Don't give up

We all have something that we want in life. Maybe it’s a dream, maybe it’s a lifestyle or an education, or a job, it could be a hundred different things.

In my experience, the thing that we want never seems to be easy to obtain. It takes work. It takes work to make that dream happen and it takes work to maintain it.

I have found though that when you work for it and you stand in the midst of experiencing your dream, it’s worth it. All the hours, the sacrifices, the struggles, all the work is worth it, and fuels you to keep working at it.

In my family, Paul and I both have dreams and we love pursuing them, and supporting each other in dreaming and doing what we can to make them come true. (Unavoidable life experiences happen, but when it is within your control to push forward, we do.) It takes a lot of work to make two dreamers content with life. Staying still when needed and pushing forward when able to do so. I would have said last year that it takes works to make our family happen in a healthy way. Now in our new year of dietary restrictions, school schedules, and living a dozen hours from family, it takes a LOT of work to make our life and dreams happen in a relatively healthy way.

Last year when I would prepare to be gone and speak for the weekend, I would do hours of writing prep, I would select my wardrobe, I would arrange for travel, I would pack my merchandise, I would make sure Paul had diapers, one meal already prepared, and groceries bought so he could just spend time with the kiddos. That was basically my checklist and it took me two days to make my dream come true.

I have found in our busy season that it takes me all week to prepare to leave for a weekend away. We have food items that are at certain specialty stores, so in one week it’s a stop at four different places to feed my family. On top of grocery shopping, I prepare all the meals ahead of time for my kids and then prepare snacks and small items for me to bring along so that I too can eat and not be a burden on my hosts. With adding good ole down home cooking, there is also our school schedule. We are not in activities yet, so we aren’t running around in the evenings, but school does mean packing the other kids up twice a day to take and pick up Big from school. It takes time. But it also means when I am gone, I need to arrange someone else to do the driving, and make sure there are notes to teachers, and directions for drivers, etc. The list goes on.

If we want to see our kids, that means being extra prepared so that you can prepare a little each day, play with the kids a little each day, pack a little each day, cook a little each day.

It would be a lot easier to stay home.

But staying home doesn’t make my dream come true. Doesn’t make what I believe God has gifted me with happen. Not working for it will never make my dream a reality.

It takes work to make dreams come true. It takes work to have intentional family time, to prepare devotions, to arrange your schedule to have quality time with your spouse, with your kids, and the Lord to remain healthy and balanced. It takes work when all that is said and done to say, now I push forward on making my dream happen. Now I get myself back in my kitchen to prepare food for my family so I can be gone. Now I get off the couch and workout so my body doesn’t fall apart and I feel better. After all that is said and done, now I write. Now I read. Now I paint. Now I play my instrument.

Now I make my dream happen.

After I used EVERY dish, I’m not kidding, every dish in my kitchen this past week to prepare all eight meals for the weekend for us while we were gone, I thought to myself, this is crazy. This is a lot of work. Why are doing this?

Then I watched my husband take the stage in front of 800 people. I love watching him play. He’s alive when he plays. He is at his best when he plays. He is connected to his soul more then ever when plays. I experience how different our family time is when we are away from home. The games my kids and I play together, and the fun we have because we get to come with dad once in awhile. And it’s worth it.

The work to make your dreams come true are worth it. Don’t give up. Keep pushing forward. Find the balance. Learn when to say no, but don’t give up. No one applauds the daily dirty work to make your life happen. Its what you do if you believe in your dream enough. The daily work isn’t to be praised by others, its for your own growth, your own depth of character to appreciate when the dream happens.

Don't give up.

In never giving up, most of what makes it so much work is putting God and family first. It’s making sure you still see your kids, you still laugh with your spouse, you still sit and read together at night. That you find time to snuggle and play. Those aren’t the sacrifices you make to have dreams come true. Make sure those things still happen cause you’ll never get those moments back. Fight hard to find the balance and never give up.

Side note: I know there are short cuts to not preparing every meal. We have LarBars for meals, we eat all fresh fruit and veggies for snacks, we eat scrambled eggs for dinner, or veggies and hummus. I cut my corners, but mostly we also value health, and want to make sure we never cut corners when it comes to feeding and training our kids about food.

Intentional Spiritual Time

This past summer at a musical festive in WI, my friend and speaking partner Pastor Henry Graf and I led a session on Dirty Parenting. Yea, you read that right. Dirty, as in the screw ups, the loss of control, the freakouts all teach us, mold us and help us get to our knees in prayer and invite God into the mess. It is a reminder that real life doesn’t look spiritual. Most of the time it just looks like a mess.

At least it does for me.

After one of the sessions, a woman came up to me and asked how I found time for spiritual fulfillment. I thought that was funny considering most of the time I am wondering that myself. I told her in the last few months I had found a good balance of accepting my reality with adjusting my expectations.

I told her this is what I wanted: Every morning wake up at least half an hour before the kids. Open my Bible, pray, journal, read, pray, cry, let go, be filled, be ready for the chaos.

Then I told her this happens maybe once every two weeks.

Then I told her this is what I strive for every week now.

Once a week I pray over my children after I put them to bed. We have read stories, teeth are brushed, our devotions and prayers and thankfulness to God are done. Then when our ritual is complete and everyone is tucked in, I pray. I pray out loud with my hand on the child I am praying for and I pour out my fears, my weakness, my dreams, my hopes, and my control. I lay down my expectations for my child and pray that God gives me eyes to see them for who they are. I pray for wisdom, for me and for them. I pray for their friends, their future spouse, and their relationship with their siblings and father. I pray for truth, for the men/woman of God they will become. I lay it all out there for them to hear. I let my children hear my heart for them and lay them back down before God almighty.

If nothing else, when they are in counseling when they are older confessing all the ways I screwed them up, they may hopefully remember that I tried. That I loved them enough to give them back to God every day. I tried.

Once a week my husband and I do our Managers meeting. This is spiritually fulfilling because it is prayer time with my partner. It is coming before God Almighty together, confessing together, gaining strength together, supporting each other, loving each other at the feet of God. This is hands down one of the most centering, balancing discipline I have.

Once a week I wake up early to journal, to read scripture and to pray. This is my truest form of honestly I can strive for. My journal has horrible confessions and crazy thoughts and emotions. It has questions that good Christians don’t ask anymore. It is my time to gain wisdom from scripture, lay down my sense of control and seek God’s counsel for the way I live my life.

I used to strive for five days a week waking up early, and when I couldn’t accomplish that and was struck by feelings of failure, I would eventually stop. Once a week is very doable if you are smart about the morning you choose to wake up early.

There are people out there who can accomplish devotional time every morning, and I congratulate you on your success. However, for those of you who can’t because your current life circumstances don’t allow it, I want to encourage you to find what works for you. Be creative, and find your vibe.

Once a week we do a family devotional and snuggle time. We read from Paul’s Bible and we just ask the kids questions about what we read. There aren’t any great activities and no the questions are planned, we are kind of fly by the seat of your pants people. Then after the Bible reading is done, we just hang out on bed, snuggle, giggle, tickle, laugh, snuggle, and hang out. It is a time to reconnect and push the pause button on life. It is full of love and therefore a deeply spiritual act.

This year, our family motto is to be intentional. When we discuss our priorities, humbling ourselves and subjecting ourselves to God’s authority needs to be intentional. If you aren’t intentional about your spiritual life, be aware that regular daily duties of life have a tendency to steal your spiritual life.

Creating these weekly ways of connecting your soul with its creator is our way of being intentional.

Four days a week I try to plug my soul back into my creator in an intentional way. The way I figure, four out of seven ain’t bad. I’m over half covered. The reason I have found success with this method is that each of my four days fills me in a different way and it looks different so it keeps my interested and forces different habits from me. Healthy habits with my kids, with my partner, and for myself.

Family meeting

We don't always succeed, but we try. We have gone weeks without a family meeting and have suffered the consequences. Life is so much better for us with a family meeting.

If you are anything like me I have a list of things I need to tell my husband after he comes home from work. Things that happened, things I'm thinking about, plans we need to make, schedules we need to coordinate. If your partner is anything like mine, he isn't thinking about those things. He isn't ready to hear all the things going on in my head. He needs some time to prepare for what's coming.

We had spent years trying to communicate in this way. Me trying to bring Paul up to speed as soon as he walks in the door, and him, trying his very hardest to balance work, the kids, projects, my wishes and desires, and his own plans. These weren't our finest moments. Sometimes work got accomplished, but mostly we were both just left feeling hurt, unheard, and disrespected.

That's why over a year ago we instituted our family meeting. Since the kids are a little older, we include them once a week in our schedule meeting, and Paul and I actually created the managers meeting.

Once a week, at a designated time we sit down and hash out all of our family business. Now it isn't necessarily the same day each week, sometimes it doesn't work that way. However, the week before we would have looked at our upcoming schedule and so we would have set our date for the next managers meeting.

In our managers meeting we start with prayer. This is hands down my favorite moment in our meeting. This prayer time allows us to refocus. To center ourselves, our plans, and our agenda. It forces us to put things in perspective. This time also allows me to hear what is on my husbands heart. Things that maybe he is struggling with that I didn't know about. I get a chance to hear his heart, his desires, his insecurities, his concerns, all the things he wants to lay on God's shoulders. It gives me insight into what is going on in his heart that maybe we didn't get a change to talk about because life got in the way. And the very opposite is true. He gets the chance to hear all these things from me.

Once we've prayed, we pull out our schedule and go through our week. We start with the most important items first, when can Paul and I get time and when do we spend time together as a family. Once those items are decided we look at what else is in our schedule for the week, the month ahead and on the cusp of each busy quarter, we look a few months ahead.

Then we bring out our notepad.

The notepad is where we have put the items to discuss for the entire week. This has saved so many disagreements, frustrations, and arguments. Instead of dumping my ideas on Paul right when he gets home or sporadically during the week, I have already put them on the notepad to discuss during our meeting. I can't tell you how helpful this is. When Paul and I come to the family meeting, both our minds are ready and prepared to discuss the family, the house, issues, whatever, it doesn't matter, we are both mentally present. Before, Paul wasn't ready to hear all the things I needed to discuss with him, or I wouldn't communicate it properly because I had already put so much thought into my ideas and I would only bring him into the discussion after I had already decided on a course of action. Waiting for the meeting forces me to think things through and how to communicate effectively to Paul and it allows Paul time to think about it and process whatever it is. (Please realize that we do talk during the week. Sometimes things on the notepad get talked about before the meeting, and often we talk about how we are feeling during our days, but the notepad frees us to leave it if we need, or force us to talk about issues when we haven't had time before hand. We aren't weirdos that won't talk to each other until meeting time. That's just strange.)

We can both put items on the notepad, it’s not a secret. Things that come up on the notepad have ranged from school for the kids, when are we going to clean out the garage, are we going to investigate new car insurance, what do we do about chores for the kids, Lu seems ready to potty train, how will we approach that, etc. Everything is up for grabs in these meetings. The best part is it makes us a team to discuss them together. We each can have an opinion and then we will together decide on the best course of action.

At the end of discussing the items on the notepad, we divide up the responsibilities and walk away with homework, or projects to be completed and reported back on the following week. This may seem ridiculous to you, but what is the point of discussing things that need to get done if no one is going to accomplish them. Someone has to re caulk the tub. Someone needs to get the oil changed, and so forth.

We end our meeting asking how we are doing individually and as a couple. It is a time to share with your partner what you are struggling with, excited about, or need from them.

Some may think that having a managers meeting once a week is extreme or just a recipe for a control crazed mom. But Paul and I do a lot of different things. We are land lords, home owners, he does freelance design work on top of his job, plus his band. I run the household, plus have my speaking career, so it is a lot to keep straight. We discovered that the weekly meeting respected our partner and our time. It created healthy conversation and turned us into a team that works together instead of tag teaming separately. Paul and I have noticed that by intentionally taking some of our time and setting it aside we grow closer together and more towards our goals.

Last year it was hard to be consistent with our family meeting. We were very successful at the beginning, and then a new diet hit, I was cooking all the time and then a tornado hit and we felt lost for the next couple months. We were barely holding on. Over New's years, we both said the one thing we need to make happen this year consistently is our managers meeting. We both knew we felt better about our lives, our marriage and our parenting if we did it together as a team.

So a couple months ago I told you that this was our year of being intentional and I would tell you what that looks like for us. This is step one, and the most important to us. Now we are human, so we will most likely miss a few weeks, we already have in complete honesty. But we try. We don’t want to wake up years down the road and say, “What happened? Where did the time go? Why didn’t we pay attention more? Why didn’t we try saving more? Why didn’t we talk more?” By being intentional, we want to make the most of our lives now.

Easter Candy

I'm not gonna lie, going to the grocery store last night kind of sucked. As soon as I walked in the door, there they were, lining the aisle.



Chocolate bunnies.

Chocolate eggs.

Peeps.

Jelly Beans.

Now, I have two very honest responses.

The first is my emotional memory response. I see that and I think Easter! What is Easter with a Chocolate bunny in your basket? I think about some of my favorite things to eat that only come out at Easter like Cadbury Eggs, or those malt eggs that you can lick and then put on like lipstick or facepaint. My cousins and I had hours of entertainment with that one at Easter growing up. My grandma used to put together an Easter tray instead of an Easter basket. That means she would purchase one bag of EVERY kind of Easter candy and pour it out on her largest platter dressed with green grass. And in the midst of that sugar coma stood the priced treat. Standing guard over all the small treats towered the Easter bunny. The whole day was spent visiting the Easter platter and picking out your favorite treats. But you had to get their early, cause everyone liked the same things, and usually the last candy left was jellybeans. I LOVED this tradition growing up.

I stood there for a second staring at the candy aisles and I thought, oh man this is our first joy free Easter. I made Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas work, but how in the name of all that is good can I recreate a bunny? My gut told me Easter was ruined and my children would live in want and feeling jipped forever every time Easter came around. I was sad and a little depressed.

Now I know that we have been living joy free for awhile, and the cravings are getting smaller, but I haven't suffered memory loss. Just because I don't crave a chocolate bunny and the other part of my mind understand how bad it is for you, I still remember how good they taste. I still remember the joy of biting into a cadbury egg and how absolutely delightful it felt to have yummy chocolate and liquid goodness melt in my mouth. Those memories ring in loud and clear when I walk the aisles of the store.

This too must be mourned.

The other part of Easter I remember is how I ended up eating half of my kids Easter candy. I remember going to the grocery store for our weekly list, but always sneaking a bag of my favorite candy to munch on while no one was looking. I remember the more candy I ate, the more I craved. I remember feeling a slave to the sugar. I remember feeling gross after eating so much candy and chocolate. I remember the countless Easters that I didn't fit in my dress because of my addiction. I remember starting to hate Easter. I remember fearing it because I wasn't strong enough to handle it. I remember guilt. Constant guilt and disappointment in myself for not being stronger. I remember needing to start over. Everyday saying, "tomorrow will be better."

So as I had my moment of mourning, I realized I was thankful, grateful and excited too. For all the things that will be missed, there are greater ideals and principles that can be embraced . On top of all my personal baggage with food I remember the gift I am giving my children as well. The gift of health. The gift of an Easter not based on the chocolate bunny. The gift of the real meaning of Easter.

So what will Easter look like for us?

Dying Easter eggs and going on an egg hunt.

Every year on Saturday before Easter morning we do an evening devotion where we are mixing together a special cookie that sits in the oven overnight. It is a hands on activity that incorporates all aspects of the Easter story and then the kids have a treat to eat the next day. I will have to do a run through to make sure we can make it allergen free.

Easter morning means a special breakfast of fruit filled crepes and fancy Easter clothes to be worn at church. It means coming home to an egg hunt and finding Easter baskets with a couple small allergen free candies, stickers, a new book and maybe a new drawing pad. Nothing more. It means sitting down as a family and enjoying our Easter dinner. It means taking a walk together. It means doing a family devotion with family snuggle time. It means togetherness remembering the gift of life we have thanks to the sacrifice of our savior and healer The Messiah.

No Easter candy tray with the protective Easter bunny keeping watch. No sugar induced melt downs. No fights on what candy we didn't want and did want. No hoarding candy or secret eating. No extra pounds and sluggish behavior.

Easter this year will be healthier and hopefully happier than years previous.

I may need to send Paul to the grocery store though for the next month. This maybe my hardest challenge yet. I do love Easter candy.

ND Leadership retreat

I love doing event ministry. Even more than participating in retreats, I love hanging out with teenagers.

This past weekend, was even more special for me.

More than a year ago, the ND District asked me to come and be their first female Keynote speaker and I was already speaking somewhere else, but they were patient and asked again this year. I was so happy it worked out because I haven't been to ND in quite some time, and I love that students who saw me at the National Youth Gathering wanted me to come to their local event. It is the highest compliment paid to a speaker.

Another highlight for me this past weekend was that the leadership team for this event hired Paul to do the music for the weekend. Working with Paul and doing ministry together with him is probably one of my favorite things to do. I have so much respect for his musical ability, his relational ministry and his talent for quick wit from the stage. He is so fantastic! We haven't done an event together in years, and that used to be with his band. Its hard to both be gone for the weekend with kids when we don't have family here to watch them. This was the first time we worked together at an event, just the two of us. Dear friends of ours took the kids for the whole weekend and allowed this rare and special gift. It was amazing!

This weekend was different than other retreats I usually speak at, but it made it more interesting and challenging. When I am asked to be a keynote, the theme is usually different, but the outline looks very similar. I typically present four keynote messages generally for 20-30min at a time starting on Friday night and ending Sunday morning. This past weekend, I had the challenge of presenting two 60min presentations and one 90min session. It was a great challenge and I loved because it forces me to rethink my messages. It challenges me to go deeper, push further and incorporate elements into my talks that I don't usually have time for.

My first session spoke to a topic close to my heart which is identity. Challenging students to rethink where they get their identity and then go even further and challenge how they see God. Living in a place of basing our faith understanding on false identity for ourselves and God can lead to a life of fruitless searching.

For the second hour we discussed expectations. The expectations we place on God, others and ourselves.

It was easy to present for 90min when the topic was mission and outreach. Where identity is close to my heart, talking about an organic, natural way of living out our faith in mission is my heart. It was exciting to have so much time to really dig into this on a local, national and global scale.

In between sessions, I had the joy and privilege of hanging out with the high school students. This is hands down my favorite part of any retreat. I love hearing students stories, I love hearing what God is doing in their life despite hardships and how they want to participate in making the world a better place. They allow me to see their hearts and it is such an honor to invited into their lives for even just a small moment in time.

The ND district youth team put together a fabulous Leadership training event. They incorporated student led sessions, keynote sessions and great music. It was an intense weekend, but so worth the drive.

Well done! It was a joy and honor to work with you all and I pray I have the privileged to do it again some day.