Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Yes, it’s been a while.  This has been the longest hiatus I’ve taken from blogging since I started.  In fact, I’ve taken a hiatus from just about everything I used to enjoy.  Call it laziness.  Call it busy-ness.  Call it lack of focus.  Call it “the season I’m in”.  Any way you cut it, I’ve been MIA from many things I enjoy in life.

In addition to not blogging, I haven’t scrapbooked in nearly 2 years.  I quit reading blogs for months.  I quit using my camera.  I quit surfing the net.  I quit Facebooking.  I quit reading.  I quit watching TV.  And if I’m honest, I quit putting much at all into my relationship with God.

There was no specific reason why.  Slowly  but surely those things just went by the wayside.  Oh, I guess you could call “just the season I’m in”…arriving home from work by 6pm (if I’m lucky), play with Kylie, eat dinner, put Kylie to bed…and that leaves about 90 minutes for me to shower and do whatever else I desired.  Most nights I’d play a game on the iPad or read a magazine.  Or many nights, I’d do some Bible study (just because I was filling in the blanks doesn’t mean I was really studying).

A few months ago, I realized how much I’d let go that I enjoyed.  So, now that we are in 2014 and starting with a clean slate, I decided to try harder to incorporate those things I once enjoyed back into my life.  One of those things is blogging.  But I’m blogging now with a different intention.  I started blogging just to document what what going on in my life.  And document I did.  During scrapbooking retreats, I’d have my blog open looking for dates and times of when things happened.  Then we decided to adopt and all of a sudden, I picked up a bunch of new readers and I started blogging every night and really stressing over getting up a new post every day.  And somewhere in all that, blogging became more of a job than something I enjoy.  So I’m going back to blogging as documentation.  And if there are any readers left after my long hiatus, then they can follow along.  Or not.  Either way, I hope to be back.

For a while, it’s going to be a lot of backtracking since it looks like it’s been almost 9 months since I really hit the high points.  I’ll leave you with some of our Easter activities (told you I was backtracking!)

It was a special day because I was able to get up and attend the early service at our main campus.  I love my church but I sure do miss the full orchestra and choir of the “big house”. 

And this is the reason why I got up so early…This is my neighbor.  We lived next door to she, her son and husband since we moved into this house over 8 years ago.  We never really knew them and didn’t do more than throw up our hand as we drove by.  Until we brought Kylie home.  See, my neighbor is Chinese.  Her husband is American and at the time was training to be a truck driver so he was away from home for a very long period of time.  She began to visit with her son (who is Jenna’s age) and as we began the relationship, she began to ask questions about God, church and Christianity.  After several months of this, she and her son were saved and both of them were baptized on Easter Sunday by the pastor of our Chinese congregation.

And there was no way I was going to miss it.  Unfortunately, Steve missed it as he was playing in the worship band at our campus.  I managed to see the baptisms and then make it back to our campus in time to teach my Sunday School class and attend service second hour.

This was after church…my sweet girls looked so beautiful!  And Steve in his pink shirt! 

Incidentally, Easter Sunday of 2012 was Kylie’s first Sunday at church EVER.  We’d only been home about a week.  She’s been every week since.  She’s grown so much!

Well, that’s it.  Thanks for indulging me a break from blogging.  It’s good to be back!!

Catching up...

Y'all bear with me.  I slacked up on my blogging during the holidays so I'm playing catch up. 

We had a lot of little fun activities coming into the Christmas holiday....at church, we have a Living Nativity.  This year, it was different...Kylie was too young to go out and see it, but I took her over there anyway before class started.  But I started teaching a 3 year old class (which I L.O.V.E. BTW) and I had the great pleasure of walking them over.

They all watched and listened so intently.  I was SO proud of them!  And some of the were even brave enough to pet the animals...

 

 

 

And lucky for us, no one melted down, which with 3 year olds, you just never know.  A few weekends before this, we decided to attend our little city's annual Christmas parade.  This year though, our church decided to be part.  Steve and several folks from the church put many hours into our float and then many members walked and handed out our church Christmas CDs.  I hi-jacked this photo from a friend (thanks L!)

 

 



 

I planned to watch the parade from the sidelines. However, there was so confusion with Jenna about that because she thought she was walking in it so by the time I got her dropped off the road was closed and I had no choice but to go.  And I had Kylie.  And no stroller.  So here's what we did...

 



 

 

OK, seriously, she only rode like this for a few minutes...but boy oh boy did she love it!  She kept waving and saying "hi!" "hi!" to everyone.  It was a great time and I kept hearing the folks watching saying "Wow" and "Whoa" when we passed by.  Just one of 1,593,293 reasons I love my church.

 

We also attended the big Christmas concert at what we affectionately refer to as the "Mother Ship" which is our home base church.  It's a rather large church and I love it, but I would not trade my regional campus for all the money in the world. 

 

Having said that, the concert was a wee bit crowded.  But wowzers...you haven't been to a Christmas concert until you've been to one at the Big House.

 



 

 

Steve played percussion, so the girls and I managed to find a whole row in the balcony.  With us, sat my friend Jill's husband with their two children and our friends the Yanceys with their 3 kids.  At the end with their newborn son were the Coates.  What that meant was our row had 8 children.  It was like a mini-daycare!  I couldn't get a ton of good pics, but check this sweet one out of Moses...

 



 

Our smaller choir had a special part too and let me tell you...they are small, but they are MIGHTY.  I would venture a guess that we took a grand majority of the best singers from the main campus.  They ROCKED. IT.  I mean...there just aren't words.  And then our awesome pastor, Jay, got up and said a few words.  It was a great night.  Kylie did so well...she loved the lights and the music.  She must have an ear for music because she's always loved it...



 

All in all, we had a great holiday season.  And bear with me as there is still more to come...

Journey On at Home

This past weekend was super busy.  It started out on Friday night hanging out with our friends the Yanceys.  That's always enjoyable except for the fact that I always watch Elizabeth with her kids and feel like a complete failure as a parent.  I am never amazed at her patience with them (they are 2 years and almost 1 year) and the way she incorporates learning about Jesus.  I'm sure Elizabeth would laugh to hear me say that and would be the first to tell you she is by no means the perfect parent, but dang, she sets the bar pretty high.  Or perhaps, it just seems high because I'm so far below it???

So, with that fresh on my mind, I was convicted to attend a parenting conference my church was putting on.  I signed up a week or so ago before my weekend got so busy.  Then by Friday night, I had decided something just had to go and it would have to be the conference.  But when I was leaving her house Friday night, Elizabeth said she was going and God really started working on me about going Saturday.

And boy am I glad I did!

Started out with a little worship which always gets me in the right frame of mind.  And then we went to break out sessions.  It was only 8:30-12:00 so it didn't take up my whole day and the sessions were SO good.  Basically it all centered around making our HOME the center of Christian influence and not just sitting back and trusting the church (and school, in our case) to do the job.

In one of our breakouts, the question was asked about who influenced you most in the faith.  Most of the people mentioned their parents or grandparents.  And they gave examples of waking up in the mornings and finding their mom or dad praying together or reading the Bible.  And I sat there wondering...in 25 years, when Jenna is asked this question, will she be able to say that??  If she were asked now, "How do you know your mom and dad love Jesus?", would she be able to give any concrete examples or just say, "They always went to church on Sunday morning."  I want to leave her with a legacy of faith.

And y'all, right now, I'm failing pretty miserably at it.  I'm not going to go into detail about how badly I'm failing, but trust me...I'm nowhere NEAR where I need to be in my spiritual/prayer life or my personal walk with God.

I noticed though that in the past several weeks, I have started to study the book, "Spiritual Parenting" during my Wednesday night class.  I have attended the Empowered to Connect seminar AND I attended this Journey On @ Home conference.  Think God might be trying to get my attention???  HELLOOOOO!!!!????  I'm about to bring a 1 year old into my home who has been institutionalized for the whole year she's been on this earth!  Perhaps now is the time to start taking some steps to become the parent God designed me to be.

I hope to share with you soon some of the changes we are making around here...but until then, just pray for me as I make these changes.  Change is always hard.  Especially where conviction is involved.

And as I learned this weekend...wherever you are right now...that is a GREAT starting place.  Won't you join me in starting to make YOUR home the center of Godly influence? 

Journey on.

The Big Apple

A few weeks ago, Jenna got to take part in something that if Steve were working she would have to miss.  So, another hidden blesssing of Steve's unemployment.

Jenna got to go to the Big Apple.  Not really.  Not NYC. But Vacation Bible School (VBS).  Our church puts on the best VBS ever and it takes hundreds (as in like 400) volunteers to pull it off, but it is so well worth it!

My good friend Zach, who is the children's minister at our regional campus (and is the absolute best) was the VBS minister.  On Friday night, the families were invited to hear the songs and lessons the kids learned. 

Jenna had a great time with her friend and so many of them she hadn't seen in a while since we attend our regional campus church.  Next year, they've committed to having VBS there instead and I can't wait!

10th Day of Christmas-Station Hill

Today I want to share something that I am SO excited about!  Many of you know that I'm a member of a pretty large church in a city further north of where I live.  Steve and I have been a member of Brentwood Baptist Church almost 10 years (in January) and we have never felt more at home.

About a year ago, after much prayer and consideration, BBC decided to launch a regional campus and it just happens to be in my back yard (well, not literally, but you know what I mean).  This whole year, we have been meeting and working together to prepare for our launch Sunday (February 2010).  It has been tiring, but exciting.  We have gotten close to many of the families that we will "do life" with over the next number of years.

Our new church will be called The Church at Station Hill and you can find more about it here as soon as the website is functional.

Making this move has definitely been out of my comfort zone.  I have been a member of 2 churches in my entire life...my home church, Radnor Baptist and my current church home, Brentwood Baptist.  I love BBC.  Let me make sure you understand.  I.  LOVE.  BBC.  I love the bigness of it.  I love the people.  I love the pastor.  I love the children's program.  I love that we have a library.  I love the choir.  I love the orchestra.  I love most everything about it.

But Station Hill will have the DNA of BBC, but we will be our own church.  And I'm going to be part of it.  And in 20 years when Station Hill is as big as BBC, I can say I was there from the beginning.  How cool is that?

So, if you are looking for a church home and live south of Nashville, come see us in February.  And if you can't wait until then, come tomorrow night at 4pm.  We'll celebrate the birth of the Christ child together.

I'll be there.