The One About Forgiveness

This past weekend Matt & I attended a Weekend to Remember conference.  During one of the last sessions, Gary Stanley was speaking.  He asked the audience, "Do you believe God forgives sins?"  And of course we all said "yes."  And then he just stopped & looked at us... "Think about it."  He then proceeded to tell us that he has been studying what God does to sin.  He throws it behind him, rips it from East to West, stomps on it and had it nailed to a cross.  Does that sound like he forgives sin or that he hates sin?

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
"... He is faithful & just to forgive US our sins and to save US from all unrighteousness."

God forgives US... he forgives the person... he hates the sin. Sin is death to Him.

Let that sink in for a moment. It feels like it's so simple, right? But this statement was so freeing to me.  We do not have to forgive the sins committed to us.  We forgive the person.  We separate the person from the sin and forgive the person.  This message is so clear throughout the Bible that it's amazing that this was so freeing to me, but it was.  Very much so. 

Forgive the person. Make a choice to forgive. You don't have to forget. You will still feel the hurt. But choose to forgive & hate the sin, not the 'sinner'.

The One Nathan Wrote

The Human Body: Ears

Ears are almost the greatest part of your body. For example: When you hear Karah screeching it immediately brings the music right to your brain. Cool, huh? Any way if you didn't have ears you would have to have loads of paper in your pocket so you could talk to each other or write to each other. But it would be kinda good because you could get better hand writing like I need to work on. Anyway you are using your ears right now as you are listening to my report. Well hopefully. This is the end. I hope you learned something. See you later.

The One About Time4Learning

I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. Time4Learning can be used as a homeschool curriculum, for afterschool enrichment and for summer skill sharpening. Find out how to write your own curriculum review for Time4Learning.

I'm looking forward to trying this out :) I'm hoping it'll be a good tool to use, especially for the youngers!

The One About Feelings

Sometimes I think 3 year olds have it right by wearing their hearts on their sleeve. Oh sure, their tantrums are frustrating, but you always know how they are feeling. They let you know one way or another that they are sad, frustrated, angry, happy, scared & so on. At some point in our lives, we all loose the ability to show what we're feeling & internalize things too much. We often aren't taught how to properly manage our feelings so we push them aside until one day, unable to to hide any longer, they blow up in our faces & often affect the ones we love the most.

Why are we taught that happy is the only acceptable emotion? Especially as Christians... we're taught that we are to be joyful in everything. That doesn't mean to put a smile and push the hurt and sad feelings aside tho. That means to seek the Lord to bring healing for the hurt & sadness & then allow His joy to come into your life. Think about it... Jesus cried, Jesus threw a tantrum, Jesus hurt, Jesus FELT. Jesus... the *only* perfect human being felt sad & angry. Guess what that means?!? IT IS OK TO BE SAD AND ANGRY!!!

It's what we do with those feelings that is the important thing.

I'm totally speaking for myself here. I could put a spin on it on how to teach our children to accept their feelings & the proper way to deal with them, but I'm not doing that. Right now, I am hurting and sad and frustrated and angry. I don't know how to deal with it. I've always pushed it aside, hidden it beneath the facade of happy life. When I was younger I'd write songs, poetry or even draw pictures portraying what I felt, but never really dealing with it. I've ignored it & avoided it, but now it's time to heal.

I'm finding the healing process to be A LOT harder than I ever imagined it would be. It's amazing that things that happen to you at 5, 18, 30 can have such a strong affect on how you view life, God & relationships.

We live in such a broken world... we're allowed to feel that. We just need to learn how to let God take the brokenness to make us whole.

The One About Love

Over the past month the subject of Love has been mulling around in my mind. Probably because of February 14th, but it seems to have started well before then. It started in little bits before that, but at a women's day retreat it came to a point where I couldn't stop thinking about it. Less than a week later, I had a preschool meeting at church. Since I was already at church, I decided to pop in to the women's meeting that night. Guess what it was about? Yep... love. And of course the Toby Mac song "Made to Love" won't stop playing in my daughter's room, on my iPod & on Pandora! Have you ever really listened to the lyrics to that song? If you haven't, you should. Click here to read them.

We were created to love, be loved & be in relationship with God & each other. Without this, we feel lost, alone & misplaced. There are things that block us and make us incapable of feeling or giving love. My children enjoy watching "What's in the Bible" by Phil Vischer. We keep it in the car and watch it as we drive around, so I've listened to it a lot! One thing he says really hits home & has stuck in my head. I'm paraphrasing here... he says that we live in a broken world. When we choose to do what we think is right & not what God wants us to do, we break our relationship with God. Isn't that essentially what sin has done? When Adam & Eve first chose to disobey God, they broke the full, true, in-inhibited relationship that they had with God. Sad to say, that many times the choices that hurt us the most are not choices that we make, but rather those around us make. The repercussions of those choices hurt us & others around them.

I had started to bare more of my soul in this post... but I have chosen to delete for now. I may or may not choose to share these thoughts later, but for now, they remain muddled in my mind. Essentially... we live in a broken, sinful world where love (true love) exists only in small glimpses. I cannot wait to reach Heaven... I can only imagine the love there is beyond amazing...

The One About Negativity Eating Away My Thoughts

Negativity. I've noticed lately that when I'm around a lot of negativity, it seems to strongly affect me. I'm a strong believer in not allowing other people to affect your moods. I teach this to my kids from when they are a young age. I tell them that just because 'x' is acting that way, doesn't mean you can. I encourage them not to let other people's moods affect their own moods. When I take a deep looking at myself, I see that I do the same exact thing that my children do. I allow the negativity in & start to think poorly about myself or others around me.

I've been a part of a message board for about 7 years & over those years there has been a lot of negativity towards husbands. It disappoints me to read about Christian women who are so negative and lacking in grace towards their husbands. It got me to thinking today. "My husband never does laundry. My husband rarely does dishes and picks up after himself." Instead of focusing on the positives (He works really hard to provide for our family, he makes himself lunches most mornings & will help w/ things if he is home & I ask. He's a great day, attentive spouse & obviously cares a lot for me & for the children.) But instead of focusing on those things, I started nit picking the negatives. Thankfully, the Lord tugged my heart and pointed out that I was allowing what I was reading to affect how I felt. I don't truly feel as tho he doesn't do anything around here. Sure, sometimes I get overwhelmed and do feel that way, but for the most part I don't. I don't truly feel as tho I'm always picking up after him or cleaning up messes he makes.

It goes along with what Matt & I have been reading in Love & War. One of the things that the authors talked about in the chapter we're reading now, is to not let negativity creep in and destroy your marriage. It's easy to let outside influences in & to start thinking bad thoughts when that's all you hear or read all the time.

So... here's to trying to keep the positive the forerunner in my thoughts & heart.

The One Where I Break Down My School Day

I've been feeling guilty over the fact that we complete our school day in about 3-4 hrs each day. We begin by 8 each morning and are done by noon each day. Rarely have we gone past noon & most day we're done quite a bit before noon. I was trying to figure out if we're skipping something important & I realized we are skipping some things. We don't do breaks or lunches. We work straight through, taking a 5 min break to grab a snack around 10. We don't have to get from one room to another. I don't count P.E. into our school day nor do I count music. We don't do home room or assemblies. So I guess, we probably spend about the same time as the public school does on academics.