Songs of deliverance ~ Bible journal entry

I am currently going thru Psalms during my study time in the Word of God and today this is where I was at and it jumped out at me and made me realize how wonderful our Heavenly Father is. This is what I wrote in my journal this morning.

Psalms 32: 1-2  (1) Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. (2) Blessed are those whose sin the Lord does not count against them in whose spirit is no deceit.

I am so blessed now knowing that if I sin and then TRULY ask for forgiveness I receive the forgiveness and then I am blessed. *smile* What an awesome God!

In the mist of my sin before I truly asked for forgiveness it was so painful that I could not handle it anymore on my own. I didn’t want to exist anymore.

Psalms 32:3-4 (3) When I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. (4) For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the summer heat.

For me this was a deep depression. I remember daily just feeling the hands of God trying to get ahold of me yet I felt justified in my sin. When you are here in your sin it is hard to get out. It took ever single ounce of me just to make it through the day. I am a great “faker”. Most people had no Idea how depressed I was.

Psalms 32:5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said “I confess my transgressions to the LORD.” And you forgave me.

This is so amazing how God did this for me. I still remember the day that I was beaten down  so much that I felt  I was about to take my last breath of life. Satan almost talked me into taking my own life and I then called out to the Lord “I confess!!” I think it was more of a cry/scream. It was beautiful the work that He did on my heart that day and the days that followed were pretty amazing also. I still had to live with the consequences of my sins but I don’t think my life would be this amazing if I had not experienced the true full body forgiveness I felt that day. It is so amazing what God can do for us when we are so ugly with sin.

Psalms 32:7 You are my hiding place, you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

  God Bless,

    Jen

Their precious little eyes~ how to keep their eyes pure

I felt the need to raise a question on how to keep our boys eyes pure? Now since we have 4 children 3 of them being boys we have been thinking of ways to do this for a while now.

First off I want to talk a little bit about what we think is not ok for their eyes. Grocery day is a big one for us. First off it is summer and VERY hot here 100+ each day so I know that everyone is trying to stay cool but when did modesty completely go out the window? So we go to the store and get out of the suburban and what do we encounter, but a young girl of an adult woman in something that barely covers their under garments. While we walk thru the store you can see so many people dressed in this way. Then we head to the dreaded check out lane Oh man do I hate this time. Not only because it takes forever when you have a family of 6 and buying for 2 weeks at a time. So the wait in the aisle is not fun at all then you eye the magazines on the rack. Who broke up with who, what so and so is wearing and unfortunately since we see these all the time I look at something more interesting and then notice that my boys are looking at a naked woman with just her hands covering her privates. Then after this we head back out to see the parking lot yet again. Now it is worse for our little town I believe because our store is right off the interstate.

1 Timothy 2:9
I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes

This is just on verse that  explains how women should dress. My thoughts are different then others but I feel you should cover yourself at least most or all of your thighs, not too low cut in the front a modest dip and they should fit not tight to where there is nothing to not be seen. Here is one definition  to propriety  ~ the quality or state of being appropriate or fitting. 

If we are walking through the store or anywhere for that matter we see girls dressed in a way well not lady like our boys eyes can not un see these things. Well, when they see them over and over they start to get use to them and then they become ok. God did warn us be in the world but not of the world. Next thing that happens is that they start to loose respect for this young ladies and in time future girlfriends or wife may not receive the respect for their bodies that these young women deserve even if they never dressed immodest this can still be consequence of our boys being over stimulated sexually by pictures and the way girls dress every day. I know that you may only have a 3 year old but if you train them to not look then you will not have to worry as much for them as they get older.

I have a few ideas, things that we do and I would like to share them with you.

Look the other way

How do we teach them to look the other way? Well this is how we have done this for our boys. When we have the opportunity individually we discuss that it is not ok to stare and also that if you look at a girl in person or see on t.v. and it gives you a funny feeling or embarrasses you  about what they are wearing just turn and look the other way or look in their eyes. This may sound weird to say to you son but if he is 10 or so he knows what your talking about. Always remind them to be care about other feelings you don’t want them to say “Hey mom She is not dressed ok so I need to look away” That would not only be embarrassing you but to the girl he is talking about. We are not to judge and I always want to teach my children not to judge others.

Now if you are training a younger one this is how we have done this for our 2 youngest boys. Every time there is a t.v. show or commercial, bra and exercise commercials are the worst. We have told then to turn and not look. I have told Croix that his eyes are too precious to look and see her not dressed all the way. Have him then  think of how he feels when someone sees him naked and we don’t want anyone to see us. Usually they will feel embarrassed about it and will turn away if they see something they should not. You may have to remind them from time to time to not look.

Its not that we should want to make our kids feel embarrassed but we need to make them understand that it is not okay for them to see because we love them. If we train them to respect girls in this way they will have a better chance in finding a girl that respect herself. Me as a mother wants that, I know you would too.

Turn the magazines

Now this is what I do when we go into the aisle to check out I look to see what the magazines have on them and just flip them over. that simple. Some people think I am silly but it is what I do. I have had other women say “Wow I never thought of doing that!”.

Code words

Code words, this one is fun. So this one came about when I took a trip just the kiddos and I last year. We went to a family reunion in Las Vegas. I knew that there were going to be things I do not want my children to see while we were out to see the sites so we came up with a code word and it was nothing weird we came up with it together and I or my daughter would say it and the boys would look down until we said it was ok to look again. For the life of me I can not remember the word that we used for while we were there.

You do not want it to be something weird to draw attention  to your family and to show disrespect to others. We do not know where their walk with God is.

I know that some of this may sound odd or maybe you think wow this is a great idea *smile* but I want you all to know that I know that everyone deserves respect and love and this is why I do this out of love and respect for my children and out of love and respect for my future grand children. If we raise our kids up to be loving and respectful they will raise theirs this way.

As I was writing this my wonderful husband says “glass house” and I wish that you all could see into my home. We are not perfect even close. But we try our hardest to do what is right. Our Boys are crazy and normal they fight a lot and sometimes even go to bed dirty *oops*. We also have a 14 year old who is trying to find her way in the world. We are letting her make decisions on her own because we trust she will make good ones. We see some that are not what we want and will step in when needed. Clothes are a hard one with girls because of all the things we see daily. Their friends are dressing a certain way and t.v. and much, much more. It is a scary world I wish I could just keep them in a bubble but I can’t that would just be silly to hide them away and set them free and hope they will not stray. They need to learn to make decisions and they need to be in the world but not of it. They need to be confident in making good decisions and that they are loved and respected.

I hope you have all come out with something that you can use in your families. I would love to hear of more ideas on this matter. I do know that we can not change the world ourselves but we can train the next generation up with Christ in their hearts and they will then teach their children and so on.

Homemakers Creed

This just says it all. I am going to be printing this out and signing it and then displaying it somewhere were I can be reminded often on just how important my job as a homemaker really is.

Even on those days when someone says to you ~

~Oh you JUST stay home. (Like that’s all I do)

~I wish I could only if my husband made more (you want to see my husbands paycheck its not much but God provides the rest)

~It must be nice to just relax all day (Hahaha)

~I would be so board (trust me I’m not board)

~I feel like I need to pull my own weight and make money too. (that one makes me sad to think that you feel like you have to make money to be worth anything)

~My kids need to be socialized so that’s why they go to daycare. (We as parents need to socialize our children like in playing with them, talking to them, spending time with them, these things all socialize our children. Do we really want someone else's children to socialize our children?)

There are many more things I have heard from others and family members but I do not have time to list them all I need to go make sure my family has clean towels for baths tonight.

Here is the link to the blog Time-warp wife and you can download the pic there to print it off. I love this blog *smile*

   God Bless,

    Jen

Update ~ Wills burns day 3 at home (graphic pictures)

Day 3 of being home was really not home because Will had a doctors appointment in Lincoln. We all had to be up and out of the house by 7:30am. Well if you were to stay with us for a couple of day you would realize that well we are not a morning family. But we were up and out of the house by then. There was a lot of road construction on the way there and we were 10 minutes late. But we made it.

Croix and Will playing in the office

We were called into the room and I have to say yet again these people are amazing! Well they were not so amazing making my Will cry while taking off the bandages, But that is the momma bear in me, *smile* They told us that the grafts looked good. Just moist and they need to dry. Which is what we are working on for the next week. We have new orders now which is to keep him unwrapped as much as possible. We need to bandage him if we leave but we were told to stay close to home because he needs that pig skin to dry and start to come off and we have to trim off the dried parts (not looking forward to that). Poor guy he has some major anxiety right now about anyone coming to close and hurting him. This is going to be a long few weeks. *sigh* God is with us.

After his appointment we w\had promised Brooke that she could go to the mall to spend her money she had saved. We did that and ate at the mall to next we had promised the boys that we would take tem to Toys R Us to look around. See we are so sheltered that when we go to Toys R Us we play and leave with out buying because it so overwhelming the amount of toys *smile* We then headed home.

After we got home I dropped off the boys and Vince and Brooke and I went to a Visitation of a dear friend of ours 10 year old boy. The strength that I seen from the parents was so amazing. You could see the trust that they had in God that he had a plan.

We came home and found that some of our sweet neighbors had brought over some cookies and a nerf gun. Will was pretty excited about that. Then Vince received a text message from a family from church that there was some cards for us on our back deck they had placed there that the children in Sunday School made for him. That was so sweet. He has a shelf in his room that goes along 2 walls and well it is filled with 18 cards from his friends from church. *smile*

Isn't this so sweet.

Well now came bed time and we had to trim off some of the dried pig skin and well it took us an hour and a half to get him to even come close to him because he knew what we had to do and he was afraid it was going to hurt. He is really having some anxiety and we ask for prayers for this. Well Vince had to finally hold him down while I cut it. After I cut it he was like Wow that didn’t hurt and all was right with the world. Now it is 12:30 am and I am finally finishing this blog post that I started at 9pm before we started with getting him ready for bed. We have to cover him back up before bed and if we have to leave. That’s not the hard part it is watching him beg us not to trim the skin.

I wanted to show you all what his burns look like with the pig skin on. If you have weak stomach please do not scroll down any more.

This is a picture of his back as you can see. He does have a few spots that do not have the pig skin on because either it ripped off in just movement or they just did not put it there.

This is of his right hand

Here is his right arm he also has burns on hi elbow too which I did not take a picture of

This is his left arm. Look at that smile.

If you see how the edges of the skin is peeling up that is where we have to trim .

Again I ask for prayers for his anxiety and for Vince and I to know how to help him understand what we are doing is for the best and that we will not hurt him as we are treating him. This right here has been so hard for us. I praise the Lord that he is not as bad as he could have been. I know God has a plan I just hate that it has to be so painful for one of my children. He knows all.

   God Bless,

     Jen

One of the scariest days of my life Will was burned.

The 4th of July was not quite what we expected this year. We thought we would have our normal BBQ and fireworks with friends and family. It all started out like it normally does. We were pretty excited about this year we built a fire pit that we have been cooking smores and enjoying time sitting around a fire at night. Great family times. So Vince lit that and lit the grill to get the food started. People started showing up so we started bring food out and some of the kids were lighting firecrackers. I went inside to get some more food and I heard a rustle and a scream and I ran out the back door. One of our friends yells at me “CALL 911!! Will fell in the fire pit"!!” At that second I look to the left Vince yells at me “get the keys”! I get the keys run the the Suburban and we were off to the hospital. We made it there in I think 5 minutes so waiting for 911 was not an option. I did not get a good look at him till we started walking in to the hospital and I was so scared. I saw his back bubbling his right arm and hand had not much skin and his left fore arm the skin was gone too. This was a test of my will power not to turn into a ball of tears. I knew that would not help anyone. God was with us the whole time I could feel him.
It felt like hours for the doctor to come in and the morphine to even help his pain. Knowing that we live in a small town I was nervous about them treating him because they are not a burn unit. The doctor came in and he said right away he was going to call the burn unit in Lincoln. They called them and had them on a video conference with us. The looked at his burns and said that we need to come there. Which is 2 1/2 hours away! So they gave him another shot of morphine and sent us on our way.
We drove there making pretty good time all the while not speeding. *smile* The whole way we prayed I knew that there we so many people praying for us. We had left our friends an family at our house and I knew they were praying for us and Will. I know I could feel it.
So we got there and I do have to say that that hospital was amazing! They already had a room ready for us. As we were in there we seen kids come thru with burns from fireworks. Next came a very hard thing was when we had to take him into a very sterile looking room and a table that looked like it came out a morgue. It was medal with a drain all the way around it. They then told us they were going to wash him with water and not scrub him but we had to leave. As we were walking with the other nurse I could hear him crying. That was so hard. We then had to answer questions and wait for him to come to the room. When he did he was not crying he was wrapped up and comfortable. They had given him more morphine.
The doctor came and said that they would take him to the O.R. to do the scrubbing and then put pig skin on the burns. He said he does not want to do it while he was awake not only because it would be hard for him to stay still but because he did not want to traumatize him. Then it was time to get some sleep but that did not happen. Not only is it hard to sleep in a hospital but when you are nervous that he is in to much pain we could not sleep.

Before surgery

8am came and it was time for his surgery. That was hard to take him to the room and tell him we loved him and then go sit in the waiting room for the doctor to come in. They told us it would take about 45 minutes. And hour and a half later still not done. The nurse came in and said he is still working on him but not because there was any surprises but because he was doing a very meticulous job. We were grateful for that. His hand needs to heal well so he can use it fully.
So about 20 or 30 minutes after that the Doctor came in and talked to us about everything and that all went well. Then he told us to wait for the nurse to come get us when they had gotten him all settled . Well about 10 minutes latter a different nurse came in and said that Will was having a hard time getting pain under control and they thought he would do better with us in there. So we went down the hall got gowned up all the while we could hear him screaming and crying. We went in there and I was not ready for him to be in so much pain. So mommy instinct kicked in and we went to trying to calm him. Nothing was working until we started to whisper into his ear telling him to breath in and breath out. He started to finally focus on something little as breathing and he started to calm and  he then the morphine started working.

Sleeping after surgery

After all was right with the medicine and he took a little nap Great Grandma and Great Aunt Rose came to visit him. The rest of the day went pretty well. He ate and got up and walked around the floor. As long as his pain meds were on time he was in good spirits.

Look at that big smile!

Then later that evening Aunt Becky and Uncle Matt came over to see him. He was very happy to see them. They even brought him a comic book and a movie to watch to pass the time by. He was getting a little snappy and kept saying that he was not in pain and I finally asked the nurse to go ahead and give him some and with in 15 minutes he was smiling and wanting to go for a walk. Becky Will and I went for a walk and he decided that he was going to loose the old ladies and was trying to lap us. It was so sweet him being silly and giving all the nurses the “Will smile” I believe it was flirting *smile*.
Next day was his birthday. Poor guy had to spend part of his Birthday in the hospital and not feeling the best. Dad and I tried to still make it special. The nurses decided that they were going to do the same. He received presents from the staff and a birthday cupcake. It was so sweet.

His presents

Here he is working on coloring with his left hand.

During this time we were waiting for the doctor to come in and check on his burns. When he came in they took back into the first wash room he was in before and yet again they told us to leave. He was so smiley when he went and and then again we could here him crying. It was so heart breaking. After a lot of tears he came out not too happy. Then we found out they had to put new pig skin on his back.
When he came back to the room he got dressed so we could leave *smile*. Then some other people showed up to see Will. They brought a monster truck for him. Which he loves *smile*.

 

All dressed and ready to go home

So then we headed out but first we asked Will what he wanted to do he said he wanted to see the new Spiderman movie so that’s what we did! After the movie we decided to drive by the University. He then seen some statues and wanted to take a picture with them.

he is pretending to catch a football

headed home and asked where he wanted to eat so we ate a Ruby Tuesday’s. yummmmmy

At Ruby Tuesday’s

After that we went home. But first we stopped by and picked up a new bike for his birthday present! When we got home Brooke and our sitter Kariee got him a ice cream cake for him. We sang to him and went to bed.It was a long couple of days.

Will and his cake. There is and awesome young lady behind him Thank you Kariee for saying with the kids and be so awesome!

So we are home now and recovering. I am not sure how long it will take for him to be back to 100%. We are praying it will be quick and easy recovery.
I will keep you all updated on his recovery.
    God Bless,
      Jen

My sink runith over.

 

 

Do you ever feel like you just can not keep up with the dishes? I know I do. I am actually having on of those days today. I have always tried to make sure that I run the dishwasher before we go to bed so that when I wake up in the morning I can just put them away and start fresh. Well last night I guess I forgot. So which means I had to run it then run another load yet my sink is still full because to day is bread baking and snack baking day. I just hate the feeling that I get when I look over and see my sink full. I know I know I could go do them by hand. But since it is winter time and the air is so dry out right now it hurts so much and I get a rash on my hands. I guess I could go buy some gloves but I forget them each time I am at the store.

So how do we get our kitchen sinks to be like this more often? This is one of my daily goals I have. This is what I do that helps me keep my sink clean.

1)Well first of all you need to get them all done and start there.

2) If you have a dishwasher make sure that when it finishes empty it out. That way when you have a dirty dish rinse it right then and there. Or if you have children that are old enough train them to do this when they dirty a dish. So then when it is full just press start.

3) Like I said before make sure to run the dishwasher before you go to bed. I do this even if it is not completely full I still run it. Then when you get up put them away and start your day.

Now if you don’t have a dishwasher or like me when mine has been not working. I well do the same but instead of rinsing and putting them in the dishwasher I rinse then and put them in the other sink. Then after the meals and sometimes in-between I wash them. Then at night make sure to wash and let dry and put them away in the morning.

I hope this helps or just gives you boost with a fresh idea to help you get to spend more time with your wonderful blessings God gave you, and with a little less stress.

  God Bless,

   Jen

My new toys!!

I just wanted to show off my new toys that my wonderful husband gave me to oaky to buy!

I had just finished mixing up some dough for some bread and rolls so it is rising in the bowl here. I was able to buy the professional model too!

looks yummy huh?

Then here is my long time awaited grain mill. I have a hand crank one but I am just not able to make everything with fresh grain because the hand crank one was just too hard on my shoulder. But I love my mill it works so fast, cleans up with just a shake, and there is no dust flying around while it is running!

Here it is put together. This lid comes off after and you snap it on the man part to store it and then it comes with another lid that you use to store your fresh ground flour in, I store mine in the freeze to keep it fresh.

 

This is the hopper it holds a lot of grain.

I am so happy that I was able to buy these 2 things. They have both made my life so much easier. Every time I use them I think of my wonderful husband. If he is here I make sure to tell him thank you. This may sound silly but I do. When I am able to have something that makes my life just a little easier and helps me save time it makes me so happy.

  God Bless,

  Jen