Tag: christianity

It begins with us!

One of my favorite quotes is by Mother Theresa;

“If you want to change the world, go home and love your family”

It’s comforted me in times when I felt like I wasn’t contributing enough to the world, my community and even in my neighborhood because my husband and I chose to have me home full time with our 4 kids.  It was never my calling, it was never my intention!  I was going to be a missionary in some exotic foreign country serving the needs of orphans and villages all across the globe.  I had a purpose and a plan and it was big, it was wide, vast and incredibly adventurous.  So when I got married and we had an instafamily within months and daycare costs just didn’t make sense next to my income, decisions were made and sacrifices were made that ultimately ruled out my personal plans and kept me home, full time and still am 16 years later.

For years I fought resentment and anger towards the unfulfilled dreams and plans I had to serve the less fortunate across the world.  I felt like my contribution was so small and completely unnoticed.  I knew it made sense for us and I knew that my sacrifices were not in vain, but I just simply could not lay these two positions down side by side on a table, analyze their value and consider them to be equal.  It was a daily struggle and I fought it hard.  Then it happened!   I woke up for my normal quiet time with God, sat down with my cup of coffee in hand and once again poured my soul bare before him screaming to understand what my purpose was and why this felt so empty and unfulfilling.  I often journal my time with God and occasionally I will receive such a strong impression on my spirit that it is truly Him that is speaking to me, pen to paper.  Sometimes the words are flying so fast that my hand can’t keep up with what I’m hearing.  God spoke to me loud and clear that morning and told me that I was on a missions trip and I was serving the lesser than and I was 100% in ministry teaching and equipping people….my people, the 4 little humans he so richly blessed me with.  My heart sank as the realization hit me like a ton of bricks and I was immediately filled with incredible joy and excitement but also the weight of what was being asked of me and the job that I had in front of me.

From that moment on, I never looked at my role or parenting in the same light.  I knew that I was on assignment and I knew that my husband and I both had some serious work on our hands to raise these people to be well rounded, honest, contributing members to society who showed respect, humility, kindness and love to any other person they came in contact with.  This has required exhausting moments of intense conversations, painful punishments, meaningful interactions, purposeful engaged time with our children.   We have made it a priority to have sit down family dinners through our week, family movie or game night once a week, both my husband and I take each of our kids on individual dates and spend one on one time with them.  We invest into our kids, we invest into their hearts, minds, souls and spirits.  We’ve said no to cable TV, and limited video games.  We have resisted the begging and pleadings for smart phones and more technology.  We pour as much healthy, pure, holy, light, lovely, joyful, fun, meaningful and inspirational information into their minds, ears and eyes.  We believe that the programming of the mind begins and ends with what we are watching and listening to and monitor that with vigor so as to keep our children sensitive, caring and compassionate humans.  I believe that is the job of every parent on this planet and I know there are a lot of you out there doing it with every fiber of your being and I’m so grateful for the sacrifices you make too!

But then I pause and take a breath and look up and notice that something is shifting in our society, something is changing and I’m finding that there are less and less of my fellow comrades in arms, fighting the same fight for our next generation and there is more and more distraction, division, disillusionment, deception and despair.  More and more parents are both working full time, grueling hours and they are exhausted…I can’t blame them, I honestly don’t know how you do it!  To manage to juggle both and do it well is quite the challenge and hardship and foundations start to crack, things start to slip, priorities start to shift and all the sudden you find that it’s easier to turn an eye, agree to their requests and shew them away for a moment of rest.  Don’t get me wrong, I have had those moments and many of them where I just wanted to cave and just give in to whatever their demands were in hopes of 10 minutes of solitude…I truly can’t imagine if this wasn’t my full-time job and I had to juggle other things as well, please don’t hear judgment!

 

But we have to have this conversation because Parkland, Florida happened and 17 people died…17 lives taken from this earth too early and far too carelessly and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about why and how and what is happening to us.  Of course I thought of my own kids who are in public school and their safety and wanting to protect them from anything like that happening to them, us and our community.  I thought of the Mother Theresa quote and then thought of my own personal sacrifices to raise up this next generation and then I thought of the slips and cracks and the foundation falling apart in our society and wondered..is this where we start?  Do we just raise up as a society of parents and say, “enough excuses!”  Do we stop blaming every dang other thing on this type of behavior and start analyzing where we fit in to the puzzle and how our lives play a key role in all of this?  Our kids are desensitized, they’ve lost their moral code, decency and value system and it’s because WE as their parents have failed them, it’s not their fault that we’ve been too busy to show them what it looks like to revere and respect life, humanity and the basic core values that have been encoded in our DNA for generations but have somehow been shoved to the recesses of our minds because it’s just easier to not uphold them then to take the time to implement them.   ALL LIFE MATTERS!!  Every human on this planet is valuable, important, purposed and planned and until we can look into the face of each other (and this includes the faces that are hiding behind screens) and recognize each others humanity and have care for one another instead of hate – evil will always win and our world will continue to crumble and fall apart.

So, I end with this thought and it takes Mother Theresa’s quote to another level for us as a society.  She says, “if you want to change the world then go home and love your family” and I say, “if you want to change the world then go home and love your family, AND the barista at Starbucks who accidentally got your drink wrong, or the guy who cut you off on your way to work, and the woman in the checkout line who gave you a glare because you have more then 15 items in the express lane, the frustrated neighbor who yelled at you for not bringing in your trash cans or the random stranger who just blew up at you on the street for no apparent reason.  It begins with us and it looks a lot like average, normal, day to day interactions that have an incredible trickle affect on the rest of humanity.  Once we raise our white flag, lay down our pride and quick to be defensive egos and make intentional decisions in our interactions with our loved ones and those we come in contact with daily is when change, REAL change will happen in society…it begins with us!  It begins with me!

Life is a river

“For he will be like a tree planted by the water, That extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit.” Jeremiah 17:8

 

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Living in Boise has a it’s perks let me tell you and one of the many in the heat of the summer time is the river!  The Boise river offers it’s cool refreshing waters to the many willing to jump on a tube, float, blow up mattress (yes I’ve seen it), flamingo (seen that one too), or really anything that can manage to stay on top of the water.

My family and I decided last Sunday to do just that very thing and grabbed our tubes, towels and some waters and we were on the river floating by 5pm.  As you enter the water you see in front of you the calmness of the river, the beauty around you and you kind of arrange your body in a relaxed, comfortable manner as you take it all in.  It’s peaceful, mesmerizing, relaxed, blissful and refreshing.  I laid there with my legs kicked up and watched other floaters pass us, kept my eye on my kiddos in their own tubes and appreciated the beauty around me.  I had been down the river before though, this wasn’t my first time and I knew something that my husband, Michael didn’t know.  There are rapids on this river and after the winter we had and how fast the river was going in the calm section, I was anticipating what was coming.

It started with a faint rushing sound in the background and I pulled my legs up and positioned myself differently knowing that the sound was the approaching rapids in front of us and uncertain as to how strong it was going to be, gripped the handles and told the kids to hold on.  There was a moment of fear as you are trusting the boat and the river to send you down the rapids the right way, facing forward and not compromise us to where we flipped over entirely and all went in different directions.  Michael had the oars and worked effortlessly in front of the boat to navigate us just in the right section of the fall so we would travel over it comfortably and easily without water coming into the boat, side skirting the rocks and boulders and not losing anyone overboard.   Despite his valiant efforts, we still managed to get drenched and a bunch of water dumped into our small little raft, but we didn’t flip over or lose anyone and I was grateful for that.  We all laughed and loosened our grip as we looked back at our milestone and watched it fade behind us and the calmness once again settled upon us and the once raging, rushing river became an oasis of stillness and relaxation.

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But not for long….the sound crept up again and we all knew what it meant and straightened our bodies, braced our hands, steadied ourselves and expectantly waited for the rapids that were swiftly approaching.  The thing about it is you aren’t exactly sure where the rapids or the falls are in the river because you are level for the most part and so you almost aren’t sure how to navigate until you are nearly on top of it and even at that point you can really just hold on to the boat and hope the boat takes you to where it needs to.

Eventually we made our way through the second one and the third one, smarter and wiser with each one we passed as we learned something that we needed to prepare ourselves for the next time we hit one.

The total time it took us was about 1 1/2 hours and then we reached the end of our destination, soaked, happy and a little proud of the small accomplishment of managing and taming the Boise river!

That night as I was drifting to sleep I distinctly heard the holy spirit whisper to me, “life is a river my love”.   I hadn’t even been thinking of the river that day, I was actually thinking about if I had locked the back door or not and was about to jump out of bed to check.  “How do you mean?”  I asked, knowing what I heard but not sure where he was going.

“You see, a river has many twists, turns and uncertainties within it.  There are many amazingly beautiful things that flank the sides of rivers and you can always see something new, different and exciting.   The calm parts of the river are the peaceful quiet parts of life.  These are the seasons of life that are more simple and you can sit back and look around, enjoy the beauty on the journey down the river and pay attention to all the things happening around you.  You lesson your grip on the boat and find yourself trusting the river more and yourself within it.  The rapids of the river represent the tribulations, trials and struggles of life.  Life will sometimes have a way of surprising you with these trials and you can find yourself on top of them uncertain of how to navigate and which way to go.  You become more aware of the boat and what direction it’s heading, how it’s navigating the rapids and you tighten your grip on the security of the raft clinching it in fear as you realize you don’t have a lot of control.  The scenery around you becomes faded and your attention is completely focused on the adversary of the rapids.

With each set of rapids in life you may assess the damage and possibly might even endured some small rips and water logged parts but you’ve learned and grown wiser through it.  With the next approaching trial you reminiscence what you learned from the previous one and you position yourself differently, maybe you sit in a different part of the boat, you rely more heavily on the boat and appreciate the need of it and you are prepared.

Unfortunately love, without the rapids of life you would never grow, you would stay stagnant and non-reliant  on the boat and may even leave the safety of the boat to try and navigate through life without it’s protection.”  ‘Papa – what does the boat represent? thoroughly engaged in this amazing gift and river analogy he was blessing me with.  “The boat represents me….I AM your protection and safety, I will navigate you through the rivers of life if you trust me, cling to me and stay focused on my protection.  You see, every time you come to a calm season in life – you loosen your grip on me a bit and become a little more trusting of the river and not of me.  You can get distracted and caught off guard if you aren’t careful to pay attention.  Remember that life is about navigating through all seasons with ME, not alone and not without your life raft.   I desire for you to enjoy the ride and I call you to live an abundant life with various seasons that will challenge you and comfort you, but the end goal is to reach the end of the river looking back with a smile on your face and maybe a little water logged but a strong sense of confidence and a feeling of, “what a ride!”

I felt like I needed to share this with anyone who needed to hear it today, what a fun and beautiful example of God, His heart and His protection for us.  How we navigate through the river of life is entirely up to us – it can be painful and hard and we can resist those rapids with all of our might, or we can embrace them, cling to the father’s protection and grab those nuggets of wisdom and growth we need for the next season of life.

Blessings to all of you and Papa loves each of you more than you can ever imagine!!

Life Interrupted

“I don’t think the way you think.  The way you work isn’t the way I work.  God’s decree.  For as the sky soars high above the earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.  Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, Doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, so will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed.  They’ll do the work I set them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them”  Isaiah 55:8-11 (MSG)

Since I started school back up in March, I’ve had to become incredibly strict with my schedule and routine.  Trying to fit everything I need and want to do with school in the mix was going to be challenging, but my type A personality and major organizational skills would make sure it would definitely happen.  Here is what my week looks like and has looked like for several months now

Monday – cleaning day!  Yes – I’m a crazy person and clean my entire, almost 3,000 square foot home in one day!  How long you say???  Oh just about 6ish hours and the family does help out, but I’d much rather have the rest of the week to take care of other stuff then spread out my cleaning through out.  I make sure though that I make time for a workout and cooking dinner in this day…oh yes – it fits!

Tuesday – Bible study day!  I decided about when I started school that I didn’t have enough chaos going on in my life so I thought I’d open up my house to a bunch of awesome women with amazing little peanuts who would destroy my newly cleaned home in 2.5 hours!  (Did I mention that re-cleaning happens Tuesday afternoon?)

Wednesday – Only day off!  But not really, because day off for me means I can do all those little things that I didn’t get to in the rest of the week.

Thursday-Saturday – SCHOOL from 9am-8pm (I’m a crazy person)

Sunday – Church in the morning and menu planning/ grocery shopping in the afternoon and yes I am that completely nutso woman in Costco you see on Sunday afternoons when you’re casually there with your family after Church to have a Polish dog and I look like a half crazed zombie that has a coffee in one hand and 5 samples in the other!

So you see every minute of my life right now is scheduled and timed perfectly to fit in every task and job I need to take care of.  I don’t really have time for interruptions and yet isn’t it so God to purposely orchestrate an interruption in our life to remind us of what’s really important!

Today is my Monday…my crazy cleaning day and out of my better judgment I made the decision to see a client this morning at 10:30 and I figured I would get to cleaning after my appointment with her.  I spent the good portion of the morning getting ready for her arrival, (I’m an Aesthetician and will work on people out of my home).  10 minutes prior to her arrival she cancelled…to say I was irate would be an understatement and I can’t say I’m proud of how I handled myself but there went 2 hours of my precious time that I would’ve been and should-be cleaning!  Michael encourages me to move on and just get going on my house responsibilities so I sit down to re-group and I very clearly hear the Lord say to me, “Offer a free facial to your neighbor, Barbara” (I changed the name for anonymity) Now – I was not feeling very excited about this suggestion because I was a little peeved at my neighbor for something and had honestly been harboring some not so great feelings.  “NO” I plainly told God…number 1. I am not happy with her right now, number 2. I am not doing anything for free and number 3. I should be cleaning!  “Invite her to come over for a free facial” God stated again.  Now listen, I have gone around the “I’m not listening to what you say” mountain with God several times and I know where it leads and so I obeyed.  I texted her thinking she’d say no and I could get off the hook and get on with my day but she instantly texted back that she could use it and has had some tragedy in her family and is feeling worn down.  I told her to head over!

When she walked in the door I immediately swept her off into my room, told her to get comfortable and I would be in to give the treatment.  I honestly thought that she needed some relaxation and so my plan was to simply give her a calming, quiet, no talking facial/massage and then whisk her away so I could finally clean my dang house!  I really didn’t feel it was my place to pry into what was going on in her personal life.  I walk back into the room and she looks at me and says, “I think we just lost power”.  And in fact, our entire neighborhood lost power which meant I couldn’t do the treatment…ok God, I’m at a loss now – what in the world are you doing???

She tells me it’s ok and she slips out of the bed and heads to the front door in which I proceed to tell her let’s do it later when power comes back on and I’m so sorry.  I hesitated but I looked at her and just said that I was sorry things weren’t well and is everything ok?  She looked up at me, her eyes completely filled up with tears and she said, no, no they’re not.  She then started sobbing and sharing that they had just gone through not 1 but 2 deaths in their family within the last month and yesterday was one of them and they came home last night from watching him pass.  At this point I’m crying and hugging her and apologizing and in that very moment I realize it….I realize why my appointment was cancelled and why Barbara was laid on my heart and why I was asked to give her a free facial and why we couldn’t do the facial…it was for this moment!  It was so I could cry with her, hug her, love on her and listen to her.  We cried together for about 5 minutes, she shared details and though I didn’t need to hear them, I think she needed to process….I listened.  We grabbed tissues and I asked her if I could pray for her.  She jumped on the opportunity, dropped her phone and grabbed my hands and then pulled me in, wrapped her arms around my body, buried her head into my chest and started sobbing.  This…this is life interrupted!  This is what it looks like when God has another agenda that is far greater, far better and far more beautiful than my mundane checklist of my day.  I prayed, I prayed hard and God used me, me of all people to pray over this beautiful person that needed God and me in that moment of her life.  I learned an important lesson today,  I need to always be available for interruptions in my day and always be ready for God to ask me to do something even if it doesn’t fit into my plans and my agenda.  Thank God I listened and I obeyed, I was richly blessed and rewarded and honored to be a part of something so much greater than myself.

Heavenly Father, thank you for today, thank you for the opportunity to be available to the hurt, the grieving and that you used a humble servant like myself to join you in your plan and agenda today.  I ask that you would always make me available and open to whatever is your will and your plans are that impact the eternal and serve a much greater purpose than my own.  In your precious sons name, Jesus..Amen!

Love to all of you,

April

Home

Home

 

Hi from Boise, Idaho!  My family and I have officially relocated ourselves from Dripping Springs, Texas!  Ironically, 2 years ago almost to the day I was staring into my oven in Kirkland, Washington getting ready to relocate to Texas.  Oh the journey I’ve been on these last 2 years and the amazing lessons I’ve learned.

It was June of 2014, I had my 2 best friends and they’re massive clan of children helping me pack up the rest of my stuff to get me out of Washington and on our way to Texas.

20140528_165739 Michael and I were good, we had been good – I’d wanted out of Seattle for so long now that I honestly couldn’t get out of there fast enough and up until this day I was beyond ready, emotionally and physically.  I was antsy for a long time in Seattle, complained about all the things I wished Seattle was but never lived up to for me.  Why couldn’t it have the sun of southern California but the beauty of the PNW??  Why did it have to be so expensive and why in the world were we living in a place on one income that cost so much?  Oh and why didn’t we make more money??  These were just a few of the things that I grumbled about and I knew that moving out of this place was going to fix everything and finally life would be greater and greener!

There I was in my kitchen cleaning the inside of my stove while I had my one friend packing my bathroom, (I still can’t find my husband’s razor), and my other friend packing my living room and it hit me…it hit me like a ton of bricks and for the first time I went into full panic mode and started sobbing hysterically.  The snotty crying that distorts your face in ways your never could if you weren’t crying.  What in the world was I doing??  This was my family, these women, these kids, this place – how do I leave it?  I felt a total lack of peace about all of it and I wanted to change my mind, I wanted to push the stop button and make it all go back to the way it was 2 months prior.  God gives his children a long leash and your playground is wide and vast with lots and lots of options!  This is a great, beautiful and wonderful things to have a father like this!  However,in that moment I wanted him to force it to all stop and control the situation…but He didn’t and He wouldn’t.   Instead, like the amazing, gracious, kind, comforting God that He is, He simply loved on me in a unique and special way in that very moment with my head in the stove.  I was listening to secular music on the radio and on came a song that I honestly can’t believe I could hear the words to over my own personal sobbing.  It was called, “Home” by; Phillip Phillips and here are the words;

Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along
Just know you’re not alone
‘Cause I’m going to make this place your home

Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Don’t pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you’re not alone
‘Cause I’m going to make this place your home

Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Don’t pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

I pulled my head out of the stove and pressed on to what I believed was going to be our forever home.  At the time, I had believed that God was telling me Texas was going to be my new home and to settle the heck down, it’ll all be fine and He’s got it!  He did have it, but what He revealed to me over the course of the next 2 years changed my opinion on what exactly He was saying to me through the words of this song.

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We finished up packing our 18ft. trailer, loaded our 4 kids and left Seattle with no job or home waiting for us in Texas, we were seriously living on faith and a prayer for next steps.  Lesson #1 – Sometimes God won’t reveal next steps until we make that first step of faith and trust in Him.  It doesn’t mean that we can be stupid and make unwise decisions, but if we have a spreadsheet of our lives planned out and have every detail marked out then where does God come in?  He wants his children to let go of some of the control and allow Him to reveal His glory in our lives…He loves showing off and when we create opportunities for Him to do that, He will never let us down. Heb 11:1 – “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see“.

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We arrived to Texas in June of 2014 and proceeded to live in our beautiful, pimped out 2002 26ft. trailer for 100 days!  Let me just break that down a little more for you; 4 kids =  2 on the couch that converts to a maybe full size bed, 1 on the dining table that converts to what I think was a twin but was chopped short a couple of inches, 1 on the floor between sofa and dining table in the kitchen.  When you have to step on your children to get coffee in the morning and it doesn’t stop you to retrieve said coffee, that’s when you know you have a possible coffee addiction.

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We also felt that we needed more fun in our trailer and decided that in the middle of  a Texas summer, we should buy a puppy, because surely potty training a new puppy in a 26ft. trailer would be exactly the kind of fun we were looking for.  It was a ride for sure and I couldn’t get out of that trailer fast enough when we finally found a home, but there was some incredible lessons and growth for me during that time.  Lesson #2 – God will allow us to sit in uncomfortable situations for a period of time to grow our characters and strengthen our endurance.  Romans 5:3,4a – “We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope.”

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Michael and I had this dream of buying a little bit of property, getting some animals, growing a garden and learning to live a simpler life with less chaos from the city.  We thought for sure that life could be so much better for us, easier and way more fun!  We purchased a manufactured home on 2.2 acres in Dripping Springs Texas which sat about 12 miles from the town and over 30 to Austin.  A double wide wasn’t our first choice, but after 100 days of searching and realizing we were going to have to sacrifice the home or the acreage, we caved on the home.

Our initial plan was to tear up the carpet, replace carpet and then move in.  However, when you’re married to a custom home builder and he asks you if you would like to move any walls or cabinetry in the Kitchen before replacing floors, you sometimes say things that you might end up regretting.  We went from tearing up carpet to a full fledged gut and remodel job.20140825_19385620140909_14163720140920_201553

So, as you can see by the above pictures, we really put ourselves in a mess, a hot mess actually!  Here we were in a new city, a new state and living as a family of 6 in a construction zone.  I went from sidewalks and city streets to gravel roads and cows as my rush hour traffic.

The adjustment of moving to a new state, living out of a trailer with 4 kids and a new puppy was monumental, to say the least.  We, however, felt that gutting our new home and living in a construction zone for roughly 7 months would just be a nice way to add to our already overwhelming experience.  During this period of time, I was also getting prepared to put my youngest into full-time school for the first time.  I have always had children and babies at home with me for the past 14 years and honestly can’t remember life before that.  I thought I was excited and ready, “time to myself, wahoo”!   Boy was I wrong.

I remember the day like it was yesterday, I think I was in the first week of school starting.  There I was in my construction zone kitchen, hurdled in a ball on the floor sobbing hysterically.  Whelp, this felt familiar – here I was broken down and what was supposed to be my “greener grass”, felt like sage brush and tumbleweeds and it hurt.  Discontentment started settling into my body and soul again and I found myself desperate to control my situation and GET OUT!!  I wanted out bad, like really bad.  I wanted back to my normal, rain filled, cement laden, tree hugging life in Seattle and with my familiar surroundings.  I was stuck though, really stuck and I knew deep in my soul that there was nothing I could do about it at that moment, but I could control other things and so I did….I immediately went down to the elementary and middle school and yanked my kids out and proceeded to home-school them part time.

 Lesson #3 – Never make extreme decisions in a time of adjustment and chaos, they will most likely always be bad ones.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I have thought in the past of home-schooling my kids and completely admire my friends who do it.  I just don’t think that in a season of newness, adjustment and remodeling our home was it wise to bring all of my children home and try to do something like this.  I had thought, emotionally, I needed them with me to deal with the discontentment  I was feeling in life.  Surely, their presence would fill the void and emptiness I was experiencing.  I quickly learned that there was only one place I could go to get the emptiness filled and help I needed.  Psalm 46:1,2 – “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea”.

God used my brokenness to draw me deeper and further into a personal relationship with Him.  I clung to Him daily as my only real source of strength to get through this time.  I hated where I lived, I hated my home, I hated home-schooling and would daily grumble and complain to Him about it and what He was going to do to change it.   The beautiful thing about our Papa in Heaven is He gave me the complete freedom and grace to complain about my circumstance.  Never once did He shame or condemn me for what I was feeling, He simply comforted me and encouraged me.

Then there was a day, September 24th 2014.  I was struggling to get through another day of home-schooling and the daily routine that I was still having a hard time adjusting to.  It was fall and by golly despite it being 95 degrees outside, I was going to cook something fallish for my family!  I bought a butternut squash and was prepping it to put in the oven.  Anyone who has ever tried to cut a butternut squash can understand the pain of this experience for me, plus I was not in the mood to fight with a squash!  I grabbed it like a football and with the other hand took my machete, (ok it was a knife), and hacked it as hard as I could.  Not only did I not cut the squash, but somehow I managed to cut my finger.20140924_173415

Remember how I shared that I lived 30 minutes from Austin out in the hill country, ya well I was very quickly reminded of that in my panicked state of mind trying to figure out how to stop the bleeding.  Meanwhile, my 3 kids are sitting at the table waiting for their next assignments, screaming that mom just cut off her finger!  I called 911, (maybe an ambulance would be easier than trying to find a local urgent care).  Apparently my phone called the state of Washington 911 and they told me they don’t drive to Texas so I had to figure something else out.  I looked at my kids and made a decision, “you guys stay here, I’m going to wrap my finger and run into a town and look for a place to get stitched”.

I jumped in my SUV and proceeded down my windy, 3 mile stretch of road just to get onto the main hwy that’s going to take me 20 minutes from there to get anywhere, “Please God don’t let me pass out while driving”!  I began sobbing – this was normal now, but this was the one like the head in the stove experience.  Hysterically driving down my Texas road, I turned on the radio and was immediately met with my song, “Home” by Phillip Phillips.  Once again I was comforted in such a unique and sweet way – my finger still hurt and I was still crying, but it was the first time I started looking at everything and this song differently.  It took on a new meaning, or at least the beginning of a new meaning and I started to view what God was saying to me through this song as not an actual physical place.  Eph 3:17 – “That Christ may make His HOME in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love.”

My finger was stitched, my kids were OK and I was actually able to make it home in time to make my butternut squash for dinner.  Lesson #4 – When you feel in life that you are run down, broken and totally incapable of going on, God is empowered and steps in to pull you through;  2 Cor. 12:9-10 – “But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Through my trials and hardships, there were invaluable lessons to be learned and God so sweetly and gentled taught them to me.  He showed me how to truly lean only on Him for comfort and peace and was revealing to me that He is my home and shelter.  There was however a lesson that had yet to be learned and that was the lesson of contentment.  I had friends who had pointed it out and I saw it in myself but wasn’t sure how I was going to weed this ever present sin in my heart?

In April of 2015 Michael and I were invited to go to an orphanage in Kenya, Africa.   A fully paid trip to see if we were the right fit to build a medical center there in the village.  Michael and I spent 12 days with the beautiful people of Eldoret.  Here are a very few of the many pictures I took.

I thought this trip was meant for business, opportunity, a way for the Larson’s to help out an amazing ministry.  Nope – God had other plans!  He rocked me to my very core of discontentment and touched it in a way that only going to a 3rd world country really can.  I saw things that I couldn’t process, poverty on a level that was inhumane.  I kept trying to understand it all…everything was difficult for these people!  Water, food, medicine and even love was something that was a hardship.  Yet – here was the craziest part of it all – they were the happiest people I had ever met.  They had nothing and yet they were so filled with joy – how???   They were experiencing the true “Joy of the Lord” and were filled with so much love in their hearts that they were overflowing.  They had nothing to distract them because they had so little and were able to focus their time and energy on the only lasting thing that really matters – Jesus!

I went home a different person, praise God and the words of Paul echoed in my heart and still remain true for me today; “for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.  I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.  I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”  Phill – 4:11-13.  Lesson #5 – Contentment and joy in life are not by products of our circumstances but decisions and choices of our hearts.  I wake up every day with a thankfulness, not because of what I have but because of who He is and the abundant amount of grace He daily bestows on me.

Once I surrendered myself to God’s plan, learned to be content in any circumstance and began wrapping my arms around Texas and our little home out in the hill country is when God released us from there.  I had to go around a few mountains before I was able to move on to the next lesson that I’m sure I have waiting for me here in Boise, but until I learned the lesson of contentment in a a place I didn’t like, then I couldn’t go.  Lesson #6 – God will leave us sometimes in places of hardship, trial and discomfort until we fully surrender all control to Him and find peace under His wing.

In the end, it was actually Michael who made the final call to move us back to the PNW.  I was actually kinda cool with staying and made the decision in my heart that it would be great.  When we decided as a family to move back, I thought a lot about the Phillip Phillips song and the meaning for me behind it.  At the end of the day it didn’t matter if I lived in Texas, Seattle, Boise, California or even Kenya for Pete’s Sake!  My “Home” was in the arms of my savior and King and as long as I remained in my true home – I could go where ever I wanted – now THAT is true freedom!!

The Sting of Slavery

Religion has sure come in and messed a lot of us up!  And, worse off, they’ve done it in the name of God, creating an opinion of Him that is formed from man and our screwed up thoughts and not who He really is and what He really stands for.

I was born and raised into the Jehovah’s Witness organization.  A lot of you many know them as the “door knockers” or the “watchtower and awake” group, I simply knew it as my life and my family.  I knew I was different at a very young age and I knew that I couldn’t do a lot of the things that almost all of the other kids were doing, but it was what I knew so I learned how to deal with the teasing, name calling and bullying throughout my school years.  I couldn’t celebrate any birthdays at school, couldn’t stand up for the pledge of allegiance, couldn’t participate in holiday functions and had very limited association with anyone that wasn’t a JW like myself.  Don’t feel too sorry for me though, I felt at the time that I was surrounded by people who for the most part loved me, I had a doting mom and all of the other people that were JW’s, (which wasn’t a big number so I had a lot of friends).

Once I got baptized into the religion is when things got way more serious for me.  It was just my mom and I at the time, my father had left us when I was young and then my sister went and moved in with him when I was around 11, so the pressure to perform and perform well was incredibly intense. JW’s function like a well oiled machine and seem to do a really great job at organizing, controlling and manipulating its members.  

Once you are baptized, you are under the rigid rules and religious scrutiny  of the elders within the particular church you attend.  They keep a very, VERY strict eye on you and this unspoken “watchman” mentality is felt within the entire organization – it’s like everyone is under some sort of spell that controls even basic common sense.  Nothing is missed, nothing can be hidden and if anything goes wrong, you will be disciplined…ahhh, but there’s the key IF you’re caught, IF you’re discovered and only IF you confess.  It’s a flawed system and here’s why;  I was not doing anything different than any of my friends were doing, but I carried a lot of weight of conviction and guilt on my shoulders.  I wanted to always impress my mom and never let down this Church that had established such a crazy standard over me that I felt like I could never live up to it.  My mentality was, if I confess everything then there won’t be any hidden sins or mistakes.  All of my peers were doing similar things, just not getting caught and therefore, not getting in trouble.   I quickly realized that the more they know about you, the more trouble you are in and by the time I was 19 I had gotten excommunicated from the Church.

Excommunicate – ” to cut off from communion with a church or exclude from sacraments of a church by ecclesiastical sentence”. – dictionary.com 

I lost everything and everyone from my life in a single instant that my name was announced on that pulpit and what felt like a tearing of my very heart from my body, I was left abandoned, rejected, alone and confused.  That’s what religion does!!  Religion stands in the name of God and says, “You couldn’t live up to our demands, you didn’t make the mark, you are flawed, sinful and disappointing to us”. This religion WAS my God, I worshiped everything about it, the rituals, practices, people and guidelines that kept me safe and protected from anything out in the world that could harm me.  What I didn’t realize is,  I was enslaved to a system that I failed and it then turned it’s back on me and I blamed God for it!

I hated God and anything to do with religion after that.  I had spent my entire life trying to live up to a standard and expectation that was set before me constantly.  I figured out how to  “pose” and “fake” my way through almost any situation, how to put on a face or a mask to appease whomever it was that I was with in that moment.  I was a chameleon to my environment and mastered the art of deception but not really knowing exactly what my true identity was.  To be separate from this religion was in a way to begin figuring out who I was behind the mask, to stop living for a checklist of rules I had to abide by and start running the course of my own life!  I had NO idea how to do that and honestly it scared me to death.

  Some experts have estimated the rate of suicides associated with the Jehovah’s Witnesses Society to be five to ten times the rate of the general population. ~ Christian Peper, “Cult Awareness”

I couldn’t describe the loneliness, emptiness and anguish I felt over the course of the next year and it honestly doesn’t surprise me to learn the above statistic about suicides within the religion.  When you are a slave to a system and know nothing or nobody else outside that system and then get removed from it with nowhere to go is incredibly frightening.  You know and understand the expectations within the system, you know how to operate and function within the walls of its doors and how to maintain your “pose”.  Outside the walls is too big, too massive and scary and sadly some people feel so overwhelmed by it that they take their own lives.  I came very close to attempting to take mine but managed to get the help I needed and made some changes in my life that moved me into good places.

I met Jesus for the first time in an apartment bedroom at 3am in the morning after I had been released from the hospital.  I had been out with my friends for the evening, drinking and partying.  I did one too many lines of cocaine, passed out and was rushed to the hospital where they brought my vitals to normal, released me and told me to get help.  The cab ride home was one of the longest I’ve ever experienced, I questioned everything about myself, my life, what I had become…..what mask was I wearing now??  Who was I?  Is this really the person I had become?  I hadn’t prayed to God since the night I got excommunicated and let me just say that any prayers I had prayed while I was a JW were very impersonal and carried a lot of fear in them.

I went into my room, closed the door and started sobbing, I didn’t care and I didn’t even know what or who I was screaming to but I started screaming at God.  I poured my heart out, got real, removed the mask and drew close in to the possibility that maybe God didn’t hate me and was out there listening to me.  I cursed at him, every obscenity you could imagine and questioned my life to Him!  Why was I placed on this planet if it was only to be rejected alone and unloved?  “ I have not rejected you, I love you, I have called you mine and I have plans and a purpose for you!”  It was as if the voice was in the room with me and it sent chills up my spine.  I begged for more, asking Him over and over again to tell me that I was accepted, forgiven and loved and He was so faithful to do that!  He laid there holding me for the rest of the night, comforting me, encouraging me and loving me.  That night was the beginning of my freedom and the journey of having a life of intimacy with my creator and no longer be a slave to a system or a religion.

My dear friends, I cannot wait to share more of my heart with you and all that God has shown me over the years of what a relationship with Him looks like and what it doesn’t look like.  He continues to remind me on a daily basis that I am no longer a slave to a system of rules and regulations and that all He desires from any of us is a relationship with Him that is true and authentic.  He wants your heart sweet friends, not your works!

Much love and always in Him

 

The “Why”

Hey friends!  I’m so honored and excited that you are here and are wanting to walk this journey with me as I stumble through this God driven desire to write for Him and encourage others through my writing.

Years ago God placed it on my heart to journal our time together, to slow down and be still enough to actually hear his voice and then write down his words in my journal.  As the years have passed, it has been so incredible to look back on those journal entries and see how faithful and true to His word He has been in my life.  They have served as a well source of living water for me in dry and parched seasons.  As a follower of Christ I have had a strong burden on my heart about the lack of intimacy we experience as believers with God and questioned how I can possibly share the visual of what that looks like for me.  Back in the fall God really started pressing on me to go beyond my journal writing and start really writing….like writing stories, events, experiences and daily struggles.  I’ve ignored Him for a while and recently he’s been actually waking me up at night giving me scriptures, thoughts and words that I believe He wants me to share and encourage with.  I can’t ignore Him anymore, I’ve got to be faithful just as He’s been faithful.

So, what’s this blog all about?  What’s the whole thing with “Unfiltered & Free”???  Well, let me ask you first, what does that mean to you?  When you think of “Unfiltered” what does that stir up in your heart?  For me, it’s packed full of so many things and I hope to touch on all of them as I really believe it’s a problem we face today in our culture.  I believe God is calling us to live as the person He created us to be…..fully exposed, fully vulnerable and completely reliant on Christ as our true identity, it is in Him that we discover who we are and yet, I can be the biggest poser and totally portray myself as something I’m not! Sometimes I find myself putting so many different masks, or “filters”, on myself through the day that by nightfall I feel like I’m questioning my authenticity in so many areas of life.  Besides the emotional and mental faker I can be through the day, I also feel that in our beauty crazed culture there is a whole level of “fake” and “filtered” that needs to be addressed here.  Now let me just get really honest with all of you….this IS one of my biggest struggles!  I work in this industry and my attention and focus is all about skin care, health, physical beauty and I’ve really had to weed through the garbage and lies out there about who I am and who I am not!  I don’t have it down, it’s a daily struggle and it’s something I have to multiple times a day pray about.  Being “Unfiltered” means to me, let’s get real, let’s get raw, let’s get vulnerable and exposed and for me…that is so refreshing to think about, (ok and slightly scary).

The “Free” aspect is just as simple as it sounds and yet why do I struggle to live it out every day???  We are FREE in Christ, we are no longer slaves to (fill in the blank).  That blank can be anything and I believe we’ve allowed ourselves to be enslaved and in bondage to many things.  For me, just to name a few; guilt, vanity, legalism and control are just a touch of the things I deal with.  But…here’s the great news, not only has God told us that we are no longer slaves but free in Christ,(Gal. 5:1), He has also told us that we have the mind of Christ,(1 Cor. 2:16), power of Christ (Phill 4:13) and the ability to take captive ANY stronghold and thought that is set up against us (2 Cor.10:3-6).  I don’t know about you guys but that gets me excited!

Heavenly Father, thank you for the person behind this screen, thank you for their desire to know you more, to create more intimacy with you and to live a free and unfiltered life.  I ask that you would use the words on my blog to encourage, support and bless everyone that reads them…It’s in your name I do all things ~ Amen

Much love to you my friends!

April