Times a changin'!

Wow the last few weeks since I posted anything have flown by! I can't believe it has been almost a month. Kudos to all of you that have time to post something everyday. It has been a whirlwind around here. First, took time to take my daughter on a little mountain excursion. We visited friends in Denver and could not even escape the heat of Oklahoma! We did however have a little reprieve in Red River, New Mexico. The evening we arrived it was 59 degrees!!!! Thank you Lord!!! We had two great days there and then traveled up to Denver. God is SO faithful and good. We really enjoyed our time together. She has three older brothers and it gets a little hard on her at times. For those of you that have teenage boys you know what I mean. Three of them are SO close in age. It was incredible that last year we had three middle schoolers; 6th, 7th, and an 8th grader! This year time is changing...we will have a freshman in College; a freshman in High School, an 8th grader, and a seventh grader! WHEW! This is going to be an incredible year!

I am currently trying to ready myself for my oldest to go to college. He is not even home right now. He has been gone all summer working at his grandparents farm. I saw him on my birthday and that is it since graduation. He is earning money for school. He will be home this week in a whirlwind only for us to pack him up to move into the dorm.

This week the two younger ones will pick up their schedules at school. So we begin another year of gnashing of teeth about their lack of friends on their 'team' at school. We usually have the kids split into three or four teams. This is who they have their class rotations with....some years good....some years not so good. I have been praying for a good year!

Next week I will be at Parent Orientation at the university all day and then Parent Orientation at the high school that evening! Thankfully I have a Palm to keep everything and everybody straight.

My husband this week also changes his schedule at work. He is in law enforcement. This last schedule has been brutal to family life. He has missed so much and I have MISSED him!!! So much changing that my head is spinning right now.

Me, I am just trying to make sense of it all. The children are no longer 'children' they are young teen/adults. Thankfully they still listen to us...even if they try to act like they are not. I am so grateful that they all love the Lord.

So much to be thankful for this week even when plans change and we ended up not having our vacation with family in Texas. God had other plans. The vacation we have been having here at home this weekend with Daddy has been needed and well deserved.

Time changes so fast. Hang on to your little ones as long as you can. In a blink of an eye they are grown!!
Praising Him in ALL things,
Vickie

The Fabulous Four!

My fantastic four! I love them dearly!

He is in the details....even when we don't think so

Next week I am taking our daughter on a road trip to the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado. It is just a special time for the two of us. She will be 13 in April and I am using this opportunity to really have some meaningful talks about modesty, purity, sex, friends, and general teenage girl things. My precious husband is giving us this wonderful opportunity to experience my most favorite place in all the world and share it with our daughter. We are going to have a wonderful 'passport to purity' week!

I am so looking forward to this uninterrupted time with H. She was only six months old when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Her mother was only given weeks to live but the Lord gave her 3 years. I would have loved to have known her mom and can't wait until one day we can meet in Heaven. At times I hurt so deeply that I am having the chance to see her children grow up and become such awesome, godly young men and a young lady. I never dreamed I could love three children so deeply that were not my very own. I mean I can see loving adopted children, children you have prayed for and chosen but you hear so many traumatic cases where there are hard feelings, or the children cannot stand their 'stepmother'. This has never been the case. We just bonded. Step is not even in our vocabularly. Even their mother's dearest friends noticed this when we met in Texas over five years ago. They said their dear friend had prayed for her husband's new wife and a mother for her precious babies. They met weekly to pray with her and for her. She specifically prayed for one to love her children as if they were her very own but also that she would not let them forget her. Imagine meeting all these people that had known and loved my new husband's wife so deeply and they were asking all these important questions about where I stood with Christ, how I felt about my husband and children, etc. I just began to tell them that I can't explain it but I feel as if the children were my very own and that we often speak of their mother. Several women burst into tears in the room. I thought, "Oh no, I should not have said that!" When they regained their composure they told me that this was her hearts prayer. We all cried then. It is not in my own strength that this is being achieved. It is by the GRACE of our Lord that He has done this very thing. This circle of friends are unlike any I have ever had in my life. They surrounded my children's mother with love, prayer, friendship, companionship, and so many other things. Perhaps her closest friend of all is one of my dearest and most precious friends to date.

The Lord was in the details down to the very meeting of my husband and myself. It is truly an unbelievable story but one I will save for another time. Until then, I will continue to be in awe of how we have a Lord that loves us so incredibly that He takes each little circumstance of our lives and spins it into this beautiful tapestry called life. I don't want to miss out on what He has for me and my family. It is so easy to do. Tonight I feel grateful and yet so unworthy. He has taken the broken, shattered hearts of two families and made one. The story is only beginning...

Praising Him in ALL things,
Vickie

Life is full of surprises

I cannot believe that I have not posted to this blog since January! I mean this is unbelievable. I have no excuse. After all my last post was on busyness.....I mean I have been busy. Anyone that has four children, a husband (with an erratic schedule) and works full time is bound to be busy. Add to the mix we had our oldest graduate in May from high school and oh did I mention that we have one going into high school in August, two still in middle school, and oh yes the graduate will be a freshmen in college. Our daughter will be 13 in April. It will be official....we will have four teenagers!

Many who know me laugh at my over excitement at times and my harried nature. Just over five years ago I was a 'busy' single mom of a 12 year old son. I 'thought' I was busy! What a sense of humor our Lord has! He knew that He was preparing me for my new life that was around the corner. The last five years have been the most wonderful of my life and yet some of the most difficult. It is hard suddenly being a wife after ten years of being alone. It is even harder becoming a mom to four children overnight. I will tell you this....life is full of surprises...I cannot imagine my life without these precious four Texans in it! My joy has truly been made full and the Lord has restored what the locust had eaten. He gave me a Godly husband that truly loves me as Christ loves the church which is just exactly what I prayed for the entire nine and one half years I was single again. He also brought into my life three children that I cannot imagine not being my very own flesh and blood. They lost their mom to cancer when they were only toddlers. All the years I was single again I prayed for the man the Lord had for me. I prayed for his circumstances and whatever surrounded his delay into my life. I prayed that if he had children that I would be able to love them as my very own. I specifically prayed for children that would need a mom to love them and care for them. The Lord answered my prayers as specifically as I prayed and even more so. He is a loving God that has our whole entire lives planned. Yes, life is full of surprises. I can't wait to see how long it will take me to update this blog. I am hoping to tomorrow but if not....it will be soon and I am sure I will have more to ramble on about. This one thing is true.....I am blessed beyond my wildest expectations or imagination.
Until next time....

Busyness

Today our lives are so fast paced and it never seems to slow down. I don't see how some parents have their children involved in numerous activities such as dance, music, sports, etc. We have four children, three of whom are teenagers. They are all active in one sport at a time. A couple have had music lessons at different times. I do not see how all this activity is helpful to children or family life. Part of life is learning to spend quiet times by oneself...learning to reflect on life and prayerfully developing spiritual disciplines that will mean so much more than all the activities one could cram into a life.

The one thing that our family really zeros in on is having dinner together each evening. It is a ritual that we still keep today. Granted if my husband's schedule changes he is not present but in that case we all have breakfast together but at least the children and I have dinner together every single night. Time spent with the family is very important to both of us. This is when we can bond with our teens and they can share what is on their hearts (at least those that are in a talkative mood that day!) I feel we are too busy at times but I know that there are many other families in our town that are so incredibly busy that it is affecting their lives in detrimental ways. They may not see it yet but one cannot continue at such a fast pace, pushing children, racing here and there without some sort of consequence taking place from all the frantic running around.

I read a story once that has stayed with me for years now. It was called B.U.S.Y. and it stood for Being Under Satan's Yoke. I have added it below:

Are You Too Busy For Christ?Keep The Christians Busy
Satan called a worldwide convention.In his opening address to his assembled demons he said:"We cannot keep the Christians from going to church. We cannot keep them from reading their Bibles and knowing the truth. We cannot even keep them from conservative values. Nevertheless, we can do something else. We can keep them from forming an intimate, abiding relationship with Christ. If they gain that connection with Jesus, our power over them is broken.

So, let them go to church, let them have their conservative lifestyle, but steal their time, so they cannot gain that relationship.This is what I want you to do. Distract them from gaining hold of their Savior and maintaining that vital connection!""How shall we do this?" shouted the demons."

Keep them busy with the non-essentials of life. Invent schemes to occupy their time." he answered."Tempt them to spend, spend, spend, then borrow, borrow, borrow. Convince the wives to go to work for long hours and the husbands to work 6 or 7 days a week, 10 - 12 hours a day, so they can afford their lifestyles. Keep them from spending time with their children. As their family fragments, soon their homes will offer no escape from the pressures of work. Also:
Super-stimulate their minds so that they cannot hear that still small voice.
Entice them to play the radio or cassette player whenever they drive, and to keep the TV, VCR, CD players and PCs going constantly in their homes. See to it that every store and restaurant in the world blares secular music constantly. This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ.
Fill their coffee tables with secular magazines and newspapers.
Pound their minds with the news 24 hours a day.
Invade their driving moments with billboards.
Flood their mailboxes with junk mail, sweepstakes, mail order catalogs, and every kind of newsletter and promotional offering, free products, services, and false hopes.
In their recreation, let them be excessive. Have them return from their recreation exhausted, disquieted, and unprepared for the coming week.
Do not let them go out in nature to reflect on God' s wonders. Send them to amusement parks, sporting events, concerts, and movies instead.
When they meet for spiritual fellowship, involve them in gossip and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences and unsettled emotion.
Let them be involved in soul-winning, but crowd their lives with so many good causes they have no time to seek power from Christ in prayer. Soon they will be working in their own strength, sacrificing their health and family for the good of the cause."

Convention Aftermath
It was quite a convention. The demons went eagerly to their assignments causing Christians everywhere to get busy, busy, busy and rush here and there. Has the devil been successful at his scheme? You be the judge. How about this definition of BUSY: Being Under Satan's Yoke.
Author Unknown

I think that pretty much sums up what I desired to say...today has been hard. I have been rushing around picking up children from practice, taking two to FCA, running an errand for another child, typing a paper for another who has great difficulty typing, cooking dinner, cleaning up, on and on and on....I needed to be reminded of this wonderful story. I pray that it ministers to someone else like it has ministered to me.

Praising Him in ALL things,
Proverbs31Mom-Vickie

Turn, Turn, Turn

As the old song goes, Turn, Turn, Turn...that seems to be how I feel today. Life is rushing ahead at lightening speed and it seems to me that my children are no longer children but young adults. This world culture today pushes our children to maturity way too soon. I am thankful that they still want to listen to me and value my opinion in regards to many important areas of their lives. I see so many teens today that are on the fence in regards to their faith and morals. This may indeed be the 21st century but God's word is as relevant today as it was a thousand years ago. I see so many parents that are flustered with raising their children. They want to be their 'friends' instead of being their parents. So many are permissive and allow their children to go to certain movies, dress inappropriately or support clothing manufacturers that are purveyors of pornography. I love my children and we have a great relationship but I am not in their lives to be their best friend. They need boundaries and a friend cannot enforce boundaries. It is okay to tell them no and point them to what God's word says about the circumstances they may find themselves in at any given time.

Tonight as I reflect on the culture that is being thrust onto my teens I am reminded that to everything there is a season. There is never a greater time or need for prayer for our youth than today. The prayers of a righteous man availeth much. Pray on!!!
Praising Him in All things,
Vickie

Heart of the Home

Welcome to my new blog! Here I will share musings, ideas, and general things that have helped me as a wife and mother to four children. I can't wait to share about who is the Heart of our home....Jesus Christ! He has brought our family together in a wonderful way and through this process He has shown me how to be more like Him; how to maximize our dollar, what works in a blended family and what does not. I can't wait to share with you!
Blessings,
Vickie