Fall...
lt’s the time of the year of beautiful foliage, stunning sunrises and sunsets and cooler temperatures. We swap out shorts and t-shirts for sweaters and jeans. We rake leaves, pack up the yard stuff, and get ready to hunker down for the winter. While I LOVE summer and live for warm weather and sunshine, I also enjoy snow days, cozy sweaters, hot tea, and snuggling on the couch under a blanket with a good book.
Simple winter pest prevention tips
Camping and boating are two of our favorite things to do in the summer, but there’s a long stretch of time when these things have to sit in the yard over the winter. We ensure they get winterized, so nothing freezes that shouldn’t freeze, but a big concern while they are being stored is small pests looking for a warm, dry place to live and taking up residence in one or both of these. So how do we keep these creatures from deciding to make a home in our belongings?
Read more...I also learned that trials do not define us.
The trial of losing my husband and losing my hope did not define me - I am His child; that is what defines me.
- Yes, I was a widow and single mom
- Yes, I was deep in grief
- But that is not my identity
- My identity is in Christ
Gal. 5:5 says, and I’m paraphrasing, “we eagerly await the hope of righteousness” when we are made into the image of Christ.
When there is conflict and struggle going on - cling to that hope. God promises that the struggle will not last forever. It will end. We can have hope that it is temporary.
I Cor. 15:19 - if we only have a human hope, we are to be pitied. If our hope is only in this life, then we’ve lost sight of our real reason for hope.
We are never without hope as believers!
Read more...In v. 3 Paul points out “we give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Giving thanks is a foundational discipline in the believer’s life, and I had forgotten that. I had stopped giving thanks. I wasn’t choosing gratitude for what I had, instead I was in despair because I was focused on what I had lost, how hard things were, and all the difficulties I was experiencing.
That didn’t mean that my grief would suddenly disappear because I started being thankful. Gratitude and grief can exist together - God’s grace can handle both at the same time.
In v. 5 is where the word hope shows up, and the first glimmer of healing began.
As believers, we are thankful because of the hope we have in Christ. When we lose hope we become depressed and anxious, which is exactly what happened to me. But we have a secure hope in something that we can depend on, which is the hope of Heaven.
He went on to talk about Rom. 5:3-5 - where it say: “...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Read more...Through all of this, I continued to read my Bible, pray, and I was asking the Lord to deliver me from this intense grief and exhaustion, but it felt like God was so distant. I didn’t know how to close the gap.
I am not very good at opening up and sharing the deep struggles I am going through, especially with my family, but I was so desperate for help that I called my Dad a couple days after my dream. I told him about my dream and explained everything that had been going on and sobbed on the phone. It was like a dam that broke, as it all rushed out.
Dad, in his wisdom said that this was a heart issue, that I needed to give up my control over to God. I remember agreeing with everything he said, but I told him I didn’t know how to do that. He knew how much I had been struggling, even though I hadn’t shared a lot, and he and Mom invited the kids and I to come down and stay for a month or two, so I could get some rest and help.
Read more...As time went on, I became exhausted and my physical and mental health began to suffer. I started struggling with anxiety over the smallest things. I would worry about the kids getting sick, I would worry about the smoke detectors chirping in the middle of the night because of a low battery, I would be anxious about not being able to sleep, which then caused me to not sleep. I would obsess about the future and fear all the “what ifs”, which deepened my anxiety.
My sleep continued to decline. I could fall asleep without an issue, but staying asleep was impossible. I often woke up at 1 or 2 am and was awake for the rest of the night over and over and over. My anxiety continued to increase, I fell deep into depression, and because I was so exhausted all the time, I had to eliminate some of the things I enjoyed doing. As I cut things from my schedule in order to have space to rest, I began to unintentionally isolate myself. I had no idea it was happening, but it added to my anxiety and depression.
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