justkeepingonkeepingon

I am linking up with Five Minute Friday & today’s topic is beautiful.  I hope you enjoy.

We have all heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  We have heard that beauty is skin deep.  I wonder if we have ever met someone who by outward appearances might seem to be plain or not so beautiful but when you get to know them is one of the most beautiful people you have ever met.

I have some of these women in my life.  They are older women who have lived their lives, taken care of their families with love & some have even lost their mates.  Some are lonely, some are busy, some are confused, some live in the past, some memorize Scripture, some do intense Bible study & some even are Titus 2 women that share their wisdom with us younger women.

Have you come across any of these beautiful women in your lifetime?  I hope that you will take time to stop & chat with them, ask them questions about their lives, their testimony, their faith in the Lord, their current walk with the Lord, or cooking or gardening questions.  They usually perk right up & love to share their memories or wisdom. 

I pray that when I am in those golden years I will shine with an inner beauty that comes from hiding God’s word in my heart, from studying it diligently & that I will be an encouragement to other women coming behind, but especially my family. 

Please go find one of these beautiful women in your life & chat with her!  You will both be blessed.

Stop

In Between:  Boy does this topic describe our life right now!!!  (In a wonderful way though).  We have been married 20 years now & have twin daughters that will turn 20 in the fall.

Now that they are out of high school & in college but still under our roof, they are almost independent but not quite ready to fly!

We have one twin that thinks her calling is to be a wife & Mommy, which is ironic because now that I have a broken kneecap, she is getting the opportunity to care for me from the time I wake up until I go to bed!  She makes me coffee, helps me get in & out of the shower, helps me with laundry, cleaning & cooking.  She has had her eyes opened a lot.

The other twin has been going to a University a couple hours away & just got home for the summer.  She gets her feelings hurt when I don’t ask her for help, but my default is to ask her older sister for help because she lives with us all the time & the younger daughter comes & goes back & forth to University.  But, she has had her eyes opened too!

It is amazing how the Lord works all things out for our good, I have the help I need to take care of me & they are both getting to experience taking care of a home & prepare meals & take care of their “decrepit” mom!!!  They always laugh when they say that! 🙂

Life is pretty sweet, God is so good to us & I am ever so thankful for the in between seasons of life & am working on being deliberate with our time together.  Who knows?  This may be the end of the season when they go back to college in the fall & I don’t want to miss a thing!

Stop.

Men… Shut-up. And take notes..

The new rhythm of our lives is changing quickly.  It’s funny how we get into a swing of things & think that life will always be this way & before we know if, things change. 

Our life has two college students in it now.  My husband & I often sit & ponder the changing rhythm we see coming.  We are being deliberate with our time with one another, because we see that before we know it, the girls will be moved out of our home & on with their own lives.  We’re not anxious or upset, just amazed at how quickly we’ve gotten to this point in our lives.

Rhythm is like that.  Ever notice when that when you’re trying to clean that if you put a happy song on with a happy beat, things go quickly?  Or if you are blue & listen to a melancholy song that you feel worst???  Our life rhythm is changing for the best, we decided.  No matter what comes, our attitude is that we were given these children to raise for the Lord, arrows in our quiver  & arrows don’t do any good in the quiver, you have to shoot them!  So, as we come to this rhythm of summer, we are choosing to extend grace, love one another & make the best of the situation.  They are taking great care of me while I’m down with the broken kneecap, by the way.  I am so proud of them for the job they are doing.  I’m very blessed!

Stop

Go

When I think about the word, listen, I don’t think much at all.  I mean who doesn’t listen to the people around us?  I, for one.  I think in this age of social networking like texting, instagram, facebook, etc., we have begun to be so self-absorbed in our own social media that we forget that there are people around us who are speaking & want us to listen.

I am guilty of it, I have a husband & twin daughters who live at home.  They both have busy lives & I can’t tell you how many times I have asked them a question & not bothered to put down my phone to “listen” to them and their hearts and their feelings or what’s going on in their world.  It’s frustrating for them and for me because I often repeat my questions later & they roll their eyes & tell me we’ve already talked about that topic!  I have to apologize & be deliberate with my conversations.

I notice when I am really paying attention to God’s word by reading, meditating & writing out His word, I do so much better with my personal interactions with my family, it’s something I intend to work on over the course of the next six weeks recuperating from a broken kneecap.  It’s unhandy but that’s my life for now.

I love the way God works all things together for my good, even a broken kneecap & time with my family taking care of me so I can take time to really “listen” to them! Have a great weekend.

Stop

Funny, that the word is fall!  Last Monday I got up & around & took a fall in our hallway & heard a loud pop, which turned out to be my right kneecap cracking into three pieces.  It hurt so bad, the pain throbbed from the top of my leg to the bottom of my foot!

When we got to the dr. & had the x-ray, the radiologist looked shocked at me but I honestly didn’t realize anything was broken.

It is amazing how the Lord works these things out for us, I bought some great books to read over the summer & I have a couple hand quilting applique projects I wanted to work on, just didn’t realize I would be doing it like this!!! LOL!

Well, I know God is in control & is sovereign, so I can rest in the assurance that He is using this for my good & for my family’s good, teaching us to live the Gospel every day, even in the unhandy!!!  Things could have been so much worst, but they aren’t & there is nothing I can do now except rest for the next eight weeks & be as gracious to my family as I can.  I hate being waited on hand & foot but that’s where I am.  God knows what I need, He is working on my heart to be more encouraging, gracious & kind.  It will be interesting to see how I look in 8 weeks of bed rest.  Pray for my attitude please & for my sweet family that we will preach the Gospel to each other through this process!  Thanks.

Stop!

Sometimes in life, God puts you in a position where you have no choice but rest & that’s where I am for the next eight weeks.  On Monday morning, I got up to let our baby out to do her business & didn’t realize that she did her business in the hallway.  I realized it when my left leg slipped out from underneath me & I did the splits & landed on my right kneecap.  It made a loud pop & the pain shot through my whole leg.

I asked my daughter to get her dad out of bed to come help me.  Once I got up, I called the clinic where we go & got an appointment to see the dr.  When we got there, he stuck a needle in my kneecap to see if he could drain any blood out of there.  No success at that. 

He sent me for an x-ray & the lady doing the x-ray told me that I needed to go back to the dr. for a follow-up & asked me to wait for the films.  When she came back, she handed me the films & told me that I had broken my patella & needed to be seen by an orthopedic surgeon right away.

Once back at the dr., he made an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon that my husband had just seen for his broken shoulder!  We went on Tuesday morning & prayed before we went that I would not need surgery & that it would heal with a brace.  The dr. examined the x-rays & my knee  said that I would not need surgery & he would be putting me in a leg immobilizer for 8 weeks & see me in two weeks for a second x-ray to see how it was doing.  He said that the crack was right at 3 cm & he does surgery if the break if over 3 cm.  We were so relieved!  He also said I couldn’t go anywhere for the time being and needed to be on bed rest.

Another blessing is that I have such a flexible boss, I am able to do all my work from home on m laptop.  He will either bring my work to me or I can have one of our daughters go get my work & bring it to me, it is such a blessing!

We came home & put my leg up & took some pain medication.  This isn’t very handy at all for any of us!!!  But, amazingly, our oldest daughter just finished her year of college & is not working, so she is able to take care of me, my youngest daughter will finish up her first year of college & be home next week.  My mother in law said she would be able to come out in a few weeks to help us too. 

Once word has gotten out, people from our church family have come by with fresh fruit, books to read, dvd’s to watch & flowers! I needed a shower chair & our friends had one in their garage, so they brought it last night.  What a blessing to be able to take a shower without worrying about falling down! 

We never know why things happen to us, but I do know that there is a reason for my being down for possibly eight weeks.  Even though I’m not happy about the situation, I am not going to complain about my plight, things could be so much worst!  To take a fall like that on a tile floor & only have broken a kneecap is a miracle in itself.  The fact that our daughters are both finished with their first year of college & now able to step up & do everything around here is another miracle.  Our dear friends have everything we need to accomplish the eight week recovery period & are coming out of the woodwork to help us.  It amazes me.

So even in the middle of a broken kneecap, God is teaching me to wait on Him & teaching our family how to extend grace to one another through helplessness, which I am learning is not going to kill me!!!  I have ordered a couple of great books about the Gospel that I will have time to read now.  I have recently discovered Elyse Fitzpatrick, Gloria Furhman & Keri Folmar & am enjoying reading these books about the Gospel in my every day life.  I also bought a new cook book called, The Smitten Kitchen, which I am dying to try her new recipes!  That will have to wait, or I can have my daughters try them our for us. 

God is so good to us & wise & will work this for my good even though it is unhandy as all get out for me, I am not going to grumble & complain, God is teaching all of us to depend on Him for everything in a completely different way than I would have thought!  What do I know??? LOL!

Thirty-two years ago today I gave birth to my first baby, a daughter.  Robin Nicole was born at 7:32 a.m. on June 1.  She weighed 7 lbs. 11. ozs & measured 19 inches long.  She was stillborn. 

I was 21 years old & had no family around for the birth.  My husband & I had a strong church family in Florida where we were living at the time.  There were some wonderful Godly southern women who came and took me under their wing during the initial shock of losing her.

We were so young & had no idea what to do.  We hadn’t even taken a La Maze class yet.  I went into labor early in the morning & we went to the hospital at 3:30 a.m.  So imagine my shock when the doctor came in at 7:00 a.m. & informed us that when we arrived at the hospital, they were not able to detect a heart beat for her ever.  I was so shocked, angry, confused, hurt & my mind was reeling.  I didn’t understand why they didn’t tell me when I got to the hospital that they suspected she was already dead. 

When they delivered her, the umbilical cord was wrapped around her waist three times & apparently strangled her during the delivery.  The doctor brought her to us after they cleaned her up & I got to hold her, we unwrapped her to count her fingers & toes & check her from head to toe  She looked normal, nothing out of place. 

When things like this happen, it’s normal to wonder why God would allow this to happen to us, but I have learned that there are questions we don’t get to ask God, we don’t ask Him why He allows anything good to happen to us, so why do we automatically assume He is to blame when bad things happen to us?  My husband & I were young & involved in a good church, so we did get on with our lives. 

We found out later that year that we were expecting another baby.  While we were thrilled to be having another baby, you get nervous about this precious gift that we have no control over!!  I was trying not to be nervous during this pregnancy, but I was scared to death that we would lose this baby as well.  I even thought that I had done something wrong during the pregnancy to cause her to die.

I have learned so much about my walk with God since that day, I no longer take anyone’s life for granted, children are a blessing from the Lord but we do have to say goodbye to them sometimes.  I am so thankful to know that I will see my Robin Nicole again someday, she has been in heaven for 32 years, it doesn’t even seem possible!

We never know what will happen to us during this life, but I do know that God is always good, always Sovereign, & is wise beyond my comprehension & I cannot wait to see my children someday.

So until we meet again, Robin Nicole, Happy 32nd birthday to you in heaven!  Celebrate with your little brother, Curtis & your nephew, Jaxson & the other relatives who are with you, I love you & can’t wait to meet you someday.  I know I will recognize you, you are beautiful!

Mom