Philippians 4:13

Yesterday was the first day back to the full-on, post-holiday schedule. Mark is back at work, Elijah is back at school and I am back at the gym. On Sunday night, I was certain that this had the potential to be the worst week ever (I'm exaggerating, of course). In a desperate attempt to start the week off on the right foot, I began tidying up around the house before bed, and found myself scrubbing a toilet at about 11 o'clock at night. I had gotten a strange "second wind" that helped me to get several things done around the house, but not without keeping me up until after two in morning.

Not a smart thing to do when you have to wake up early in the morning for the first time in nearly 3 weeks.

God was good, however, and I was up yesterday, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I got the kids up, dressed and fed a nice, healthy, warm breakfast. I got all of our beds made before heading out the door and, after dropping Elijah off at preschool, met Katie at the gym. I got home and showered with enough time to go pick up Elijah from preschool (with a wet head), and home again just in time for me to crash into a brick wall. All of a sudden my late night caught up with me and I was sleepy.

Fortunately it was almost lunch time, so I fed the kids lunch, got them down for naptime/quiet rest time, and put my feet up in front of the TV. I started to feel a little guilty until I realized all that I had accomplished in the previous 12 hours (or so). My bathrooms were both clean, my kid's toy cupboard was cleaned out and reorganized. The house was tidy, the kitchen cleaned of the mess from breakfast and lunch, and the boys were both well taken care of. I had made it to the gym, which was enough of an accomplishment all by itself. God had given me the energy and the discipline to do all that was needed of me yesterday and reminded me that it was okay rest once I was done.

This is going to be yet another rough week in the Moeller household. Mark is even more behind at work because of the snowstorm last week and January is already a crazy month for him at work because of year-end. He will leave for work every day at his usual time of 5 AM and get home sometime around 10 or 11 PM. I wish I was exaggerating. This means he will get little sleep and will not see the boys all week. Which means that the boys will not see him. It breaks my heart for them, and I know this weekend they are going to have a lot of "boys" time. Until then, I am a "single parent" this week and I'm not looking forward to it.

God blessed me yesterday and reminded me that he will sustain me through it. Will I get tired? Yep. But He will remind me that it's okay to rest. Will I get everything done that I want to do? No. But I'll get everything done that I NEED to do. Will I miss Mark? Yep. But Mark will be home eventually. I will crawl my way through this week on my knees in prayer and be all the better for it when it's over. When God reminded me this weekend of how much He loves me, He also reminded me of how much sweeter life is with Him in it. It's not any easier, but it is so much better feeling like as I tackle weeks like this one, I am not alone.

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More

I love a deep theological conversation. I adore tearing into scripture and taking it as deep as my human brain can go. God's Word is so multi-faceted and has so many layers. The more you know, the more you realize how much more there is. I find it fascinating to look up the original Hebrew or Greek origins of words and to learn the historic context of writings by Moses or Paul. The Bible is so rich with information, history, insight and wisdom.

Sometimes, though, the best stuff about the Bible is when it is at it's simplest.

Tonight in the car, on the way to dinner with my family, a song came on the radio that was the message of the Bible at it's simplest. It's not a new song, in fact the album was released in 2004. I've heard the song a hundred times and I will likely hear the song a hundred times more. Tonight it hit me between the eyes.



I have the song on now as I'm typing this post, and tears are coming to my eyes. I've been going through a rough few months, personally. I suffer from significant depression and anxiety attacks and am in the midst of a doctor change and medication change. While I wait for the dust to settle on this season of my life, I have allowed it to drive a wedge between the LORD and I. I can't tell you why. I've just been feeling pretty crummy most of the time and have not allowed Him to minister to it. I have felt like I have come undone.

Tonight God used this simple little song to remind me that He loves me more. I love how Matthew West just sings it over and over....."I love you more..." He loves me more than the mountains He created, more than the massive oceans, more than the stars in the sky. He loves me more....than anything. More than my failures. More than my choices. More than my pity parties. He loves me more....He loves me more......

I struggle with placing human limitations on God. I know in my mind that He is capable of forgiving me over and over again for the same thing, but in my heart I feel like He must be sick of forgiving me by now. Because I would be sick of forgiving me by now. But He's not. He wants me to know....He's not letting go.....He loves me more...

And that is really the message of the Bible. Amongst all of the history, the poetry, the letters and the prophecy....He loves us more than anything. More than His own Son's life. He will say it over and over again because He is gracious and He knows we need to hear it over and over again. He love us more.....

That song doesn't contain a single idea that I hadn't heard before. I know He loves me more....now if only I would start believing it again, so I could shine like those stars He created.

Thank you, LORD, for using a song to remind me. You knew it would get to me.

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A Fresh Start

Everytime I would look at my blog, I would remember how neglectful I had been of it. I've decided that my blog deserves a new look to go along with my new resolve. This is not it. It's going to take me some time to play around with it and decide what I want to do, so for now, I've just gone back to a standard Blogger template.

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Death

This has not been my favorite year. For the first time in my adult life, I had to face some very adult realities. The year started off with a bang when my sister-in-law, Bonnie, suddenly lost her father. A mere week or two had passed when Jesus called my Grandma home, and precisely three days later my Father-in-Law found himself in heaven, finally free of the Parkinson's that he had battled with for a couple of decades. Truly, that was enough. Unfortunately, 2009 didn't stop there.

Over the course of this year, so many loved ones ended their time on this earth, it would be too unpleasant to list. My mortality became much more tangible to me. Certainly I always knew that my life would come to an end, but like most, I spent my younger years feeling detached from the reality of it. I recently saw an episode of The Golden Girls that had Dorothy facing the potential loss of Sophia, her mother. In a moment of reflection, she said to Blanche "When my mother goes, it moves me up to the head of the line." This year I started moving up the line.

Before this post gets away from me, I think it is important to clarify that I am not depressed by this cognisance. For many, speaking of death is morose. It is not done. Such unpleasantries are not discussed in proper company. I understand. I don't make it a habit. Or do I? We are created to yearn for our true, eternal home. This side of heaven, we will always long to be there. This world is not my home and I long to see my Savior's face (2 Cor. 5:1-10, Hebrews 11:15). These are all things that I talk about on a very regular basis. Any time I look forward to spending eternity with Jesus, I am talking about the end of my time here. I am talking about death. Or rather....the absence of death.

We just celebrated the birth of our Savior, Jesus. The birth that set in motion the single most important event in human history. The birth of the One who would defeat death. Who would end it forever. Yes, our bodies still die. They wear out. Yes, it is painful to be separated from those we love, even when we know it is only temporary. But that is what is so glorious! It only has to be temporary!

1 Corinthians 15:54-55
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory. "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

So I am sitting on my couch on this New Year's Eve, 2009. Mark is taking the kids to my parents' house to spend the night. I'm reflecting on what I have learned this last year. What did God want me to take away from 2009? And this post is what I am coming up with. I'm sorry that it's not the most light-hearted post. We didn't have the most light-hearted year. In my family, this year was a year that brought death. But because of Jesus, that death doesn't sting. Did we enjoy it? No. Do we look forward to a day when the New Heaven and New Earth have obliterated even temporary death? You bet. But until that day, we will not mourn as those who have no hope. (1 Thess. 4:13-14)

I hope that your 2009 gave you fewer reasons to mourn than ours did. More than anything, I hope that when you did mourn, you mourned with the knowledge that Jesus Christ has CONQUERED death. And in 2010, I hope that we all resolve to remember that if Jesus can conquer death....he can conquer anything!!

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Oh, the weather outside was frightful......

What a day!! I woke up this morning to find that the wireless internet access I had come to adore was not working. So even though you had every reason to believe that I had again neglected my blog, I had not. My internet had neglected me. My IT guy (Mark) was not home to fix it for me, so my new laptop sat on the end table in the living room, mocking me all day. I should have been able to open it up and start typing away.....but I couldn't. Well, I guess that's not actually true. I could have typed up all over Microsoft Word, but I think you all may have had trouble reading that. And what's the fun in rambling like this if you can't all join in the fun with me?

So my morning started with that big disappointment that carried me through the whole day. Fortunately, many bright moments in my day helped to dim that sadness. Elijah read me one of the new books he got for Christmas with very minimal help from me. Granted, it takes the better part of 30 minutes for him to get through it, but he's 4! And he's reading! It's such a joy for me to see. This past weekend we sat down and played his new Monopoly Junior game with him and he read all of the "Chance" cards on his own, counted his money and paid everyone what he owed them. He was also very quick to say "Daddy, you owe me $2, please!" when it was his turn to collect. He's no dummy! I also got all of the laundry done, which was no small feat considering how long it had been since I had done it (remember, we've been on Christmas break).

And then.....

Shortly after lunchtime, little flakes started to fall from our skies. And not only that, they were sticking to the ground and accumulating into a blanket of white all over everything that we could see out of our windows. For those of you who do not live near me, you will not understand the magnitude of what happened today. It snowed. In fact, it didn't just snow....it dumped snow on us. The craziest part of the whole thing is that NO ONE knew it was coming! At six o'clock this morning, I heard the weather man tell me that we would have heavy rain today and it would be 42 degrees. Around these parts, any amount of snow shuts down the city. We do not have plows, we do not know how to drive in it and we are simply unprepared. In fairness to us, our snow is very different than the powder that is experienced in other areas of the country. It's wet and there is always ice involved. It's not easy to navigate in and our lack of practice make most of us very dangerous behind the wheel of a car under these circumstances. Had the snow come during the night (like snow is supposed to do, right?!), most people would have stayed home in their cozy houses, drinking hot cocoa and venturing outside for the occasional snowball fight or snowman build. But not today. Today we realized how serious this snow storm was just in time for everyone in the tri-county area to be heading home from work.

Normally this would not have impacted us. Mark takes our city's lightrail to work and we are blessed that our trains run just fine in the snow, ice, sleet....you name it. He would have boarded a train and been home in an hour, like usual.

But not today.....

Today Mark took the car to work. He needed the car today because he had plans to meet up with an old friend from high school who was in town for Christmas. I knew that I had tons of laundry laughing at me from the hamper in our bedroom, so I knew that he could take our (one and only) car with no problem. Except then it snowed!!!! OF ALL DAYS!!!!!

Mark left his office shortly after 4 o'clock this afternoon. He got home at 8:52 pm. I know the exact time because the minute he walked in the door, I sent out a mass text to all of the friends and family who were praying and checking in with me for those four-plus hours. Mark is certainly not alone in this. In fact, the reason for it taking him so long to get home was only indirectly related to the snow. Our car handles the snow just fine. Unfortunately, when thousands upon thousands of people who have no business driving in the snow are forced to drive in the snow at the same time.....it gets ugly, people. There were fender benders on every corner. The overpasses were unpassable and the on-ramps became nothing more than a pile of cars that had once tried to "ramp up" and were sadly only able to "slide down".

(This is going to totally give away what kind of sick sense of humor I have, but the pictures on the news reminded me of the scene at the end of "Wall-E" where all the people have become so huge and their muscles have atrophied so badly that they can't help but slide into a pile up depending on which way the space ship is tilting)

My brother and sister-in-law live up quite a hill and Kevin was unable to get his vehicle up the hill (and he drives an SUV), so had to leave his car on the side of the road (amongst many, many others) and walk the 3.74 miles home. I know the exact number because he texted it to me. Remember, when he had left the house this morning, he hadn't planned on hiking through the snow, so it wasn't like he was wearing the appropriate attire (although, now that I think about it, were you wearing your new coat, Kev? Because it totally would have been appropriate for the occasion!).

So the evening was filled with drama as my friends and family texted away, giving each other updates on the status of our loved ones stuck in the snow. Actually....stuck in the traffic. And now I'm exhausted. I wish there was some good reason for my exhaustion, but I wasn't the one stuck in a car going 5 mph for nearly 5 hours. I also wasn't the one who stopped several times to help push people out of the ditches they had careened into (isn't Mark the greatest guy?). No....I was just the one on the edge of my seat, nervously wondering how far away he was and if everything was okay. I was the one who had to keep the kids occupied, fed and to bed, even though all I wanted to do was watch the news to make sure our car wasn't in one of the pile ups at the bottom of an on-ramp. So, basically.....I'm tired because I am emotionally exhausted. Well, that and the 14 minutes I put in on the Wii Fit today. I know the exact amount of time because it tells me.

So now my rambling will come to an end. There is not tidy little wrap up to this post. It's just an endless stream of my thoughts at the end of a very unusual day. It's time for me to go and sleep, and hopefully when I wake up....things will be back to normal.

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Reality Hits Hard

The last 10 days of my life have been blissful (by my standards, anyway). Mark's work decided that in an effort to cut some costs for 2009, they would require everyone to take some time off around the holidays. If you were an employee with PTO remaining, you would be allowed to use it, but if your PTO was gone, you would still need to take the time off, unpaid. Fortunately, Mark fell into the latter category, so taking the time off was financially painless for us. I felt badly for those who were without time off remaining, but I'm certain they preferred this option to potentially losing their jobs all together.

So Mark has been off since December 18th and just rolled back into work this morning. Which means I had to roll back into work this morning as well. When the kids woke up this morning, there was no one else here to wake up with them and make them pancakes. It was all me. And I was not ready. For the last 10 days, I have woken up sometime between 9 and 10. (The only exception to this was Christmas morning, of course, when I was up with the birds.) Mark and I stayed up way too late most nights playing Super Paper Mario on Wii and successfully turning our "clocks" around. We had a great time, but we are paying for it today.

The truth is, even though Mark had to take this time off, his work load did not decrease any and, in fact, had INcreased since he was heading into year-end (he's an accountant....I don't know if I've ever mentioned that before). So he is not just back to the daily grind of 9-5 today. I'll be lucky if I see him much between now and Thursday evening. I won't lie....it's makes today sting even more than it should.

None-the-less.....he has a job. And it pays for the breakfast my children are eating and the internet access I'm using right now. It pays for the trip to Target I need to take today and for the storage containers I will buy while there to store all the new toys my children had under the tree. Mark's job paid for those, too. I wish I didn't need to remind myself of this all the time. I wish I was able to remain constantly grateful in the Holy Spirit instead of so easily slipping into the comfort of my Flesh and throwing a pity party. How pathetic that even though I haven't blogged in many months, my struggles remain the same as they did back then.

Praise the LORD that he never struggles to forgive me.

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On the Go

Back when I started this blog, I would always read other people's blogs and hear about how they were typing from Starbucks or Panera, or (even better) their beds! They had the luxury of a laptop and the joy of wireless internet access. I would go into places that offered free Wi-Fi and dream of being a mom-blogger-on-the-go. I would imagine that I would have dropped my kids off at school and, peppermint mocha in hand, sit down to type something wonderfully profound to all of my bloggy friends and family. As happy as the idea made me, I knew that it was never meant to be. We had a very faithful, reliable PC that did everything I needed it to do and then some. Yes, it kept me tied to a desk, but that was not reason enough to invest money we did not have on a laptop we did not need.

So even though I loved blogging and never meant to stop, I found it harder and harder to find the time. As my kids get older I find that I am spending less and less time at home. The computer time I do have every day is generally spent working on Scentsy or ministry items and most of my "free" time on the computer is spent on facebook. Facebook requires absolutely no thought or creativity on my part, so it's easy to squeeze into the few minutes I have here and there. I would occasionally think about my blog longingly, realizing that it was still out there in the blogosphere, collecting dust and cobwebs. Every once in awhile I would decide I needed to delete it, but never had the heart to do it. I wanted to blog again, I just couldn't find the time.

So imagine my delight this last Christmas morning, just two days ago, when I opened the largest gift under the tree with my name on it to find a laptop computer!! My very own, fancy-schmancy laptop!! My husband very cleverly enlisted nearly every single one of my family members (including my Mother-in-Law) and insisted that I allow him to use the money I would have spent on his gift to contribute to mine. Of course I was dying to know what was going on and had my suspicions, but until I opened that gift I didn't know for sure what I would find so I refused to get my hopes up.

Now as I type this blog, I have become what I dreamed of being....a mom-blogger-on-the-go. For the time being I have only "gone" as far as my couch, but that's far enough for now. Instead of being sequestered to a desk in order to touch base with the blogosphere, I can sit right here on the couch, as Elijah and Mark take the ornaments off the tree in front of me and Micah is snuggled up next to me. All of a sudden, I have time to blog again, because blogging doesn't require me to neglect my family time. I can blog right here in the midst of my family.

And hopefully someone is still willing to read it.

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