Wiping off the dust.....

Do you ever feel like you put God on a shelf? Well, when it comes to keeping this blog up, I have done just that for the past several months. Why does that seem to happen? I remember when I first started this blog and we had our first bible study meeting. I had been praying for almost a year and a half that our house would be sold and the next day, that happened. I got so busy with the hustle and bustle of packing and moving, the book got packed away. Then, after moving, I couldn't for the life of me, remembered where I had put it or what box I had put it in.

Things were going good and I was always "on the go" so this area of my life got put on a shelf. It is also really shameful and embarrassing to admit that I had started something and hadn't seen it through. In the beginning, I wanted this blog to be beneficial to moms in hopes that it would not only bring us closer to the Lord, but that it would bless our children as well. I actually found the book about a month ago and I kept telling myself that I needed to go update the blog, but other things always came first. It's funny I found the time to watch Melrose Place, read up on the D2 football message board, and lets not forget Facebook. I always had time to check that. This is where Satan gets us. He creeps in and I pushed this to the back of the shelf. The enemy always has a way of doing that.

God, on the other hand, can overcome the enemy. He always wins, no matter what. So here I am again, wiping off the dust and hoping you will join me in this journey to lift our children up. There are so many things that have come to my attention over the past several months. I mean, the whole Jaycee story about being kidnapped in 1991 and then found. The pit of my stomach hurt when I heard that story and I just couldn't get it out of my head. Can you imagine? That poor girl. That poor mother. Where would you ever get the strength....either one of them. It had to come from the Lord.

When I think about my own anxieties with my children, the first thing I do is run to God. I want God to make it better right then. Sophi began school, a new school, and cried the whole first week. She was being bullied by this little boy and had no friends. As a mother, it was awful. You want to make all their sadness go away. Of course, I lit the rescue fire and asked God to make it better....."QUICKLY".....and then I sent Cary to school to take care of it from there! I asked myself the other day, "Are you still praying for Sophi's school day the way you did the first week of school?" The answer is a sorry no.

Then there is my Cari-Bella. I thought when we passed by the "so called" terrible two's we had made it. Our family would all be back in the same house again and her temper tantrums would be gone. Boy, was I wrong. If I thought she was having fits at two, then I don't even know what you would call it now at THREE. They are horrible. They happen right before school and then right before bed. The crazy thing is that it is usually over CLOTHING ITEMS. I am at a loss. I am not going to go into all the details because I don't want you to think I am a crazy parent with a crazy three year old, but what three year old goes hitting, spitting, kicking crazy over the color of clothes? I had to ask myself what had I done to her self esteem. She tells me that some colors do not make her beautiful. Cary and I have told her over and over and over again that beauty is not in what you wear, but what you are on the inside. Now, in three year old terms, it is "Your kind words, nice manners, pretty smile, kind heart.....etc" But why is this happening? Again, I light my rescue fire and BEG God to help me through this! Please don't let my sins and shortcomings fall on to my children. I had a big wake up when I realized that I wasn't praying for each one the way I should be praying for them.

We all have issues with our own children (or at least I hope that I am not the only one) but my issues PALE IN COMPARISON to other issues out there. Disease, missing, sickness, runaways, I could go on and on. You turn on the tv, computer, or open up a magazine or newspaper and there are problems with children all over the place every day. Children we know and ones we don't. What are we doing to conquer these problems? The one thing that we all can remember is that there is no problem too big for God to handle.

Last night, I was at my bible study and I want to tell you it is the very best one I have done. If you have never done the Beth Moore study on the Ascent of Psalms, "Stepping Up," you must. It is wonderful. Anyway, we were in the scripture talking about the journey Jesus took to the temple in Jerusalem with his parents when he was 12 years old. (Luke 2:41-52) To summarize what happens in these verses, After the Passover Feast was over, the group began their journey home. After some time, Mary and Joseph realized that Jesus was not with the group. They traveled for one whole day before they realized their son was missing. They went back to look for him in Jerusalem and it took them THREE days before they found him in the temple. Beth Moore brought out a point about what must have been going through their minds for those three days. Can you imagine??? Beth said that Mary was probably frantically telling God, "Help me please, you give me your son and now I have lost your child!" As a mother, we can't imagine. It doesn't say a lot in the bible about how God worked in Mary's life after Jesus was born, but I can only imagine that he wanted her to turn and look to Him for guidance on how to raise her child, Jesus, just as he wants us all to.

I have to ask you to forgive me for being such a slacker in keeping this blog going and to continue on this journey with me to pray for our children. I am going to do my very best to keep things posted every Monday. Please, help and hold me accountable for this. I know some of you are still reading and have told me that you are way a head of me, some of you have told me that you are waiting for me, and some of you don't have a book. If you don't have a book, that is ok. I am really going to try and summarize each chapter and then include the questions. Take time to look over the previous posts and then I will add chapter 4 on Monday.

I haven't done any updates on the children that we are praying for, so if you know of any that need our desperate prayers or your children's names are not on our list, please let me know.

God bless,
Shanan