God is Changing Me

I've been thinking for a long time about being more consistent with my blogging. So... Here goes. I have quite a few things that I want to blog about and I have a number of blogsites. I'm going to devote this one to the hard things in life. Now this may sound like it will be a real discouraging subject. But, that isn't my intent.

I have learned SO MUCH in the hard parts of my life. God has used pain to bring about some of the biggest blessings that I have ever experienced. For example, what has happened since I broke my knee. I learned to rely on someone else rather than myself. I've had to learn a new way to balance my life. And, I make mistakes as I continue on this journey. Today, I was up and moving a fair amount. I got quite a bit done. Then, I sat down at a table to write some things out. My knee really started hurting by the time I was done. So I sat in my recliner couch and got my leg up. It took awhile for the pain to ease. But, yes, I got another chance to figure out the balance that is good for me.

In the process over the last three years, I've been learning something I had never understood. I don't have to be hard on myself. I can accept where I'm at. I've made a lot of progress in not feeling guilty for things I thought I should hold onto. I can let go of the sin in my life, the mistakes I make, errors in judgement. I have punished myself FAR MORE than God ever has. He doesn't want me to live life handicapped by guilt. This makes it easier for me to admit my faults, errors, sin.

This blogsite has a lot about what it was like to live with our RAD kiddos. I'll update a bit on that in a later post. This is still an area that I have some struggles in. And yes, growth happens through struggling through what has gone on.

God Wants Us TO GROW

Well, as seems to be par for the course in our household, we recently went through another time of stress. In that stress, I was fairly calm but VERY aware that God wanted some changes in perspective in the way we look at life. It wasn't an easy time. But, it was a growing time.

In thirty years of marriage, it has been, less than ideal. I finally put my foot down a few years back about some things and I haven't backed down. This hasn't been the norm for me in our relationship and it has caused MAJOR issues. I refuse to go back. We have discovered a few things through this. My husband has ADHD and is now on meds. WOW!!! This, along with him working on his relationship with God and reading a book by a spouse of an ADD person has made a difference. Are we close to where I'd like to be? NO!!! Thirty years takes a toll and there is a LOT to repair. But, on to what God did recently...

I had been sensing the need to do some things around our home. Organizing some, decluttering, etc. My husband just didn't see it as strongly as I did but was helping anyway. We had had many conversations on what my needs were in this regard. I didn't really say much about what I was sensing. That usually seemed to backfire on me. Then, we got a phone call from the home that Jonathan is in. Some things were going on there. We didn't know if we were going to need to bring him home immediately or not.

YIKES!!! His room is COMPLETELY filled with things that we moved in there when we fixed up the bedrooms for the older two kids. They now bring spouses home and the bedrooms needed a few changes. Jonathan doesn't even have a bed anymore; he broke his - SIGH!!! We talked about what needed to be done in the house to make it friendly for our son. There was still damage that he had done to our home that had not been repaired. It was EXTREMELY important that he NOT come home to see that!! We haven't had him home for a visit yet due to this. When he sees his home again for the first time, it needs to be with a fresh start.

My husband and I started a list and have been working on getting things done. We will spend most of our Thanksgiving holiday working on this. In this we have discussed what God is doing in our life. I told him what I had felt God pressing upon me. It took a couple of days of processing for me to see that God was REALLY impressing on me that we are to be READY at ALL TIMES for WHATEVER HE MAY bring into our life. We are NOT to sit idle when we KNOW that there are things that need to be worked on in ourselves, our home, etc. We still don't know if Jonathan will need to come home or not. But it doesn't matter. What matters is, that we are to BE PREPARED for God to MOVE in us.

Soooo, we have been busy. We are almost done with phase one of project one. It is a BIG project!!! I'm hoping to finish phase one really soon and move on to phase two. Meanwhile, we have emptied some bookshelves in a little room we have and those will get loaded up with art supplies. I have also looked at homeschool needs in case Jonathan does need to come home. One of the interesting things in all of this, is that I had brought up some things with my husband about how to deal with some things with Jonathan. We had already talked through what we should do about schooling when he comes home. We had already started discussing things regarding how things should be when he comes home. I had been feeling the need to get this out on the table too and he was open. God works to prepare our hearts and prepare us for the future even when we don't what the future holds. But HE DOES!!! And we CAN TRUST HIM WITH IT!!!