Start over.

Starting homeschooling hasn't been without its wrinkles and although it's been super fun and rewarding so far, it's also been fraught with some discouragement and fear. My husband sent me this little poem yesterday morning, which greatly lifted my spirits, and maybe it will yours too :) I like knowing that there is always an opportunity to start fresh. There is no such thing as no more chances.

When you've trusted Jesus and walked His way, 

When you've felt His hand lead you day by day 

But your steps now take you another way, 

START OVER. 

When you've made your plans and they've gone awry, 

When you've tried your best 'til there's no more try, 

When you've failed yourself, and you don't know why, 

START OVER. 

When you've told your friends what you plan to do,

When you've trusted them but they didn't come through, 

Now you're all alone and it's up to you to 

START OVER. 

When you've failed your kids and they're grown and gone

When you've done your best but it turned out wrong, 

And now your grandchildren have come along 

START OVER. 

When you've prayed to God so you'll know His will,

When you've prayed and prayed but you don't know still, 

When you want to stop 'cause you've had your fill, 

START OVER. 

When you think you're finished and want to quit,

When you've bottomed out in life's deepest pit, 

When you've tried and tried to get out of it 

START OVER. 

When the year's been long and successes few,

When December comes and you're feeling blue, 

God gives a January just so you can 

START OVER. 

Starting over means victories won,

Starting over means a race well run, 

Starting over means the Lord's "Well done," 

So don't just sit there, 

START OVER. 

- Woodrow Kroll

The steadfast love the of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 

they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22, 23

Meal planning a new way.

September always feels like a new beginning to me, and even with homeschooling for the first time looming in my future, it still feels like I'm starting out with a clean slate. I love that feeling. With new beginnings comes renewed purpose to make things better, improve my relationships, spend less money... and on that note, I've been thinking of how I can better manage my meal-planning.

I used to be great at making a weekly plan and sticking to it. Now I'm lucky if I can think of five meals to get us through a week and I only very loosely follow what I've planned.  I mean, it's good to at least vaguely know that there are things in the cupboard and freezer I can pull out at a moment's notice when I need to. But I think I need a little more structure now that I'm going to have so much on my plate (haha, pun!) during the daytime now.

I've been wanting to try something a little different for a long time now, and with my sense of new beginnings and renewed purpose, I'm going to attempt it this fall/winter season. It's basically just a meal plan, but knowing what genre (is that the right word?) of meal ahead of time. That was a really awkward way of explaining what will look like this:

Sunday: soup

Monday: pasta

Tuesday: meat and potatoes

Wednesday: soup

Thursday: meat and rice

Friday: something special for Lucas and I / something simple for the kids

Saturday: leftovers / pantry clean out

... and then each week (or hopefully every two weeks if I can be organized enough) I will just plug in a specific meal for whatever kind of meal belongs on that day. I think this way of doing things could either make life super easy, or be super limiting. But I'd still like to give it a go, especially as we're now a homeschooling family, I think it might make my life a little easier. One less thing to think/worry about. I'm really hoping to do groceries only every two weeks now, for lots of reasons. One, I hate grocery shopping, so it's appealing to me to be there even less than normal. Also, I hope that it will save us some money. If I can spend an hour every two weeks planning out a whole two weeks worth of meals/snacks/drinks, then I'll feel like super-woman.

Of course, whether I am able to accomplish this or not remains to be seen... stay tuned...

In which I rhapsodize about summer.

Summer wreaks havoc on my family, for a myriad of reasons, the biggest being that the lack of routine gets the better of us. I, being me, have never really been able to figure out how to schedule a routine in the summer, so I generally just let it go down the tubes. Unfortunately, this also means that by the end of the summer we are tearing out our hair with boredom and lack of discipline. I may or may not have banged my head against a wall a few times. I'll never tell if it was intentional or not. Sigh. Only a few weeks left to go...

We did manage to squeeze in some fun stuff this year in between our fits of madness. We:

Had Vacation Bible School, at which I taught a class for the first time ever and loved it. 

Spent a few days at various lakes. They call our city the "City of Lakes" for a reason!

Took a bus ride to Halifax.

My sister had her first baby!!! Super exciting and...

...we made an impromptu trip to go see her and precious baby Hayley. I also got to visit with some people that I've been wanting to visit with for a long time now. 

Still ahead, we have a few days in PEI with my family as well as 

my sister and her hubby and baby coming for a visit! 

And, in very huge news (worthy of a newsflash), we have decided to homeschool this year! It was a last minute decision, but it's been long in coming and one day I just decided, you know what? Now is as a good a time to start as any. Lots of prayer, lots of consideration, and lots of discussion went into it, but all the right doors opened as well and I feel very peaceful (although very nervous!) about it.

So you can expect some blogs about homeschooling in our very near future... 

Can you really be FOUR?

Oh my baby girl

I still can't believe I have you

You light up my life

Thank you for being here, not just to keep me from drowning in testosterone,
but just because you're you :)

Happy fourth birthday to my beautiful Amelia girl!

She tends toward goofiness sometimes :)

Dealing with anger.

Lately I've been working on my anger. More specifically, working on not yelling at my kids. Even though I know that spending time in God's word and prayer is ultimately what will give me victory over my struggle with losing my cool, there is still a lot of work to be done on a practical level. The day in, day out life of living with three young children brings out the worst in me, and while God is doing His great work in me, I don't want to spend my whole life yelling at my kids when they stress me out. And really, if I'm honest, more often than not, my yelling is not their fault at all, but some hidden angst inside of myself that comes spilling out onto them. Anyway, I've come up with a few pointers that I've learned over the last few years that are helping me in a practical way to curb the way I speak to my family.

Realize you're never going to be perfect, so extend grace to yourself. It came as almost a revelation to me, the fact that I will probably always struggle with losing my temper. In a lot of ways, this knowledge is very freeing. It gives me the motivation to keep trying to work at it, but also, it gives me the freedom to forgive myself and move on when I do mess up. My tendency is to drag my guilt around like a ball and chain, but really, how unrealistic is that? I am human, I am going to mess up and yell at my kids from time to time. It's okay. Ask for forgiveness and move on.

Get someone else on board for accountability. This has been the biggest help to me in my quest to control my anger. Knowing someone is there to hear you when you mess up, who will let you cry on their shoulder when you can't do it anymore, and who calls to check in on a regular basis to make sure you're on track, has been more valuable to me than I can even tell you. I highly recommend finding a friend who struggles in the same area and reaching out to be accountability partners.

Find out your trigger points and give yourself pep talks during those times. It really helped me to figure out what exactly it is that sets me off most of the time and when I figured that out, I was more able to gain control of myself during those times. For example, one of my trigger points is trying to get out the door in the mornings before school. Most often I am dropping my kids off to school in a heat of anger; one dark morning I did not even say goodbye to them, I was seething so deeply. *shame* So, what I try to do now is to counsel myself from the time I wake up until the time I drive them to school. I just keep up a running commentary to myself in my head, like "Laura, you know this is going to be a difficult hour. Just get through it without yelling. The kids are going to frustrate you, so remember to speak with gentleness and don't lash out at them" that kind of thing. I also pray a lot during that counselling session with myself. It does help. Not always of course, like I said I am human, but it definitely helps if I mentally prepare myself for the stress that I know is coming. This pep-talk thing only works for your trigger points. I've found that it doesn't help at all for those times of unexpected anger, when the kids do something that instantly turns my hair grey, for example. I tend toward explosion during those times and I'm still trying to come up with a way to handle my "surprise" anger. I'll let you know when I solve this little mystery...

Changing my attitude about my kids from the inside so it affects the outside. The biggest thing by far for me has been changing how I feel about my kids. Don't get me wrong, I love them dearly, but I sometimes struggle with seeing them as the blessing they are. When drinks keep getting spilled, one kid keeps back-talking and I'm also simultaneously somehow wiping two bottoms at one time, it can get dark very quickly. Life is messy, especially with kids. Embracing the messy parts, while difficult, has been essential to my growth as a mom. Seeing my kids through God's eyes, I can see that they are precious treasures with fragile souls. Through His eyes, I can see how much they need to be loved and how much more He loves them than I do. There has been a major shift in my attitude the last few months in how I view my kids and I honestly believe that this is the one thing that will most help me gain victory over my yelling. When I tell myself that they are a gift, not a burden, it is easier to see the good in the difficulty of our day. I try to pray for them as gifts, rather than just asking for survival to get through the day. (Although I still do that too.) When I change my perspective on who these little beings are, my inward attitude towards them starts to change too, and whatever is inside my heart is what will come out. I just want them to always sense my love, rather than my frustration.

Just thought I would share what I've been learning :)

Our God is so big.

On the one hand, Christians are made fun of because they believe in a God who is deemed to be nothing more than someone just like Santa Claus. You know, a figment of our imagination that we've dreamed up to make ourselves feel better. On the other hand, the God that is supposedly not real, is condemned for not being the magician in the sky that people think He should be. You know, the one who could take a magic wand and sweep away all the world's troubles in one fell swoop.

I am not saying for one moment that God couldn't take away the world's problems if He felt so inclined. In fact, one day I believe He will, although it won't be how people expect it to be. But, I think God specifically chooses not to take away the problems and heartache of the world. Not right now anyway. He is God, He is big, He is mighty, but He is a God of the individual. Let me explain...

God cares too much about us to just sweep away our troubles and pretend they never existed. He cares far too much for us to just let us be His puppets, to live in a sunshiny world where we never feel a need for Him. God cares so much about us, in fact, that He meets each one of us exactly where we need to be met. He cares about each individual's heart, right down to the little, tiny fetus nestling in a womb. Our loving Father knows that if He just swept away all the cares and horrors of our world, that we would forget about Him. There would never be a need for us to reach out in despair and grasp onto His strong hands. He cares so much for us, that He wants us to want a relationship with Him, rather than forcing us to believe and see Him. He doesn't send down fire and brimstone and lightning bolts because He knows that if you don't want to believe Him, you won't, regardless of the signs He sets before your eyes.

I feel like I am not making myself clear or getting my point across. Words feel too small to explain how the bigness of God translates directly into how much He cares about the small things of life. Rather than taking away my heartache, He walks through it with me. Rather than take away the pain, the unfairness, the general upheaval and dread of life, He promises to be the shelter, the rock, the wing underneath which I can sit. His eye is on the babies, children, women who are done wrong every day. He sees them and He hears their cries, and He cares so much that He stores their tears in a bottle and doesn't forget one drop.

I would rather believe in a God who promises to be there in my pain, who extends grace to the lowest of the low, than believe in a God who waves His magic wand and makes trouble disappear. If He was that general and wide-sweeping of a God, He wouldn't care about each person and their relationship with Himself. If He took away all the turmoil, no one would ever bother questioning Him, never bother acknowledging that either yes, there is a God, or doubting in His existence. Because to doubt His existence is proof that He is there. Nobody wastes time debating over whether Santa is real or not, because they know he is not.

Someday trouble will be gone, and tears will be wiped away. But until then, God is extending His very strong hand of grace for any who will reach out and take it.

Hi there.

I haven't been writing much lately. I haven't been feeling overly inspired. But just so you all know I haven't died and gone to heaven, I thought I would make a 'What I've Been...' list. Because I know everyone sits on the edge of their chair waiting to hear what I've been up to. Blerg.

So, here it is. What I've Been...

...Reading

Let. It. Go. by Karen Ehman - A book about chilling out, basically. As women, we tend to over-control, some of us blatantly, some of us passive-aggressively. I've gotten some really great insight from this book so far.

Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend - A book about setting boundaries and how that fits in with the way God wants us to reach out to others. Again, lots of insight. I'm doing this one as a book-study with some others so that makes it even more interesting.

Agatha Christie - What's not to love about a good old-fashioned murder mystery?

...Eating

I made this yummy sweet and sour chicken found HERE. My whole family loves it and I always feel like I've won the lottery (well, pretty close anyway) when all five us like the same meal.

The Pioneer Woman's Sloppy Joes found HERE. A great, easy, summer meal. Serve it with salad or coleslaw and fries on the side. Perfection. It's also very versatile; you can add whatever veggies that you have on hand.

...Listening To 

There are a few songs that I could listen to on repeat all day long. Here are a few.

Sovereign by Chris Tomlin

Carry Me by Audrey Assad

Power of the Cross by Stuart Townend