"100 Days of Blessing" book review

I don't get alot of time to read so when I read something great I want to share it with others. Recently I was able to go to an "Above Rubies" ladies retreat. While there I purchased a devotional book for wives and mothers called "100 Days of Blessing", by Nancy Campbell.

There are so many good daily readings but my favorite one so far is Day 42 called " Don't waste Brain Space". I would love to write out the whole devotional here but that probably isn't legal or feasible but here are a few of my favorite parts:

Casting ALL your care upon Him for He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7
Many women spend most of their brain space worrying about this and that. What a waste! This space could be more profitably used to think positively. When we worry and think negatively, we do not help the situation.Worry makes the problem worse. Worry stifles creativity. You can't even see a way out of the problem when you worry. Worry strangles the effectiveness of God's Word in your life and makes you unproductive. Matthew 13:22 tells us that "the worries of this life" choke the Word and we become unfruitful.

God does not tell you to give some of your worries to Him. He tells you to give ALL your cares to Him. That means EVERY ONE. The big ones and the little ones.

If we spend all our brain space thinking about ourselves and insignificant things, we leave no room for God to bring to our mind the needs of others.

These are just a few passages of this days devotional and this one is just one of many wonderful daily devotions in this book. I would love to be able to purchase a boatload of these to hand out to all the wives and mothers I come in contact with.

If you are interested in this book or any others written by Mrs. Campbell, you can find them at www.aboverubies.org

Winter

We woke up this morning to beautiful snow. I don't mind a bit of snow for just a day or so. Great excuse to stay home by the fire with family and snuggle up in footy jammies...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you all. We pray that each of you has a personal relationship with the ONE who gives us the reason for this season, Jesus Christ. As we left church yesterday we noticed one of the churches in our town had a sign saying they were not having a service on Christmas day and that struck me as so very strange. Now I know that people may choose not to attend church if Christmas falls on a Sunday, maybe visiting family etc. but for a church to choose not to have a service just struck me as strange since the reason we have Christmas is because of CHRIST. Anyway, I do hope you had a great day. We chose to open our gifts today, Monday, not only to avoid a very busy Sunday but also because our oldest and his fiance both had to work yesterday, medical people just don't always have the option to not work on holidays. We had a very nice relaxing day today with the children.

Again, Merry Christmas and we hope you all have a Happy Jesus loves you New Year.

ps Sister Kristy I would love to be invited to read your blog:)

JOY

Isn't this the most joyful time of the year? A time for us to be joyful about our Saviour, Jesus, who came to this world as a helpless baby and then He died on a cruel cross to take the punishment for our sins so we could be reconciled to the God who created us and loves us so much. Why wouldn't we be joyful at the thought of this. But are we joyful? Am I joyful?

The Lord has been bringing that word to me lately...Joy. Do I have joy? Or do I let the cares of the day rob me of my joy? Am I crabby and short tempered? I must admit that ,yes I am. I blame it on lack of sleep etc. but it just boils down to choosing to be UNJOYFUL. Is that even a word? Well now it is. One of the things I blame my lack of joy on is my children's crabbiness. But then I realize that they are only crabby because they see mama being crabby.

So for our Advent readings this year we are focusing on Scriptures about Joy. Last nights verse was from Nehemiah 8:10, the second part, where it says...

"Do not sorrow, for the JOY of the Lord is your strength"

The notes in my Bible concerning this verse, which is actually speaking to the Isrealites as they are hearing the Law read to them by Ezra, say that the joy of the Lord is the joy that springs up in our hearts because of our relationship to the Lord. It is a God-given gladness found when we are in communion with God. When our goal is to know more about the Lord, the by-product is His joy.

So what I am taking away from this is that we in America try to manufacture our joy during the Christmas season. We sing about Joy, we may even read Scriptures about joy but if we (meaning me) are not in God's Word DAILY then we will ever be striving to find our JOY. Only in Christ Jesus can we have that because everyday will have trials that want to rob us of our joy. And He is the only constant thing.

I was planning on writing out my favorite poem about my children mirroring me and how I need to have joy if I expect them to have it but then I realized that I had already written it. So if you want to refresh your memory of it or never read it to begin with, click on Poems on the side bar. I think it is an excellent reminder to us that our children will become what they see in us(most of the time).

Again, I ask us, "How's your joy?" Can I challenge you and me to daily find our joy in the Lord? Can I challenge each of us to find someone we trust to hold us accountable to be in God's word daily and to practice the joy that we know we should be exhibiting? How can we reach others for Christ when we show no joy in the life that He has given us?

I hope we each have a JOYFUL Christmas season and beyond!

Noah Update

As I am sure you can tell, my days don't leave alot of time for blogging. Mostly I am walking through the days in a fog of sleeplessness. Noah seems to have the typical nightowl problem that most newborns have. He sleeps great during the day with all of the noise going on around here but come nighttime he is a grunter. He does sleep but he grunts and fusses most of the night and only sleeps well if he is in mom's arms. We usually end up on the couch sleeping together in hopes that dad will get some rest since he is on night duty with Audrey. He goes back to work this week so my nights will be quite interesting as I try to get up with both of them and then throw in the 2 year old who still wakes up some nights. Other than that he is doing great. He is gaining weight like crazy. We took him in with me for my postpartum checkup and he weighed 6lbs 13 oz which was up from 6lbs 1 oz only a few days prior to that. Then he went in for a two week check up two days later and he weighed 7lbs 2 oz. So despite being labeled a preemie, he is weighing more like a full term baby and is still as cute as a bug's ear in my opinion...

Noah Walker

I don't usually post names of our kiddos but I did want you to know his name...for those of you who don't read my girls blogs.....Baby Noah arrived on Wed. Oct. 5th, almost 5 weeks early. I don't have alot of time to type since I am sitting in the NICU of a local hospital but I wanted to tell you of the Lord's goodness before heading, bleary-eyed, to bed for a couple of hours.





Last weekend I started having some contractions that were a bit bothersome to me in their frequency so I talked to my midwife. We had already decided a few days earlier that we should go back to the Perinatologist for another growth ultrasound for baby since he had a two vessel umbilical cord instead of a three vessel cord. My original appt was for the 10th or 11th of Oct. but we ended up moving it to Friday the 7th. Unfortunately Mark wasn't going to be able to go with me that day so I decided to give the dr.s office a call and ask if there was anyway I could come in on Wed. the 5th instead. I was able to get an appt. so on Wed. off we went.





I was still having some contractions off and on but nothing too serious. While the ultrasound tech was doing the scan she excused herself and came back with the doctor. I knew something was wrong at that point. The doctor proceeded to tell us that baby's heart rate had some periods of dipping down lower than he liked to see it. He suggested being monitored in the hospital for a few hours. We weren't thrilled with the idea as we had some things we wanted to get done that day but consented to it. DH and I decided that while I was hooked up to the monitors he would run our errands and then come back about the time I should be ready to head back to the dr. for him to tell us what he saw. While being monitored baby had several episodes of dropping heart rate for 3 or more minutes. When the second one happened with in a minute my room was flooded by nurses and doctors and I was quickly put up on my hands and knees to try to get baby to change positions and move off of the umbilical cord. Right at that moment is when Dad came through the door, shocked to see what was going on. I am sure he was expecting me to be just sitting demurely in the bed hooked up to the monitor. We were very quickly educated on the C-Section process, risks and benefits. They didn't have to convince me, I knew I didn't want to experience his heart rate dropping again like it had. That was very scary and I just cried out to the Lord while on my hands and knees for Him to bring baby's heart rate back where it needed to be.

Apparantly while they were getting me ready to go back to the OR baby had another drop in heart rate, which I didn't know about so they sped things up and wasted no time getting me in the OR. Dad had to wait a bit to come back until they had the anesthesia in place. God provided a wonderful staff in the OR. I had a student nurse at my side holding my hand and quoting Scripture to me the whole time until Dad was able to come in and then she came back to my side when he left to go with baby to the NICU. We didn't know until later that night that baby's APGAR score when he was born was a 1 which is the lowest you can get before there is nothing. His umbilical cord was wrapped 4 times around his neck and he had a knot in his cord. The OB Dr. who did the c-section said that if I had waited to come in even one day the outcome of his delivery would have been drastically different, meaning we probably would have been looking at a Stillbirth. Everyone in the OR was amazed when I told them that I actually wasn't supposed to have come in until Friday. We have been able to share with alot of people while here the Lord's hand in all of this and we have had alot of Christian nurses which has been wonderful.

There are so many babies here that need prayer and their families too so if you think about it, pray for the NICU babies. That is how I fall asleep each night while here. Tonight we will be sleeping in the family room with Noah which is a last step before being discharged tomorrow, Lord willing.

B# 7 Turns 4

On Saturday, B#7 turned 4. Hard to believe he is already 4. We just stayed home and celebrated his birthday as a family. He was pretty specific in what he wanted for his birthday and with some preplanning and shopping at Goodwill we were able to find what he wanted. He asked for a big boy bike, which I found brand new at Goodwill, some little boy roller blades which I also found at Goodwill and a lawn mower which we had purchased and put away months ago since Wal-Mart usually only carries them in the summer. B#1 bought him the movie WALL E which the little boys were very excited to get. So we watched that in between riding bikes and roller blading. Now we are ready to plan a family bike riding day when the weather gets a tad cooler. B#4 made him these adorable cookie monster cupcakes. She only made enough for the little ones because she said they were kind of a pain to make.