My Cup Overflows. What it means to be truly thankful

Reposted by request

So comes the time of year where we endeavor to reminisce about what the Lord has done for us this last year. We think about the blessings He has laid upon us. As King David laid awake in bed at night, he remembered and recounted the goodness of the Lord in his life:

 On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Psalm 63:6 

What a wonderful thing to do- to meditate on His faithfulness, His goodness. And a wonderful thing to teach our children to do as well. Not only at night in our beds, but all the day long. (Deut 6:6) In our family we do not celebrate hallow33n or the controversial "harvest parties" that coincide with Oct 31st. If Christian families wanted to celebrate the harvest of the Lord or play dress-up, why on THAT night when there are 364 others? I am not really asking anyone that question, I know that if they really are honest with themselves and God, they will know the answer. But I digress...

However, we DO spend a great deal of time in October and November preparing our hearts for the coming King, which we celebrate in December. Much time is spent giving thanks, reflection and in praise before December.

This year (2012) in particular, we have a long list of thanks and praise. I personally just had a near miss with death and will be with my family here on earth longer. A couple months ago, my grandmother gave her life to Christ only 3 days before she died. My husband has had a major financial breakthrough at work last week and our list of praises goes on.
Two days ago, I was literally laying in my bed as King David did. I was alone and thinking in the dark and suddenly became overwhelmed at how thankful I am that the Lord has spared my life to stay and serve my immediate family longer. In that moment, I had no thought for myself whatsoever, after all I would have been in Heaven. Nothing bad about Heaven, folks! No loss for me to go- only gain. BUT... my only thoughts were of how my immediate family needed me and I was truly humbled right then and there. Humbled by the honor to be reserved here to continue to serve them.
It was a God moment.
A moment like that is hard to really convey to another person the depths... or rather how deep and wide the implications and understanding you had in that tiny instant. True revelation, I guess you could say. In any case and however you might say, I have been made keenly aware once again how
not even a day is guaranteed to us;
how good through and through the Lord is;
my conviction to press on toward the mark has been rekindled
and also, interestingly and unexpectedly, I saw myself in the mirror in this last couple weeks. I was disappointed in a few things, but I was surprised at how clear and unpolluted my motives were in the rest of my "closet" when the Lord shone His light in there. Maybe that was an additional gift from God. How could that be a gift? Reason why is that, honestly, I doubt myself and my personal walk a lot. I always wonder in the back of my mind somewhere, "Am I really desiring what the Lord wants? Am I selfish in these ambitions? Is my heart truly running after Him?" He has eased my fears of this, at least for now, and at the same time He gently showed me my weak areas to work on. What a good Father He is. Makes me love Him all the more.

Clearly I have a lot to be thankful for. I know you do too. Won't you make these two months special and tell God how much you love and appreciate Him? Sort of like a romantic anniversary you may have with your husband. Love on Him!

originally posted 10-12-2012

A Passionate Christian Marriage: How To Have It & Keep It

A Passionate Marriage: How To Have It and Keep It

When we first become engaged to the woman or man of our dreams, we envision a certain amount of perfection that will follow in our marriage. We see our life filled with smiles, laughter, passionate kisses, maybe some children. We don’t dare imagine life without a few little bumps in the road, because after all we are trying to be honest with ourselves.
What happens after we say “I Do” is where the rubber meets the road. All of our hopes and dreams we have separately, jointly and even unspoken ones… all join together. The brightness of a newly married life and romantic adventure wears off a bit. After years it may fade away completely.

 Why would this happen? Why is it accepted as part of the way things are when you get married? As Christians, we should immediately reject that lie. We should understand that marriage is a life long romance that requires us to be vigilant to guard it and our hearts. The enemy of our souls is seeking to kill and destroy and our marriage. Christian Marriage, tops his list of things to destroy. There are a lot of reasons why he does this. Mainly because marriage is holy before God and he hates everything called holy. Another big reason is that when we are married before the Lord, we are blessed, strong and bonded in unity. Literally that must make the devil’s skin crawl.

When we remember all these things, we should stand a bit taller and be ever more committed to protect and strengthen our relationship with our husband or wife. We know that satan prowls about like a hungry lion and breaking a godly marriage is pretty delicious to him.
So, how can we strengthen and protect our marriage from that?

It takes a hard and focused stand on the issue. We must eliminate everything, yes every thing, that comes between the husband and wife relationship. If our marriage is full of bickering there is a struggle for power in the marriage. That will take some serious denying of your flesh and giving God control. If we are spending too much time or too much money on “things” or “hobbies” then cut that out too. Sensual movies, sensual books, victorias secret (forms of porn!) have no place in your marriage. Ever. Don’t fool yourself if you think you are not affected by it. Your eyes & heart should only be for your sweetie. God’s word is clear on the matter.

Our children, according to scripture, are NOT ahead of our spouse or the Lord.
The Biblical order to your priorities is:
1. God
2. Husband/Wife
3. Ourselves
4. Children
5. Other family, Friends, Serving in Church
6. Exterior world

When we are at worship practice 3 nights a week, playing cards or out with friends frequently, shopping for kicks, on the net chatting or facebooking, texting, at soccer practice & games, pta meetings, television, netflix and so on… we are spending way too much time NOT being married or a family. We have our priorities out of whack.

It then makes sense that we will have a cascading failure of our marriage and family!

If we take the time to prioritize our walk- God first, Our husband or wife second- then our life will shift back into proper focus. No longer will chaos, busyness, fighting, power struggles, passive aggressive remarks and behavior, sexual problems in the bedroom and our children’s behavior plague us. All of these things do straighten out if we genuinely turn all of this over to the Lord.

On the subject of our bedrooms, it is a taboo topic for some reason in the Church. Secret sin abounds in this area. It is not a place to manipulate, coerce or avoid and make excuses. The marriage bed is pure and holy and good and safe. A place of trust and intimacy. God says so in Song Of Solomon, “Drink deeply!” Passion and romance are very good and He wants us all to have it. When we begin to treat our husband or wife like they are a treasure to us, with honor, with adoration, we will see a change. Make an diligent effort and do it regularly. Progress may be slow at first, but keep praying and keep up the good work.
Your marriage is worth it. Every little step counts. If you need help, a fantastic book “The Love Dare” is available at the link here.



 

The Great Purge... De-Crappification 2013: Part 1 (Parts 1 - 6)

Here it is. 

My honest, open, nitty gritty journey chronicled here on my blog for all to see.
I touched on it a bit in the last post, where I ranted about crappy-ness, clutter, time wasters, new techy gadgets and Facebook. Where I urged all of you out there in the world to also say, "Enough is enough!" 

I don't want a minimalist lifestyle or some new agey zen or feng shui jazz going on. That stuff is not from the Lord.  I want less. Less stuff, less mess, less belongings.
If my life is full of busyness, too much activity, too much belongings, too much drama... then I am not genuinely free to serve the Lord and I am too self concerned. If I am honest with myself then I know that to be true.

Did I already freak you out? 

Then I gotta tell you this: 
When you are purging, you do a lot of thinking. You think about why you have held this stuff and how much money and time has been wasted on it. You think about a lot of things.

Today I am decluttering and purging again. I think I am doing it every day except Sunday. It is nice to have only 1/4 of the toys we had a couple months ago and to have less crap in general. When I have ditched a lot of stuff out of a drawer or cabinet, I have taken the extra time to wipe it down with cleaner. That extra step is not really decluttering and minimizing my belongings, but it felt good to have it done. No one “saw” the mess ...or sees that it is now clean... but it looks clean to me because I know I just cleaned it. Hah! Kinda funny. 

I have been trying this last 2 years to get a hold of my clutter problem and I literally have a spotless house compared to what I used to have-- but I know what normal standards are and I still have a long way to go. One of the big motivators for me is that whatever our future home on a farm will be, it is sure to be a whole lot smaller than we have now. Probably without a garage to stuff things into also. The other big motivator is that I keep hearing over and over that less stuff means less stress and less cleaning and more of the "appearance" of clean. I seriously would like that instead of freaking out all the time that my house is a disaster. 

EDITED TO ADD all Parts of the adventure:
Getting Rid Of Crap For Real
Part #2
Part #3
Part #4
Part #5
Part #6
 

Getting Rid Of Crap... for real

My project over the last couple years has been to reduce our belongings. You might call it minimalism. I call it de-crapping. Six people in one home-- wow, just wow.
Over the last 3 months, I have resolved to get really SERIOUS about it. It's working. My goal now is to ditch 1/3 of our stuff by summer. I'm having a lot of fun but it is h a r d.

I already hate new fancy touch phones/iPads/tablets and foofoo gadgets and Facebook and all that junk. I quit FB about 2 years ago, the drama and privacy issues drove me batty. It wastes time too. So when I say I hate that stuff, I mean it. I do not partake, as it were. 

I watch almost everyone at stores and malls walking around texting, head bent down as they walk around. Nearly every person. Start watching for yourself. Couples sitting together at restaurants both lost in their own phone on FB or texting or whatever... who really knows but them? So much for having any relationship or actually communicating face to face. (Hey, lady! Your husband is sitting right there! You know... the guy you've been facebooking and texting all day?) Maybe you've heard of texters walking in front of cars?  

I see all of this as related to becoming less crappy. 
ELIMINATE the crap, folks. 
The air is cleaner and clearer without your dang foofoo phone. 
You LIFE is cleaner and clearer without it. 
Ditch it.

Here is a great and hilarious related post you may enjoy by J Smith.

The Short, 16-Step Guide to Getting Rid of Your Crap

Yay, it’s Friday! Time to head home and relax after a week of hard work..

1. Enter the front door of your home. Toss off your shoes. Notice, lying beneath, a pair of boots you have worn only once. Shrug.

2. Turn on the television and sit on your Ikea couch. Attempt to relax. Awaken 20 minutes later, realizing that you’ve been passively flipping through channels. Turn off the TV, remove the batteries from your remote. Toss them in your Blendtec blender. Stop yourself moments away from doing something drastic.

3. Briefly fondle the iPhone in your pocket. Stop yourself, realizing you were about to do the exact same thing with Reddit as you just did with TV. Call and cancel your data plan in the nick of time.

4. Begin to wonder what people did before television and internet access. Observe the room around you, looking over the unread books and unwatched DVDs lining your dusty shelves. Consider shopping, then picture the unworn clothes occupying your cavernous walk-in closet.

5. Realize your imagination has turned all black and grey.

6. Suddenly recognize that you haven’t used your “spare” room… ever. Do the math and realize said room is costing you five or six hours of work per month. Take out a piece of paper and compare it to that trip to Japan you’ve been meaning to take. Stare at the math in disbelief. Stuff the paper in your mouth and begin to chew.

7. Realize that the brief emotional rush that accompanied the purchase of each item in your home is now gone, leaving only the object itself in its most basic, uninteresting form. The gorgeous, pastel designer couch has become simply a chair. A beautiful glass buffet is transformed into a mere table. A set of immaculate handmade dishes has aged into nothing but a bunch of plates. Your goose down duvet is actually just a blanket. Wince.

8. Glance down at your groceries and realize that the Doritos, Lay’s, and Ruffles you purchased are all just coloured corn and potatoes.

9. Open your credit card bill. Wide-eyed, discover how often you’ve confused shopping with actual extra-curricular activities. Consider joining a monastery.

10. Remember that time you went over to a party in a friend’s pseudo-abandoned loft. Recall the roommates, the self-made art and photos on the walls, the obscenely cheap rent, and the embraced simplicity.

11. Begin to make a quick list of the top 10 things you own in terms of how much they cost. With horror, make a second list of the top 10 things that make you happy. Sense the creeping dread as you realize there is no overlap between the two at all. Shudder in terror.

12. Decide to have a packing party like your friend suggested one time. Take the old sheets you never used from Crate & Barrel. Cover all your stuff with them. Endeavor not to uncover it unless you decide you need to use it. Realize suddenly that you would never use anything at all because you are never actually home.

13. Remember a time in childhood when you were more excited by ideas, love, travel, and people than by anything else. Realize that you have, somehow, bought into a new religion, and that malls, from the inside, look exactly like cathedrals.

14. Consider starting a fire.

15. Consider that, perhaps, you are more than just your stuff. Begin to take a long walk. Breathe.

16. Begin to relax. Give yourself the freedom to begin to dream again.

The Great Purge... De-Crappification 2013: Part 6

All of this time I have been purging and tossing and recycling, I have also been keeping an eye on a section of my garage that has been harboring a potential money maker for my family. The stacks of boxes and odd shaped things that would not quite fit into boxes were neatly and patiently waiting for me to get around to handling them. 

Most of it, about 90%, is the stuff that did not sell at our unbelievably massive garage sale last summer. Okay, I know what you're thinking. No, it is not crap that is not fit for a thrift store. We don't try to yard sale or donate any junk.. that stuff is in the trash where it belongs. What actually happened was that after our very successful money making sale (yay!!!), we sorted the stuff out that simply were worth way too much to just donate. Most of it was boutique clothes that yard salers won't buy because they are looking to spend 50 cents on a Hanna Andersson dress or "high end" wooden toys and so on. (Umm no thank you, I'm not a fool.) The donate stuff went in several van loads to the donation drop. The boutique type high end stuff went into my special stack to await the local consignment sale. As I have been purging my home, I have added the top drawer type stuff to the stack.

Every decent size town has a consignor sale. At the very least, a consignment store. We have a few around these parts. Do a quick search on the net for your area. Most sales, you will find, charge the consignors 35% of their take plus a "building rental & advertising" fee. The one I chose only takes 30% and has a $12 fee. Higher than I prefer, but better than other sales AND the sheer number of customers looking for exactly the kind of stuff I have will be there, with cash in hand. People wait in long lines to get in.


If you want to do something like this, there are some things that might help you decide if you have the potential for making your time worth it.Your items for sale must not be recalled or have noticeable wear or stains, of course. The pricing can be the easiest part. The hanging your items as per the rules and the cataloguing/printing/hanging tags is the real pain in the hiney. Not to mention, time sucker and living room messer upper. Then you must bring all your goodies in, usually at a pre-arranged appointment. They will check your stuff to make sure it is acceptable. (The check in gals told me usually 25% of the items submitted are rejected. I only went home with 7 or 8 things, so they kept making comments on how nice my stuff was. Made me feel good!) The appointment times fill up as soon as the sale gets posted pretty much, so register that part asap after you agree to their terms.

All told, I spent three days preparing for this sale. When I say three days, I mean 7ish am to 7 or 8pm. My item count was around 325. That's twenty "banana" boxes full of clothes on hangers and toys. My dollar amount if everything sold and I did not have to pay any fees was $1100. While the sale is going, you can monitor the progress of your items being sold online at the end of each day. Kind of a nice feature. I'm not sure how many consignment sales can do that.

Now that the sale is over, I am happy to report I sold 265 of my items! Yay! All of my toys sold. Wow! Now I just wait for my check to come in the mail a couple weeks from now. 

BONUS! My house has a lot less stuff in it and I am "free" of it. Not to mention, I made some serious money off of it!

I will keep purging my home and continuing this project of de-crapping. I have far exceeded my goal of getting rid of 30% of our stuff. I am very pleased with myself. It's a good thing for me and my family and... my house is cleaner.

The Great Purge... De-Crappification 2013: Part 5

Americans tend to accrue crap.

How many pairs of shoes do you really need? Isn't 10 coffee mugs a bit much? I believe 5 farming/work shirts is plenty. Do you actually need your old boyscout uniform or 4 boxes of Christmas stuff? Ticket stubs? 10 pictures on a shelf? More than one toothbrush? Or the broken down car in the yard that will never get fixed? Or broken anything, for that matter?

You need a neutral eye when assessing whether your things are crap or wise possessions. 

Keep the emotions out of it. Let it go. 

Sometimes I need to pray and ask the Lord to help me do this. I still struggle on some days.

My goal is to ditch 1/3 of our stuff.

If you can't downsize by a third, go for 1 out of every 10 things. It's a start. You will be surprised at what you can get done.

As they say...
There is power, freedom and meaning to be had if you live a life with less stuff and less attachment to the stuff. Fewer possessions means less consumption, less damage to the planet, less cost, less maintaining, less cleaning and more time, money, fun, freedom and fulfillment.

Less stress.
It's freeing.

Some tips that help are to start in one room and pick a corner and work clockwise around the room.
Get 4 boxes to keep with you:
Recycle, Trash, Give Away, Yard Sale/Craigslist.

Resolve to spend at least 15 minutes a day doing this. Set a timer and stop at the ding. Some people will do 15 or 30 minute increments more than once a day.

If that overwhelms you-
Try to make it a goal to get rid of a bag a day. Even if it is just a little grocery size bag. Or you could go for a trash bag a week.

EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS. It adds up fast.

Going back into rooms and areas and forcing myself to re-examine belongings to hopefully purge has been fairly productive.

** Here is some of what I have been up to:

·       Purging toys, toys and more toys until all we have is building toys (Kinex, Legos, Zoobs) and pretend play toys that encourage children to play together like Melissa & Doug wooden food, little animals & lizards, small wooden Melissa & Doug doll house, Playmobil farm set, a few babydolls, Matchbox/Hotwheels cars.

Result? Happier kids. Happier mom. Cleaner house.

·       I tackled our "junk" cabinet and "junk drawer". These were a procrastinator's nightmare.
Old cell phone chargers, super glue, CDs, tools and all kinds of stuff. Tools I use to put new batteries in stuff or do quick household fixes are now in a special plastic clip-lid box and labeled. Batteries are in their own tin and labeled.
DONE.

·      Also did our front entry closet. With six people it gets so bad. (If I can get my husband to part with at least half of his hats, we'll be rolling.) Several adult coats, extra gloves, children coats and various other items are gone now.

·       7 more plastic bins/totes from the garage emptied.

·      6 boxes from garage done. One of which was really tough due to it being desk type papers and so sorting it was a pain.

·       Highschool yearbooks, memorabilia, all memory stuff from when I was a child, baby memory stuff from my own children. Kept 1 baby blanket for each child. Kept all photos.

·       A hard one has been all love letters and cards kept over the years. My husband is a very sweet, loving man and is not afraid to tell me what I mean to him. I love that! The result is I have a lot of his declarations in boxes and drawers. Now these are systematically being recycled when I find a stash of them. I make sure to reread them before getting rid of them. The tangle I had with it all is that I felt some guilt about letting them go, like there was some coldness in it or rejection of the love my husband had and has for me. I realized that I am not being fair to myself, because I am completely confident in my marriage, my love for my husband and his love for me. Keeping all those Valentines, Birthday, Anniversary, Mother’s Day cards letters and so on is excessive, especially when you’ve been married as long as I have. My husband is still keeping the ones from me.

·       Snow clothes gone through. Purged 3 outgrown snow-bibs, snow gloves and snow hats. Everything else is still good to keep and not excessive.

·      1 teen chair "confiscated" and going to thriftstore donation.

·      More CDs, big people books, clothes, etc going too. Not sure how many boxes.

·       At one point I had counted 180 children’s books but I am way past that now because the 180 books were in 6 boxes and I have purged over 11 boxes of books. That’s a lot of books, folks.

·      First Aid duffle bag has been sorted and condensed for easier use. Medicine cabinet cleaned out.

·       Shoes for the kids checked for sizes. Husband let go of some shoes.
 
·      Husband put up hooks on garage wall for all our backpacks.  

·       Kid “dress up” clothes purged completely (wow!) except for 1 girl princess dress with play purse and gloves, 1 boy knight outfit and 1 older boy Davy Crocket jacket and coon cap. Kept all the swords, play pistols.

·       Toys all re-decluttered. Big step was purging all the LeapFrog LeapPad books and cartridges and the LeapPad units and the carrying cases. Lots of money invested there but it was time to let go.

The Great Purge... De-Crappification 2013: Part 4

I inventoried my deep freezer with my sweet husband's help.

We had to organize it and purging food that had gone bad in order to make an inventory sheet. It was a good day for my chickens. They got some yummy freezer burned food.

My inventory is a low tech list system where on graph paper I have the item named and then under it I have used a highlighter to fill in the number of squares of that item I have in stock. As an item gets used out of the freezer, I draw a line through a highlighted square under the appropriate item. It's easy to add new squares to with a highlighter pen if I buy more. Adding new squares is easy at least for a while and then I will need to make a new sheet. It does not have to look beautiful. Now a clipboard sits on my freezer with boxes to check off as I use something out of it. It's working so far.

Every time you open your freezer, you lose all that wonderful frozen air you paid for. It costs you money.

It also adds moisture to the inside of your freezer which then freezes and brings you closer to needing to defrost. I hate defrosting my freezer.

If I could "see" what I have in my freezer without opening it and digging around, my hands would be warmer, deciding what to cook would be easier, I'd waste less energy and I probably would not over stock my freezer anymore.

I am going to make a genuine concerted effort to keep up this new inventory system. It makes sense.

The Great Purge... De-Crappification 2013: Part 3

I’ve never been a chotchky person, you know… someone who puts cutesy things on shelves that they’ve collected or photos of their family all over the walls. I have zero stuff like that. When I have received stuff like that as gifts, I am sad because I know that I will be getting rid of it as soon as I can. One time someone bought me a wooden sailboat with a scripture printed on the sail. They knew I was a Christian and walked into a Christian store and bought this “thing” for me believing in some naïve way that anything Christian would make me happy and satisfy their obligation to give a gift. Ugh.

Shouldn’t there be a rule? Don’t buy perfume, books, music, clothing or collectibles for someone unless they specifically ASK for it? But I digress.

So, it’s not collectible thimbles from pancake houses around the world that I simply cannot part with. That is not my problem. Forgive me if you do that. I can’t stand that sort of thing.

My problem is the accumulation of crapitude.

One reason that has been the bane of my life- for what seems for forever- is that I have four children that are really widely spaced in ages. Not a problem, of course. The problem is that it goes girl, boy, girl, boy. Hand me downs then are then held a long time in boxes in my garage waiting for the next appropriate gender child to grow enough. After a child is done with the clothes in their size, I get rid of my non-favorites and nonessentials. The rest go into a plastic tote to store. I often ask myself why would I hold a box for so long? I could, in theory, get rid of all of it and then re-buy all of it later. I can’t bring myself to do it. The expense of it is so high in my mind!

Clearly I am not ready to cross the purge bridge with my hand me downs. Maybe soon that will change.