning for my great Deliverer.  He continues to set me free from myself.  I am seeing him so clearly.  I see his work in our family.  Though things are so stressful, situation wise we are getting to know who God is.  He is my deliverer and has set me free.

INSANITY

The past 2 days have been pretty much insanity.  I have OCD more than ever and in my head I think know that things can't be prefect all of the time but my eyes see things not in order and it sends my body into a fit of rage.  Is this forever for me?  I cannot stand being this way.  I shoot from being angry to crying to being angry because I cried.  I know there is HOPE.  If I don't take things literally one minute at a time I will fall apart.  All I can do is cry out to my Redeemer and say...you are all I need.  Lord what thing are you asking me to do next that I can't see clearly yet?  Lead me in the next step with grace and COURAGE!  I have to be ok with not "feeling" the peace yet.  It will come.  HE promises me that.  I will continue this coarse because I want him to be my everything....my person....my love....my life.  If I have to go through this for a time, help me to do it with such grace.  Be real to me Father...

Revelation

I must say...that God has sustained me beyond measure.  He continues to let me see him in glimpses of my life.
 
My dizziness is still pretty bad, now nauseous and still emotionally up and down I am on day 8.  One week down.  I know He never lets go.  Joy and pain sun and rain your the same and you never let go of me sweet Father.  Thank you all for your prayers.  My sister has been here for a few days.  God has instilled in her such a sweet calm personality.  She was music to my soul.  She sat with me, laughed with me, cried with me, walked with me, held me.  I felt the hand of God though her.  She also helped take some of the burden off of Ronnie.  He continues to try and find what makes me tick and what he can do to help me.  I love that man beyond words.  I find that his touch is what helps me the most.  I am so thankful for KNOWING that I am fully taken care of by my Lord and I am not ALONE. 


These words mean so much to me...

My life has led me down the road that's so uncertain
Now I am left alone and I am broken
Trying to find my way
Trying to find the faith that's gone

This time I know that you are holding all the answers
I'm tired of losing hope and taking chances
On roads that never seem
To be the ones that bring me home

Give me a revelation
Show me what to do
'Cause I've been trying to find my way
I haven't got a clue
Tell me should I stay here
Or do I need to move
Give me a revelation
I've got nothing without you
I've got nothing without you

My life has led me down this path that's ever winding
Through every twist and turn, I'm always finding
That I am lost again
Tell me when this road will ever end

I don't know where I can turn
Tell me, when will I learn
Won't you show me where I need to go
Let me follow your lead
I know that it's the only way that I can get back home
~Third Day

Raw Emotion...

This is pretty raw here...please pray for me and my family


Today is day 5 ....I am completely off my my medicine for anxiety.  I have to say that the side effects are pretty intense.  First let me tell you about this week.  Monday both Naomi got sick with fever, coughing sore throat ( up all night) Tuesday night Trinity got sick with the same thing (again up all night).  I in the mean time started with a pretty severe pain on my right side, by Thursday I knew I should probably call the doctor.  They of coarse wanted to see me immediately, I felt as if it were nothing to serious but they wanted to check to see.  So Ronnie stayed home with the girls on Friday so I could go (because we only have one car and the girls were still sick).  I went and the doc wanted me to have a CT scan.  So I fasted and drank that AWFUL dye (2 bottles) and headed to get my scan to which they gave me more of the dye through an IV once I got there.  This stuff made me feel SICK SICK SICK.  Forgot to mention that because of being up for 3 nights straight with the girls I forgot to take my medicine.  Once I realized it (on Friday) well I wanted to come off of it anyway right?  Yeah....this timing stinks.  All of these things going on.  God's timing is perfect though right?  I was waiting for side effects to worsen and yesterday they started to peak.  I was expecting some anger issues (because that is what I usually face) but had no idea the heaviness I would feel.  I am so sad, I feel alone (though I know the truth by body reacts otherwise).  I have vertigo, extreme vertigo, so bad it is making me nauseous.  I cry all of the time and I just want to sleep.  Not sleep because I am depressed but sleep because I want the dizziness to stop.  For some reason I am worse when Ronnie is around.  I feel angry because I just want him to understand how I feel, again this is not the truth.  He is human, not my Saviour.  He is just as helpless as I am in the situation.  I love him and the human side of me wants someone tangible to help me get out of this and make it go away.  My Jesus is the only one who can, and I know this.  I have lately been so tired and dizzy that it hurts physically to even try to talk to him.  A wise friend (thanks Sarah) told me that just filling my head with praise music or listening to sermons in my home is feeding my brain and my soul.  He will give me strength when I need it.  Trinity is also aware of the detox period off the medicine.  We explained that Mommy has been on a medicine for a very long time and she needs to come off of it and for the next few weeks her body is going to try and search for it and that causes all kinds of things to happen in her body.  She asked yesterday was the crying apart of that search that my body was doing.  Wow the wisdom of children.  Some people would sh reek at the fact that I told my 6 year old about this.


Again I know his timing is perfect.  I was complaining yesterday about all of the stuff going on....Then I just picked up the girls bible and started reading outloud we read and read and read.  Starting palm Sunday all the way to the Resurrection and the weeks that followed.  What a picture of new life. 

some history and a new journey

Dearest Blogging friends,
I am getting ready to embark on one of the hardest things I have ever experienced.  Let me give you some history.  Upon my teen years I was a terror.  I was an emotional wreck.  I was first put on Birth Control at the age of 14 to try and help with the mood swings and severe PMS.  When switching that several times in a matter of years the doc suggested that I have a chemical imbalance.  What exactly is a chemical imbalance anyway? ( I am doing my research on this, I do believe it is real but stems from somewhere else, such as chemical reactions in the liver)  So I started on Prozac at the age of 16.  Seemed to help with the PMS symptoms temporally.  In six months the Doctor had to up my dose.  Then a few months after that I switched to a different SSRI ( Select Serotonin Re uptake Inhibitor) Paxil, then Zoloft.  This had been an ongoing process until 4 years ago when through prayer and a lot of anger (for a drug or drugs having so much of a hold on me) I proceeded to come off slowly.  I felt better than I had EVER felt.  Then 3 months after, Ronnie went into the Hospital for diverticulitis and diverticulosis (this is the first time anything like this had happened in our 3 year Marriage) I felt panic at first but was able to stay pretty calm.  Weeks after that Ronnie was rushed to the Hospital for Emergency Colon Surgery.  Upon arrival to the hospital they discovered he had eaten a Whopper and Fries, surgery would have to be postponed 2 days to clean out his system, he would be spending these 2 days in the hospital hooked up to IVs with antibiotics and fluids. The first night he was put in the hospital, I was at home with my sweet Trinity and I started bleeding.  I was mortified.  I had heard of my friends going through this but never in my naive mind would my family go through this, now especially when my love was in the hospital with a severe life threatening infection.  I talked with God a lot.  I talked with my friend Shannon, she did the best thing that a friend can ever do, she told me the truth.  She said Amber you need to prepare yourself that you are probably losing your baby. To be continued...