some tidbits

I'm still not blogging. Don't think this is blogging. One more week and I'm coming back stronger than ever. Tonight I made a little purpose statement for this blog and it made me get goosebumps, I was excited. You thought only middle school youth groups used purpose statements? Nope, me too. Anyhow - here are some things I would like to get off my chest.

- I really, really, really love Beyonce. My sister bought me the "I am Yours" cd/dvd set. I can't get enough of it. She is officially on my celebrity-salvation-prayer list & daily inspiration list. Her talent INSPIRES me.

- On another celebrity note, have you ever noticed how much Glory looks like Taylor Swift? It freaks me out a little. (It's the sweet slanty eyes and hair!)

- Also, Elias has been in a big boy bed for about two weeks. Nick and I were over the moon that he seemed to be handling it so well (ie - not getting out of bed a hundred times before fell asleep). Well, so much for that. Last night I found him munching on cupcakes at 2am.

- I would like to publicly say that my husband is the greatest and I'm so glad for him. This was an exhausting week with Elias' birthday party and our house catching on fire. OH WAIT! I didn't tell about your our fire.

(Everyone is safe & the Lord spared the inside of our house.)

I'll tell you about that later. Anyhow - I was exhausted. But we had these cool personalizable cups for E's party and this is what Nick brought me with my dinner tonight. Mine is on the right, his left. I love him.

Thanks Jesus for him.

Would you just pray?

I've felt so inadequate about what to do for Haiti. We discussed it with our community group, and Nick and I have talked about it a lot. Adoption won't be possible (or even possibly helpful) for years, and the little money we can give seems so... little.

But, would you just pray fervently for this family today?

There story is heart-wrenching and the husband has been sleeping on the floor of the US embassy for days, trying to get their adopted son home. His wife is back home caring for their other three children, one being a newborn.

Let's pray for them today.

That Ernest & Ronel would get as soon as possible.

That the Lord would use Ronel's testimony of being rescued in a scary land by his father to further the name of Christ.

hold out for three

I would like to interrupt my non-blogging to tell you something VERY important.

My oldest baby is about to be three.

I will no longer use the phrase "three under three".

I no longer have three babies in diapers.

I no longer have three babies in cribs.

I've got a baby, a wild woman-animal-of-a-toddler, and a kid.

Now this week we're preparing for a three year old dinosaur blow-out and almost sixteen times a day, Elias asks one of us to show him on the calendar how many days left till his party. But he's so excited and a little confused, because he thinks it's his friend Silas' birthday too, since we just celebrated Silas' birthday in um... December:)

So he says, "FOUR days to my/Silas happy birthday dinosaur party??!!!!!"

Sweet thing.

But this post is just to say, if you have any children under three...

hold out for three.

Babies are WONDERFUL. I used to think I was a baby person.

Toddlers are DELIGHTFUL. Toddlers used to rule my world!

But three, oh three.

Laying in bed with him and singing.

Having him pray for his friends and siblings when they're hurt.

Telling me every little thing that's on his mind.

Drawing dinosaurs in the condensation on car windows.

Handling bodily functions all by himself!

I really feel like I'm turning into a mom, rather than a baby caretaker. Now, I was always a mom and you are too if you have a baby - but something about the act of getting to spend more time shepherding their heart and teaching them, rather than holding and feeding them - that is a really sweet gift from Jesus.

And I'm not even joking. As I sit here typing at 6:29am, he just tiptoed out of his room, over to the couch, and climbed in my lap. As he nuzzled up he said, "It's dark Mommy. Turn lights on." And I giggled. Then he stood and and grabbed my hand and said,

"How many days dinosaur party?!"

And now we're off to check the calendar for the first time of the day.

inspiration

Two quick things.

#1 - Are you looking for a tangible way to help Haiti with your funds?

Two things I'd suggest.

a) Our pastor went to Haiti this week to do some filming & to need-assessment. Our church is taking a special offering this week, but you can also give online to Churches Helping Churches. It seems like they'll be specifically helping churches rebuild during this crazy time.

b) My sweet friend, Staci, is going to be going on a medical mission to Haiti the first week of February. It does my heart good to know that hurting people will get to see her sweet smile and be on the receiving end of her helpful hands. I know they will experience Christ through her. Visit her blog to see how you can help.

#2 - On a completely unimportant note... here is my inspiration for where I'd like to go visually with the old blog. It's a bit confusing right now, but I'll get there. Sooner or later.

Ya'll have a good weekend and I'll continue not blogging next week:)

work in progress

One fact I forgot to mention.

Because I didn't know it yet.

While I'm not officially blogging for 21 days, I'm going to be making changes some visual changes up in here, so....

pardon the mess.

psalm 13

... But I have trusted in Your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.

What are the things He's dealt bountifully with you about?

The things that have me singing today.... salvation, time with my sister, community, being able to have mercy for my kids while they have ear infections, Benjamin's blond hair, Nick doing a very good imitation of superdad, knowing that God is the God of the Haitians too, and crafttime with Elias.

taking a break.

Inspired by a message from Pastor Greg at Seacoast while on vacation, Nick and I will be doing the Daniel Fast for 21 days beginning this Sunday.

A few reasons why.

Closer communion with God? We need it.

Clarity to see His plan for us? Bring it on.

Renewed fervor for prayer and His word? That seems like a really good idea.

Increased spiritual discipline? Well, definitely.

I wouldn't say I'm fasting from blogging, but I'm going to be totally honest with you: If I'm not going to drink coffee for 21 days, I'm not totally sure anyone would want to read what I have to write:).

In all seriousness, blogging and internet use is something that I can easily cut out and have extra time to get this year started right by spending time with Jesus and getting life sorted out. I think I'll post scripture that stands out to me and Daniel Fast recipes for anyone else who is doing it, since I know a lot of churches are participating together for the new year, but no silly stories about hair or toddler poop or wanna-be-deep-insights.

I hope you all have an amazing end of January and beginning of February.

See you soon!

(and.... some resources)

The Daniel Fast

Awake 21

John Piper's book, Hunger for God

the tale of the earrings

Early in the Christmas season, I had two thoughts: a) I really wanted to gather some ladies together to celebrate together and b)ooooohhh.... my friends are very stylish. I put these thoughts together and decided to have a little great-gift-white-elephant party. Not a tacky-horrible-gift-exchange, but a "let's celebrate our good taste and have a ten dollar limit party"! You get the idea.

So the party is in full, awesome swing and the gift exchange begins. Sweet Kelly is one of the first or second to choose and she gets the sweetest earrings you've ever seen from stylishly amazing Marcy. My jaw drops. I look at Marcy and she whispers, "I thought of you when I bought those! I knew you'd love them!" And I do! Vintagey cloth buttons made into earrings. Long story short, they get stolen from Kelly, but not by me, and somene else goes home with them.

Fast forward a few days. Those earrings are still on my mind. It's Christmas Eve and we're just home from church, in the middle of a packing frenzy, and I hear a knock-knock-knock on my door. It's Marcy, with a similar pair of earrings that she just got in the mail from Etsy, not intended for me - but gifted to me because, well, she's too much and too sweet. I'm in awe.

I wear them the next day on the plane, even though they don't totally match my sweat pants.

I wear them on for the first week of my trip, telling everyone the story of my awesome earrings.

Then one day, Nick greets me on the stairs at my mom's house and says semi-casually,

"I'm really sorry but one of your earrings fell down the sink today".

I reply, "No biggie!" (I mean, none of my earrings cost more than ten dollars).

He looks at me more seriously.

"NO! NO! NO! Don't tell me it was the button earrings!"

Longer story short, he saves our marriage and pulls the sink apart and gets it.

Fast forward a few days and even longer story short, I lose the earring AGAIN putting a baby in the car, find it again.

Next day, as I'm finding previously mentioned earring, I lose the other one. I'm not even kidding! In the process of finding earring A, I lose earring B.

Ten minutes later, I miraculously found earring B.

I'm scared to wear them now, but come on? Look at them!

Also, everytime I lose one and almost go to pieces, I hear the faint "where your treasure is, your heart is also". But have you seen those things? Ugh, they're too great.

Great earrings are a blessing and a dilemma all at once.

Friends like Marcy are just a blessing.

*We're heading home tomorrow morning! I can't wait to see all my NW friends very, very soon.*

Did I ever tell you?

So I'm loving my friend Rachel's posts titled, "Did I ever tell you about?" and I especially loved her most recent one on her kid's names! I love naming kids:) AND, I love hearing about how and why my friends name their babies what they do!

So, here are ours!

Elias Powell: Honestly, Elias wasn't Elias until just before he was born. For the bulk of my pregnancy he was "Joaquin Powell". Before I took a pregnancy test, I knew I was pregnant and knew I was pregnant with a little boy who we would name Joaquin. I have a video of myself, my sister, and my mom as I'm taking the pregnancy test and we're all calling him Joaquin.

When I was about seven months pregnant, someone talked Nick out of it - saying we were too white to name our baby Joaquin. Well, no comment on that, but I'm still holding out for my Joaquin.

Anyhow, we were at a Christmas party just before he was born and we had NO names. We asked everyone to suggest a name and some sweet older friends of ours said that if they'd ever had a boy, they would have name him Elias. We loved it. It means, "The Lord is my God".
His middle name is Powell, which is my mom's maiden name.

Gloriana Eloise: Oh, naming that sweet girl.
So, like Elias, when I was pregnant with Glor - I just knew she was a girl and I was positive her name would be Talitha Katherine (and call her Taley Kate). "talitha koum" is the tattoo I have and it's a reference to Mark chapter 5, where Jesus raises Jairus' daughter and says to her, "Little girl - get up!".

Well, as you may know (or can read about here), we had a lot of complications while pregnant with our sweet girl and while Talitha would have been a fitting name since the Lord spared her from her fatal diagnosis, during that whole process we began to refer to her as "our Glory baby" or "our Glory girl". For me, changing her name from Talitha to Glory was a lot about excepting whatever God has for her - and praying that He gets the glory in every circumstance. Of course I wanted him to heal her, but more than that - I want Him to be glorified.


Eloise comes from a sweet old women I was standing beside at the dry cleaners one day while we were expecting her. She had to have been in her nineties but she was sassy as anything, and I just wanted to take her to coffee right there. Even then, I had an idea of how sassy our girl would be and I knew she needed a fiery middle name!
And again, I'm still holding out for Taley Kate:).

Benjamin Haddon: For real, Benjamin was my hardest to name.
I just think boy names are hard.
I asked for internet advice, I read literally like sixteen baby name books. Nothing seemed to fit with who I thought he'd be.

Then, one day, Nick and I were at a conference listening to PJ Smythe talk about how the Lord loves us and how we respond and he was talking about his son Benjamin. He said sometimes he has to put both hands on his son's face and say, "Benjamin Smythe! I love you!" and we were hooked. Also, Benjamin means, "son of my right hand" and for some reason, that always described how I felt about him in utero. He isn't my favorite (since I don't believe in that) and he isn't even our firstborn - he is just our special Benjamin, that we love so much.

His middle name is Haddon, like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who has been one of our favorites of the faith. In his time, his life wasn't easy and he wasn't loved by all, but he was sold out for Jesus and preached the gospel like whoa.

So, that's my baby name story(s).

I don't think we have a clear answer from the Lord about how many more children we'll have and where they'll come from (my body or elsewhere) but there may just be a Joaquin and a Taley later on.

Let's hear your name stories! Past, present, and future!

the whole gospel

As part of our resolution for the New Year, Nick and I have been reading through the Bible together and we're using this plan that has you reading from four different books each day. I have to tell you, I'm loving that Acts!

For some reason, reading through Genesis, Acts, Matthew, and the Psalms all at once has me reading with new eyes - eyes that see a real history rather than familiar stories. I can picture David, hidden in a cave, crying to the Lord. I long for the day when God gives us the full understanding so that we can semi-envision what creation was like. Coming fresh off of advent, I love to picture the wise men bowing down and seeing John and Jesus together in the water at his baptism.

But Acts, it's blowing my mind.

So far, it is these men that should be absolutely rattled, totally freaked out, hiding away from the world - still processing the nutty things they've just seen.
But - they're not. They are living the redemptive work of Christ, with a strong apostolic conviction I can only pray for.

So, anyhow, reading through the Bible.

Reading through this Bible plan, I've tried to just pick a few key verses and ask the Lord to write them on my heart (christian talk for really understand and know that they're true without constantly reading them) since I can't even begin to memorize them all. Well, goodness gracious, I get to Acts and Peter and John are PREACHING the gospel over and over again, to anyone who will listen and even those who don't want to. There are SO many of these verses, I can't even write them all down.

Like this one.

So, what really struck me about these passages was that the gospel is so complete in their words. It's minutes after pentecost, and the Spirit is speaking through them, delivering this truly complete gospel that captures all of what we believe, all of what we hope for. And it got me thinking, could I deliver a complete gospel if someone asked me what this is all about?
Moreover, do I live a complete gospel?

Take that previous passage.
Do I live like Jesus, my personal Savior, defeated death and rose to sit at God's right hand?
Do I practice true repentance?
Do I take full advantage of the gift of the Holy Spirit?
Do I believe all his promises are for me? For my children?
Do I live the whole gospel?

Excuses aside, it's time to start.

twitter, text, & tea

One of the events we semi-planned our holiday vacation around was a conference my mom was organizing at her church here in Mt. Pleasant (Seacoast) for women called "Twitter, Text, & Tea". It sounded like such an amazing idea to get women together to talk about the benefits and purposes behind using technology for the kingdom of God. I obviously love to blog, but I love being able to be spurred on to grow community through areas like facebook and twitter, etc. So I was super pumped when mom asked me to do a breakout session about blogging and equally paranoid as I watched my sister describe me as a "famous mommy blogger" on the youtube video they made to promote the event. I love my sister and I love how much she loves me, but I feel like there may possibly be some dissappointed women looking for real famous mommy bloggers.

Anyhow! If you're in the Charleston/Mt. Pleasant area and want to stop in on Monday - we'll be doing two sessions: 10am-noon and 7-9pm! Come meet a non-famous, non-professional blogger and some other women who are using technology to build community with women and drink some tea.

I for one, will be sneaking in coffee.

quote of the day.

I could write volumes on this, but I think I'll let Nick's quote from last night do all the talking. We were on a mini-date (Thanks Nonny) and talking about our kids. A lot of people say you shouldn't talk about kids on a date, but our kids aren't heavy or hard to talk about yet - they're still just joyful little toddlers who make us laugh and shake our heads. Anyhow, we were talking about Glory and Nick said,

"I've made a promise to myself to never turn down a game of 'get-you' with Glory... Because the day I stop chasing her,

she might want someone else to".

What a great dad, right?

It makes me think all sorts of heavy things about the Lord chasing me and watching their relationship unfold, and the burden of being a mother to a girl.

But I'll let you think on those things without my words clouding your thoughts.

However, there is definitely room in everyone's thoughts for this sweet smile, right?

back to regular programming.

Wooooosh, that was quite the unintentional blogging break.

I find that when we're on vacation in Charleston, everything slows down and speeds up all at once.

We're trying so hard to get all the family memories, wishes, & relaxation packed in - we're exhausted at the end of the day. But we're also ridiculously unplugged. I look at my cell phone like every three days and forget about email all together.

So, blogging all of a sudden feels daunting and impossible but I'll start off slow and copy everyone else's creativity today. Here's my semi-fun, light-hearted to-do list for 2010.

(come on, of course I have a more serious list - but it's private)

- Wear more hats. (not figuratively, literally)

- Find as many people to play the Twilight boardgame with me as possible.

(NW ladies, date as soon as I get back?!)

- Potty train at least one child.

(also, sidebar funny story: Tonight I told Elias that we were going to start seriously potty training when we got back home and he was elated! His response, "TRAINS GO POTTY?!" - oh geez.)

- Learn how to bless people better and do it. We've been so blessed in 2009 and it's time to pay it forward. Look out world. Coffee, cards, and baked goods are coming your way.

- Repair some of the heat damage done to my hair.

- Dance to Beyonce more often.

- Read through the Bible with my husband.

- Never go that long again not visiting the east coast. (a whole year!?)

- Last but not least. Do this trampoline workout at least five times before we leave the East Coast. Nick says he'll film me.

Ok, that was an easy jump back into real blogging.

Enjoy your Monday!