~Abigail~

 I found this while searching through my blogger drafts this morning for, oddly enough, a craft about birds nests! ha! Anyway, it made a lot of sense to me so I wanted to share it with you. Hope it helps someone.



REVIVE OUR HEARTS.COM

Caught in the Middle

Series: Abigail: How to Live with the Fools in Your Life
Wednesday, April 16 2008

Leslie Basham: Here’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: You don’t have to let a harsh, badly-behaved man turn you into a harsh, badly-behaved woman.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Wednesday, April 16.

Yesterday we wrapped up a series on how wives can understand their husbands better, meet a husband’s needs, and serve him. Whenever we air a series like that, we hear from listeners who are in bleak situations.
Nancy provides biblical counsel for women who have husbands who seem impossible to love, and she gives advice to anybody who has to deal with a difficult person. Here she is in a series called How to Live with the Fools in Your Life.

Nancy: If you’ve been listening to Revive Our Hearts for any length of time, you may remember a year or so ago when we did a lengthy series on the Proverbs 31 woman. We called it The Counter-cultural Woman.
When you think about Proverbs 31 and that virtuous woman, it’s easy, perhaps, for some women to think, “That’s easy for that woman to be virtuous. Look at the guy she’s married to. I mean, he loves her. He’s an honorable man. He’s a virtuous man. Anybody could be a great woman if she was married to a man like that.”

I think of some of our listeners who call us, send letters, or emails. I’m so thankful for those letters and emails. I read as many of them as possible. So many of those women pour out their hearts about some difficult or impossible situation that they feel trapped in.

For some, it’s their marriage. They’re married to a man who just is impossible to love, humanly speaking. He may just be mean. Or maybe it’s a situation at work—a boss who’s impossible, somebody they can’t please.
It may be a situation in their church—someone they can’t get along with, someone who is cantankerous. I’m sure there’s nobody cantankerous in your church. But in some churches, there are some cantankerous people.

Maybe you have one of those impossible people in your life—maybe in the four walls of your own home, in your workplace, in your church, in your neighborhood, wherever. How do you live with those kinds of people? How do you respond as a virtuous woman when you’re living with someone who is an ungodly, foolish person?

Well, there’s an amazing story in the Old Testament, 1 Samuel chapter 25. I want to ask you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Samuel 25. We’re going to be introduced to a woman in the Old Testament. She’s not as well-known as some of the other women that we’ve studied in Revive Our Hearts, not as well-known as Mary of Nazareth or Deborah or Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.

But Abigail has become one of my favorite Old Testament characters. She is an extraordinary woman. There’s a lot we can learn from her life, not only from her life but also from the two men who are the other main characters in this story.

At any given time in your life, you may relate to any one of these three characters. So we’re not just going to study Abigail. We want to look at the two men who were involved in her life. As we do this character study, we want to see what God has to teach us for our lives.

Let’s start with verse one, which is the setting for this story. In verse one of chapter 25 we read, “Now Samuel died. And all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him in his house at Ramah.”
You remember that Samuel was a man of God. He was a prophet. He lived a long, long time. He was the last of the judges. He was the one who anointed Saul to be the first king of Israel. He’s also the one who anointed David to be Saul’s replacement.

When I think of Samuel dying, the picture that comes to my mind is a little bit like what happened when President Ronald Reagan died. Do you remember? He had been a great leader. He had led this nation. He was esteemed. He was respected. He’d lived a lot of years. He had led the nation well.

When President Reagan died, do you remember how the flags were flown at half mast and how thousands and thousands of people lined up, first in California and then in the streets of Washington D.C., to just stand and watch as the procession carrying his body drove through those streets. Remember how over a hundred thousand people stood in line there at the rotunda in Washington, some of them for up to three hours, just to file by and pay their last respects.

The nation mourned when President Reagan died. I mean, Republicans, Democrats, people who didn’t know what party they were. They had a lot of respect for this man. And they mourned when he died. They grieved.
I think that’s a little bit what it was like when Samuel died. There was this national sense of grieving, mourning. But of all the people who were grieving when this great man of God, Samuel, died, I think that David was probably the one who mourned this loss as much as anyone else in the whole land of Israel.

You remember that David had been anointed to be the next king of Israel. But King Saul was still on the throne. King Saul was an egomaniac. He was full of himself. He was insecure. And he was trying to kill David. He was jealous of David and knew that David was coming to the throne. There was this war going on between Saul and David.

Samuel the prophet had been a buffer between David and Saul. And now Samuel is gone. I can imagine David feeling abandoned, vulnerable, alone, maybe depressed, discouraged, maybe wondering, “Are God’s promises for my life really ever going to come true?”

In the midst of that lonely, vulnerable, scared time in David’s life, we come to the next phrase in verse one that says, “Then David rose and went down to the wilderness of Paran.”

David, in the context of 1 Samuel 25 here, has been fleeing for his life from this madman, King Saul. He’s a fugitive. In the previous chapter he had been in the wilderness of Engedi and had had an encounter with King Saul. Now Samuel dies, and David moves further south down to the wilderness of Paran to get further away from King Saul.

As he’s headed south toward the wilderness of Paran, this story takes place. In this place David encounters a couple, a husband and a wife, and a couple like many I have heard of and met today, where one of the mates is a godly person who loves and fears the Lord and the other mate is a totally ungodly, selfish, wicked person. It happens. And David met a couple just like that.

As we’ve said, there are three main characters in this story. When you study the Bible, as you do character studies, it helps to ask yourself, whether the characters are good or bad.

Is there an example here for me?
Is there an example to be followed?
Is there an example to be avoided?

What does this passage and what do these people teach me about the heart and the ways and the character of God?
That’s what we’re going to be looking for in this story.

The first character we’re introduced to—and I want to just give you a quick overview today and then tomorrow we’ll jump into the story. But the first character is a man named Nabal. His name means “fool,” a Hebrew word for “fool.”

In verse 25, we read about Nabal. “As his name is, so is he.” His name means “fool” and that describes exactly what this man was like. He was a wicked, foolish man.
As we study the life of Nabal, we’re going to see a lot of the characteristics of a fool. As you see those characteristics, you may recognize someone you know, maybe more than one person.

But you know what else? You may also see yourself, at points. One of the things we want to do as we go through this series is say, “How can we avoid becoming like a Nabal? How can we avoid having those characteristics in our lives?”

Nabal’s foolish behavior evoked two very different kinds of responses from the other two main characters in the story. First there was David, the man who was going to be king. He had been appointed by God to be king, but he was still a fugitive from King Saul.

David’s response, when he came face to face with this foolish man Nabal, was to get provoked. He lost control. He was tempted to respond just the same way that Nabal had treated him. The danger is that when you get around a fool, you may respond like a fool.

In fact, as we get into this story, we’ll see that David’s response was even worse than what Nabal had done to provoke him. We’ll see in this story that even the most godly people sometimes act in ungodly, foolish ways.
That’s why we all need wise counsel. We need godly people around us who will help us see when we’re being foolish and, when necessary, will confront us, will love us enough to get into our face and speak the truth to us as Abigail did to David.

We need people who will give us godly counsel when we’re acting like fools. And we need to learn to listen to that counsel, to take it, to heed it.
That’s what humility really is. It’s the willingness to listen to wise counsel and to change direction when we realize we’ve been wrong. We’re going to see in David a man who, though he initially responded foolishly to this fool, was willing to listen to wise counsel and to change his course, to change his direction, when he realized he’d been wrong.

The third character, as we’ve already referenced, is this woman named Abigail. She models an incredible response to foolish people. There’s so much we can learn from her, whether the fool in your life is the husband or it’s a boss or it’s a son or daughter or it’s an in-law or it’s somebody in your church or your neighbor. Whoever the fool is in your life, Abigail teaches us how to live with and deal with the fools in your life.

She’s a woman of discretion. She’s a woman of wisdom. She’s a peacemaker. Her life changes the whole outcome of this story.
As in every story, including yours, there’s a fourth, mostly-silent character in this story and that is God Himself. God who is always behind the scenes ruling, overruling and intervening in the affairs of men. God who is always sovereign; He’s always on His throne. He’s always working to achieve His purposes and fulfill His promises.

We see in this story a God who is never absent, a God who is never asleep on the job. It’s the same God who is in your story, a God who is involved in your life, who cares about the fools that you live with or work with or go to school with. There’s a God who is involved.

Verses 2 and 3 tell us:
There was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel. The man was very rich; he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail. The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved; he was a Calebite.

Most likely this marriage between Abigail and Nabal had been arranged by her parents, as most marriages were in that culture. She probably had no say in the matter. She was beautiful. He was rich. Her father may have thought he was really doing her a favor by marrying her into this rich man’s family, thought he was doing a good thing for her.

A beautiful woman and a rich man—you’d think that was a great combination. But the problem is that beauty and wealth are only external characteristics. What really matters when it comes down to real life is the heart, the character, not the outward appearance or the material wealth.
In the case of this couple, the difference between their hearts and their character could hardly have been more extreme. It was like night and day. This is a totally mismatched couple when it comes to matters of the heart.
He was a foolish, ungodly man; she was a wise, godly woman. We don’t know if he had always been that way, if he was that way when they got married. Maybe she thought he was a great man when they got married. As is true of many women that I’ve heard from, they say, “I had no clue till years into our marriage what kind of man he was going to turn into.”
Or maybe he’d always been ill-tempered and ill-mannered. We don’t know. All we know is she ended up in this very difficult marriage.

There are a couple points of application that are pretty obvious to me already in this chapter. First is the fact that if you are godly, that does not necessarily guarantee that your mate will be godly or that others in your life, others you live with, family members, friends, co-workers will be godly. The fact that you are a godly person does not guarantee that the people around you will be godly people. Neither does it guarantee that they will change.

Sometimes people who write us about our program say, “You give me the feeling that if I just live a godly life, my husband will become a godly man.”
I want to make it clear. We are not saying that, because the Scripture doesn’t say that. Scripture does teach that a godly mate can have a powerful influence on an ungodly mate. But there’s no guarantee that your choosing to live God’s way will change the people around you who are fools, who are Nabals. They may never change.

There’s a second application here, and that is that you don’t have to let a harsh, badly-behaved man turn you into a harsh, badly-behaved woman. That’s one of the powerful things about this story. The fact that your mate or someone else that you have to live with or work with on a regular basis, the fact that they are ungodly doesn’t mean that you can’t be godly yourself.

You see, we tend to feel that our level of godliness or spirituality is tied into the people around us. They make us react this way. No one can make you react in an ungodly way. The fact that you have to live with a person who is ungodly doesn’t mean that you can’t be godly yourself. Your character, your responses don’t have to be controlled by theirs.

One of the things that I love about this story is by the time we enter into it—we don’t know what all had preceded it but we know that Abigail has been living with this harsh, badly-behaved man. We know that had to affect her. She was living with the man.

But it’s obvious that she had not let Nabal destroy her. She was still a discerning, wise, godly, beautiful woman. She had not let his behavior control hers. She was still winsome, courageous, gracious.

And most important, she had not lost her faith in the promises of God just because she was living with this wicked man who, as far as she knew, never would change. In fact, he never did change.

We’re first introduced to Nabal in this story and then to David and then to Abigail. Verse 2 tells us that this man was very rich. He was a business man, a wealthy business man. He was influential.

As you read this story, and this will unfold over the next few sessions, one of the things that’s real obvious is some of the potential pitfalls of wealth. These things don’t have to be true of wealthy people, but they often are. By the world’s standards, we are wealthy. So these are qualities we need to watch out for in our own lives.

People who are wealthy can become independent-spirited. Others need them, others are dependent on them, but they don’t need anybody. They don’t need anything.

Sometimes with people who are very rich in the world’s standards in material goods, it’s hard for others to be honest with them. In verse 17 the servants said about Nabal their master, “One cannot speak to him.” He won’t listen to anybody.

Nobody can tell the truth to him. He’s powerful. He’s influential. He’s wealthy and people are scared to death of him. Nobody will really speak the truth to him.

We all need mirrors in our lives. We need people who will be honest with us, who will love us enough to speak the truth. But here’s a man who, partially because of his wealth, had gotten into a position where no one would be honest with him.

People were afraid of telling him the truth, afraid of losing their job. What if one of those employees had spoken up and said, “Nabal you’re wrong; you’re acting like a fool”?
“Off with your head.”

So, people were afraid of him. Sometimes when you have a lot of wealth by the world’s standards, it’s easy to assume the worst of others, to assume negatively of others, as we’ll see that Nabal did of David.

Proverbs 18:23 is a verse that has always been very convicting to me. It says, “The poor use entreaties.” They appeal. They plead. “But the rich answer roughly.” They can talk any way they want to talk. They own the world. It’s all theirs. There’s this pride, this arrogance that sometimes, not always but sometimes, goes with wealth.

Not only was he very rich, but verse 3 tells us he was harsh. If you’re using the King James Version you’ll have there the word churlish. It’s a word that in the Hebrew means “hard, unyielding, unbending, uncontrollable.” You get the picture of this man? He’s a harsh man.

He’s an abusive man. He’s abusive to his wife. He’s abusive to others. He’s verbally abusive. He’s a hard drinker; we’re going to see that. He’s just a mean man.

There are those men in this world and sometimes you have to live with a fool. It may be in your marriage, in your workplace, in your church, in some other sphere of your life. We’re going to see from this study that there is a way to deal with fools in your life and there’s a way not to deal with fools in your life.

The Scripture says that not only was he harsh, he was badly-behaved. The NIV says in that verse that he “was surly and mean in his dealings.” He was corrupt. Chances are he’d gotten some of his wealth by cheating others. He was a badly-behaved man.

And then that phrase, “He was a Calebite.” That may mean that he was a descendant of Caleb, who was a godly man from the tribe of Judah. But the word Caleb in Hebrew means “dog.” Some commentators suggest that, rather than being a descendant of Caleb, what it’s really saying is that it was an adjective to describe his behavior.

One translation renders it, “He was snappish as a dog.” His character is best described as we’ve seen by his name—Nabal, fool.

When we see the word fool in the Scripture, we need to remember that a fool is not somebody who is mentally deficient. It’s someone who is morally deficient. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). It’s a person who wants to live his life as if there were no God.

He has no fear of God, no fear of man, no regard for what is moral, no regard for what is spiritual. As a result, he acts stupidly, foolishly, disgracefully.

Isaiah 32:6 says, “The fool speaks folly, and his heart is busy with iniquity, to practice ungodliness and to utter error concerning the LORD, to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied, and to deprive the thirsty of drink.”
We’re going to see that Nabal, the fool, lived up to that description of a fool. He kept back food and water from those who were hungry and thirsty. He was a foolish man.

I think you can see already that your heart determines your character and your behavior. If you have a foolish heart, you will act foolishly. Your character and your behavior reveals your heart. If you’re acting foolishly in foolish ungodly ways, that reveals that you have a foolish heart.
All through this series, it’s going to be easy as we read about Nabal to think of someone we know. But I want us as we examine this passage to let God shine the spotlight of His Spirit and His Word into our hearts and say, “Could any of this be true of me?”

Am I sometimes impossible to deal with?
Are people not honest with me because I’ll blow up?
Am I arrogant, proud, harsh?
Do I assume negatively of others, assume the worst of them?
Do I answer roughly rather than graciously?
If I act in those ways, if I speak in those ways, that tells you something about the condition of my heart.

The Scripture says we’re all born fools. Only the grace of God and the power of the Gospel, the power of Christ, can transform our hearts, give us a new heart and give us a wise heart.

That’s why we need a heart transplant. It’s only the grace of God if there’s anything in us that is gracious and kind or sweet-spirited, in our homes and in our other relationships. That’s why we desperately need God’s grace.
Apart from the grace of God, every one of us would be a Nabal. That’s why we desperately need the grace of God.

Leslie: That’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss reminding us of how needy we really are. All of us need to learn to not be a fool and how to love other people who are being foolish.

Our team has developed a Bible study on the story of Abigail that will help you incorporate God’s grace into areas of need in your life. It comes with a CD of Nancy’s teaching and you can use the booklet and CD together to study Abigail’s life. Identify areas where you want to become more like her and take some practical next steps.

We’ll send you the Abigail teaching on CD and the accompanying study guide when you make a much-needed donation to Revive Our Hearts. Your gift will help us to continue speaking into the lives of women, and I think you’ll get a lot out of this study we provide as our thanks to you.
Look for information on this study guide, and donate at ReviveOurHearts.com or donate by phone: 1-800-569-5959.
A lot of people call for a lot of reasons, so when you make your donation, would you specifically let us know you’d like the Abigail CD and study guide?

Do you ever have trouble controlling your anger? Get some perspective on the danger of acting in anger from the story of Abigail. We’ll hear about it tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.
Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.


♥Julie♥

Day 2.......

Okay, I don't have much time to be on the computer today! valentine's party tomorrow and Birthday party Sunday for Claire; I have SO much to do !! So, to make it quick:

Day 1 was a redo but I just carried it over into day2 and now I think I am going to continue to keep carrying a lot of these over from now on and never stop doing them. For example, the saying nothing negative, I need to work on that every day, not just day 1!! :) Of course we all know that, but do we practice it?

Here's day 2:

"Kindness is love in acttion. If patience is how love reacts in order to minimize a negative circumstance, kindness is how love acts to maximize a positive circumstance.Patience avoids a problem; kindness creates a blessing. One is preventive, the other proactive. These two sides of love are the cornerstones on which many of the other attributes we will discuss are built."

LOVE MAKES YOU KIND, AND KINDNESS MAKES YOU LIKEABLE. When you are kind, people want to be around you. They see you as being good to them and for them.

"Do not let kindness and truth leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man" Proverbs 3:3-4

These really stuck out for me:: (there are LOTS of these for husbands, too, don't worry!)

"Kindness graces a wife with the ability to serve her husband (and children) without worrying about her rights." OUCH!!!!

"The kind wife will be one who greets first, smiles first, serves first and forgives first. They don't require the other to get his act together before showing love. You see the need and make your move, first. "

Proverbs 31:26 "She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue"


TODAY'S DARE:

IN ADDITION TO SAYING NOTHING NEGATIVE TO YOUR SPOUSE AGAIN TODAY, DO AT LEAST ONE UNEXPECTED GESTURE AS AN ACT OF KINDNESS.

Today I had a lot of fun thinking of Charlie and going back to the days when we met and how I felt about him then. I also thought of how much we have grown in the 11 years we have been together and I just became amazed at God's hand in our lives! It was easy after thinking of everything he has done for me, to be kind to him. However, this is also about learning to be kind in EVERY circumstance. Not just when you have warm and fuzzy feelings about each other. So, I plan to continue on with day 2, even in the rough circumstances and the bad tempers. Believe me, the time will come when my kindness will be tested and so will me saying nothing negative!!! SO hard for me sometimes!

I will hopefully be back sometime this evening or tonight with day 3. Stay tuned!!

starting over again......

I have went almost all the way through The Love Dare and maybe I am just being completely ridiculously hard on myself but as I am doing the Husband Encouragement Challenge along with The Love Dare, I am finding so many things that I am just not getting! Call me hard headed but I believe that my husband deserves MY VERY BEST and I will continue to do this Love Dare and the Challenge over and over probably for the rest of my life. I don't want to ever again, get caught in a rut in our marriage. And, I can definitely say both of these marriage tools are working! My husband is so different and considerate (he was before but now, A NEW LEVEL!!!) I am different. I am more thoughtful. I put Charlie's preferences and wants FIRST, most of the time. It is changing me so much but I want to continue to be changed!! I want to continue to be challenged and I want to feel that pain of being pruned because I know it is working!!

I only have a few minutes on the computer as I am trying to limit my computer time and be more disciplined. So, I am going to share with you Day 1 of the Love Dare. I am starting over!! Well, here goes:

"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in Love." Ephesians 4:2 NIV

"Love will inspire you to become a patient person. When you choose to be patient, you respond in a positive way to a negative situation. You are slow to anger. You choose to have a long fuse instead of a quick temper. Rather than being restless and demanding, love helps you settle down and being extending mercy to those around you. Patience brings an internal calm during an external storm." pg.1

"This Love Dare journey is a process and the first thing you must resolve to possess is patience. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint. But it's a race worth running." pg. 3


TODAY'S DARE: DAY 1:

"THE FIRST PART OF THIS DARE IS FAIRLY SIMPLE. ALTHOUGH LOVE IS COMMUNICATED IN A NUMBER OF WAYS, OUR WORDS OFTEN REFLECT THE CONDITION OF OUR HEART. FOR THE NEXT DAY, RESOLVE TO DEMONSTRATE PATIENCE AND SAY NOTHING NEGATIVE TO YOUR SPOUSE AT ALL. IF THE TEMPTATION ARISES, CHOOSE NOT TO SAY ANYTHING. IT'S BETTER TO HOLD YOUR TONGUE THAN TO SAY SOMETHING YOU'LL REGRET."

Okay, here goes!! Starting over again! Be praying for me!!

Love,
Julie

more of my rambling...........;)

I ran 1 mile today and walked a mile and a half. Pretty good for not running for a few years! I have been a little busy having babies! :) It felt so good to run and today was such a gorgeous day to run! 74 degrees and windy with a touch of rain in the air.......aaaahhhhhhh....... I had forgotten how much I love to run and just be alone, just me, the road and God.

I don't know how many miles I am going to be able to get since I am home all day with the kids and I don't have babysitting close by. Charlie usually doesn't get home until late so that's out. Hopefully, Mom will watch them a couple of days a week for an hour so I can run and the other days we will just walk and I will do some walking videos in the house with the girls. :) That's always fun! They love to exercise with Mama! And, I can always get in some running time on Saturdays and Sundays and I am thinking that will be enough for me! I am not in this for the miles. I just want to be healthy for myself and my family. I want to feel better and be the best wife and mother I can be. That's why I run.

I bought Claire's stuff for her Princess party this weekend. Hopefully, I wil get invitations mailed out this weekend. We also have been invited to a valentine's party on Saturday so I got everything for that, too. I am making Red Velvet cupcakes with cream cheese or buttercream icing (can't decide yet) and placing candy hearts on top. She picked out Princess valentines for the girls and Car valentines for the boys. They got pencils with their Valentines. I thought that was a cute idea.

Tomorrow we are making supper and baking cookies for a family that goes to our church. Miss Tammie's mama is sick so we are going to make her feel better. They don't know yet, it's a surprise! Hopefully, I can get it done. If not tomorrow, I will take it Tuesday. Also, we are going to make a Valentine's garland and work on our letter of the week (A). shape: square number: 1 and nursery rhyme: Hey Diddle Diddle, our theme is Cows and our vocabulary word is calf. We are reviewing or that's the plan anyway!! We are working on grasping objects with Drew and he's getting pretty good at it! Oh my goodness, he is growing SO fast!!

Friday night we all curled up in blankets and watched "Facing the Giants". That is such a favorite around here. We could watch it again and again. :)

Charlie heads back to work tomorrow and I am not ready for that at all. Check out the "My Husband Rocks" t-shirts on my sidebar. I am going to order one and wear it with pride. He definitely deserves it. I have such an amazing husband. Oh Lord, you have blessed me more than I EVER deserve and I thank you!!!

Well, I have to go. Just wanted to touch base since I have been gone all week. I probably won't get to blog much this week, either. I have so many things to do and such a busy week planned with the kids and Charlie.

Talk to you soon, though!! Have a blessed week!!

Love,
Julie

another wild post....

Didn't get to go to church services today. Lily was sick. She's better now. I hate it when my kids are sick. I wish I could take their place every time. Poor babies. :(

Got my running shoes yesterday. Nikes. Silver & kind of a mauve purple. I will have to take a picture. I know a lot of people don't like Nikes for running but I do. These fit the best out of all the options I looked at. Also, I wore Nikes for 7 years playing basketball and they never really hurt my feet. Maybe I won't like them so much after I put some miles on them but for now, they are great!! :) Also, a GREAT price!! Charlie & I both got shoes for what I would have paid regular price for mine!! I LOVE a great deal!

Still haven't found the perfect computer. Still looking. I am such a tightwad. I also have to buy a new printer so I am just cringing at the prices. Laugh if you want. I am serious. This is why my computer is ancient and about to kick the bucket on me. I just hate to buy anything expensive. See above on running shoes. Haha. :)

So, it's a lazy Sunday. I am going to head out in a little bit and get Valentine's for the kids Valentine's party next week and stuff to make them a box.(SO excited about this!!!) I also need to get their Valentine's presents from Mama & Daddy and Charlie's gift. Also, I have to get final things for Claire's birthday party (her birthday is the 15th.) So, I have A LOT to do today!!

Going to do some baking and cleaning. Already did 6 loads of laundry and 2 loads of dishes. Cleaned our bathroom and dusted from the wood stove soot. Argh..... well, hey, it's heat and it's free!!! (we cut our own firewood off of our property)

So, now I am off to go running while the kids nap... I don't know how much I will be blogging this week. Kinda busy!! Lots to do and plan!! Family: I am mailing birthday invitations so you should get them sometime early this week. Sorry it's so late! But, that's how we roll around here. :)

Have a great week, everyone and remember, to keep up the Husband Encouragement Challenge!!! Also, the 31 Days of Praying for your husband are great, as well!! Do these along with the Love Dare and you will be knocking Satan out right and left!! :)

(If you need information on any of the challenges or the love dare just email me at mama2clairelilydrew (at) gmail (dot) com. using the symbols, of course, not the words! I will be SO glad to help you in any way!!)

Love,
Julie

*LOVE, LOVE this on the bottom of my shoes:

"I run like a girl; try to keep up" ;)

Happy Birthday, Allison & a must read for your marriage(this post is ALL over the place)

Drew in MeMe's lap at church; smiling big!! :)

Allison is on the very end holding Lily. Isn't she pretty? :)

I am taking a "break" from my blogging break today for 3 VERY important reasons! First, Happy Birthday (yesterday) to our precious niece, Allison!!! She is 16 and will be driving next week!! (legally, anyway!) :) I am putting a picture of her on here but it's not real current. I am trying to get better about that! :) Hope you had a GREAT birthday, sweetie!! LOVE YOU!!!

Drew is also 5 months old today!!! I will write a longer post about this later!!!I can't believe that he is almost half a year old(where does the time go?!) and this is a fairly current pic of him but again I will HAVE to get better about this!!! (going computer shopping this weekend!!) YAY!! :)

And the third thing is this post today at Praise and Coffee. Thanks, Kelli, for sharing this!!! If you are married, read this. I have some things to add to this but for today I am just not sure what I should write so I will wait until God makes it more clear. This is a topic that is VERY hard to address and that is exactly why Satan is so victorious in this area. People sweep it under the rug. We CAN NOT allow that to happen; that is just automatically forfeiting the game to Satan!! More on this later when I get my thoughts together and have a little time to write a longer post!!

Praying for my husband is going pretty good but I could do better! I am going to stay on blogging break again until at least Saturday so that I can focus more intently on Charlie and his needs, especially in prayer. Something that I didn't expect is that Claire has prayed with me a few times and Lily (following Sissy's example) got down in the floor with us, as well and said her little prayers. My heart is just full when moments like that happen.

Well, back to my break & I hope ya'll are having a great week!!! :)

Love,

Julie

It's Friday!....

I am SO glad it's Friday! It has just been one of the LONGEST weeks, ever! We did LOTS of messy (but FUN) crafts this week and with Drew having a cold and wanting to be held all of the time, I just feel like nothing was really accomplished. But, looking at what I just typed, I realize that the most very important things were done. :)

Sunday, February 1st, I am joining Kelli, one of my very first blogging friends in The Husband Encouragement Challenge!! I did this last year and the difference in my husband was just remarkable so I am doing it again this year; come on and join us!!

And, I won't be posting on my challenge for a little while but I hope to catch up when I get back. I am taking a blogging break this week to focus and regroup. I need to spend ALL of my extra time praying for my husband and my children. I love Kelli's idea of praying on the bathroom floor if I have too; I HAVE done that before... :)

Well, so, I hope to see ya'll sometime after next week! I have some pictures to post so I may get back to that sometime this week if I have the time. Other than that, I won't be posting until after this week! Talk to you then!

Have a great weekend and next week, everyone and please consider joining us in the Husband Encouragement Challenge!!! It's life changing, I promise!!

Love,
Julie

Hello!.....

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! :) Thank you so much for the sweet cards and emails! Your Christmas/New Year cards should be arriving soon in your mailbox, if they haven't already. I am really sorry that I was so late getting them sent out. I tried.

We have had a wonderful Christmas! First of all, Charlie got a week off from work, unexpectedly. It wasn't great because it was a week without pay or unemployment (long story) but it was great because we got to spend a lot of time and have a fantastic Christmas week instead of a rushed week. Thank you, Lord, for that. See, there is good in everything, even financial difficulty. :)

So, our Christmas spending was cut back even more, but that's okay, because we just focused more on important things and the true meaning of the Christmas season. Charlie bought us the book, "The Love Dare", as one of our Christmas presents. We have just started doing this and already Satan has attacked us in almost every area of our marriage. It has been rough but it's funny, too, because we just fight back that much harder and WE are winning! If you haven't started this book, I cannot recommend anything any more than I can recommend this book! It's great!

The girls have had a fun filled time with their Daddy and with cousins and visiting family. It's been a wild week and we are looking forward to settling down this week and just getting back into our groove. :)

Charlie's dad is doing pretty good, considering. He has a really great attitude about everything. He's good like that. :) They did not find any cancer in his bones and it is a really early stage so, those are all great things. Hopefully, they can take care of it with radiation. Please continue to pray. We sure do appreciate all of your prayers. :)

We are looking at a rough year again. HOPEfully, things will improve finanacially and otherwise. We are praying and prayerfully considering some options available to us. Please pray for Charlie as he makes a lot of decisions for the future of our family. He really is trying so hard to seek God's will and direction in his life. I am SO proud of him and in all of almost 11 years (next week) of marriage, I have never seen him walk as closely to the Lord as I see him walking now. It gives me goosebumps just talking about it! :)

*Well, I have to go lay clothes out for church tomorrow and read my love dare for tomorrow and get some sleep. I will try to post pictures of our crazy kids and their wild antics at Christmas if I can get the computer to cooperate! (Because of the week off of work, I will have to wait a little while longer on our computer, that's okay, the Lord is sure teaching me how to wait patiently!) :)

Happy New Year!

Julie