My First Tattoo

Well I did it! Yissiree! There it is...

The first question anyone asks is, "Did it hurt?"

and my answer is a resounding

"You Bet it Did!!!!"

I have wanted a tattoo for 20 years but I wasn't going

to get one just to have one. It needed to matter to me.

I knew it was a lifetime commitment and definitely

wanted to be sure it was what I wanted.

This tattoo means a lot to me.

It symbolizes the two anchors in my life--Jesus and Darren.

The second question I get asked is,

"Are you gonna get another one?"

I tell them it's kind of like having a baby--

In the beginning your real excited. Then as it gets closer you

get nervous and anxious. When the time comes to get it done and

you feel the pain of that first line drawn, you just want to say,

"OK! That's enough, I'm outta here!"

But you can't stop now.

You'll be left with a weird permanent mark.

So you grin and bear it and yell a bit.

Learn a few new expletives...

Once it's over you are so relieved and proud of yourself.

You lived through it!

However, the LAST thing on your mind

is to start planning your next one!

School Begins....Our 7th Year!!!

We started our new school year August 7th. This year is different than all the rest---for one thing DD 17 is graduating this year. I am shell-shocked by this knowledge. I can remember her first day of school like it was yesterday.

DD 17 is taking 2 classes at our local community college. They will give her a headstart for when she starts her college education in Fall 2009. I have learned that 80% of high school graduates who begin college require a remedial math and/or reading class. I would like to avoid that for DD. One of her classes is Elementary Algebra which is high school algebra. The reading class is designed to give her the necessary comprehension and study skills required for college textbooks. These are semester classes--they do a year's worth in 1 semester. Once she gets through these we will evaluate how to use her 2nd semester to her advantage.

DD 16 is in 10th grade. We are trying something different with her veering a little more on the unschooling side, but still with a purpose and goal in mind. For her Biology she is doing Animal Biology & Care, instead of human biology. Of course I will tie the two together in our discussions, but she has a passion for animals and if this is what motivates her to learn, so be it. I have discussed with our local vet the possibility of her doing on-going mentoring throughout the year. He was very open to it and DD 16 is excited about the possibilities. She is also doing a lot more reading, ie., fiction, classics, non-fiction etc. This is a vast improvement from last year when it was like pulling teeth from an alligator to get her to read anything.

DD 10 is now in 5th grade. Amazing!! My baby is growing up as fast as the other two did. What is a mother to do? I am excited about our school year plan for her. This will be the first year that there hasn't been some kind of major distraction that has kept my time divided too thin. We begin our Beyond 2 unit studies with Sarah, Plain & Tall and I know she is just going to love the wonderful lessons that go along with it. I mean, I'M excited so it's bound to rub off! :) I am also using a new spelling curriculum called Sequential Spelling. We have been using it for 2 weeks now and we both love it! Her confidence grows with each lesson.

I have so much hope for this year. I believe there are going to be learning leaps for each of my girls.

A Fresh Word

I've had trouble forgetting past sins and hurts. I have spent years asking for forgiveness and forgiving others but somehow could not get the forgetting part down. The more I would try to forget the more the devil would bring it to my mind. I would often remember the scripture in Philippians 3:13 where Paul says, "Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead." I would often wonder how he could do that--forget. Especially when the devil is quick to remind you. But then a friend of mine gave me a different word to use--NEGLECT.

Let's compare definitions:

Forgetting (forget) - To lose the remembrance of; to let go from the memory; to cease to have in mind, to treat with inattention or disregard; to slight; to neglect.

Did you see that? To neglect is part of the definition of forgetting! Now let's define neglect.

Neglect - Not to attend to with due care or attention; to forbear one's duty in regard to; to suffer to pass unimproved, unheeded, undone, etc.; to omit to receive or embrace.

That I CAN do!! I can neglect my past until I lose the memory of it. When the devil brings my past up to me, or even if I find myself starting to entertain it I can say, "I am forgiven. I am healed. I choose to neglect it." At that time the second part of the verse comes into action, "straining toward what is ahead."

In my curiosity I looked up straining and this is the definition:

Straining - stretching beyond its proper limit, exerting with violence, making great effort, filtering (to make pure).

In that definition I can see that when I choose to forget [neglect] what is behind it isn't going to be easy to move forward. There is going to be some pain involved. I am going to experience my faith being stretched. I am going to have to move out of my comfort zone. Depending on the situation I could feel like I'm walking through fire or a desert. But through it all God is with me and Jesus has gone before me. Understanding this in this way gives me new insight to the scripture 2 Timothy 1:7 "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." God has given me, and all of us, the gift of courage to be able to strain "toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:14

God is the finisher of my story

Secrets are like poison to the soul. Just as poison spreads throughout a body so does secrets spread throughout all parts of your life. However, unlike poison which could take minutes or hours to spread secrets can take years and years. It is a false sense of security to think they are hidden from the world, safe from being discovered. Secrets are actually begging to be exposed.

There once was a little girl with long blonde hair and a bright smile. At the tender age of five her world became the devil’s playground. Her mother became involved with a man and brought him into her home. It wasn’t long before the little girl, along with her little sister, became the target of her mom’s and his evil intentions.

The spankings came first. The welts were bloodied and swollen like ropes across her buttocks and thighs. As she grew she learned to bite down hard into the pillows to keep from crying out or screaming because those sounds enraged him even more and he would hit longer and harder.

By the age of seven, while sleeping, the little girl was abruptly taken from her bed and brought into her parent’s room. Fear and hope warring in her mind. Fear of another spanking, hope for something she could not name. There was no spanking given that night. On this night the little girl was made to watch her mom and the man have sex.

Eight years later the little girl is long gone. She can’t remember ever being a little girl. Her mind is filled with images she can’t get rid of. Her flesh is a constant reminder of what she was forced to do. Each day’s cruelties ripped and shredded her heart into pieces. She had no dreams because she didn’t sleep. She had no hope because those that were supposed to protect her were the ones that were causing all her pain. One day she tried to end the pain. She took a full bottle of aspirin and went to bed. She wasn’t thinking of dying she just wanted to stop hurting. She was rewarded by a trip to the hospital and having her stomach pumped. She was 15.

Something changed in her after that. She could feel it growing stronger. She spent less and less time at home. One day the man made her come home early from a school swim meet claiming there was an emergency. The emergency was he wanted her to cook him a meal. She expressed her outrage and he punched her in the face saying “I own you.” For the first time her eyes stared back hard, unwavering, challenging him to go the distance.

The final confrontation came when she was 16. Tired and exhausted after a long swim practice she lay sleeping in her bed. She felt his presence standing over her. She could feel the air moving as he undressed. She waited until he was undressed and suddenly bolted up from the bed to stand before him. 10 years of his cruelty had taken away her hopes and dreams. One of them was going to die before he laid one hand on her ever again. At that moment she didn’t care who. Her voice strong and loud she cried, “You vile piece of scum! Just try to touch me and I will kill you! I have nothing more to lose. You have taken everything from me. The only way you will ever touch me again is over my dead body.” She watched as he lowered his head. She waited, almost hoping he would try so she could inflict as much pain on him as he had on her. Instead he got dressed and sat on the bed holding his head in his hands. She ran out of her room and out of her house and never returned.

This shouldn’t happen to anyone ever, but it does. It happened to me.

Even before I gave my heart to Jesus, God worked in my life to heal the wounds that were cut so deep. The first thing he did was give me a man who has the patience of a rock and an unwavering, unconditional love. That man is my husband. (And before you think that no human can do that this is to testify that a human can.)

In 1993, I gave my life to Jesus. I learned about forgiveness and forgave my step-dad and my mother. My step-father had entered the Betty Ford Center back when I was 16 and had been sober ever since. He also found forgiveness through giving his life to Jesus. My mother, however, took another road by becoming a wiccan. When I told her that I forgave her, she said “It’s no big deal.”

Each time I thought God was done there was more that was uncovered. Each time I thought it couldn’t hurt worse, the pain was excruciating. In 1998 I spent a year in that pain while God went deeper, taking out more junk and replacing it with his love and truth. I felt like I had finally reached a place of wholeness.

Little did I know that God was not yet finished.

Experiencing disunity in our marriage, I went to the Real Life Marriage conference with the hope that Dh would hear and finally understand what he should be doing and basically what I could do to help him. I never expected that I would be the one to have open heart surgery---again!

Almost immediately the pain was there as if it had never gone away. I cried so hard at times I physically shook. God was showing me something and I didn’t want to see it. I just wanted to stop hurting. During a talk with S he asked, “Have you given D your heart?” I paused and had to think. Did I? I married him, doesn’t that mean I gave him my heart? I looked at S and said, “I don’t think so.”

The next day it all came to a head as God showed me my fear of intimacy. Sex was one thing. Being gentle and kind was completely different. When Dh would touch me in a gentle way it would literally cause me physical pain. Like being burned. Because of this, I did not enter our encounters feeling loving. It was more of having power over someone else. I couldn’t give myself to him unless it felt like he was taking from me. Oh how I cried and cried and cried. The hurting just wouldn’t end. “Help me Please God Help me” was all I could say. It was like there were two sides of me warring together. One side was feeling hurt, pain, and angry feeding off the ugly words parading through my mind and the other side has a death grip hold on Jesus, wanting so much to feel love without pain.

I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the Word. I believe God is sovereign, all-powerful. Did I truly believe in His mercy and grace? After the conference I can say, as real as I can, I’m beginning to.

I may not fully understand God’s mercy and grace in my life but what I do know is through His Son he reached out to me and pulled me out of the darkness. He gave me a husband who beyond my understanding has endured with me this journey that is my life. He gave me 3 healthy, beautiful daughters who have shown me what it means to be a child. They have shown me how to love, how to laugh, how to be humble.

Satan wants my story to end before it's finished because each time I overcome God gets the glory. I can think of no better way to defeat the enemy than to tell him again and again, NO MORE.

NO MORE will the abuse go on.
NO MORE will I carry on the abuse.
NO MORE will I keep my heart from my Dh.
NO MORE will I keep my heart from Jesus.

NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE

Learning to See Marriage throughthe Eyes of Jesus

Darren and I have been reading Generation NeXt Marriage. We have only gotten through 2 chapters and already I have had some revealing thoughts about my attitude towards marriage.

The biggest impact in my thinking came from reading chapter 2 about my relationship role models. For better or worse my parents were my foundation in processing relationships. I went through my first divorce when I was 4-1/2. The second divorce happened when I was 16. It is at this age where my dd's are at now. If I think about it, it was about a year ago that I began thinking more seriously about where Darren and I were headed. It's like I couldn't think beyond the dc leaving the nest. More and more, I would think, "Well, it's been a nice run. It's time to go our separate ways before one of us does something we really regret." I didn't even think if what I was thinking was truth or a lie, it just sounded "normal". Of course it didn't make me feel any better. The more I thought these things the more upset and angry I would become and of course I would take those feelings out on Dh. The more clueless he was the more it seemed to cement that we shouldn't keep trying in vain. How's that for rational thinking!

After reading the chapter I realized how much is still engrained in me from my parents. Darren and I started our life together agreeing we would take our vows seriously and not use divorce as a way out of troubled times. So isn't it interesting that it didn't even take troubled times for me to actually think divorce was the next step after our dd's prepare to leave the nest.

Granted we do have some issues with communication and learning how to navigate middle age and teenagers and homeschooling and work and finances--but those things are normal relationship dilemma's. The one thing that is constant is that we do love each other. I told Darren that I do not have to look very deep at all into my heart to know that I love him. But things that are deep in my heart are creeping up to the surface and these are the things I need to see in the light of truth.

I'm looking forward to continuing to replace lies with truth.

Jane Austen Read-A-Thon

This past month, the girls and I read Jane Eyre. I had not read this book before. I was surprised to find that I really liked it. Then we watched the movie, The Jane Austen Book Club. It was a wonderful movie and it served to peak my interest greatly in reading Jane Austen's books, of which I have not read at all!

I posted on the FIAR boards if anyone else wanted to take on this endeaver of reading all 6 of Austen's novels over the next 6 months and I was pleasantly surprised and encouraged to have so many takers! We are having our discussions over at The Homeschool Lounge. The group is called The Book Nook and the discussion is called The Jane Austen Book Club (Emma). We will be in the Lounge Chat at the end of each month for a live, and hopefully lively, discussion.

Our Reading Order for Jane Austen's Books:

March -- Emma
April -- Pride & Prejudice
May -- Mansfield Park
June -- Northanger Abbey
July -- Sense & Sensibility
August -- Persuasion

A Fresh Start for 2008

It's a new year! I hear it all the time, but time really does fly. This year I have chosen a word as my personal theme: PERSEVERANCE

I find that I am great for starting things and then life and trials bog me down and hampers my follow through. This year:

I want to get to a healthy weight. I am starting off strong, losing 4 pounds already. I need to persevere through each day so that in consistency I will see the results I am praying for.

I want to read through the Bible. Last year I tried this and only got through 6 weeks of the year. I need to persevere each day to put aside time to read. It doesn't take long, I tell myself, and I have to remember that. Plus the benefit of doing so will far outweigh any perceived sacrifice I have to make in order to read it.

I want to go to the FIAR Conference. I love the intimacy of this event. It truly equips me to be a better mom, wife, teacher, and friend. I need to persevere through my finances.

I want to go to the Extreme Marriage Makeover Conference. This would be for both of us. I need to again persevere through my finances. We have been together going on 24 years and we love each other deeply. However, who couldn't use a tune-up for the next 25 years!

I want to grow closer to Father. I want to know more of Jesus. I feel in my spirit God is trying to tell me something and right now I don't quite know what it is. I feel discontent or slow or something...I don't even know what the word is to describe it. I just know there has to be more than what I am experiencing right now. In this I just need to persevere, period.