A Life of Gratitude

During our homeschool co-op this morning, all of the moms participated in a sweet time of relaxation, meditation, prayer, and journaling. As I prayed, God gave me these words. He was speaking this to me and to faith-filled Mommas everywhere. Today I am grateful for God's words of encouragement for all the Mommas that love Jesus!   If you are a Mom that desires to live a Spirit-filled life, longs to be a blessing to her children, and wants more than anything to lead your children to the Father... These words are for you. _____________________________________________________ These are my children. These are the loves of my life. They do not need to be fearful. They are not controlled by anger, evil, or pride. They are not in bondage. They are free. They are liberated. They are loved. They are held by me at all times. You must teach them who I am. You must show them My love. You must rebuke fear and call out confidence. You must help them un

Students of the Spirit, our homeschool co-op, had the privilege of serving at the Ronald McDonald house this morning. Our group of homeschool families participated in the Lunches With Love program. We donated and packed 67 bagged lunches to be served to the families whose children are hospitalized for various reasons.  After packing the bags, we prayed over the families that would be receiving them. We all truly enjoyed this wonderful opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus for a community of people that are facing a very difficult time. If you've never been to the Ronald McDonald House, I highly recommend volunteering! We were given a tour of the house after completing the bags and I was blown away. This 35 bedroom home provides meals and a place to sleep and bathe for families with children at Brenner's hospital. There is absolutely no charge and families can stay as long as needed. A $10 donation is suggested for each ni

Tonight we celebrated my mom's 70th Birthday! My brother and I didn't want to celebrate with just any ordinary party, so we decided to throw a 70's themed party! Everyone dressed in 70's style attire and we had an amazing dinner catered by Boston Market. We sang Happy Birthday, ate cake, and then had a dance party! We also had men's best-dressed, women's best-dressed, and kid's best-dressed winners! Everyone laughed and enjoyed themselves! It really was a great celebration of my mom's 70th year of life! One of everyone's favorite things was the slide show I created with pictures from the past. The slide show encompassed years and years of memories. It played on repeat throughout the evening on the big screen TV. I loved making the slide show. As I picked memory after memory, I was amazed at my mom's beautiful life. It hasn't always been easy or perfect, but she's been given 70 l

Psalm 61:2 "From the ends of the earth I cry out to you. When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Does your heart ever feel overwhelmed? Perhaps you’re feeling overwhelmed currently. What typically happens when our hearts are burdened? Sometimes we get frustrated and feel hopeless. We often take it out on other people and start to feel ashamed of ourselves. Other times we end up throwing ourselves a pity party, don’t we? From David’s writing in Psalm 61, we can easily tell that he also experienced what often feels like defeat. He says to God, “From the ends of the earth I cry out to you.” It appears he felt distant from God, possibly as far away as the earth would allow. He says is crying out from the end of the earth, this language suggest that he felt an extreme distance between himself and his Father. When our hearts are overwhelmed it can cause us to feel utterly alone and detached from our Creator. Next David

After almost 3 months of waiting on forms to be filled out and calls to be made and approvals to be granted, I was finally able to start infusion therapy last week. This medication is a type of Chemotherapy that will hopefully help relieve the symptoms I suffer with because of Ankylosing Spondylitis. It will also help to slow the progression of the disease.  It took a few hours to infuse the drug into my body and it took about 3 days to recover from the infusion. I slept on and off for 72 hours. I will be getting infusions every 2 weeks for a while and then I'll move to every 4-6 weeks for the foreseeable future. My doctor expects that I will start feeling some relief after a few infusions. I'm hopeful that my body will respond well and this drug will help me for many years. For many, this drug is like being infused with hope.  As I've gotten accustomed to this diagnosis and all that comes with it, I have also been apart of several AS facebook groups. I'v