Making Your Home a Haven - 31 Day Challenge

You are going to love this!

As you may (or may not!) know, Autumn is my absolutely favorite season. I just love everything about it, even those dreary, chilly, rainy days. I love watching the farmers in the fields harvesting their crops. I love watching the world turn colors as it prepares to sleep away the winter cold. I love the warmth of a bonfire as we toast marshmallows and cook hot dogs while sipping hot chocolate and laughing. I love the sound of leaves crunching under our feet as we take the dog for walks. I love getting my trunk ready for Trunk or Treat at our church every Halloween. I love the baking and decorating and cooking that seems to only come around during the autumn months.

You get the idea. I LOVE AUTUMN!

And now, I have one more thing to love.

check out this amazing challenge over at Women Living Well Ministries.  This is a do-able challenge for anyone and I can't wait for it to get started!

To share with you...

Sometimes there are things that are just too good not to share. I am posting some things that have inspired, encouraged or otherwise made my day in some way.

10 Points of Joyful Parenting sits on my fridge door. I look at it as often as I need to (to re-adjust my attitude) or want to find a way to focus back in on what this parenting thing is all about. While you are there, take the time to savor the writing of Ann Voskamp. You will be blessed indeed.

A friend and I recently had a conversation about hearing from God. What's it like? How do I know? Is it a voice? A feeling? This I ran across this wonderful gift on Lysa TerKeurst's website.

I was reading Karen Ehman's blog (so wonderfully titled Live Your Priorities, Love Your Life) today and she shared what has become my number one favorite song. Chris Tomlin's All My Fountains. I have listened to it about 20 times today. LOVE. IT.

My ladies ministry at church has started Priscilla Shirer's Jonah: Navigating a Life Interrupted Bible study. I'm already hooked. Get it? Hooked.

LeAnn Rice over at She Cooks has a recipe that makes all the other recipes jealous. Try this Marble Cheesecake with Dark Chocolate Ganache.

I will be creating these cute little pumpkin people for my front porch this weekend.

And finally...

Football season is winding down, and that makes my heart sad, but my very handsome guard made my Momma Heart very very proud!

And how could we leave out one very cute Jr. Cheerleader sister?

My babies.

Called to do the work

You might notice that the tone of my posts will be different now and again. I generally share something that God has shown me, or that I am in the process of being "refined" through. 

But another aspect of my life has taken center-stage and you will be hearing more on it from time to time.

Being a full time stay at home mom.

This is a huge step for me. We have gone into this season knowing that it will have to develop and flesh out in God's way and in his time. Pretty much the only thing I know for sure right now is that I am where I am supposed to be.

I know this because I am nervous. I am only nervous when I am not in control. I guess this being nervous is a good thing. It means I am on a path that God has for me. 

It is exciting too. Knowing I am doing what God wants from me. I know there will be some amazing blessings on this path. I know I will get to see God move and do things that I can't even imagine right now.

God has been really working on me to release control, to push myself to become more disciplined, and to seek out what he has for me in this season. 

I have been memorizing a verse that I want to pray for my son regularly as he moves from his pre-teen to his teen years. It really is what my decision to stay home is all about. David said it for Solomon as he built the temple. I pray it for my son as he grows. But God has shown me that it also applies to my work as a mother. 

“Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the LORD is finished."
1 Chronicles 28:20

Our bodies house our soul. They house our spirit. They are now the temple that we are to prepare for God to dwell in.

"Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?"1 Corinthians 3:16

 "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own."
1 Corinthians 6:19

God has given me specific duties to build these two little "houses" to prepare for his Holy Spirit. My job as a mother is to pour in as much truth, love, encouragement and hope in Jesus that I can; so that as God works on them, an amazing temple- their testimony that will be lived out with that body - will be built. Through God's work, their lives will bring Him glory and the Light of Jesus to the world. 

This is no small order. But wow. 

He is no small God.

Shhhhh...He's speaking

" ....our days are meant to tilt and we are meant to spin and He holds us perfectly on this axis of rotating glory." ~ Ann Voskamp

What with becoming a stay at home mom (most of the time) part-time Special Events Coordinator for my old employer - a crisis pregnancy center, a Pre-K princess who didn't go to Pre-K and now needs to be entertained/challenged/educated/encouraged toward a little more independence by Mommy, a Jr. High football and basketball playing all-boy who is testing the limits of well, everything, a new dog, writing my first teaching workshop and working in children's ministry teaching kids how much you can learn from the greedy kid in the pig pen and how amazing it feels to throw a little hip-hop into your worship time... I sometimes feel a little dried up in the inspiration department.

OK, here lately, not sometimes....it's been a drought.

Then rain.

Drops to refresh and inspire.

To remind.

To encourage.

To incite to create.

A Holy Experience

Yes, life should be. 

          

                                      Can be. 

    

                                                           Is.  

                                                                          Will be.

This blog posting from Ann Voskamp moved me in ways I don't really understand, and yet were so profound.  Her simple, quiet, faith-talk that makes you wonder how anything could be as complicated as we make it. I haven't been able to remove that talking from my mind.

 I don't think I am meant to. 

I think I was meant to find this offering, this day, for this reason.

To remember how intimate and personal and amazing God is. 

I do believe I had completely forgotten.

I can't explain why what Ann wrote has made me feel like God was talking to me, but it did. And does.

It feels lite as a feather...

and full of Light. 

Airy.

Welcoming.

Fall-ish in it's anticipation of beautiful, colors-bursting-forth change.

Yes, a one-piece faith and experiences and fragrances spoke to me today. 

God got me all quiet, and in the quiet...He spoke.

Go let it speak to you, too.