I'm Learning

Lately, I have had a pretty stressful time at work. I'm not going to go into details, but let's just say, things have been a bit frustrating. Things are still great with my principal, and my students, and my coworkers, but from the head honchos office, things have been coming down the pipe that have been a tad frustrating.

I got so frustrated last week, that it was totally consuming me. I mean totally. I was just letting it completely take over, and then I was letting it affect how I reacted to things at home as well, which obviously is not good.

On top of all of this, I really want a baby, and I just have to face the reality, that it might not be in the cards for us. If there is one thing I have learned this year, it is that God is in control of everything, and if it isn't supposed to happen it won't.

For several weeks, I was totally consumed with having a baby. Until I heard the song "Clear the Stage" by Jimmy Needham.

Um. Have you heard it?

One specific part that got to me was this:

"Anything I I can't stop thinking of is an idol"

or perhaps

"Anything I want, with all my heart, is an idol"

Hmmm...

Yeah, so I have been learning, that I need to be content with what God has blessed me with, and fulfill my purpose on this earth as a teacher, wife, and mother. I need to strive to bring glory to Him, no matter what I want for my life. His purpose for me, is to bring others to Him. It's not for me to have a perfect little family, with the "right" number of children, in my timing.

So that means, that when things get stressful at work, or when I want a baby tremendously, that I need to give those things to God, for Him to control, and I just need to bring glory to Him each day with everything I say and do.

That's it.

I had the awesome opportunity this weekend to go to the Women of Faith Conference, in San Antonio, TX. I went with my church, but especially with my wonderful friend Erin. You might remember reading her story about her son that she lost, named Graham. We were so excited to go to this particular WOF, because our BFF (not really), Angie Smith, was speaking there. If you haven't ever read her blog, you totally need to. She is amazing. Erin and I began reading her blog almost 5 years ago. Angie lost her daughter, Audrey Caroline, 2 hours after she was born. Erin and I were totally consumed with Angie's story way before we ever knew we would be living out our own versions of it 4 years later. We got to meet her, tell her our stories, and get her autograph.

Below are some pics from our trip. I am also going to put links to a few books. There were some amazing speakers at WOF this year, who are incredibly genuine women, that have some wonderful, encouraging books to read. If you have a Kindle, they are all under $10, and if you don't, they are all under $15!

Book Suggestions:

Anything: The Prayer that Unlocked My God and My Soul by Jennie Allen

This girl is a Pastor's Wife, and she had an awesome message! She is pretty young too, so she is easy to relate to!


Stumbling into Grace: Confessions of a Sometimes Spiritually Clumsy Woman by Lisa Harper

Um. She is HILARIOUS. She has tons of books, but this one is her latest.

Then of course, my BFF, Angie Smith, has 3 books:

What Women Fear: Walking in Faith that Transforms

Mended: Pieces of a Life Made Whole

Then, her first book, about Audrey's story, would be great to read if you have lost a baby, or know someone who has. It is incredible.

I Will Carry You; The Sacred Dance of Grief and Joy

My Sweet Girls

I realized today that I haven't updated on Kailey and Makenna in quite some time. I know I post pictures of them on Facebook, but I haven't written about them in awhile.

Kailey Rose:
She will be 5 in 2 months. TWO MONTHS! Isn't that crazy? When I started this blog she was only 6 months old! Kailey is so full of life. She asks a kajillion questions a second, because she is just so curious about everything around her. It can get to be a bit overwhelming at times, but I have to remind myself that she is learning, and that is how she learns best! She started 4 year old Pre-K this year, and so far things seem to be going really well. She knows her letters by sight (upper and lower case) and she knows most of their sounds, although she is definitely still working on that part of it. She is taking gymnastics again this year, and she is one of the best in her class. She loves going each week. She is also taking TOTS basketball at school, which she is super excited about as well. She is an Awana Cubbie this year, again, and she will be hopefully memorizing a bunch of new verses this year. She is also still in children's choir at church. She still has trouble being dropped off at her church activities. We are working with her on not being so shy (at first). After she is in there she is fine. At home she talks our heads off and is SO LOUD. She doesn't know what quiet means at all! She is a wonderful big sister to Makenna. So wonderful that she told me she "wishes she was Makenna's mommy". Good grief. Really that just means she wants to boss her around and not get in trouble. :)She definitely has her moments of disobedience, and drama queen-ness, but she is a most wonderful blessing in our house, and I can't imagine life without her.

Makenna Grace:
She will be 2 and a half in November! She thinks she can do anything her big "sissy" can do. A lot of times she can! She is so petite. She still only weighs around 23-24 pounds, and is still wearing 24 month clothes. She is talking up a storm. She will repeat anything anybody says, and she talks in complete sentences, even though sometimes it is hard to interpret! She LOVES playing with her baby dolls, and is such a sweet girl. She loves to eat, and is definitely our good eater. She had to go to the dentist last week because she chipped a tooth in the bathtub, but he says it should smooth out over time. She is an Awana Puggle this year, which we are looking forward to watching her participate in. I still call her my sweet angel baby, even though she definitely has her moments of disobedience as well. She sticks up for herself when Kailey is trying to push her around, and it is sometimes hard not to laugh when she does it. If I start counting for her to obey (like 1, 2, 3) she just looks at me and goes "4, 5, 6, 7". She adds so many snuggles and smiles to our house. I love her to pieces!

Hopefully this updates you on my sweet girls. It at least makes me feel like a better mother. :)

It always takes 3 weeks

Eesh. I know that I still need to blog about my cruise, but I just had to take a minute and blog about school. It was definitely one of those days.

First of all, let me just tell you, I have the BEST students on the planet Earth. They are perfect little angels. I keep waiting on the "other shoe to fall" because I am SO incredibly blessed. I have 2 Pre-AP classes for the first time ever, and all 5 of my classes are under 25 students. I mean, that hasn't happened in like 3 years. Usually my classes are around 30 each, and they put most of the SPED inclusion kids in my room. This year, they chose to cluster them in my partner's class, so I only have one. ONE. I mean when does that happen? Two of my regular classes are sitting at 19 and 17 a piece. I mean. That is like under 20! I am SO blessed. I can like actually teach them!

At my school every teacher is on car or bus duty every day after school. Every.Single.Day. We are a "dock" school for the district, so we have 2 buses that leave at 3:45. The rest of the buses are at one of the other middle schools and at the high school at 3:45. So they load those suckers up, and then they come to my school. Well it takes about 30-35 minutes for them to get to my school and us to let all those kids switch buses, and then let all of our late bus riders out of the building to load. It has been SO overwhelming. Because if you aren't outside, you are inside trying to keep an entire classroom of middle schoolers from tearing down the building for 30-35 minutes.

Then today, we had a faculty meeting after school. We almost always have them on Wednesdays, and they usually only take like 20-30 minutes. Well today we had two people from downtown come and do abuse awareness training and bullying training (which we are required to do every.single.year). Then after they were done, we needed to meet about a few other things. I didn't leave school until 5:24 today. On a Wednesday. Kailey's children's choir started at 6:00, and we had to eat dinner!

So Casey picked them up, went and got dinner, and we all ate in about 20 minutes time. I felt so bad just stuffing Kailey back in another class after she was in daycare all day long. So we did that, came home, and the hubs stays at church until at least 9:00 on Wednesdays, so I have to bathe them, brush them, brush their teeth, read them books, etc. and it is literally my only time to spend with them on Wednesdays, which makes me feel awful. And I'm sure people wonder why the youth minister's wife used to not even stay for church on Wednesday nights...this would be why.

So, I am just now sitting down for what feels like the first time all day, and it is 8:00. I still have about 60 papers to grade before tomorrow, because it is "Meet the Teacher" night and I need something to hang in the hallway (by my own requiring it; nobody else requires it of me). I would just hang them without grading them, but I need the grade because Progress Reports come out next week and I have to have a major grade in the grade book.

So I will sit here and grade these papers and put them in the grade book and hang them in the hallway tomorrow and stay until 7:00 greeting parents and miss another night with my girls.

It ALWAYS takes 3 weeks. By that I mean, it always takes 3 weeks of the school year for me to feel like everything is going to be ok and that I am not going to run from the building screaming. I have 2 more days of my 3 weeks...We will see.

Isn't it strange to think that this would be my last week of maternity leave, and I would be starting school for the first time on Monday?? Crazy. I now know for sure that God definitely would have had my back for the start of school. I mean he literally put angels in my classes, and everything would have been ok. I worried for nothing. Obviously. :)

Honoring Brittyn

Today was Brittyn's due date. I remember when I found out that I was pregnant with her, I was like "Wowsers! That is very close to school starting!". I went through a few months of not knowing how in the world that was going to work out, and then finally being at peace with realizing that a substitute teacher would start my school year for me. I felt like it was God's way of showing me that He was in control, and that I was not. I was going to have her sometime this week, then I was going to miss inservice and 3 weeks of the school year. I was going to have Kailey and Makenna start back to school when they normally would have, and then I was going to have Brittyn all to myself for 3 whole weeks.

Yep, that was my plan.

Obviously, in April we found out that God had a plan different from mine. He wasn't going to teach me that He was in control by having me out of my classroom this fall. Instead He was going to teach me He was in control by me losing my baby girl, and having no other choice but to trust Him.

When I think back to April, and everything I had to go through to lose her, it feels like it was forever ago. In the same way, it feels like her due date has taken forever to get here. It is like I have been waiting on pins and needes for this day to come, so that I could move on past it. In some ways, I have felt like I have needed to keep her memory so close to the surface each day of these past 4 months, to make sure I carry her in my heart as long as I would have carried her in my womb. I know that I will carry her in my heart for the rest of my life, but I also know she won't always be as near to me as she has been for the past 4 months. I am sad about that, but as I have gone through these months, and today, one thing I know for sure is that she is with Jesus! I shouldn't want to keep her from that! I should be overflowing with joy that she is there with Him! That is our ultimate goal, to make it to Him one day! She doesn't have to have pain or sorrow...ever!

So in some ways, I feel that having her due date pass by, is giving me a sense of peace. This was God's plan for her life. For my life. I don't know what the future holds, and I never have known what it holds, even when I thought I did. All I know for sure is that God is Sovereign, and He is in control, and He has an amazing plan for my life, just as He has an amazing plan for hers in Heaven with Him.

We wanted to honor Brittyn today, and remember her in a special way. Casey and I both googled some different ways to remember babies that have passed away, and one idea that kept coming up was to have a balloon release. So that is what we did. We bought a dozen pink and white balloons and on each one we wrote a special message to Brittyn. Kailey even told us some things she wanted to say to Brittyn. Then we released them, one by one, and watched them float into the sky to Heaven.

Obviously I am not so crazy as to think that they will actually go to Heaven. I even said to Casey "She won't even get to read them".

But then he turned to me and said, "But, what if she does?"

So, that has been my prayer today. That she got to read them. That maybe God let her have a "window from Heaven" as Karen Kingsbury says in her books, to see what we said to her today, so that she can see how much we love and miss her. Here are some pictures from our day.

(We found out that they are going to replace the headstone, due to the grammar mistake with arms.)

I wasn't going to blog about this....

I wasn't going to blog about this, but then I kept trying to write a facebook status about it, and I erased it about 15 times before I realized that I couldn't fit all of my thoughts into a status.

You guessed it. It's about Chick-Fil-A.

So stop reading if you are as sick of the whole debate as I am. I guess I just really wanted to clear something up. I went to Chick-Fil-A twice today, but for some reason people think I did because I hate gay people?

And I'm not talking about non-Christian people here. I'm talking about at least 4-5 of my facebook friends who are Christians.

The reason I went to Chick-Fil-A today was because Dan Cathy said the following, when ASKED about his views on marriage:

“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

“We operate as a family business … our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that,” Cathy emphasized.

“We intend to stay the course,” he said. “We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”



Then after he said these things, well you all know what happened. People started calling him "homophobic" and accused him of speaking "hate speech".

So then Huckabee said we should all go to Chick-Fil-A on August 1st to show our support for Mr. Cathy.

OUR SUPPORT FOR MR. CATHY.

For some reason today, instead of it being viewed as support, people are accusing those of us that went of the same things they accused Mr. Cathy. And I'm not talking about "worldly" people...I'm talking about Christian people.

He never said anything hateful about gay people, and neither did I. Why isn't it obvious that those of us that went are supporting him...and not that we hate gay people? It just really bothers me that even on a day like today, when it is a pretty easy way to support a Christian brother who took a stand, a lot of Christians 1) refused to do so and 2) started calling foul on the people that went.

It's just ridiculous.

I just wanted to be perfectly clear (although I would think by my character people should know this) that I don't hate gay people. I just was supporting a VERY generous man, who shares the same Christian beliefs that I do.

A Fast Summer

Summer is always super fast! I look forward to it so much, and then before you know it, July is almost over! Crazy! I am still not to the point where I am ready for school to start. That usually hits me a couple weeks into August. For now, I am just trying to enjoy what is left of the Summer. Here is what our Summer has looked like so far:

June 8-15: Single Mom Week #1: Kingwood for me and the girls (Casey went to World Changers in Corpus)
June 20: Curriculum Writing for me
June 25: More Curriculum Writing for me (yay.)
June 24-28: Single Mom (at night) week #2:VBS at our church (This was from 6-8:45 each night..then Casey stayed out til midnight every night with the youth)
June 30: The day of two birthday parties
July 3-5: We spent time in Kingwood for 4th of July
July 6-7: We spent time in Burleson at the Yogi Bear Jellystone Campground with Casey's side of the family
July 7-14: Kailey spent the week with Casey's Parents in Shreveport. While she was gone we were put on a water restriction due to a power outage at the water plant, and the day after that was turned back on, we had to call Roto-Rooter to clean out the pipes at our house. (Thank you Dave Ramsey Emergency Fund!)
July 16-20: Single Mom (at night) week #3: Casey has been working with the youth at a church in Killeen to do VBS each night this week. They showed up to help, by request of the county Baptist Association, and have ended up running the entire VBS!

We have had a super busy summer so far, especially Casey! We still have one more week where I am a single mom, the girls are going to be flower girls in a wedding, and then we are going on a much-needed cruise in August!

Here are some pictures from our summer:

Arthur Story Time at Barnes and Noble:

Water Fun:

A few pics from our week in Kingwood:

Father's Day Pics for Daddy's Gift:

Fourth of July:

Yogi Bear Jellystone Campground (Super fun time!)

Park and Water Fun

Another big part of our summer as been keeping Brittyn's flowers alive! So far, so good. I mean they have their moments..but overall they are surviving! Here are some of my favorite pics of them! (Oh and I have fallen in LOVE with Instagram this summer, in case you can't tell!)