Ramblings from my heart to yours...

My heart is full. Very, very full. Praise the Lord! Full of family, friends and ministry.

Oh my precious family just warms my heart. I am finding myself just stepping back and taking it all in at times...knowing these days are going by far too quickly! I want to intentionally relish the season of life that I am in and that is so hard sometimes when my to do list sits just calling my name most days. My friend, Jerri Kersh, came and spoke at one of our Moms 31 Sessions and said, "Moms, you are building a wonderful museum of memories for your children." Wow. That really got me. Yes, yes I am. How am I doing with that I began to process... I find myself holding Claire a little longer, reading to Abigail more, hugging Andrew a little tighter and carving out time to sit down and play a game with Carson more often. They are such a blessing and I am so privileged to be their Mommy. This past month I have been reading a book by Elizabeth George called "A Mom after God's Own Heart: 10 ways to love your children". It has been so wonderful and God has really spoken to me through it. It has helped me in so many ways but mostly how to share my love, faith and my values with my children...Today! My friend Suzanne Lawrence has a picture button by her facebook profile that says "Be Awesome Today"...I love that! Each day is such a gift...I will choose to be an awesome Mommy today! I desire to help my children experience God's love, God's blessings and God's provisions. This means I have to be very intentionally about seeking Him out in all things daily and recognizing where He is working and proclaiming Him to my children. I want to be a Mom after God's own heart! My heart is full of love for my wonderful husband. I am so proud of the husband, father, and devoted follower of Christ that He is. He has allowed God to mold him and use him in such a beautiful way and I am so delighted to get to see him grow and speak truth to his patients that need the Lord. I tell him alot that he is a bearer of hope...the hope of Christ within him! The kids and I pray every morning that the Lord will give him opportunity today to show God's grace and mercy to his patients. I love being a part of that. I love when he comes home and tells me how He was able to share God's word or pray with a patient. I am thankful the Lord is using him in such a mighty way! I see my husband as a sewer of hearts..a Cushing farmer perhaps....sewing hope, the truth of God..that He truly is the way, the truth and the life...into the lives of so many that seek his help "medically". Oh how I love this prince of mine! He is such a great Daddy. His little girls have him mesmerized for sure. When he says hi to Claire these days she cocks her head in a little cute shy smile...just adorable. He took us bowling the other day and after we got home he had to run back up to the hospital to see a patient. Abigail came into the kitchen and said totally unprompted in the sweetest quietest little voice "Thank you Daddy for taking me bowling. I really "wiked" it."....I looked over and could just see him swooning! He hugged her and later told me if she would have asked for anything just then he would have given it to her....oh, the power these girls of mine are going to have over their Daddy. My heart is full to the brim of love and thankfulness for my family.
My heart is full of friends. Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and wait to hear the answer. What a treasure true friends are that love the Lord! I have prayed for friends. We moved to Cushing last June and I knew 1 lady here. The wife of another doctor that had recruited us to come here. I prayed that the Lord would bless me with maybe just a few friends. This past monday I found myself at a Christmas gathering of 12 ladies that I have come to know and love this past year. I began to thank the Lord as I looked around the room...12 ladies there that I knew and loved their hearts and desire to know Him and make Him known.! I found myself thinking Who am I? Why would the Lord see me worthy of such a blessing? What I have learned this year is that women need each other. I have a desire to be real with other women sharing my life with them and they do to. I have a desire to see them grow in the Lord. I have a desire to grow with them! I am so thankful for these women. My friends. True friends. The amazing thing is they weren't all there...my friends that the Lord has given me...there are more! Friends are truly the flowers in the garden of life...the Lord has blessed me with a beautiful assortment that are all striving to be fed by the Son! For that my heart is so very full! Thank you Lord for the gift of friendship!
My heart is full of ministry. I love the little saying: Bloom where you are planted. Many times I wondered what the Lord would have in store for me as we prepared to come to our new town. Where He would want to use me. He planted us in Cushing, OK for a specific reason and season. Our message to proclaim: Life is better with Jesus! Abundant life eternally through Him alone but also here, right now. Abundant daily living with the blessings he bestows upon us as we obediently walk in His ways day by day. Before I sat down again to finish this post I was in the playroom with Abigail reading her a book before nap time. I came across this book that is one of my favorite little kids songs:
Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,
To shine for Him each day,
In every way try to please Him,
At home, at school...at play.
A sunbeam, a sunbeam,
Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,
A sunbeam, A sunbeam,
I'll be a sunbeam for Him.
Jesus wants me to be loving,
And kind to all I see,
Showing how friendly and happy
His little one can be.
I'll be a sunbeam for Jesus,
It's easy if I try,
Serving Him moment to moment,
Then live with Him on high.

I love the picture this little song paints about being a sunbeam for Jesus...sharing His light, His love in all areas of your life. Serving Him moment to moment. What exactly did the Lord have in store! Well if He had let me know all the details then that I know now...I would have been scared out of my mind and very disobedient, I believe. I know that I probobly would have tried to plead with Him that I could not possibly do the things He was calling me to do. What wonderful grace He has as He gives us sometimes only a glimpse of His plans and as we follow after Him He reveals more and more of the horizon, if you will. So. In April a few moms I knew started talking about how great it would be to have a MOPS in Cushing. MOPS stands for Mothers of PreSchoolers. It is basically a time during the day where moms meet. It can be structured very differently but most groups meet the needs of mothers through discussion, fellowship, creativity and speakers. Most groups use this as an outreach to create opportunities to get to know other moms. How the Lord fashioned together the leadership team is really pretty neat, I began to pray....their were four of us at the time. I met another mom at a garage sale and spoke with her and shared my heart with her about the moms ministry...she had been in one in Tulsa and had been praying about one!...she came and met with us and brought her friend...and thus we had the team of us....6 Moms set off to pray and plan through what God had in store for the coming year! What an exciting time! We met during the days with all of our children...in the summertime....oh my! God was totally in control....as I look back on it I wonder how on earth it all got accomplished... God can do all things!!! We began to pray in May for Moms that we could reach and the way we wanted our ministry to be set up. We decided that our mission was to connect moms of all ages in the community by encouraging and equipping them with God's word and providing a Christ-centered ministry where relationships with Jesus could develop. We wanted to make sure it was not a fellowship group but an outreach group...moms growing closer to the Lord. Moms reaching Moms...Moms being fishers of Moms...sharing the good news that Jesus has reconciled us with God! We began to plan for our ministry and all of the details that involved. Three big items where: budget=God's provision, children=Little Blessings, schedule=what did God want to teach us this year, mentor moms=who could invest and teach us about their walk with Him. We decided to model it much like the MOPS program with 8 sessions in the Fall and 8 sessions in the spring. I spoke with my pastor and he agreed to let us use the facilities and nursery for the meetings. Children...in order to minister to these moms we needed a program for the children which we named perfectly, I believe, Little Blessings Program because they are our Little Blessings!! Our sessions would be from 9am-11am twice a month and so we began to plan and pray for 8 workers and a coordinator. A budget....oh, how I laugh at that! We had originally thought, well, we could plan for 16-20 moms maybe? (I was truthfully thinking 12 would be great! That would double our leadership team, but God had other things in store). The majority of our budget for the Fall was to pay for the Little Blessings program. I believe the projected amount was $4000. We began to pray for His provision. How on earth were we going to raise $4000 by August to start the ministry! Well, He provided through a super awesome Garage Sale, generous donations, newsletter ads, and a Christmas booth rental and sales! You know what else he provided...we started enrolling in August for the session and the Lord brought 36 moms! (as you can imagine we were a little overwhelmed! We moved our meeting location to fellowship hall even before our first meeting because we had already outgrown it!) Well, with 36 moms we needed more classrooms for our 42 kids in our Little Blessings Program....again, Lord provided! We now have 12 teachers! Our total numbers this fall was 42 moms and mentor moms enrolled! Who would have known...only the Lord! Our first session I remember how tearful all of the leadership team was. I remember how neat it was to see the faces of the moms we had been praying for since April! God already knew them...he knew who would be in every seat...and we got to meet those Moms we had been praying for the first time...that was really special. Our schedule/ sessions began- what did God want to teach us this year! Oh soooo sooo much!! I invited a few dear friends to come and share (Jerri Kersh & Wynne Ann Hook). We had 4 speakers this Fall and 4 crafts. We had mentor moms from the community raise up and join us to serve alongside of us! They also have taken turns speaking and sharing their lives with us and encouraging us! What a blessing! What a lot of work!....We talk about this alot...the leadership team! Wow! This ministry is a lot of work, but so rewarding as we see hearts being softened for the Lord. As we see the Holy Spirit move and draw moms closer to him. As we see Moms at the park, library, wal-mart and invite them to come and be a part and they COME!.....our prayer is that through sharing life with them we can share Christ with them! Oh the things I have learned and continue to learn as He graciously guides me. I feel so unworthy and unequipped at times for some of the responsibilities that have come with this ministy. Satan is on attack. God is being glorified! Moms are growing closer to Him. Families are being changed....would you pray for this ministry? Pray that the Lord would give us wisdom in how to deal with some attacks that are going on right now. Pray that the Lord would put a hedge of protections around this ministry. Pray that we would serve him together in unity. I am so excited to see what He has in store this year for this ministry and am so thankful to be leading these women to serve him together in this ministry so near to my heart. He alone is worthy! One of the things the Lord has been speaking to me specifically about is that He is not interested in my capabilities but in my availability. Because He is God He can do all things. But he can't accomplish things for His glory if we are not available for Him to use. Are you available for the Lord to use? How are you spending your days...your time....your efforts? What does He have in store for you? Bloom where you are planted....Be a sunbeam for Him! Oh, how He loves you and wants to fill your heart with His goodness too!