Guest Friend Post: Broken But Believing
Hi everyone hope everyone is good! Sorry that it has been so quiet around here I have had so many things going on. All really good!
I am now 28 and have a nose ring ha!
Today we have the guest post that I promised! Please go check out her blog and show some love!
Have a blessed and great day!
Love B
For those of you reading this who do not know me, I am a friend of Brittney's, a wife and mom of three kids and I am just 26 years old. My family and I recently moved to Kona, Hawaii near the end of August last year after a series of unbelievable events that you will just have to check out on my blog to find out and get details! I met Brittney on an amazing adventure called God's Summer of Love Tour, that we shared together with a ministry known as The Cause USA back in 2007. And by the end of the tour (beginning of the tour for her) we both ended up pregnant by our newly wed husbands...haha, this still makes me laugh. I would explain more but that wonderful summer deserves its own individual post; so for now I am going to share a recent post from my own blog, Broken But Believing, that seemed to really turn some hearts. Humbled and in unbelief by the responses I received from it, I was asked to share it here with you, so here goes:
I am cramming in this blog right now, even right before I have to go pick Jedidiah (my 4yr old son) up from school. So much on my heart, so much I am working through and figuring out. It's been a little messy around here recently but I am really looking forward to what the Lord is about to set up for us; all the while trying to appreciate the season I am in. This quarter I did not sign up for college classes, as I had previously done because I felt like I really needed a season of refreshing and focus on the Lord. Last quarter here was hard because we weren't really able to be apart of the ministry side of things. It was hard to sit in services because at least 2 of 3 kids were uncooperative every time, and on top of that Caleb's hours made it really hard to attend most things. I, on the other hand, spent every second of free time doing homework, writing papers, taking test. It was just too much.
We also recently met with some friends of ours, a couple we met when we first arrived here, who have really been some amazing spiritual parents to us. And we processed with them a lot of things we have been feeling pressure to do, things we were scared about, confused about, and of course some things we have dreamed about. One of the main things on my heart was the struggle between being a mom,(a good mom) and/or becoming someone/accomplishing something. I explained to them how since I was a child I have always loved to write, sing, and dance..but when that wasn't really nurtured I stopped pursuing it. Then as I got older, and began to learn how crazy my family is (no offense), I was enthralled with the human mind, how it worked, and spiritual strongholds on it. I was infatuated with the idea of helping "mentally ill" people, understanding WHY, and how to lead them to the FATHER; naturally. But the more I searched out the field, the more I disliked the "treatments" for these types of sickness'. So I started to look into a broader stream of medicine, NATUROPATHY!! I felt like this would cover it all. I could help these types of people the way I wanted, and could make a profession of it. But over time, after one child became two and then two became three, I began to put aside my true desires and replace them with pseudo passions that could make money to help support my family, or that would fit into my schedule of being a mother.
That was NOT a good idea, not at all, for me at least. I lost focus, I started to try and lead my life with my mind instead if my heart and so everything just felt wrong. I kept changing what I wanted to do, and then never followed through with any of them. I felt like a complete failure! Caleb would always ask me, "what do you want to do with your life?" and I never really knew what to say, That wasn't like me, not ever. I have always "known" what I wanted out of life, but having kids took the control I always stood on right out from under my feet. I could stand alone, I knew how to do that well, but I have no grid for being in a family, feeling apart of something so uncontrollable and finding my place in it. *Everything that can be shaken will be*…and oh boy, I was shaken alright. I had no foundation. My intentions were pure, I wanted to do "what the Lord wanted me to do", but I was not looking right in front of me to see exactly what that was.
It's really kind of comical in a crude humor kind of way... I thought all my life I will prove myself, I will make it, no matter what, I am in control. But when you give your life to the Lord, I mean really give your life to the Lord you ARE NOT in control, HE IS! And I have been fighting it all along. I got married, said I would wait two years to have kids, so I got on birth control and I was pregnant by the third month; so it obviously didn't work. Three times, I went through very similar situations…trying to take control and "ask" the Lord, what he wanted me to do with my life, and HOW I was supposed to do it with three kids?! I thought He wasn't answering, and it got even worse when we moved to Hawaii because people are always asking "what do you do here?" or "are you on staff, or in a school?" And I was confronted daily with 'my lack of doing something'. When I would say, "well, I'm a wife, and I have three kids, I'm trying to finish school and I don't really have much time for anything else", I could feel this yucky spirit of rejection. So while I have been here faithfully trying to obey the place the Lord has called me/us to, I have really been feeling out of place deep in my heart.
SOOOO BACK TO THE CONVERSATION WITH SPIRITUAL PARENTS >>>>>
I explained all this to the woman/friend we were talking to and she paused and said something along the lines of:
'well it sounds like the Lord has called you to be a mom right now!? I mean you have three small children, and they desperately need your attention.'
And she said soooo much more, so much good stuff that would take me forever to write but suddenly it all made since to me. The Lord didn't just allow me to get pregnant 3 times, unplanned, just because!!! He formed in my womb, INTENTIONALLY three ETER that is a job, that is a career to be proud of!
I can't really explain to you in words what happened that night in my heart but all I can tell you is that I feel for the first time confident in who I am, who I am as a woman, and a MOTHER/WIFE. That is NOT to say the things I have dreamed about doing have gone to waist, its just not the time for them yet. There are still things I can do now that wont take the focus off my full time job. And honestly, its been really exciting creatively figuring them out.
Our society does not uphold the position of a mother. A mother is thought of as something you become if you have no other talents, or you are older and done what you wanted to do with your life. That IS NOT a mother, and that thought process is exactly why the generations below us and around us are falling apart. Without a mother to raise a child properly, will be a child who is left to search for that love and nurturing in one way or another, and then we have a mess on our hands to fix. This is not the way the Lord intended it, and I do not want that life for my children. Its definitely a narrow path, one not so easy (all up-hill here) or often taken, but one I now feel proud to walk. It's taken a lot of practice so far, I catch myself feeling a little unsure about my life and having to say "I'm am in a very important season, a season of being a mom." I am excited about my future, what I am going to do, but I am also excited about my NOW, and learning to actually be thankful for it.
This is becoming a real problem, and I challenge those of you who are mothers to reevaluate your dreams and plans and really consider the task at hand, and whether or not you have your priorities in order; if so GREAT! If not stop; stop what you are doing and consider a career change, one that will establish a foundation for your children that carries truth beyond this lifetime into the next.
We also recently met with some friends of ours, a couple we met when we first arrived here, who have really been some amazing spiritual parents to us. And we processed with them a lot of things we have been feeling pressure to do, things we were scared about, confused about, and of course some things we have dreamed about. One of the main things on my heart was the struggle between being a mom,(a good mom) and/or becoming someone/accomplishing something. I explained to them how since I was a child I have always loved to write, sing, and dance..but when that wasn't really nurtured I stopped pursuing it. Then as I got older, and began to learn how crazy my family is (no offense), I was enthralled with the human mind, how it worked, and spiritual strongholds on it. I was infatuated with the idea of helping "mentally ill" people, understanding WHY, and how to lead them to the FATHER; naturally. But the more I searched out the field, the more I disliked the "treatments" for these types of sickness'. So I started to look into a broader stream of medicine, NATUROPATHY!! I felt like this would cover it all. I could help these types of people the way I wanted, and could make a profession of it. But over time, after one child became two and then two became three, I began to put aside my true desires and replace them with pseudo passions that could make money to help support my family, or that would fit into my schedule of being a mother.
That was NOT a good idea, not at all, for me at least. I lost focus, I started to try and lead my life with my mind instead if my heart and so everything just felt wrong. I kept changing what I wanted to do, and then never followed through with any of them. I felt like a complete failure! Caleb would always ask me, "what do you want to do with your life?" and I never really knew what to say, That wasn't like me, not ever. I have always "known" what I wanted out of life, but having kids took the control I always stood on right out from under my feet. I could stand alone, I knew how to do that well, but I have no grid for being in a family, feeling apart of something so uncontrollable and finding my place in it. *Everything that can be shaken will be*…and oh boy, I was shaken alright. I had no foundation. My intentions were pure, I wanted to do "what the Lord wanted me to do", but I was not looking right in front of me to see exactly what that was.
It's really kind of comical in a crude humor kind of way... I thought all my life I will prove myself, I will make it, no matter what, I am in control. But when you give your life to the Lord, I mean really give your life to the Lord you ARE NOT in control, HE IS! And I have been fighting it all along. I got married, said I would wait two years to have kids, so I got on birth control and I was pregnant by the third month; so it obviously didn't work. Three times, I went through very similar situations…trying to take control and "ask" the Lord, what he wanted me to do with my life, and HOW I was supposed to do it with three kids?! I thought He wasn't answering, and it got even worse when we moved to Hawaii because people are always asking "what do you do here?" or "are you on staff, or in a school?" And I was confronted daily with 'my lack of doing something'. When I would say, "well, I'm a wife, and I have three kids, I'm trying to finish school and I don't really have much time for anything else", I could feel this yucky spirit of rejection. So while I have been here faithfully trying to obey the place the Lord has called me/us to, I have really been feeling out of place deep in my heart.
SOOOO BACK TO THE CONVERSATION WITH SPIRITUAL PARENTS >>>>>
I explained all this to the woman/friend we were talking to and she paused and said something along the lines of:
'well it sounds like the Lord has called you to be a mom right now!? I mean you have three small children, and they desperately need your attention.'
And she said soooo much more, so much good stuff that would take me forever to write but suddenly it all made since to me. The Lord didn't just allow me to get pregnant 3 times, unplanned, just because!!! He formed in my womb, INTENTIONALLY three ETER
I can't really explain to you in words what happened that night in my heart but all I can tell you is that I feel for the first time confident in who I am, who I am as a woman, and a MOTHER/WIFE. That is NOT to say the things I have dreamed about doing have gone to waist, its just not the time for them yet. There are still things I can do now that wont take the focus off my full time job. And honestly, its been really exciting creatively figuring them out.
Our society does not uphold the position of a mother. A mother is thought of as something you become if you have no other talents, or you are older and done what you wanted to do with your life. That IS NOT a mother, and that thought process is exactly why the generations below us and around us are falling apart. Without a mother to raise a child properly, will be a child who is left to search for that love and nurturing in one way or another, and then we have a mess on our hands to fix. This is not the way the Lord intended it, and I do not want that life for my children. Its definitely a narrow path, one not so easy (all up-hill here) or often taken, but one I now feel proud to walk. It's taken a lot of practice so far, I catch myself feeling a little unsure about my life and having to say "I'm am in a very important season, a season of being a mom." I am excited about my future, what I am going to do, but I am also excited about my NOW, and learning to actually be thankful for it.
We need a culture shift, seriously! We need to stop grudgingly complaining about being parents, our youth hear that and then they don't see it as an honorable thing and therefore have no respect for those who are parents. It also creates an unnecessary fear in people when they become pregnant, that forces them to look into abortion, you may think that is extreme but I can guarantee you that it is not.
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