Mishaps, Mayhem and Ministry of Me&Mine: So. How was your day?!?

Mishaps, Mayhem and Ministry of Me&Mine: So. How was your day?!?: "So. How was YOUR day?!?!"  When you hear that statement it is usually after someone has rambled on for 20 minutes about the misfortunes of ...

So. How was your day?!?

"So. How was YOUR day?!?!"  When you hear that statement it is usually after someone has rambled on for 20 minutes about the misfortunes of their day.  And lucky you- that is what I am about to do!! I won't even begin at the beginning of my Saturday morning. (Even though the piece of a waffle I found in our toilet this morning, put their by a certain someone, might give you a clue how the day started, continued and ended.)

Let me just recap the last few hours.  I took Jacob over to my mom's to watch the Razorback football game.  He has to watch it over there because we are a Netflix only household.  Hmmm...and what do I say about having Netflix only on our TV? Lets just say its NOT "wow! I am so glad my husband and boys are on the 247th episode of this show in a 3 week period! What constructive use of their time!!" 

We get to my mom's.  5 minutes into the visit Jacob and Elisabeth have already eaten her out of house and home.  Its in the middle of the afternoon and they have consumed the rest of her fried chicken, chips, cantelope and cereal.  And that just confirms her thoughts that I never feed my children well rounded meals and that is why they are always hungry.

20 minutes into the visit Elisabeth manages to push the screen out of my mom's window.  My mom fixed that window only to have a different window screen pushed out by Ms. destructive baby herself.  My mom follows her around like a nervous wreck after that and literally says, "This is EXACTLY how kids fall to their DEATHS in CABRINI GREEN!!!"  Don't worry mom, I am not going to visit the Cabrini Green slums of Chicago anytime soon. I love my mom.

On to grocery shopping at Walmart.  That is almost a weekly disaster.  First, Elisabeth either destroys or eats half of the food in the cart. Today we leave a long line of crunched cheetos and puddles of squirted out Caprison juice.  I was waiting for them to come on the intercom and say "Cleanup in aisle...umm..clean up EVERYWHERE.  Just follow the lady with the red-headed baby!"

Now, while this is going on my husband is out tromping through the woods all day looking for that ideal place to put his deer stand with one of his friends.  What Chris needs to do is to set a deer stand in my dad's backyard at Beaver Lake.  At any given time there is probably 10 or 15 deer happily nibbling on the corn my dad feeds them 5 feet away from their house.  Of course except when we are visiting and we bring our dog Matty.  Matty's favorite past time is to chase all the deer away from my dad's house.  Matty and my dad do not get along.   Now my husband deserves guy time, he works extremely hard for our family. I appreciate and love him for it.  It would just be nice if his guy time was at 2 am or something.  I am finally done with the grocery saga and heading home with 20,000 grocery bags that I am dreading having to carry in and put away by myself. (After all, that is what I have children for, who lucky for them, were not home either.)

In order to get all the groceries in and keep my daughter from running into the street and pushing out the screens in the neighbors windows I have to strap her in her high chair in the front yard.  When I am seriously taking the last load of groceries in, Matt and Chris drive up.  The first thing they say is "Why is Elisabeth in a high chair in the front yard? Then they see the groceries and Chris says "Quick! Let's drive around the block a few more times." And then they start laughing hysterically.  Chris gets out and offers to help and says as he walks by, "I know, I get the husband of the year award..." 

This was Elisabeth actually sitting in her highchair in the front yard.  You can just read her thoughts, "Come on mamma - let me out of here...I can take out those screens at the Martins in 10 seconds flat."



So.  How was YOUR day?!?!

My God moment(s) with Sarah

Sarah Joy.  My original baby girl. I swear that child came out of the womb quoting Psalm 100 and teaching all the other babies in the hospital nursery calculus. She begged us to get saved when she was in pre-school.  I remember us putting it off, trying to wait until  we thought she really understood.  When we picked her up from pre-school, her teacher was telling us she kept talking about wanting to get saved, what it meant, and how her parents were making her wait! Okay, so the kid got it and she prayed to ask Jesus in her heart that night!  She was always playing "church" with her babies. She would sit them all (15 of them) up against the wall next to a piano we had in the house at Boys Town and make them sing hymns. I knew then she had the hand of God on her and would do something great for him and I better prepare my heart then to someday "let her go."

 

I kept a prayer book of sorts for my kids. I would jot prayers and the dates and scripture that went along with 2 year old temper tantrums, lost papers at school, and ear infections that wouldn't go away.  I remember when Sarah was in 1st grade and I felt so strongly that she would become a missionary that I actually wept and prayed thinking about her leaving us to go off to some third world country to be eaten by Indians.  (I was really into Elisabeth Elliot at the time- lol) Yes, that was my irrational prayer that didn't even make sense. But I kept writing those prayers for all my kiddo's, crazy fears and all.

The summer of 2010 we took our youth group to Glorietta, New Mexico to participate in MFuge.  This is part mission trip, part youth camp.  We have never pressured Sarah to become a missionary.  In fact, since she knew all the down and dirty of ministry growing up in a ministry family - we would consider ourselves lucky if she didn't leave the church all together some day! :) But she went forward during MFuge on a Thursday night and gave her life over to full time ministry - and felt special call of God to missions. She felt God calling her to be a sports missionary, possibly leading basketball camps in Africa. Her dad and I rejoiced and hugged and prayed and I secretly prayed for protection against those Indians!

     This is one of my all time favorite pictures of us - and it was taken during that week of Mfuge!

Several months after we returned from camp and the school year was back in full swing I was looking through old prayer journals for the kids. 

I came across this entry (look at the bottom of the picture). This was written 6 years before she gave her heart over to the call of missions.

I called Sarah into the bedroom, showed it to her and it was another tear filled, goosebump, God moment.  Everything that we both felt like God had spoken quietly to us over the years was confirmed in that moment.

She finished out her high school years, playing basketball, ministering in her school and through our church.  She spent time as a summer missionary through the Southern Baptist Convention in Kentucky.  Her major at SBU is in Intercultural Studies with a plan to go to the mission field.  Now don't get me wrong - we had our share of normal teenage knock down, drag out, yelling, slamming doors nights.  She's been grounded from her car, and had her bedroom door removed from its hinges and stored in the garage much to her teenage horror. But her heart always returned back to Jesus.

This summer we had our big garage sale.  (You can read about it in my previous blog "Cow skulls and Kids not for sale") Sarah put out all her stuff, and as I was looking through her things I noticed some basketball shoes she had put a $1.00 sticker on.  I actually plucked them out of someone's hand because I noticed something on them that made those shoes absolutely priceless to me. 

         She had written scripture on her school basketball shoes.  Those verses went up and down the court with her every single game. 

                     That's my sports missionary whether she goes over seas or not.  That's my girl. And Sarah Joy, if you happen to come across this blog in the middle of the night during a late night (hopefully study break) - we are praying that verse over you which carried up and down the court during basketball season Ezra 10:4 "Rise up, this matter is in your hands.  We will support you, so take courage and do it."  You can accomplish everything God has for you.  Love you baby girl.