Devotion for Baby Shower

I am so sad to miss out on this opportunity to get to celebrate LeAnne and the gift of this baby boy. I was asked to share a devotional and while honored, I also know my wisdom and experience pales in comparison to many ladies that are in LeAnne's life. Especially the example of her mom Judy. I am so thankful for their close relationship and friendship and the instruction that her parents and Josh's parents give to them to seek after the Lord. The is no greater accomplishment. My own parenting has been a constant learning process and with each new child I realize how little I only thought I knew. I pray for less of me and my weaknesses so that HE can fill and lead our family.

Devotional:


Live Fully in the moment. While it is easy to love a sleeping, snuggling, cooing baby. Kisses on warm fuzzy heads & velvet skin. Chubby little fingers, toes and thighs. That breathtaking love so deep that our hearts hurt as they sigh and find utter fulfillment resting on our chests. As those first hours turn into days and then weeks of lack of sleep & showers, crying and dirty diapers, hurting breasts that are barely get a break, the wishing for the next phase of babylife can set in. But that 3, 6, 9-month mark will come all too fast. The time we have to protect, instruct and influence them is short. Lord help us as moms to see thru your eye. To see. To see the gift of each day, hour and moment.


Laugh Often. My own kids antics can quickly push me over the line of sanity when I stop looking at how can this be funny? When I view questions as interruptions, when I view a tired or sick child as a kink in my day I had planned on paper. As I sit typing this up, I watch our 4th and most rambunctious, always loud child, slowly and diligently sorting and lining up his crayons in perfect order in his school box. How many moments have I robbed him and myself of joy for being annoyed that the crayons where on the floor and snapped to pick them up. I saw a wall decal just this week that said "Boy: noise covered in dirt." It made me laugh and brought a fresh breath and new retinas for me as I washed clothes covered in sand and cat poop. As I washed boots that had been filled to the brim with gravel, as I had to tell the boys to put on clean underwear, wash their hands, not to wear their socks 2 days in a row, to take the karate outside, that "no we were eating only meat for supper", that if I can smell them from more than 20 feet away from all the grease from them working on the trailer it didn't matter that it wasn't bedtime, it WAS bathtime. There is a time to laugh and oftentimes it is when we least feel like it.


Love Always. This new baby coming into the Hudson's home is going to be a tangible gift of love from God. Babies are so easy to love and overwhelm us with emotions. To love so deeply a child you have only seen for mere seconds. That we have loved since the instant the lines turned pink. From the first kick in mommas tummy. It is an echo of the Lord's heart for each of us. May we follow the Lords instructions to pursue righteousness in our own hearts as we lead our children to Him.


"The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach. Christ incarnated in the parent is the only hope of incarnating Christ in the child." - Ann Voskamp. Love produces better results. Love is Jesus's way. By His example we can see how to gently yet passionately and unselfishly love our children.


Lord thank you for the blessing of this baby boy. Not just another child, but another warrior for your Kingdom. Thank you for the gifts you have bestowed in him already. Open the eyes of the Hudson Family to help develop those gifts as you entrust him to their care. May there be plenty of love and laughter even in the days of long nights and overflowing laundry. May Elijah and Maddie take on the role of mentors to their younger sibling. Thank you for the gift of relationships and children. May we love like you. Amen.

Wounded

We each have a different message that haunts us through our lives. Satan knows us. He knows what our destiny is and he knows how to cut deep to discourage us. He won’t bring adversity and pain to us just once, and he isn't random in those attacks. If you’ll look at your hurts, there is a theme to his attacks, to make sure we get the message loud and clear. It starts with our own parents, friends and peers, strangers, and then it carries over into our marriages.

Think for a minute if you have ever had any of these thoughts towards yourself:

I’m not good enough
Someone else does it better
No one will miss me
If I were a better wife or mom or Christian I would be loved more
I feel lonely and I don’t know why
I wish I did not want to be romanced
If people knew the real me they would not love me.
I’m not worthy of being loved
Every time I open myself up I get hurt.
I don’t want to be a burden
No one ever chooses me 1st

My personal message started being memorized. “I am not enough to absolutely be head over heels in love with, to be set aside as precious and valued. If those that know me best do not love me, what is wrong with me? How can God delight in me when he knows me completely? How can I trust Him that I’m of value to Him? Am I second choice? Does He love me because He has to? Am I worth the effort?" Almost as if living in a world where I’m just waiting for everyone to grown tired and leave me.

It is so much easier to believe these statements than the truth which is that we are wonderful, beautiful, delighted in, loved, protected, and desired.

We have been identifying and praying about stepping out into our callings and to go forth. It is powerful to identify the theme of destroying messages in our lives so that we are quick to separate and recognize each individual spiritual battle we are in rather than accepting it to be truth.

Start with your current situations of hurt, then work your way backwards. What is the message that has been etched on your heart that is so hard to shake? Think about the desires of your heart. What adversity comes your way when you follow in obedience to your calling? Think about your love language. These can all be tools used to come against you.

My hearts passion has long been to encourage and uplift other women. Each time I have stepped out to lead a study or speak, that is when I feel the heat. My love language is words, and I can live off a compliment for weeks. But it is by words that I’m also deeply wounded. My attacks have been through words from friends, family, my husband, and most often myself. Those I trust the most. Satan will bring up my own flaws and failures so that I start questioning what I even have to offer other women. Choosing to back off and fly below the radar. Unnoticed. Uneffective.

Even in our failures, the Lord can use us and has a plan. Through my own flaws and trials I hope that other women will be encouraged that they are not alone. All through the scriptures God used men and women not because their perfect track record, but because of their hearts towards Him and some that only He saw potential in.

Pressure Points

And yet...another great book: A Mother's Heart by Jean Fleming.

This book has came along at perfect timing for me. When Allen and I were 1st engaged, I tried to break it off with him several times as I was pretty sure I didn't even want kids and I knew he did. I feel like I'm not one of those naturally wise mom's with wonderful insight as to how to really love and educate and deal with children, yet that seems to fallen in my lap as my full time job as now we are expecting our 5th in March and homeschooling and me wondering at times if I was suppose to be a 1 kid parent and I've mistakenly gotten someone else's assignment:)

This book has tenderly spoken to my heart. We have company coming over for supper this week and so of course the house has become my pressure point of tension. Before kids, I thought I might actually have a shot at being the next Martha Stewart. I dreamed of a home that looked like it came straight out of the pages of "Better Homes and Gardens". But what I seem to accomplish is Pillsbury cookies and decorations sitting in the attic that I have never hung or put out and a house that often times resembles a garden of chaos. I still have that innate desire to entertain and present a lovely everything-in-it's-place, type A personality home, it is just that sometimes the pressure to try to get there immediately takes over....like when we are going to have company.

After snapping at the kids for the umpteenth time to pick up something, ANYTHING! and finding myself seething from irritation, I retreated to breathe and happened to pick up the book, and read just 1 page. I am behind on my assigned reading for this book but God knew where I needed to be. One single paragraph almost strangled me with quilt and slapped me back into reality of having a home with 4 little ones there constantly, a business to run and school to be had.

"How easy to allow the pressure of company (or you could insert here any current pressure point you are dealing with) to determine my values. My guest will be here only for a few hours, but I will live with my children many years. So I've decided not to let what company thinks of my house-keeping or hostessing become more important than "walking blamelessly in my own house."

Thank you Lord for speaking to my heart and teaching me through the words of another mom. Forgive me for letting my little ones take the brunt of my harshness yesterday. Renew our spirits today to reflect a love like yours.

In His Image

God shows Himself in both the masculine qualities we find in men and the feminine qualities we find in women. What is it that we women reveal about who God is? Women are relational. If you want to know how someone is doing you don't ask the man, you ask the woman. We are the ones who dive in and ask those questions, that my husband accuses me of being too personal and invading sometimes. Which I'm sure he sees it that way, most women view it as truly caring beyond that, "how are you?" courtesy question.

The last couple of years have brought many changes for our household. We went from homeschool 2 girls to adding a boy to the mix. A little one that went from baby to full throttle boy toddler. I took on managing the office full time from home for my husbands business. We moved twice. All of that takes a lot of focus to detail. It was exhausting. I am organized to a point, because I have to be. But this is not my desire. I enjoy leadership, but that is because it gives me an opportunity to serve others, not because I'm the best manager. I LOVE spending time with women. I try my hardest to follow up and encourage and continually pray for areas of their lives I know they are struggling.

I had came to a point where I viewed this as a weakness, as if it made me lazy that I was inclined to choose a relationship building afternoon with some phone calls or emails that were pressing on my heart vs mopping the floor. I have come to accept that this is a part of God Himself. He is a relational God. I was so thankful to be reminded to have a Mary heart in a Martha world. I still have to find that balance because my husband is not a relational creature and it is important to have the main rooms picked up and a hot meal on the table, which I enjoy honoring him with. I have given myself some grace and ask for wisdom that the Lord will use me where He may and to help me be a reflection of Him and how much He cares for others. And on this journey to echo more of Him, I'm sure I'll continue to fail many.

We as women often define ourselves by the relationship of our lives with our spouse, children, family members. God yearns for a relationship with us as well. He is a jealous God. He desires our hearts to desire Him. We are tenderhearted, we are inviting, we are hospitable, tender, merciful and at the same time fiercely devoted. God is all these things too. If everyone is created in His image, what is it we can discover about Him in each person we meet?

Obedience

I am reading a wonderful little diddy of a book called "The Homeschool Journey". So far the first several chapters have been more for me as a person than anything about homeschooling. Talking about integrity, servant hood, humility and obedience. Obedience is nothing new for any parent, but I can always learn from others. I used to think that self-control, or the lack of, was at the core of most of my problems I bring on myself. But the author challenged me to see it as a slave to self, full of pride. Disobedience to the will of God. That cuts deep. It is honestly so much easier to say I had lost self control and over ate than it is to admit that I committed gluttony and disobeyed God's will for my body.

Jesus in the garden was tore between his flesh and his will and his Father's will. "If there is any way this cup can pass, if there is any way You can get me out of this, do it!" "Nevertheless not My will but Thine be done." And He prayed it not just once, but 3 times. - (That's a summary:) Matthew 26:39-44 So the victory that took place on the cross was because of Christ choosing to serve and have ultimate obedience.

So it goes with letting our children disobey. It is never the easy thing to stop and correct our kids, or at least for me it's not. I do not like disciplining them. I do not like taking things away and seeing their sad little faces. I'm the mom, isn't it my job to love and protect them to the ends of the earth? I often fear I look like a hypocrite with my own shortcomings as I am still striving to have my life reflect more of Christ's characteristics. This has been my own arch enemy in doubting if I even have a right to correct the kids at time.

I have often gained their obedience with bribes, or asked each individual child to do the chores they are already good at or enjoy. But this is for my own comfort level, so that there is no butting of heads. But there is also no true uncomfortableness to reach their hearts to become genuine servers and die to their own self will and build their obedience muscles.

My desire is not that my kids help keep a clean home, but that they have joyful hearts when asked to serve in our home. The very heart of servant hood and obedience is humility. A quality that will be seen in the way we live our lives.

It is only by God's grace with me that I can learn to to apologize to the kids when I am disobedient. I am slowly growing more confident and keeping the end in sight as we fall and get back up to run the race we are called to finish. I pray that I will be a better example to my children to teach by my walk rather than by my talk.

Christ is intentional

There are so many things around us in life that appear to be "bad". So many tragedies, events, hurts and failures that hit us hard, and cut to the heart. Things that feel like they are a punishment, or maybe God had forgotten about us. No matter how our human minds might conceive such events and even when burdens feel like more than we can bear, we can hold fast to the truth that Christ is intentional.

Everything that comes our way has a purpose for our own good. Whether it is to grow in character, empathy, humbleness or for us to come back to our Father's feet. Even in the death of Lazarus, a friend that Christ loved and wept over. There was no mistake. While it pained Christ to hear of his death and know the hurt the family faced, in this event He was able to raise the dead. He took something so sad and devastating and healed that hurt like no one else was able to. He was able to convert those who did not believe. Convince those who were bordering and saw the miracle. And deepen the faith of his disciples, the very men that lived and ate with the Son of God.

We watched a documentary on the History Channel about the Black Blizzards of the dust bowl. One man had attached a wire from the barn to the house so that if he was caught in the barn when the storm came that he could close his eyes and the wire would lead him to safety. I pray that when facing a hardship of any kind, that we will reach out and grab that wire of prayer that will lead us to the Father. He already knows the answers and He can make good what the enemy has intended for destruction.

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

I can still remember sitting in the back yard and plucking the petals off the Black-Eyed Susan playing this Russian Roulette with love over a childhood crush. I cannot recall how many flowers fell victim that day to my hopes of winning the answer I longed for. I was so young and so innocent to believe that love was held in the number of petals and my ability to start with the correct one.

As I aged I no longer played the game with the flower petals, but I still played the game in my head. With each heart break I faced, either letting my parents down, a friend that betrayed, or a relationship that ended badly or I had lost their affection; it grew harder to deeply trust and know whether the relationships I were in were safe for the long run. Did they love me, did they love me not?

And now as I can almost touch being 40 years old I see that I play this same game with my Lord. It is hard not too. The style of love that most of us have experienced is based on performance. Most of our parents, while certainly not all, have loved us unconditionally. But even with my own children, I may love, but my approval or lack of often shows because of their actions. This is life in this life.

I teach a Bible study, He loves me. I fail and yell at the kids, He loves me not. We give a gift to someone in need, He loves me. I gossip, He loves me not. You can't foster a deep trusting relationship with someone who is always checking your performance to make sure it adequate enough to merit their friendship.

What I didn't realize is that I was reading The Scriptures starting with the same view point of God only having the same capabilities in relationships as the ones I was accustomed to. From the very beginning it has been about His love for us. In the Garden with Adam and Eve, God could have hidden the trees of life and knowledge in some remote corner of the world. He could have stepped in and stopped Eve from that 1st bite. But He didn't. God allows us to choose and fail because it allows us to see the lack of our own wisdom and and seek to put our trust in Him. Only then do our greatest failures make it worth the pain when it turns us back to
Him.

G0d raised the bar so high that I'm not capable of jumping it on my own. The purpose of the cross was not to fill some need in God at the expense of His son, but to satisfy a need in us at His expense. This is where I come to the end of me. And as a wise lady said, it is a great place to be.

And There Was Evening and There Was Morning

Why did God say it that way? I had personally always thought of the evening as the end to the day. Time to unwind and reflect. Some days to cry and just breathe. Sometimes to just fall in bed spent or veg out in front of the TV. However, it appears that God designed our days to begin in the evening. Why would He do that? Why does it matter?

I have heard it said "we don't get up on the wrong side of the bed, we go to bed on the wrong side." Quilty as charged. I can survive on less sleep than 8 hours and feel good and so I push the limit, to 7, 6, sometimes 5 hours or less if there is a lot to do. But that sets the mood for me getting grumpy and tired and not thinking clearly the next day. But if I know what I've got going on, do my prep work, have my game plan, think over my goals, go to bed at a decent hour so I can get up and started on time, the next day always seems to go smoother. But I'm not the quickest student and haven't been 100% consistent with this.

Another challenge with this IBLP study was to go to bed meditating on the scripture, praying for wisdom for areas of concern and repenting for a clean heart so that you would have a clean head as you laid in upon your pillow.

Why would it make a difference? Psalms 16:7 tells us, "I will bless the LORD, who hath given me counsel: my reins also instruct me in the night seasons." God can talk with us and give us insight and direct us even in our dreams. Maybe because this is when we are actually quiet enough to listen. When we meditate on His word, we gain wisdom and just as Prov 8:12 says, "I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions." So if you need a solution to a problem, repent, pray about it before bed and truly contemplate the scriptures. See if you don't awake with an answer or idea.

Psalms 119:130 "The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple." The word of God brings light to darkness. It is a path unto our feet. The more we read the more we understand. The more we focus on it the more we comprehend. God Himself in Spirit can teach us.

I pray you have a great day tomorrow by having a great night tonight.

Flowers or weeds

I was talking with my friend and mentor this morning. She was sharing about her garden. She has added a fountain, has flowers planted, a garden growing, a sitting area there to enjoy and admire the fruits of her labor. As I was on the phone with her I walked outside to sit and look at my own yard. Now remember that I did attend college for horticulture/floriculture. However, my yard looked as if an abandon home had it's yard mowed. My rose garden is completely overran with weeds, the English Ivy has taken over the fence and all the bushes that landscape the front porch, the birdseed feeder is gone, the naked ladies, iris' and tulips are not blooming. It is really quite a sad sight. My husband is wonderful at making sure our yard is mowed and the edges trimmed so that we aren't fined for having a pasture in town. I am not committed to following through with the little extras that turn our yard from just serving a purpose to being a delight to the senses.


I have no natural gifting in the area of gardening. And since I have accepted that I have allowed this to be an excuse for how our yard appears. I keep hoping one of our neighbors will nominate us for some HGTV special for someone who needs help, but so far neither Ty Pennington or any of his costars have rang the doorbell.


In Psalms 44:1 the writer says that he knows of God because his ears have heard about all God has done for his father. As I posted about faithbooking last week, I realized that what started out to be something tangible for me to remember and see God's works in my life, it will be equally important for my kids to be able to look through and see also. How will my children grow to know Him unless I'm talking about Him? How will my children grow to love Him unless they see us love Him and see the love He has for us? It is my responsibility to tend to the hearts of my own children so that they bear the fruits of the Spirit. Left to themselves they will develop just as my yard has. They might have the appearance of a fresh cut but there is nothing more that they are growing. The areas in their hearts that with pruning could produce beautiful flowers and delicious fruits to offer others, may eventually be choked with weeds from lack of proper feeding.


I issued a challenge last week to find 5 things a day to be thankful for, I'm going to put a little twist on that challenge. In addition to those 5 things, find one thing each day in which God showed Himself real to you that day. No matter how big or small.

For example: I was mad at my husband and was going to leave without a note just to prove my point and give him a little scare even if it was just to WalMart for a couple of hours. My van which has had no problems before, would start and then die after a second or two not allowing me to get anywhere. It eventually made it to the middle of the drive and I left it parked there. Allen got home, I let him know the van was broke. He got in, started it and drove around the block and it has been fine every since. I knew at the time it was childish behavior, but to be honest I really didn't care. God allowed me time to cool off without doing anything stupid to cause more conflict.

Many blessings to you this day as you tend your own little gardens.