Shoes

I'm going to confess right up front that this is going to be an extremely shallow blog! :)

I LOVE shoes (& bags). I always have, even though I know very good and well what THE BOOK says about love and who we are supposed to love. So you all understand it's not THAT kind of love. It's a shallow love.

Which leads me to this bumper sticker on Nicole's Facebook that made me laugh:

Waiting

...accompanied with patience, has never been one of my dominant virtues. I'm more inclined towards doing, producing, gitterdone, the quicker the better. I especially get impatient when I have to wait on people. In fact, I stopped praying for patience awhile back because God kept inserting opportunites for me to display it towards my children. :)

But, waiting is so often what God calls me to do- waiting with patience. My humanness tells me I am being unproductive if I am sitting still. Sometimes my prayers can be more of a frantic desperation that God do something NOW. My heart can actually feel tight and squeezed when I don't see anything happening.

In the past several months I believe God has been speaking to me through His Word about this subject of waiting patiently:

Psalm 25:4&5- "Make me know Your ways, O LORD; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day."
(I must insert here a great big thank you to Jessi for directing me to these verses in regards to my children. She has no idea how much this has blessed me. I want to pass it along: whenever the word 'me' is used in these verses, insert a child's name. I love you, Jessi!)

Psalm 27:14- "Wait for the LORD; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the LORD."

Psalm 37:7- "Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him..."

Psalm 62:5-8- "My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be shaken. On God my salvation and my glory rest; the rock of my strength, my refuge is in God. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us."

Isaiah 40:31- "...yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary."

Acts 1:4- "And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised..." (read the rest of this passage)

Titus 2:13- "...waiting (looking) for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Christ Jesus..."

Believers seeking to glorify God will simply wait. It is in waiting that God will bring about my sanctification through spiritual growth; it is in waiting that I am actually given new strength. He does not want me waiting with a sense of quiet desperation, but with a courage that He is my hope and salvation. God is a very patient potter, smoothing out my rough edges through sanctifying grace, settling my soul to trust in God that He is exercising His perfect will- even in those areas where I wait...and wait...and wait...

And so, maybe I now have the assurance to go back to praying for patience. :)

And a great big, full-of-love HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the most important man in my life!

Truth

"I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth." 3 John 4

Colin reading his testimony.



"I have been raised in a Christian home with parents who loved me and taught me about God and His love all of my life. I have known about Jesus for all of my 16 years.

About two years ago I realized that just knowing who Christ is wasn’t enough; I needed a personal relationship with Christ. I needed to really know Him. I confessed that I was a sinner; I needed Christ and His redemptive power of the Cross to wash and make me clean.

Titus 3:4-7 says “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

I have submitted to Christ and His finished work on the cross. I believe that I will never be good enough or be able to do enough for salvation, that it is my faith in Christ and nothing else that saves me. It is this same faith that makes me part of His body.

I want to be baptized to show the world that my belief in an awesome and powerful God is real, that He will love me even through the process of growing in His grace. Baptism, for me, makes me accountable to other believers because it is an outward confession of what is in my heart."




What an awesome day to experience the 4th baptism in our family. God's blessings are too numerous to count! One thing that is very clear to us as parents is even though we don't always agree with the choices our children make, we NEVER doubt that they love Jesus and sincerely desire to serve Him.

God is good all the time!

Lake Erie

...was awesome in a completely different sort of way than our previous getaway. It was awesome to create memories with those I love the most- husband and kids. We were extremely bummed that Adam wasn't able to go with us. We left early Thursday morning and went to East Harbor State Park; it's on a peninsula northwest of Sandusky.

We had to go see the lake first thing!




Our camper supposedly sleeps 8- I suppose that's true if all the kids were 5 and under. We've always felt a little cramped with all of our big kids and so this time we borrowed my mom's little pop-up for the girls to sleep in. All the kids pitched in and we were set up in no time.





A good portion of our days was spent in the water...






or near the water...











or eating...











One day Jerald, Laina and I took a stroll down the beach and out on this walkway made of huge rocks.






Another day, we went to the Marblehead Lighthouse- the oldest lighthouse in continuous operation on the Great Lakes, built in 1819.





We snuck in some family pics at the beautiful area surrounding Marblehead.





"ewwwwww...that's disgusting!"


On our last day, we were able to play Bocce ball on a sandbar surrounded by water.




Other random pics...










Camping is actually one of our favorite things to do with our kids. It's a totally relaxed atmosphere, no schedule...sleep when you want, get up when you want, eat when you want, read when you want and is one of the cheapest family-oriented activities there is. It creates great, good times and lasting memories. There's nothing like sitting around a campfire, talking, roasting marshmallows, just being together. We've thought about other family things we could do; let's see...Cedar Point (we saw it from the lighthouse)- $315 for the day, Disney World- $525 for one day, Kings Island- $330. It really gripes me that these places are all about family, but one has to remortgage their house to go.

And so, I guess we will stick with camping for now...it's a lot less stress anyway! The only thing we are praying for is the opportunity to take Dan & Chris! :)