Visit
Welcome, Friends! We’re so glad you’re here. Won’t you grab a steaming hot cup of coffee and sit a spell on the overstuffed couch? Just move those pillows out of the way and make yourself comfortable.
Let’s talk into the wee morning hours as we laugh, share, and enjoy our visit together. We can talk about serious issues that have you filled with anxiety and stress, or we can just throw our heads back laughing at the silliest of things. It’s only important that we’re together bonding as friends do.
Looking for something a bit more adventurous for this visit? Grab some tack, and let’s saddle up, partner. Side by side, our horses will walk in unison as we chat and inhale all of the beauty that surrounds us in the middle of the forest. 
Breathe in God’s goodness and let all of your problems go as you exhale. It feels so good when we’re one with nature and God above! We can ride together talking about the good ole days, or we can have our faithful companions carry us on their strong backs, occasionally grasping at stray grass or trees along the way, as we are silent, soaking in the sights and sounds around us, appreciating all that God has given us to feast our eyes upon.
Let’s make full use of the time we have together and not waste a single minute!
This post was inspired by the prompt word of VISIT for this edition of Five Minute Friday over at Kate’s virtual house.
God Takes Care of His Children
God continues to prove this more and more to our family. God takes care of His children!
Less than two weeks ago I posted about how my husband’s company of 17 years laid him off. It was sudden and completely unexpected after he served that company well for all of those years. Shortly thereafter, one of his friends in the business learned of his lay off and offered my husband a temporary position to help the family out. We greatly appreciated this offer and thanked God for blessing us with great people in this line of work that were willing to help out in our time of need. Today, God showed up and blessed us with an even greater offer as my husband has now been given a more permanent position with that company!
Oh, thank you, God!!
I was in tears at this point as my husband gave me all of the details and discussed the different options available to him.
God is SO good, and we give him all of the praise, glory, and honor!
I feel this all has been building for a long time now. You see, my husband’s focus was not what it should have been for years, nor were his priorities in the order that they should have been either. He was a great Project Manager and served that company well. I’m not saying that he wasn’t a model employee because he was. However, there was sin in my husband’s life which we have spoken openly about here on this blog in the category to the right: Men Struggling But Recovering. I feel there is a connection here, so please hear me out.
Since my husband turned away from his sinful ways last year, a lot has changed! First, it makes the enemy angry when we turn from our sin and walk toward God. The enemy will try everything within his power to trip us up and to destroy us, our families, our lives. I feel that when my husband finally broke free from the sin that held him in bondage for so long, it angered the devil even more so and he was determined to take my husband down. He almost destroyed our family. We almost did not make it. There was talk of divorce at one point, and it devastated us both. When it did not look good for us, we know that the devil was falling on the floor on his back laughing the most wicked laughter he possibly could. He thought he ruined our family and had torn us apart, but God reached His hand down in the mist of it all and restored our marriage. It is stronger today than it ever has been in the 12 years that we have been together. It did not happen over night, but God held us through the transformation. Through all of the heartache and pain, God was there holding us tight. We both struggled with sin but in different ways. God restored what we once thought was lost. He strengthened our marriage and gave us such love, devotion, and intimacy as we’ve never experienced before.
Feeling sure that the devil grew more angry at the thought, he attacked yet another area in our lives; my husband’s job. You see, my husband poured all he had into the position that he held at that company of 17 years. That became his identity, and he often placed that job in front of his own family. To him, that needed to be his top priority. That was who he was, and he was proud of it … until it was stripped away.
When he was called into the meeting at his previous place of employment where he would learn the news of his lay off, he grabbed a wooden cross and slipped it into his pocket. This wooden cross had just been given to us at the pre-screening of the movie Do You Believe? which will be in theaters on March 20, 2015. We all know that it isn’t a bed of roses when you are a Christian and are trying to do the right thing. You will be persecuted, and you will struggle. But, you turn to God even more so when it is happening because you know that He will be your strength and He will see you through! Various different things happen in the movie to test people’s faith, too, but they believed in God and held on tight to Him … just as my husband has started learning to do. He believes he was able to retain his composure in the meeting as well as he did due to that little cross in his pocket and having Jesus in his heart.
Deep down my husband is a good person. We’ve all heard how bad things happen to good people all the time. I believe that maybe God allowed this job loss to happen for a specific reason. Maybe God allowed my husband to be stripped from this job because in one way, his sin increased at this job. Not only that, but he idolized that job. He put that job before his own family at times and most certainly before God. That was wrong! I tried to talk to him about this on several occasions, but I could not reach him. Maybe it took God allowing him to be stripped of this position to dispose of ALL of the sin in his life. Maybe, just maybe, it took him hitting rock bottom to realize that God was the rock at the very bottom that he needed to cling to. And so … now he has. My husband felt so very low after what happened last year with our family and now this year when our family was further threatened due to the job loss. We didn’t want to face financial ruins, and yet the healthcare that the government has mandated now has the potential of doing just that as the premiums are so out of reach for the average person. Family coverage was close to $900 a month in premiums. Who can pay that in addition to the regular bills for necessities like food, clothing, a roof over our heads, electricity, etc.? I’m not talking fancy trips, eating out all the time, and enjoying things beyond our means. I’m talking now with the job loss, we feared we could not meet the basic bills to survive.
Were we tested? YOU BET! But, we held on to each other and to GOD! My faith never wavered because I knew that God was going to take care of us. I reminded my husband of what God had just done in restoring our family. God didn’t take us this far to leave us. He would carry us through this storm on to bigger and better things. We just had to wait on God.
And then it happened! God entered the picture riding in on a white horse dressed like a knight in shiny armor once more with the temporary position that he was offered less than two weeks ago … and now with the permanent position he was just offered. Maybe my husband had to be stripped of all of the things due to the sin in his past so that God could start a new work in him. I am a firm believer that God makes all things new – including me and you – so my thinking is that God allowed my husband to be taken down in the area of our marriage and in the area of his job to strip away the sin and make him a new man. God is now rebuilding greater things for our family – our marriage – and his career. All my husband had to do was let go of the sin forever. He had to turn from his sinful ways for God to pour out His blessings. Once my husband was stripped of these things, he changed his focus where it should have been – on God – and on me, his wife.
I have seen changes in my husband. One striking thing that I’ve noticed is that last year he began kneeling down beside our bed every morning to pray. He has done this some times without my knowledge, even kneeling down beside me as I slept. On a few occasions, I woke up to find him kneeling in prayer right there beside me. At other times, he would put his hand on me or slip his hand in my own as he prayed. Then there are times he doesn’t wish to wake me, so he will resume his practice of kneeling to pray while I’m still sleeping. The difference is that he takes time to pray now before rushing into his day. He makes GOD a priority! He realizes that God has blessed us – and even though we struggled after the job loss – God had big plans for our future, something that I also reassured my husband of often when he would get depressed about the situation.
And look what God has done!
Oh thank you, dear God, for restoring our marriage, for giving us a love for each other like never before and for us being committed to making our marriage the best that it can be! AND Thank you, dear God, for blessing us with this new job opportunity at this company. Thank you that doors have swung wide open for my husband and that blessings are coming our way better than we could have ever imagined.
That’s our God!
God takes care of His children!
Snow Day!
We had a snow day today in the South. There was a “threat” of snow, sleet, and ice in the forecast yesterday evening for today, so the schools decided to make it a snow day today. Yea!! Snow day!
When I woke up this morning, I ran to the window anticipating to see a dusting of snow. However, none was to be seen in our area today. The only thing we had was rain and a tad bit of ice which did not last long, thankfully.
My daughters and I took advantage of the time together today, though! While my oldest daughter was as snug as a bug in a rug sleeping in until way after noon, my youngest daughter and I baked peanut butter cookies! They have always been one of my favorites, and I have fond memories of making homemade peanut butter cookies with my mom when I was younger. I thought today would be the perfect day to show my youngest daughter how to make them.
I didn’t start with an “instructional” as one would think. Instead, I allowed her to continue watching television in the living room while I got the ingredients out. In my best Julia Childs’ voice, I started speaking as I was preparing to get started. My daughter immediately came into the kichen to inquire as to why I was speaking in such a weird voice, but the moment she saw the cookie sheet, her eyes got wide as the look of delight filled her little angelic face! She almost squealed as she said, “I WANNA HELP!” And I could contain my happiness no longer as I smiled so wide at her eagerness to help!
I preheated the oven as she leveled one cup of sugar in the measuring cup. Then I went in search of the Vanilla Extract in the very back of the cabinet. I could not see it initially, but I knew it was there. Dragging a heavy chair across the kitchen floor, I positioned it just right for us short people to get a good view of all of the contents of the cabinet. There it was, the tiny, thin bottle of goodness waiting for me to grab it and measure a teaspoon full right into the middle of the sugar that my daughter had just poured into the bowl. After putting the chair back in it’s place at the dining room table, I made my way back to my daughter’s side where she was eagerly waiting to crack one pearly white egg. She held this egg in her hand with great determination that SHE had to be the one to add it. And so to my daughter’s delight, she did just that as the egg shell crackled and then cracked open as she struck it against the side of the bowl. She was sure to inspect it so that no egg shell contaminated our other ingredients as she poured it into the bowl. Next up was one heaping cup full of the creamiest peanut butter on the planet – Peter Pan, that is! We added it to the bowl, and she had her little spoon going round and round in the bowl alongside mine as we made mixer noises with our mouths which only made her laugh harder at my silliness!
And there I was, side by side with my princess loving every single minute!
Now for the fun part! ROLLING the cookie dough in our hands! This was her most favorite part! It even far exceeded the excitement that she felt cracking that egg! Yep, this little girl took her teaspoon and scooped up some peanut butter cookie dough and then took it into her tiny hands and rolled it round and round, looking up at me smiling and laughing as she felt the gooey substance and fished around for more to add to it. She thought her work was through until I told her that we get to make designs on them. “DESIGNS?” she asked with her little eyebrows raised and the biggest smile on her angelic face. Yes, designs. I took a fork out of the drawer and showed her how my mother and I used to press the fork on the top of the cookie horizontally and then vertically. She smiled, then held her mouth just right as she had this determined look come over her as she made the perfect design. I nodded my approval, and she went on to the next one. By the time we reached the second dozen, though, she got a little wild and crazy with her own designs, and I just laughed and laughed! When we were finished decorating, we popped those two dozen cookies into the preheated oven and waited for 10 agonizing minutes until they were ready to take out of the oven. The house was smelling really good at about the time we heard the “ding” of the timer as it went off, and I took our goodies out of the oven. But now they had to cool before we could try them! My daughter danced off into the next room where she returned in a few minutes just in time to sample one of our cookies. She was so excited when she took a bite because they were really good! I think she was a tad bit surprised, but she shouldn’t have been for we had the world’s greatest chef in the kitchen – my princess!
Much later in the day, our oldest daughter finally woke up and got to sample our tasty treats as well. She missed all the fun, but she sure did enjoy those cookies!
While there was nary a bit of snow in sight today, we still had the best day at home making memories together on this snow day! Thank you, God, for moments like these with my children!
