Looking Back, the View after 15 Years.

I spent yesterday at a pow wow with my family.  If you've never attended a pow wow, you should take the opportunity to do so sometime.  It's an interesting event to view. 

My husband and I met somewhere around 20 years ago in the pow wow world.  I was 16 and he was 15 when we fell head over heals deeply in love.  Or so I thought.  Who knows the heart of a teenager.  They are crazy.  But I do know that it is to this world of pow wows and friends that I owe my opportunity to meet the man who was to become my husband.  Okay, honestly it was to the great and awesome God who orchestrated the whole thing.  It amazes me that while I did not yet know Him, He was situating me for a future life so full of His blessings that I would be unable to deny Him, not that I want to.

I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with my husband.  I remember exactly where we were and the circumstances surrounding it.  We were, surprise surprise, at a pow wow in Oklahoma.  It was a dance that years later we would attend together as a freshly engaged couple.  I remember that moment, sitting on that picnic table when I realized that I was in love with this kid. 

We were such kids.  Of course we wouldn't have believed that if you had told us that.  We knew so much.  We knew what we were going to be doing for the rest of our lives.  We couldn't imagine a life where one didn't pow wow 6+ times a year.  We loved our week long trips to Oklahoma, or our long weekend trips to Oklahoma.  We even spent our honeymoon at a pow wow.  Okay, not a pow wow, THE POW WOW.  The biggest and best pow wow in this area, the National Pow Wow.  This dance is held only once every 3 years.  It is this same dance that we attended yesterday, 15 years and 6 kids after our honeymoon.

God is so awesome.  I got to see a few old friends who I don't see much any more.  I got to share something I used to love with my kids.  I got to enjoy the music and dancing I often times miss.

Despite the fun I had, I got a much bigger message.  About 8 years ago, my husband and I walked away from this life.  The reasons are complicated.  We didn't know at the time how complete our removal from this world was going to be.  Where we once imagined ourselves raising our kids, we suddenly were no longer.  I don't think either of us intended to remove ourselves so fully from this lifestyle.  But it was several years before we returned with our kids to visit a life that had become so deeply ingrained in us.

Now, looking back, I can totally see God's hand and wisdom.  We cannot believe some of the things that we thought were so important.  We see danger and harm in things we once felt were so benign, even helpful.  Now we see the bigger picture with our children and understand that the things that are such vital values and beliefs to us would be practically impossible for us to teach well in this environment.  Not that others cannot.  I know many good people in the pow wow circuit who love their children and teach them well.  I am not criticizing them.  However, I know that my husband and I would not have been able to do so. 

God led us, without our knowledge or understanding, to walk away from that which would have been detrimental to our marriage and our children and led us toward a life far more fulfilling than we could ever have imagined. 

I still miss my old life sometimes.  I miss the fellowship, the late nights, the music, the dancing, the flashy clothes.  We now feel more able than before to take our children out to experience this occasionally without getting pulled into all that goes with it.

But yesterday I was given a gift.  God gave me the opportunity to fall more in love with Him, seeing much of what He has done without my understanding.  God also gave me the opportunity to fall more in love with my husband, the man God gave me to share this life with. 

I can truly say, as I watched my husband of 15 years dance around the arena carrying our 6th child in his arms, that I love him more now than I did during that National Pow Wow 1996, just days after marrying the man of my dreams.

Be Careful What You Wish For

A few months ago, I found myself overwhelmed and tired. Tired of having too much to do, tired of getting nowhere in all I needed to do, tired of being busy. I needed a break from my everyday life, but I couldn't really take a break. Five kids, homeschooling, babysitting, perpetually messy house, church commitments, hosting a bible study, pregnant, life was busy. Good busy. Full of the things I wanted to do kind of busy, but very busy.

What do I give up? There is really nothing I wanted to give up, but I couldn't figure out where to go. So my gracious and amazing God took matters into His own hands, as He is so capable of doing. He yanked me out of my busy life. Forced me to have some time to rest, sent me on a little vacation, made me realize what is truly important in life, what is good but removable from my life, and what needed to go. God is good, and patient, and kind.

Shortly after Christmas we began to have problems with our well. You can read full details in the entry below if you are so inclined. These issues have caused me to be displaced from my home to my in-laws for a good amount of time. My in-laws have all the luxuries: mostly regular heat in the house no hot spots/cold spots, jacuzzi tub, satellite, high speed internet, another adult to help cook, another adult to help clean, someone to go to the grocery store. It was a rough life. I enjoy my time there, but it is hard not being at home. Just as I was trying to work out a plan, a routine of sorts that would allow us to be up there some to do laundry/bathe and be here to clean, babysit and do school, my family was hit with a stomach virus.

My littlest got sick with this virus first. We stayed home from church. Then I got it. I canceled my babysitting kids. I spent an entire day asleep in bed or on the couch. I began recovering only to discover that my baby was puking again. Canceled babysitting for the rest of the week and returned to my in-laws.

Life began to return to normal, minus water for shower/laundry. Just as I thought we were all ready to resume life as planned, child number 2 comes down with the bug. Again I canceled some of my babysitting and church. Meanwhile my house kept getting worse and worse and I was only able to be home long enough to unload whatever was in my van and throw more stuff in my van. I began getting more and more frustrated.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law graduated from Army Basic Training in Georgia. We took a road trip to Georgia with 5 kids and a grandpa for most of a week. We ate in restaurants, relaxed in a hotel room, and in general had nothing we had to do. We even got to see an old friend of my husband's from high school.

Oh, did I mention that my husband's grandfather died the day we were planning to leave for Georgia. That was a whole other layer of complication as we tried to figure out details for the funereal and for going to Georgia. We returned from Georgia to my in-laws house late Friday night, spent Saturday unloading and doing laundry, managed to go to church on Sunday and finally the funereal on Monday.

We finally got home late Monday night to find that some dear friend(s) came and cleaned house for us! What a blessing! Now we are back from our trip, chilling at home, babysitting, finally made it to church.

Life is still crazy. I still have to go to my in-laws for a shower and laundry. But I've seen reality. Reality is that all that matters is my family, being together. Reality is that other people have problems. Reality is that I have too much stuff, most of which can go away and will never be missed. Reality is that most of what I do, while good and helpful, is not so important that God cannot accomplish it without me.

Now I am in the process of reprioritizing. I'm massively decluttering my house. I'm trying to rebuild routines that will help me organize. I am planning for the birth of our newest baby. I am going to try to let God do His job, and only do what He has asked me to do. I am sure I'll get over committed and overwhelmed again, and I am sure God will "gently" remind me of what's important. But for now, I am looking up and looking ahead, pleased with where I am in the midst of still have so little certainty with my water, having absolute certainty with my God.

A Christmas Lesson - Learning God's Generosity in a Lean Season

My husband is an amazing and generous man. He's generous with his time, his advice, his heart and with his money. Money never really meant much to him. Understand, he likes nice things. He has NICE taste in things. He never likes to buy less than the best (usually most expensive). But he isn't greedy. He doesn't need to keep up with the Joneses. He likes nice things, he's willing to pay more for them, but he doesn't really "value" money as some do. I say this meaning he doesn't really think about money. He doesn't worry (too much) about money. And he is generous with what money he has.

I am not generous. I think about money, a lot. I worry about money. I fret about money. I think of ways to earn more money. I try to spend less money. I am, above all, cheap. Not thrifty. Thrifty is for those who like to get all the value from a dollar. I am cheap, I care less about value and more about how far I can make a dollar stretch. I would love to give to people, but I always think I can't.

Years ago, while I was still working full time, my husband and I took a class called Crown Financial Ministries. It challenged us to tithe. Yup, the full 10%. Ouch. We both worked then and made reasonable money (I taught public school, so not an extravagant salary, but not bad for a couple 25 year-olds). We were always broke, but my hubby said we should go for it. I wanted to ease into it, slowly. Increase by about $10 every couple weeks to make sure we could afford it. He said we needed to trust God and give it a shot.

God is good, and we never felt any more struggle financially when we started tithing. It was a large extra expense, but it was not felt. I would love to say we struggled even less, but that isn't true. However, we struggled no more after increasing our giving ten fold. We were amazed.

Fast forward a few years. I had quit my job, dropping our income by more than half, to be a stay at home mom. I then began having even more babies, numbers 1 & 2 were already born while I was employed, we are now awaiting the joyful arrival of number 6. We had far less income, still we always managed. Times got hard and we missed a few tithes and I felt extremely guilty, yet God always showed His love and kindness. Each year during tax review I would discover that we were still on target with 10% even though we missed a few "payments" (this is because I round to the nearest $5, sometime $10 to make my life easier). I have now been unemployed for 7 years. Our income is back to where it was when I quit.

Sorry for all the prattling on, but you need to understand, this has been years of growing, all "culminating" if you will at this Christmas season.

As I said, my husband is generous. When the bell ringers are out, he gives each of the kids a buck or whatever change is in his pocket do drop in, I stress over the extra $2 in change I give them to donate. When a friend's family was struggling he hid $100 bill for them to find, I worried we needed that money. When someone needs, he doesn't think much about it. He does. He's not irresponsible, he's just giving. I'm not. Or I wasn't. This year God changed me, in a huge way.

For months leading up to Christmas I began to realize I couldn't always think the way I had about money. I would not buy tennis shoes when I really needed them not because we didn't have the money, because I was afraid we wouldn't have the money. That may not make sense to you, but that's how I thought. I always worried there wouldn't be enough. As this year wore on, I began to realize I needed to let go of the stress and buy things when they were needed and trust God for the outcome.

Going into Christmas has always been a stress for me, I worry about all the others we have to buy for, the parents, grandparents, etc. It adds up quickly at $20 here, $20 there. This Christmas was worse. I realized in October that the Christmas bonus we always counted on for gift buying wasn't going to happen due to company changes. I panicked. I worried. I bought a few things ahead to relieve the December burden. But I worried. Then God blessed me.

God gave me a change to go shopping for a needy family. Our church had groups shop for different families and my group got a family that I knew. They were going through some really tough times, not just financially. Our group spent around 9 hours trying to stretch every penny to bless this family with the somewhat small resources we had. I found myself volunteering to buy coloring books for the family. This was one thing they had all asked for that I didn't want to waste our precious allotted money for. I found myself saying I'd buy them, figuring it would be good for my kids to shop for other and the extra $20 would hardly be noticeable. (This is not typical thinking on my part, remember). I briefly wondered if my hubby would care, then knew immediately he wouldn't. This is how he thinks all the time.

I came home late that night exhausted and feeling so good that we were able to find almost everything asked for and get some donations for other items that would allow us to spend our allotted dollars on more "fun" stuff. We found coats and snow boots to be donated, freeing the money further.

When I returned home, I received a message from a sweet friend at our church that someone had recommended our family for this same program. What?!? We didn't have much this year, true. But with grandparents and aunts and uncles, my kids would be super blessed. They would not do without. We had enough to buy them some stuff and the rest of the family would spoil them. How could I accept this? Others, like the family I had just shopped ALL day for, needed it so much more. I was nearly in tears. I didn't know what to say. I just couldn't accept this. It wasn't pride, but a huge sense of being overwhelmingly blessed that made me want to say no.

I talked with this friend who recommended that think about it, but suggested that sometimes God wants us to learn to receive. She said we are often giving of our time and our resources and should consider receiving. I prayed about it, wondering if God had a lesson for me. I really didn't want to do it.

The next day, while I was pondering the dilemma, I was excited to find a coat for the mom of the family we were buying for. It was used, but nice and I knew that it might be gone before the person in charge could get there to buy it with the church's money, so I bought it. I didn't even worry about it. This is so not me.

After buying the coat, I could tell God was working on me. He wanted me to agree to this opportunity to allow the church to bless my family. I still didn't want to do it. I didn't think was pride causing me to want to refuse, but figured that God was working on me somehow. I reluctantly agreed.

As my husband and I went shopping for the kids, I found myself less burdened than usual for getting them just the right stuff. We had a little extra cash come in that we set aside for that purpose so I had the needed money. I found myself thinking very little about cost. I usually worry, "$19.95 is a lot to spend for this". I didn't do that. I encouraged my husband to buy things I would usually feel knots in my stomach over. Odd.

As the weeks progressed, I felt no stress over buying gifts for the parents and siblings. I didn't worry over how much it was going to cost to buy such and such a gift card, etc. I even encouraged my husband to buy the more expensive items when necessary,THIS IS NOT ME!

When time came to shop for my husband, a horrible chore (sorry honey) because he is very particular (remember, he likes nice things), I didn't worry. I decided to buy him some odd and end things, not to worry over getting just the right this or just the right that and I didn't worry about money. Again, God blessed me with a little extra unexpected income that I set aside for the dear hubby's present. I can't say that I bought him the coolest gifts this year, what I can say is, I tended toward the more expensive rather than less and even impulse bought something I knew he'd never splurge for.

I began this Christmas season with dread, but found that shopping was more joyful that it had ever been. I finally got into the sense of buying something to show them I care and try to pay attention to their interests, instead of buying just the right thing. This Christmas taught me the JOY of giving over the DREAD of giving. We still spent less this year than in previous years, tried to be aware of not overdoing it on the kids, but the burden was gone.

I suppose many of you that know me will read this and be surprised by what I say about myself. I wouldn't really want to share these insights about myself normally. However, I felt this really needed to be shared to show how God can take a stressed heart like mine and turn it toward Him and those I love during this holiday season.

By the way, just days before Christmas, when all the shopping was quite nearly (miraculously) finished (and wrapped before Christmas Eve I must add), my hubby got a Christmas bonus. God is Good, all the time!