Thursday 29 May 2014
God's Princesses
A while back Little A and some of her friends we had a "Royal Red Tea Party".
The whole idea for it came about after we read the story "God's Little Princess, Gigi's Royal Tea Party".
Once we had finished reading it Little A asked me if she could have a tea party too. She said that it should be red and not pink and then she proceeded to choose her guests.
I asked what we should have at the tea party, meaning what food or drinks we should have. Her response was wonderful, " Cups, and plates, and spoons." Perfect. Easiest party ever.
So we went about planning a Royal Red Tea Party, since we couldn't call it a princess party since we had some little princes we were inviting.
The day was perfect. Little A was so excited about having all her friends over and about all of the decorations. She had seen some of the pieces of it as it was being put together, since I did some decorating before hand so that I wasn't doing it all the morning of the party.
Since our party was set for the morning we kept it somewhat healthy and had fruit (red ones of course), White Chocolate Raspberry Muffins, Banana Berry Bread (Gluten Free- made by my sister), and some sparkling fruit juice for the little tea cups.
The kids had a wonderful time during tea and then headed outside to jump and dance around on the trampoline and play in the sand.
During the party Little A must have changed her outfit a handful of times. She loves playing dress up. Most of the royal guests were also dressed in their finery and it was a lot of fun seeing them oo and aa over each others outfits.
After the party Little A and I read through the book again and talked about what it meant to be Gods Little Princess.
She then told me that she wanted all her friends to be God's children as well. (Music to my ears)
"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!"
1 John 3:1
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession,that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
1 Peter 1:9
The most wonderful thing about knowing that you are a child of God, is the closeness that comes from that. I know that the little tea party was fun for the kids but I really wanted to give Little A something to remember and that would remind her that she is a princess because she belongs to the Father.
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Romans 8:14-17
I love those verses. They speak to my soul every time I read them.
By the Spirit we call Abba Father. "Abba" is used as a term of endearment for a father, it is translated not just to father but to daddy, papa, or dear Father.
There is something wonderful about being able to cry out to the God of the universe and call him daddy.
Daddy is used by children as a term of endearment. It would be strange to hear a child call their father, daddy, if they never see them or barely know them. Daddy evokes thoughts of trust and comfort, closeness.
And because of being Gods children we can approach God with freedom and confidence. We can put our trust in him. We can hope in him and know that he has plans for our good.
In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Ephesians 3:12
There is nothing more I want for my children then for them to know Christ and be able to approach God with freedom and confidence, knowing that they have been adopted into sonship.
Blessings
Saturday 10 May 2014
From A Regular Mother
I know that mothers day is supposed to be about celebrating moms but I have been thinking lately about what it means to me to be a mother and what my job really is.
So this mothers day I wanted to share with the world an open letter for my children.
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| I Love You (ASL) |
You are my world. Each of you have been given to me as a tremendous blessing. There is nothing else I would ever want to do with my life and nothing I am more proud of than being your mom.
Each day that I spend with you I learn more about you and the characters that God has created you with and to be. You change so much all of the time and as you learn and grow you are teaching me more about myself and about God.
You fill my life with so much joy. But you also make me crazy. You test my patience more than I ever thought was possible. Sometimes it feels like you are teaming up and trying to make me go bald from pulling out my hair. There are times that it feels like I can never do anything right but they are out numbered tenfold by the times that you make me feel like I could do no wrong in your eyes.
I know that there will be times in our lives together when you will feel like I don't love you. Times when you feel like I am being unfair and unkind. But I pray that you will remember that we discipline because we love you. We only want the best for you and we pray blessings over you everyday. So, I hope, that when those times come when you feel like you hate me and that we will never see eye to eye, that you will at least remember that I love you and will continue to love you no matter what you do.
You will make mistakes. You will hurt my feelings and I will hurt yours. We will misunderstand each other and sometimes we will understand each other but not agree. But being your mom is the greatest joy and blessing and I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you can never make me stop loving you.
I know that the choices that you make in your life are yours to make. You will have to live with the consequences of your actions and only you will be judged for them. I want you to know that I know I am not your judge, I will do everything I can to teach you the path of the righteous but in the end it is you who will choose which way you will go.
I will keep loving you when we fight, when we yell and when we make up.
I will love you even if you get piercings, tattoos, or have any kind of crazy hair (its just hair, I may have crazy hair right along side of you).
I will continue to love you if you fail in school, don't do your homework, or get called into the principals office.
My love is still there if you sneak out of the house, if you drink, smoke, or do drugs.
I will not stop loving you if you choose to be straight or homosexual.
I will continue to love you if you have sex before marriage or if you abstain until you are married.
I will continue to love you when you have a baby, married or not.
My love for you wont disappear when you parent your kids in a strange way I don't understand or agree with.
My love will not go away if you walk away from God.
I may not agree with what you do, where you go with your life and how you act, but there is nothing you could do that would make me ever stop loving you. I am your mom and that means you have my heart, you carry it in your heart.
I tell you this because I know that I am not the best parent in the world. I know that I am a flawed human being. I know that our Father in heaven is the best dad there is, and that his children make horrible decisions, just look at how corrupt and hurtful people from the church can be. I know that that heavenly father is the best there is, and his children, even though they try, are often not like him, they are not perfect.
So, I, your not perfect mother, just want you to know that I love you as much as I possibly can, more than I ever knew was possible and until the day that I die and beyond.
But I also want you to know that as much as I love you, your Heavenly Father loves you more. There are people who would want you to believe that there are mistakes that you can make that will make God stop loving you. They are absolutely wrong. There is nothing you can do that can separate you from His love.
God has given us choices, he allows us to make mistakes. And just like me, watching you make those mistakes hurts him. The sins that we commit hurt him, hurt you, and distance you from God because he cannot be close to your sin. But that does not ever make his love leave you. I pray that you will always know that and be able to stand up to the lies of the enemy and of the people around you, that try to hurt people with those lies.
Because there are those people, the ones that think they can judge others and their sins. People that believe that they can hurt people and make them feel small because they think that the sins that they commit are less bad than your sins. They are wrong, no sin is bigger than another and all sin hurts us because of keeping us from God (But not keeping us from his love).
So know these truths and never let go of them, share them with those that are hurting because of the lies people tell.
For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.
Zephaniah 3:17
The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
Lamentations 3:22-23
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
1 John 4:9-10
I love you Kiddos. Always have always will.
Your Momma
Wednesday 23 April 2014
Shaken and Afraid
The other night was quite and interesting one. We spent the weekend away visiting family and had a wonderful time. But Sunday night was difficult, both for Little A and for myself.
We had the kids off to bed by 8 o'clock which is a huge accomplishment when we are visiting family, they always have too much fun to really want to go to sleep. The kids were sharing a room, E man in a playpen and Little A in a big girl bed, but they share at home so they had done pretty well. But Sunday night was different, Little A talked and sang for quite some time. Then suddenly we heard sobbing and calling for mommy.
At first we thought it was E man trying to get me to come and give him another hug or something, but then I realized it was Little A and she sounded very upset. Hubby went in quickly because I was feeding the baby.
Apparently Little A saw something scary in her room.
Hubby prayed with our little princess and cuddled her until she calmed down. Together they cast the thing out and prayed the blood of Jesus over her and the whole house. He reminded her of how big God is, that he is always with her and that he loves her very much. Then he tucked her back in and left the room.
Shortly there after it happened again.
This time I went in and prayed with her. But she could not calm down. She said that it wasn't leaving even after we prayed. So I asked her what she thought we should do and she said we should pray with Grandpa and Daddy.
We all prayed again and tried to comfort my sad little girl. The men left and Little A asked me to stay with her for a minute. And after quite a few minutes of holding her hand while she tried to go to sleep I had to go and feed the baby.
We got the kids to bed that night at 8 and she finally slept by 12:30 am.
The worst part of this for me was the feeling of helplessness that I had the moment I heard her cry out and say she was seeing something scary.
I can still remember all of the horrible things that I saw while alone in that room. We moved into the house my parents are in when I was 12 years old. But that time I had been having spiritual dreams and visions for many years and when we moved into that house they got worse.
Around the same time as our move to the new home, my family began to work at a downtown children's church working with inner-city kids. It was a huge blessing to work with these amazing kids that were so excited to learn about Jesus' love when they were being so neglected and abused at home. Working with those kind of kids brings a lot of hard things, the least of which was the lice that we dealt with on what felt like a weekly basis.
The worst thing I had to handle was a little girl telling me, a little girl myself really, about how she was raped by her uncle. Hearing things like that from the mouths of sweet children that are drowning in sorrow and hurt, that are starving for someone to love them, hearing those things breaks your heart and changes who you are.
Sunday afternoons with those kids was the hardest, most heartbreaking and rewarding thing I have ever done. Every Sunday we started our ministry with prayer, for safety, for help to get through it, and for God to speak his message and his love to all that came. Then we would get onto buses and go and pick up the kids from the filth that they were living in, praying as we went. Once we got all those hundreds of children into the building we fed them physically and spiritually. It was an amazing thing to be a part of.
Then when we were finished and finally pulled into our driveway, we would all just sit in the car for a moment, so drained physically, emotionally, and spiritually that we could not even move. Then we would pray and we would leave the car feeling so thankful for the opportunity to speak to and love on those kids and feeling a new overflowing of the Fathers love for us and for the kids our hearts were broken for.
The problem was that the battle never just ended after we got out of the car. We would get out of the car and begin to fight a battle in our hearts over the next week. The enemy would send an onslaught through the week that would leave us tired and feeling like we were empty and had nothing to offer those children. Every Sunday we would have to struggle against our selves to get back in the car to go downtown and again and again God proved faithful to be our strength and shine his love when we had nothing left to give.
I share all of that with you because it played a huge role in what happened while alone in my room, feeling not just physically alone but spiritually alone as well.
I can still close my eyes and see some of the horrible and frightening thing that came at me in my sleep. There was many a time when I would wake up in cold sweats from a battle I was fighting in my dreams only to find that with my eyes open they were still there, sneering and trying to fill me with fear and steal the blessings that God was giving me.
Those "things" that were in my room as a child all came flooding back into my mind as I heard my daughter cry out. I felt me skin crawl and my stomach wretch. I was stuck somewhere between wanting to cry and wanting to run in sword and tongue set ablaze with righteous anger.
When it was my turn to be in there with her, when she saw the scary things for the second time, I felt a crawly feeling on my skin and a sneering, familiar glare looking at me. I was taken aback and was shaken. I was reminded of all those fears all over again and of praying and worshiping and trying to force the demons to leave. And as I prayed with Little A I felt like a child again, a helpless child that couldn't make the "scary things" leave. The enemy was using my daughters fears to get to me and I was letting him.
But thankfully my daughter has already learned a few things from struggles in the past. There is strength in numbers. And that we serve a God that is always with us. It was actually her words that pulled me from my fear filled stupor and reminded me of the God that I love and serve.
That night we were both frightened, Little A because she saw "scary things" that she could not make go away on her own. And myself, because I was reminded of my own fears from long ago and because I realized that my little girl is going to have to fight scary battles sometimes, just like I did.
I take comfort in knowing that I was never really alone, the enemy just wanted to make me feel that way. I was never weak or small, I am filled with the Holy Spirit and he has already conquered death and all of the things of this world. I would never have changed any of my childhood, attacks, battles and all. And I am comforted because I know how real God was to me because of what I struggled through as a kid. I don't want my children to have to face hardships and trails, but I know that I have never questioned the reality of my God because of the things I have seen.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1:9
I am working hard on teaching the kids about the Armour of God, and reminding myself that I too need to remember to dress myself daily in that armour as well.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
Ephesians 6:10-18
We had the kids off to bed by 8 o'clock which is a huge accomplishment when we are visiting family, they always have too much fun to really want to go to sleep. The kids were sharing a room, E man in a playpen and Little A in a big girl bed, but they share at home so they had done pretty well. But Sunday night was different, Little A talked and sang for quite some time. Then suddenly we heard sobbing and calling for mommy.
At first we thought it was E man trying to get me to come and give him another hug or something, but then I realized it was Little A and she sounded very upset. Hubby went in quickly because I was feeding the baby.
Apparently Little A saw something scary in her room.
Hubby prayed with our little princess and cuddled her until she calmed down. Together they cast the thing out and prayed the blood of Jesus over her and the whole house. He reminded her of how big God is, that he is always with her and that he loves her very much. Then he tucked her back in and left the room.
Shortly there after it happened again.
This time I went in and prayed with her. But she could not calm down. She said that it wasn't leaving even after we prayed. So I asked her what she thought we should do and she said we should pray with Grandpa and Daddy.
We all prayed again and tried to comfort my sad little girl. The men left and Little A asked me to stay with her for a minute. And after quite a few minutes of holding her hand while she tried to go to sleep I had to go and feed the baby.
We got the kids to bed that night at 8 and she finally slept by 12:30 am.
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| My Lovely Sisters and Myself. ( I am the cutie in red) |
I can still remember all of the horrible things that I saw while alone in that room. We moved into the house my parents are in when I was 12 years old. But that time I had been having spiritual dreams and visions for many years and when we moved into that house they got worse.
Around the same time as our move to the new home, my family began to work at a downtown children's church working with inner-city kids. It was a huge blessing to work with these amazing kids that were so excited to learn about Jesus' love when they were being so neglected and abused at home. Working with those kind of kids brings a lot of hard things, the least of which was the lice that we dealt with on what felt like a weekly basis.
The worst thing I had to handle was a little girl telling me, a little girl myself really, about how she was raped by her uncle. Hearing things like that from the mouths of sweet children that are drowning in sorrow and hurt, that are starving for someone to love them, hearing those things breaks your heart and changes who you are.
Sunday afternoons with those kids was the hardest, most heartbreaking and rewarding thing I have ever done. Every Sunday we started our ministry with prayer, for safety, for help to get through it, and for God to speak his message and his love to all that came. Then we would get onto buses and go and pick up the kids from the filth that they were living in, praying as we went. Once we got all those hundreds of children into the building we fed them physically and spiritually. It was an amazing thing to be a part of.
Then when we were finished and finally pulled into our driveway, we would all just sit in the car for a moment, so drained physically, emotionally, and spiritually that we could not even move. Then we would pray and we would leave the car feeling so thankful for the opportunity to speak to and love on those kids and feeling a new overflowing of the Fathers love for us and for the kids our hearts were broken for.
The problem was that the battle never just ended after we got out of the car. We would get out of the car and begin to fight a battle in our hearts over the next week. The enemy would send an onslaught through the week that would leave us tired and feeling like we were empty and had nothing to offer those children. Every Sunday we would have to struggle against our selves to get back in the car to go downtown and again and again God proved faithful to be our strength and shine his love when we had nothing left to give.
I share all of that with you because it played a huge role in what happened while alone in my room, feeling not just physically alone but spiritually alone as well.
I can still close my eyes and see some of the horrible and frightening thing that came at me in my sleep. There was many a time when I would wake up in cold sweats from a battle I was fighting in my dreams only to find that with my eyes open they were still there, sneering and trying to fill me with fear and steal the blessings that God was giving me.
Those "things" that were in my room as a child all came flooding back into my mind as I heard my daughter cry out. I felt me skin crawl and my stomach wretch. I was stuck somewhere between wanting to cry and wanting to run in sword and tongue set ablaze with righteous anger.
When it was my turn to be in there with her, when she saw the scary things for the second time, I felt a crawly feeling on my skin and a sneering, familiar glare looking at me. I was taken aback and was shaken. I was reminded of all those fears all over again and of praying and worshiping and trying to force the demons to leave. And as I prayed with Little A I felt like a child again, a helpless child that couldn't make the "scary things" leave. The enemy was using my daughters fears to get to me and I was letting him.
But thankfully my daughter has already learned a few things from struggles in the past. There is strength in numbers. And that we serve a God that is always with us. It was actually her words that pulled me from my fear filled stupor and reminded me of the God that I love and serve.
That night we were both frightened, Little A because she saw "scary things" that she could not make go away on her own. And myself, because I was reminded of my own fears from long ago and because I realized that my little girl is going to have to fight scary battles sometimes, just like I did.
I take comfort in knowing that I was never really alone, the enemy just wanted to make me feel that way. I was never weak or small, I am filled with the Holy Spirit and he has already conquered death and all of the things of this world. I would never have changed any of my childhood, attacks, battles and all. And I am comforted because I know how real God was to me because of what I struggled through as a kid. I don't want my children to have to face hardships and trails, but I know that I have never questioned the reality of my God because of the things I have seen.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1:9
I am working hard on teaching the kids about the Armour of God, and reminding myself that I too need to remember to dress myself daily in that armour as well.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
Ephesians 6:10-18
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