april showers

I have been super way behind on posting on our blog more often than not this year.

Currently:

I finally... FINALLY... got myself to slow down a little. I'm feeling more alive and human most days, thank goodness! To turn the tv off more. To get off facebook (thanks StayFocused and RescueTime!) I've been reading my Bible almost every day [so close! :)]. Two weeks ago I actually started exercising again. I've been able to hang almost all laundry for weeks now [as this blog post says it: "Hanging clothes outside is a simple act, but I love it because it makes me slow down"]. I'm going to bed earlier. I'm not chasing so many deals for price matching/ couponing.

write your story

A little while back I was laying down for a rest, singing the words to "Write Your Story" by Francesca Battistelli in my head as I dozed off. I woke up within moments, with the words, "It's in the building experience that you grow," burning in my mind.

I wrote the words down, and forgot about them. Until today. When I felt a stirring in my heart.

But what am I building? Right now, I think I feel like I'm not building anything most of the time. That I'm just here, being. But I'm not. With most things, I believe we're almost always either building or tearing down. If we don't do what we need to maintain or build, things deteriorate. The problem with that deterioration is that it often goes unnoticed as things are slowly torn down. When we finally realize it, it ends up taking a lot more effort to rebuild than it would have to maintain or add on in the first place.

My life is full of things that are deteriorating before my eyes, and I think I've been choosing to ignore that fact, or cover it up somehow. My bitterness, my negative speech, and my weight are just some of the things I see causing deterioration. And I'm using my success in helping save our family money/ pay off loans as well as my "stress-induced nesting-like tendencies" to make myself feel better. [A friend posted the other day about building a life that feels good inside, not just looks good outside. yep.]

When instead I need to seek God's blueprint and restart the building process.

Keywords: need, restart, and process. It is certainly a need, but important for my type-A personality to not focus on the need for the end result, but to find a starting point, and seek the process. If nothing else, to keep the deterioration at bay. To truly seek God's will on who He needs me to be and how He needs me to live, right here, right now. To allow Him to "write His story on my heart."

I really started this post a couple months ago, and I think it's no coincidence the many ways I've realized God has "snuck in" and helped me repair the foundation for what He's growing my story into... Read more as I catch up with April and May in the next two weeks!

to be continued....

the pastor.

This post is purely informational. I do not mean it any other way, so please try not to read it so :) 

I made a brief post with links to some brief articles on supporting the pastor's wife. Check it out and better support your pastors' wives (one wife per pastor, ha!).

This post, though, needs to be a little longer. If you love and appreciate your pastor, hang with me! I promise you will find at least one way to better support or encourage your pastor, which can only have positive results.

As I was "researching" some helpful tips to share from those wiser than me, I stumbled across some comments about, "Well, ya ya ya, these things are true of any [small business owner, person in leadership, etc]." While that may be true, I'm just looking to share from what consumes much of our lives: a pastor in full-time church ministry! (Both of us have dads who serve/served as senior pastors and have been in ministry our whole lives!)