the house trap...

so i will admit i have been a little stressed out lately...

ok maybe alot!

life has been crazy this year and i think it has been easy to focus on the earthly individual situations and not the heavenly big picture.

however, the biggest source of stress right now is the new house. moving. packing. decorating. wanting to update. mortgaging. ughhh!

and i find it so annoying. a house should be a place of rest and renewal. edith schaeffer once compared it to a hospital- people should be healed by being in your home. thats a pretty lofty goal. and i so desire to have a home that people feel the Holy Spirit ministering in. i want to be renewed by walking in the door, and i want others too as well.

and yet too often my home is my biggest source of frustration. my biggest idol. my biggest distraction. i try to live up to unachievable perfection when it comes to cleaning my house and decorating and organizing my house. my intention is good- i start out wanting it to be clutter free and inviting. however when i end, it has not become a place of renewal- it is a place i (and prob my husband) want to run from!

so with the new house, i am finding it so hard to slow down and simply desire for it to be welcoming and relaxing. i am constantly thinking of how to update it, make it look better, make it worth more money, make it look super cute etc. it is such a worldly trap!!! ugh! it is enough to make a person want to just move overseas with some tribe that lives in huts! goodness!

(did i mention i am not even moved in this house yet?)

so if you think about it today, send a prayer up for me and my home. pray that my mind will be captive to the things of Christ only, and that my home will be a place of ministry, not of worldly show.

tired thoughts... with no point really

this year has been very full of tiredness.

i started the year tired from surgery. i had a tired voice and complete lack of motivation. i was also tired of my husband being jobless and us being churchless. just tired.

then i was tired from a lack of sufficient thyroid hormone. literally tired. it took months to get my dose right, and quite frankly we are still working on that.

and now i am just tired. i am so tired of constantly running running running. there are practically no margins in our lives. we run from thing to thing to thing. and it is not just the busyness, anyone who knows me knows i have been busy my whole life. i was born busy i think.

but there is something different about this busy, something that is leaving me feeling awfully cynical and negative.

i dont have a wise lesson to be learned here- i have something i am needing to learn i think. basically i am tired, and fighting negativity so hard, and i havent the slightest clue why. but if you are reading this- please pray for clarity and joy.

oh, and calmness hehe!

someone hit fast forward!

where did summer go?


suddenly we only have a few more weeks and I am wondering how on earth time went by so quickly! in the last month I have gone to New York on a family vacation, and Louisville on a youth mission trip. but the biggest news is...


we are buying a house!

yes in the process of helping Dustin (Justin's twin brother) buy a house, we ran out of reasons to continue renting and started our own house search! we found a house that is just so "us" and are now under contract. the whole thing si super fast and crazy! here is a listing if you are interested!

http://legacyrealestategroup.point2agent.com/Bowling_Green/Kentucky/Homes/Bowling_Green_North/Agent/Listing_1768599.html

it must be time for a lesson...

well a few weeks ago i write a post about comparing myself to others on facebook etc. well apparently God thought it was time to teach me a lesson about just that!
I just began a bible study with a group of fabulous ladies online (whom I have never met and whom live all over the US really) entitled "No Other Gods" by Kelly Minter. It is about confronting the everyday idols we all have in our lives. The ones we dont even notice...
... such as comparing ourselves to others!
Hopefully I will get to share alot more about what god is teaching me thru this study later, but for now I wanted to share a great definition in the bible study of an idol:
An idol is something within creation that is inflated to function as a substitute for God. All sorts of things are potential idols, depending only on our attitudes and actions toward them...Idolatry may not involve explicit denials of God's existence or character. It may well come in the form of an over attachment to something that is, in itself, perfectly good... An idol can be a physical object, a property, a person, an activity, a role, an institution, a hope, an image, an idea, a pleasure, a hero- anything that can substitute for God. -Richard Keyes

really?

ok this post will prob seem pretty dumb to any males reading, but my girls will prob find it hilarious.

i am getting my haircut today. i really want bangs, i dont know why but i have a deep longing for bangs! hehe! so today i wen to google images and searched 'medium haircuts with bangs". well i found a whole new subculture of the internet! ladies, there is no longer a need to go look or buy the haircut mags at walmart, you can find anything you want on the internet these days!

i found a whole blog titled "hair obsessed", where the whole point of this ladies blog is to post pictures of different haircuts she finds online! she had even divided them all up into hair length categories, face shapes, appropriate for each age haircuts etc. it was nuts!

then i am also getting my eyebrows waxed today, so i decided why not see if there are eyebrow blogs etc. oh yeah... whole websites dedicated to helping people get the right eyebrow shape.

now to all this i have to say, "really?"! really, people have enough time and passion for others hair cuts and eyebrows to update blogs and websites every day with pictures?!! do these people work?? i just found it bizarre. dont get me wrong, i enjoyed being able to find pics to take to my hairdresser, but I just have to wonder who these people are?

you really can find anything on the internet!!!