Snug as a Bug in My Wool Camel Coat

This morning after breakfast Sam wanted to watch one show on tv.  On Tuesday and Thursdays, I sometimes allow them to snuggle up after breakfast and watch one show just until the kitchen is cleaned up and I have time to possibly drink my coffee:) Well, this morning, Sam says to me that he is "freeeeeeezing." To which I replied, " go put on some warmer clothes."  I didn't pay much attention to what happened next until Rob tells me to go over in the den and see how he remedied his problem.  This is what I found:

 VERY RESOURCEFUL!  Gotta love him:)

Round 1 of Maggie's Birthday

Our sweet little Maggie turned 1 this past Saturday.  This last year has proven to be the absolute fastest year of my life.  Seriously, I feel like I just came home from the hospital about a month or two ago.  She is becoming such a funny little girl.  She already has opinions about a lot of things.  One of which is her food choices.  From the very beginning of starting table food, she has resisted anything that is slimy.  I have tried everything to get her to eat vegetables and fruits, but to no avail, she continues to resist.  She usually gives it one good touch and then throws it to the floor as if it has stung her.  I am being humbled everyday, because Sam and Kate ate ANYTHING  I gave them and proudly I assured other moms that "if you put it in front of them, they will eat it."  Ha...Ha, Jokes on Me.  This child eats nothing but waffles (that I make with sweet potatoes and bananas that I hide in there) and edamame.  Yes folks, that's it.  Some days it really ticks me off and then others I just serve up the waffles as if this is what she may eat forever, because I honestly don't have the time to stress about it.  I figure she will one day decide to eat:) Here's to praying for a better diet later.  Anyway, we can't imagine life without our Maggie.  The kids adore her and love to harass her, play with her, roll her around and drag her from place to place.  She is tolerant for the most part. 

Well, on Saturday we had planned to have the family over for lunch and cake to celebrate her sweet life, but Maggie was running a fever, coughing like crazy and was generally not feeling well. We thought it best to postpone her celebration until this coming Saturday, so she could enjoy her time.  I thought we needed to do something to recognize the day, so the kids and I went to Whole Foods and bought 5 mini cupcakes and thought we would have those after lunch and take the opportunity to sing Happy Birthday to Mag.  Being the finicky texture opposed child that she is, she wouldn't even touch the cupcake:) Should have known...

Here are some pics of the experience.  Oh, but she did reach out and burn her sweet little hand on the candle. Fun Times.

This was shared with me and I wanted to share with you. Hope you find hope in this as much as I did.

How to Glorify God Through Your Imperfections

Posted on 09 December 2010
Tags: How to overcome sin


Did you know that you can honor God through the bad things that you do? I hope you know this. If you don’t know this truth then you are probably truncating the potential that you could have for making God’s name great. Honoring God through the bad things that we do does not get as much airplay as honoring God through righteousness, obedience, and holy living. However, I think it is important to talk about how we can magnify God through our imperfections. The reason for this is because we are imperfect.

Exploring imperfection

We have yet to attain sinless perfection in this life. And the truth of the matter is, we will never be sinlessly perfected in this life. Therefore, if we cannot honor God through our imperfections then we cannot honor God completely. Let’s say, though I know this could be perceived as silly, that we are 70% perfect and 30% imperfect. I realize some of you are probably more perfect than 70%, but work with me here, okay?

According to my math, you can only honor God up to 70% because that is your personal best for the good things that you can do. Therefore, seventy percent of the time you are walking in holiness, obeying God, making his name great, serving others, worshipping Him with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. However, there is a pocket of sin or weakness or areas that have yet to be conquered and biblically refined in your life. In my illustration, that amounts to about 30% of your total self.

What if I told you that you could make God’s name great through your imperfections? That you no longer have to limit all of the possibilities that God could perform through you? And what would you have to do?

First of all, you would have to acknowledge that you have made mistakes, that you have sinned. You cannot honor God nor make His name great by hiding part of the truth about yourself. But it gets better than just being honest. Let’s suppose that you become more specific and open about who you really are. You decide that you’re going to put the power back into the Gospel by exposing the details of your imperfections. Anyone who has ever done this knows exactly what I am talking about. They have experienced the release, relief, power, and blessing that comes through confession.

Not only would God be more glorified because of your sin, but He would extend grace to you to help you overcome your sin. Jesus was glad when Lazarus died because it was an opportunity for Him to help His friends trust Him more. (John 11:14-15) It is through our weaknesses that God’s strength is made perfect. The Father came for the weak, downcast, imperfect, and sick. There is no grace for the perfect, healthy, and sufficient.

But it gets even better than this. The more honest you are about your weaknesses and sins, the more He is able to inspire others by your humble example.

The temptation to be perfect

A person who does not acknowledge his imperfections is a person who is truncating some of the possibilities of what God could do through him. A person who does not acknowledge his imperfections is, in essence, “limiting God.” The reason the Gospel exists is because of sin. If we say we have no sin, then we are saying that the Gospel is purposeless and we have no need for the Gospel. A person who is unwilling to come clean about his sin is a person who does not understand the Gospel. He is mocking the Gospel.

One of the primary temptations in this area of not owning our sin is our desire to appear righteous before others. Just like the Pharisees of old, we are too easily stuck on ourselves. How we come across and what people think about us tends to matter too much to us. And because of this we are tempted to promote and present the good things that we do while suppressing and hiding our foibles.

The benefits offered to the sinning Christian

A person who understands the Gospel is a person who is aggressively honest about who he really is. And this kind of humble awareness and acknowledgement opens the door to an entire constellation of benefits that the proud embarrassed-about-my-sin-kind-of-person cannot enjoy. Let me give you a list of benefits that are offered to the person who is willing to be honest about who he really is:

Boldness Grace Freedom Integrity Transparency
Authenticity Joy Peace with God Restoration Guilt-free
Clear Conscience Lack of fear No Shame No Regret True Forgiveness
Wisdom Empowerment God’s Pleasure Blessing Honesty
Hope Confidence Greater Usefulness Ongoing Repentance Discernment
Reconciliation Contentment No Hypocrisy Accountability Humility
God-centered Encouraging An Example Selfless Servant
The person who limits the power of the Gospel through their lack of transparency is like a reservoir held back by a dam. You are a person with the Spirit, but the Spirit is quenched and grieved because of your stubborn pride. In this life you will not be able to honor God as a fully perfected person. Therefore, I thank God for the Gospel because the Gospel opens the door of possibility where we have the opportunity to glorify God through our weaknesses.

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. -The Savior, Mark 2:17 (ESV)

Application Questions

Why do you fear being honest with others?
How has your lack of transparency hindered or hurt certain relationships?
Do you lead by example in confessing your sins to others, thus releasing others to emulate you?
Do you create contexts of grace that inspires your friends to tell you their temptations?

11 Step Program for those thinking of having kids

by SUGAR on JANUARY 18, 2011

Humor is one extremely vital skill to have as a parent, in my opinion. I happened upon this on Facebook and I was literally laughing out loud, my husband thought that I had gone mad. It is a tongue and cheek point of view written by Amy Lawrence, a person that I have never met. Somehow her work found it’s way from Canada to Charleston via social media. Funny how the world works these days….

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their…
1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.
Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…
1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
4. Set the alarm for 3AM.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out…
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this – all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you’re thinking What’s ‘Noggin’?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the ‘mommy’ tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

This is all very tongue in cheek; anyone who is parent will say ‘it’s all worth it!’ Share it with your friends, both those who do and don’t have kids. I guarantee they’ll get a chuckle out of it. Remember, a sense of humor is one of the most important things you’ll need when you become a parent!