Control

I have discovered something about myself...I am a control freak! It's not an issue in every area of my life but I have to admit that I do like a lot of things done a certain way in a specific time frame (just ask my husband!). But sometimes that can really cause problems!

As I was thinking about this I remembered an older post i'd written on this subject. It's from March of this year and i've gotten many new followers since then so I decided to share it again with all of you. If you struggle with control, I hope you enjoy this post and know that you're not alone!


Struggles

I have been going through a very hard time lately. It feels like my mind and emotions have just been under a huge attack. It seems like no matter what I do or how much I pray, I can’t get past it. My husband even talked to me about it and said he’s been feeling the same way and seeing the same thing. In fact, it was him talking to me about it that showed me what’s really been going on. See at first it just felt like a pity party. How many of you girls have ever felt the need to just sit down and have a good old fashioned pity party? You know the one, it makes you want to sit in the corner and sing “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms!”.

But after feeling this way for very long, I started to feel like it was getting out of my control and my emotions were beginning to get control of me. Ever felt that way?

But control just began to add to the problem. See I felt that if I could just get control of it, instead of allowing my emotions to have control, I could get rid if the attack. If I could just understand what was happening I could control it. Have you ever felt that way? Like you could do it yourself, control it yourself? I’ve found out that as soon as I start feeling that way, the problem only gets worse. And it did.

Thankfully I serve a mighty God who sees me exactly where I am and meets me right there and knows exactly what I need to get through.

Yesterday morning I read 4 little verses that changed things for me. For some reason I decided to read Jeremiah 29:11, it’s a very familiar verse and one I’ve prayed over my children on several occasions. But this time I read it with myself in mind and I also read the verses after it which are not often quoted with it but are very powerful.

11. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
12. Then shall you call upon me, and you shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
13. And you shall seek me, and find me, when you search for me with all you heart.
14. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord…

I love how this is said in the King James version. The thoughts God thinks towards me are of peace. Peace was exactly what I needed. Peace over my mind. Peace to my need to control. Peace over my pity party. Peace. Perfect peace.

I love how the Amplified version says verses 12 and 13.

12. Then you will call upon Me, and you will come and pray to me, and I will hear and heed to you.
13. Then you will seek Me, inquire for and require Me [as a vital necessity] and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

How comforting is that? Here I am, feeling like I’m doing all this by myself , like I have to figure this all out by myself, and God used these familiar verses to show me that I’m not. All I have to do is simply call on Him. All I have to do is pray with all my heart, with everything I have. He’s right here, just waiting for me to call out to Him.

See, by me trying to take control of the situation I was effectively making the problem worse. I wasn’t only fighting myself in this situation, I was fighting the One who needed to be in control and just making a mess of the whole thing.

Once I was able to turn the problem over to Him, and once I began to “seek Him, inquire for and require Him [as a vital necessity] “ the peace that He wanted for me the whole time began to take over.

Now that’s not saying that the desire for control will never creep up on me again, but I do know what to do with it when it does. I can’t face attacks on my own. I can’t solve the problems I face on my own. I can’t survive my day to day struggles on my own. So each time I face a problem, attack or struggle, I’m going to seek, inquire for and require Christ as a vital necessity. And I know that as soon as I do that I’ll be ok.

Tiny Prints Christmas Cards

I'm not a big fan of blogs promoting things but sometimes a girls just gotta do what a girls gotta do! I won 50 cards from Tiny Prints if I blog about it, and to me that's a really good deal. So here goes.

I love Christmas cards! With my husband being a photographer it kinda seems like sending them out is a must. But i'm not great at the whole "Year in a letter" thing that goes in a lot of cards. With that being case, I like cards that you can put several pictures on (of my kids of course!). Now here's where you guys, my awesome readers, come in. Tiny Prints has a TON of different cards to choose from and i've spent the last 2 days narrowing it down. I've finally gotten it down to my 5 favorites but I just can't decide past that! So you guys get to help me decide which card our family will be sending out for Christmas. Leave a comment below telling me which one your favorite is and the one with the most votes will win. Here you go...

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Option 5

Now that you've all helped me decide what card our family will be getting, take a few minuets and look at all the cards Tiny Prints has to offer. They even have matching address labels you can get!

Thank You!

Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God ~ Philippians 1:3

Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I have so much to be thankful for in my life and will be spending the rest of this week enjoying time with my family and friends. But I wanted to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of my readers. Thank you for joining me on this blogging journey. Thank you for following along and for all the wonderful comments. Thank you for your input and your interest in my posts over the last several months. You all are the reason I write! That verse really does say it all...Every time I think of one of you, I thank God. I hope each and every one of you have a wonderful and blessed holiday! Love you all. Happy Thanksgiving!!

To Good Not To Share

"Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side." — Zig Ziglar

I saw this quote and just had to share it. It's just too good!! How often does that seem to be the biggest problem in marriage? You and your spouse get into a situation and react as if you were on different sides and are now fighting each other.

Today i'm keeping it short and simple because I really think that quote says it all. So just keep this quote in mind the next time you get into a conflict of any kind with your spouse and work on working together instead of fighting against each other!

How Are You Treating Him?

Today my husband posted this status on his facebook page.

‎"You get treated like a dumb animal long enough, that's what you become." -Trumpkin, The Chronicles of Narnia. Ladies, how are you treating the man in your life? Like a dumb animal or a capable leader?

I don't know about you but that made me stop and think! I've said before that inside every man is a king and a fool. Whichever one you talk to is the one you'll see. But I loved how my husband put this today. So often when we get frustrated with our husbands we can end up talking to them like a dumb animal that must be corrected and trained. How foolish that is!

Our husbands have been charged with the daunting task of leading our families. They are the ones that will stand before God and be accountable for what is done in our home and how we're led. And yet so often we treat them like they're too stupid to do anything.

Men today are portrayed in almost every area of the media and the world as big ignorant children who don't know which way is up. They're wives are viewed as the only smart ones in the relationship and she most often treats the men like stupid children. Then we wonder why so many men are not acting like the responsible head of their household!

In Ephesians 5:33 it says that women are to respect their husband and let me tell you, you can not respect your husband and treat him like a "dumb animal" at the same time. It is simply not possible. One of those will take over and form your view of him.

Let's face it ladies, for men to be seen and talked to different, it's gonna have to come from us and it's going to start in our homes. And something to remember is, the way you speak to your husband is how your son will expect to be talked to and how your daughter will talk to her husband. It all starts with us.

Girls, we have to understand that we have so much power in the words we speak to our husbands! I know i've quoted this verse before and i'm sure i'll quote it again but Proverbs 18:21 says "Death and life are in the power of the tongue". That is a verse that should constantly be on our minds when speaking in and about our marriages and husbands.

It's time we stop speaking to the dumb animal and start speaking to the capable leader in our husbands!

Linked up with

Do You Dream Together?

Have you ever had a dream? Something inside of you that you wished or hoped for? I know I have many things that I wish for and dream about having. I dream of having a Victorian style house with a wrap around porch. I dream of taking a vacation to Maine and spending time sitting on the beach with my husband, with my toes buried in the sand and just drinking in the sunset. I dream of the day that all of my children will finally be potty trained! I dream of being used by God and making a difference in this world. See, I have many dreams! But you know who else has dreams? My husband, Colby....

Join me over at Time-Warp Wife for the rest of this post. It's part of her 31 days of love marriage challenge and you don't want to miss it. While you're there, take a look back at some of the previous entries!

Featured at Time-Warp Wife

Postponed

Hey everyone, my post for today has been postponed until tomorrow. I'm guest posting on another blog tomorrow so be sure to check back in for the link. You won't want to miss it!

To Busy To Get Busy

I talked on Wednesday about being too busy during the holidays and gave a few ideas on how to make this time of the year a little less stressful. Now let's talk about how busyness can affect our marriage.

Girls let's face it, we work from the time our feet hit the floor in the morning until we collapse into bed at night. I doesn't matter if we are stay-at-home-moms or we also work outside of the home, we are constantly going and the holidays are no different! With that being the case, I think that sometimes we can get so busy we begin to neglect not only are interaction with our husbands but we can also begin to neglect them sexually. Now it's been awhile since i've talked about sex on here so bare with me as I blush my way through this subject once again. :o)

We all know how important it is to set aside time just for you and your husband. But how often is that the first thing to go when we get busy? It's so easy to push it aside and fill our time with everything else going on around us, but it can do such harm to your marriage.

My husband and I have 3 children all 6 and under so we stay very busy in our house. It seems like one of them needs something from us every few minuets, so that along with all the housework that comes from a family of 5 can run me ragged. By the time the kids get in bed and we finally have "us" time i'm often to exhausted to do anything other than sit in a coma-like state!

But sometimes my husband needs me to wake up and show him a little attention! I have to be very careful to not use every bit of my energy on the housework and kids, but to purposely reserve some of that energy for him. My husband is like any other man around in the fact that he has needs, sometimes he simply needs to sit with me and watch our favorite tv show after the kids are in bed. And of course sometimes he needs intimacy, which requires me to have enough energy to be an active participant!

So i'm adding one more challenge to the list from Wednesday...

Get Busy! ;o)
Take some time over the next day or two and look over your schedule, find a couple of things you can give up or push back to another day in order to leave yourself more refreshed at the end of the day. Put the kids to bed a little earlier and take a bath to relax yourself if you need to but then poor yourself into your husband! Don't make him beg for your attention or intimacy with you, you be the one to make time for it and initiate it. Save some of your energy and attention for your husband and I promise you it will pay off!

Are You Too Busy?

The holidays are finally approaching! This is absolutely my favorite time of the year, I look forward to Christmas from about the middle of July so i'm thrilled that it's almost here. But this is without a doubt the busiest time of the year for our family because along with Christmas and Thanksgiving, all 5 of our birthdays are crammed in from November to March. Needless to say, I am often running frantic during these months!

I'm sure there are many woman that are equally as busy during this time of the year so I wanted to talk to you girls for a bit about a few ways to make things a little less stressful during the holidays. So i've come up with a couple of challenges for us girls (and i'm even going to sneak one in for you guys too!).

#1. Remember that you can not do it all!
It is absolutely impossible to try to do everything for each member of your family during this time of the year, or any time of the year for that matter. You are one woman and simply can not to the job of 2, 3 or 5 different people! Which leads to number 2...

#2. Delegate!
I am the worst about doing this! I have such a specific way of doing things and the perfect idea of how something should be done or cleaned and I know that my 2, 4 and 6 year old children simply can not do it that way so I don't even have them try. This is where I need to relinquish control and teach them how to do things. And most importantly, I need to give up my idea of perfection. It really doesn't matter if the wash rags are folded exactly the same, as long as they are in the closet when we need them.

#3. Spread things out!
This time of year there are always 100 things that need doing or functions that we feel we have to go to. In our family we have 5 different family gatherings at Christmas, all of which we could try to cram into 2 days if we wanted to make ourselves go crazy. Instead we spread some of them out a little and you know what? It's still just as much of a family Christmas get-together even if it happens the first part of January! It really is ok. Christmas is about celebrating Christ, not about pleasing every member of your family by seeing them at a specific time on a specific day.

#4. Just say "NO"!
It really is ok to say no to things. It's extremely hard for me to do that so i'm talking to myself just as much on this one. But if you try to stretch yourself too thin and be everything for everyone then no matter what you do it will be difficult to be anything for anyone.

#5. Ask for help!
If you're like me and your to-do list is a mile long, figure out what on there can be done by others and get your whole family to pitch in. If my house is a mess and it needs to be cleaned in a certain amount of time, I could run around like a crazy person and try to do it all myself. I'd probably only get about half of it done and just end up frustrated. Or, I could get my husband and kids involved in the project, get it done in half the time and avoid getting frustrated in the first place.

#6. Bonus for you guys...HELP!
Ok guys, here is the biggest secret to making things run smoother in your home during the holidays. Help your wife! I know it can be so easy to let her do everything because chances are, she's very much like me and has a certain way of doing things. But even if that is the case, get in there, figure out how to do it and do it. (Girls refer back to #2 on this one!) I promise guys, you will help her out so much, fill up her love bank and help her finish early which will leave more time for the two of you to spend together all in one easy step. You really can elevate a huge amount of stress for your wife which will in turn elevate a huge amount of stress from your home.

So there you go, there are my 6 easy steps to a stress free holiday season! Just kidding, they're really not easy to put into practice nor will they make your holidays completely stress free. But they sure can help to elevate a lot of the stress you may face over the next 2 months...or just from life in general!

5 Years Ago...

Yesterday we celebrated my daughter's 5th birthday so please excuse me while I get sentimental, just for today. :o)

5 years ago I was the mother of a son. I had a rough and tumble little boy who was into everything and felt it was his mission in life to destroy everything in his path. I was still learning how to do this whole "motherhood" thing and had finally gotten somewhat of an idea of what I was doing. Then came Alexis. She was pink all over and had complete control of her daddy from the moment she was born. She was full of drama and had the strongest will that I had ever dealt with, and in five years very little has changed. And yet, much has changed. Somehow in the blink of an eye, my little Lexi went from this...

To this...

She has transformed from a chubby little toddler into such a beautiful little lady and yet I know that at only 5 years old, the transformation is only beginning. I know that one day not too far away i'll look back at the pictures from this weekend and say "where did my baby go?". But for now, i'm going to hang on to this moment, hug her a little longer and enjoy these mere moments that she is a child.

Happy birthday my sweet Alexis! There is no one else in this like you, you are truly a one in a million girl and I thank God daily for allowing me to be your mother. I love you my sweet girl, never ever forget that!