Lets Give Them Something to Talk About

This past week I have been reminded how my life used to be.   Full of DRAMA…   At least, I sure thought that it was.   I could make anything and everything dramatic, and I did.   If I didn’t like my job, it was a full out ordeal that EVERYONE had to know about.   If I didn’t like my friends or family, same thing…   If I was extremely busy, or at least what I thought was extremely busy before I had kids, I had to make a huge deal about it.   I guess life hasn’t changed all that much, but my outlook on life has changed and therefore, my life is changed.   Life is always going to throw curve balls at us.   ALWAYS!   There is no way around this idea, it is a truth.   Life isn’t necessarily easy but depending on how we look at it doesn’t have to be stressful and full of drama all the time.   I used to be so stressed out until I realized, guess what – the world doesn’t revolve around me…   A novel concept I assure you. ...

Imagine having nowhere to turn.   No one to look to and no one to go to and no one to turn to when things were rough. Recently a 13-year-old boy felt this way.   He was part of my niece’s class and had a terribly bad day.   He felt hopeless.   He took a gun.   He took the gun and put it to his head and pulled the trigger.   To our knowledge, he has not passed away yet.   We have heard that he passed and also that he did not pass, but is in a coma after surgery.    This past Sunday we heard a message of HOPE given by our Pastor at The Fields Church in Mattoon.   The message was of how Jesus makes hopeless situations and inserts hope into them.   During the sermon, our pastor held up a balloon.   That is our life.   We are hopeless without Christ.   Then, Christ breathes life into us and we inflate.   When we let Christ breathe into our lives, we are able to take the shape that He created us for.   We n...

More and more women, men and children are being expected to take on more and more responsibilities.   Due to worldly pressures, women think they have to have a spotless house, while working a full time job or being a stay at home mother, all while raising perfect children who they do activities with daily, and also have perfect homemade meals prepared and having meals stored in the freezer/ pantry etc…, while also volunteering at church, school, for girl/ boy scouts etc…    Men’s pressures are just as high, they have to be the ultra romantic man who works full time at a high paying joy, but still devotes his entire heart to children and finds time to take his wife out, when he is off he is expected to clean the house and bring breakfast in bed to her.   Children are to be in multiple activities (that their parents inevitably have to drive them to in addition to all their other chores), do their homework, have 1 hour structured play and 1 hour unstructured play, s...

It is Sunday.   I roll over in my bed, grab my phone that inevitably woke me up last night begging to be charged, and turn off my alarm.   Stretching, I reach out and click on the 40-watt lamp that is next to my bed.   As I sit up, and stretch some more, working the kinks out of my back and neck I think to myself, what am I going to wear today?   Looking at my clock and seeing that it is 7:00, I remember that we are teaching one of our two daughter’s classes this week.   It is Sunday. Taking a breath, I will myself out of the bed, feet first, hoping that the momentum of swinging my feet out of the bed will give me some sort of energy.   I shuffle sleepily into the kitchen, start my coffee and go back towards my room.   Entering the room I hear the bed calling my name, begging me to get back into it for just 5 more minutes.   My body is thrown off from the extra 30 minutes it already got.   Heading into our bathroom, I turn on the show...