When Your Life Changes

On Monday, our lives changed.

Mike was sworn in. He is officially in law enforcement.

It was a proud moment. There were tears when I pinned his badge (I nearly turned into a heaving, ugly-cry, sobbing mess) and again when I shook the hand of the captain who was in charge of hiring.

Being a copper's wife was definitely not on my radar when we married. In fact, I am fairly certain I had written a list of things I would never marry--cop was at the very top.

But here we are, starting this journey. God has been gracious enough to give me five years to adjust to the idea. I've seen my husband's heart grow with a passion for the law and the way God uses men and women to bring peace to people in their lowest moments and most difficult trials.

I know my life, my children's lives, my husband's life has been forever changed. I admit to being terrified. How rough will our marriage be? What will it be like for our kids growing up with a dad who sees the hardest parts of life on a daily basis? Will my husband change so much that I hardly recognize him? Will he be okay? What if he is injured {or worse} in the line of duty? All these questions, but I sense the very real presence of God. I AM, and I AM WITH YOU. I am choosing to trust God in spite of unknowns.

I am surrendered and taking it one day at a time, and, you know, I am excited too.

Also, I would like to note that I discovered I am now married to a man in uniform. And I think he looks pretty dang good in one ;)

I would love to know if you are in a high-stress, life-on-the-line career or married to someone who is?? Any advice to offer this rookie wife??


By Grace,
Amanda

Warrior Scars

I need to say something.

It’s a little off my normal topics. I may even need to use off-color language. 

I read this article found on a blog that an old acquaintance had mentioned as being hilarious. I am sure it was meant to be funny… one of those “here’s me be super real and in a funny way so that you can feel more normal about yourself” kind of things. This woman talked about the state of her body after having 4 children: gravity-stricken and shriveled breasts, the state of her “lady town,” her muffin-top tummy, varicose veins... 

And yep, this stuff is all a part of growing older and having children.

But I gotta be honest. As I was reading this, it made me angry.

If your husband was to go to war and come home with scars, would you love him more or less??

Why is it that when we do this crazy bold thing—carry life in our bellies, push that life out into the world in the most excruciating and courageous way, nourish our babies from our very own breasts—somehow we think ourselves less beautiful???

We carry life! We nourish life. We raise life, mold it and shape it. And when we look in the mirror and see our fluffy bellies, our C-section scar, our saggier breasts, our dark circles under our eyes, the veins on our legs, our stretch marks... somehow all we see is ugly?!?! We can’t see the battle scars, the marks of an overcomer, a warrior woman?! Blessed with children? Blessed with life? 

We see our perineal scars, our bladder that never works the same, our stretched out hoo-hoo… and somehow see ourselves as LESS than what we used to be… less deserving of the love of our man?! Somehow more insecure?

Um…

You catching my drift?!

You, dear one, are beautiful. No, not young, and not without scars. But your age is your royal garment, your children are your crown.

As mothers, we make a mark on the world—one we make with our own bodies, on our own bodies. We give life. We carry it, birth it, nourish it, stay up all hours of the night comforting it, we instill Jesus, kiss boo-boos, teach how to live. We! Women! How crazy amazing and beautiful is our high calling?! 

{Psst… Please don’t hear me as putting down anyone who would choose to work away from the home, or that motherhood is somehow the end all high calling and there is no other.}

Somehow our society likes to separate the hard parts about life from the gifts that come with it, slap a label on the complaining and call it “being real,” and make it scary, ugly, horrifying. I hear women adamantly refusing to breastfeed because of what it might do to their bosoms, women terrified to age, women actually opting for the 3+ week recovery time of a c-section just so everything stays tight in their lowers… Women who are terrified of being ugly. 

Women who think age and child-bearing is ugly.

Is this not upside down?! Twisted?! Horrible?!  Maybe even narcissistic?!

Could we please stop allowing society to feed us the lies of what beautiful looks like?

Could we please start seeing ourselves as beautiful, sexy, strong warriors again?!

I know there are some underlying society issues that could take some of the blame: like single parenthood, divorce rate, pornography addiction epidemic to name a few. And I’m not exactly sure what the answer is. But perhaps, it wouldn’t be too bad of an idea to start by seeing our God-given gifts in our scars and passing this feeling of self-worth, this warrior-woman, look-at-what-I-get-to-do spirit onto our daughters… for didn’t the greatest gift the world ever received leave behind scars?

{By the way, remind me I wrote this when I get closer to my 30^th birthday milestone. I may need to remember this again when I start to complain of aging and gray hairs and a slowing metabolism.}

{Could I just add a little clarification in case this isn’t super clear? I really want to make sure you hear my heart: it’s not to stir up controversy; it’s not to make a woman feel terribly who doesn’t want children or chooses not to breastfeed. Really, my heart is just to offer a different perspective through which to see your postpartum body—that you are beautiful, a warrior, worthy of honor.}

Alright, your turn. What do you think??

By Grace,
Amanda 

Finding Contentment... Because, Seriously, Sometimes It's Hard to Find

Last night’s scene looked a little like this:

Husband is in bed reading Lord of the Rings. I hop into bed, set my alarm, and play a game of spider solitaire on my phone. I hear little Jed noises coming from the closet—his bedroom. His little voice trying out all the words he knows but would like to say. And then he moves on to singing. Mike and I listen with such grateful contentment. I take a deep breath and inhale this moment, hold it, and slowly exhale. 

And then it occurs to me, this moment is courtesy of our small apartment and Jed’s closet bedroom. I get to lie in bed listening to the sweet little sounds of my boy talking and singing himself to sleep.

Awe. :)

I’ve been wanting out of here. A larger place. A backyard. 3+ bedrooms. A family room. Each day this place feels smaller. With each passing week, the time it takes for my children to take my just cleaned house to look like a small tornado passed through gets shorter and shorter {I am pretty sure it currently takes about 20 minutes to go from clean to disaster. My kids are masters of disasters}.

But anywhere else, I wouldn’t get to lay my head down to the sweet noise of my handsome little man babbling himself to sleep.

God isn’t in the house I wish I had. He’s here. And there are gifts here—beautiful moments I wouldn’t trade for the whole world. 

Okay, so now, I am slowing myself down, finding all the things I can be grateful for HERE, recalibrating my heart, finding myself content again.

What do you do when you find yourself discontent and wanting change? Maybe if you are battling discontentment, go find one precious gift you couldn’t have anywhere else? Would you share it with us?

By Grace,

Amanda

A Testimony 5 Years in the Making

I firmly believe in celebrating… just about everything.

And today? Today, I am planning a celebration for my husband. Will you allow me to tell you why?

Just shy of 5 years ago, My husband and his dad had a cabinet refinishing business. As the economy slowed, their business came to a grinding halt without much warning. My husband struggled to find work. At five months pregnant with Addy, we were forced to move into my parent’s house.

Mike took whatever jobs he could find: concrete, construction, winery hand, census, night-time security guard, and pest control. He has been employed by 10 different places over the last 5 years… and not by choice.

We lived at my parents for 2 years and in a tiny studio apartment above my church for almost a year, before getting to where we live now.

During the past 5 years, we’ve cried. We’ve thrown some “why me?!” temper tantrums. We’ve made difficult decisions. We’ve battled depression. We’ve watched our “American dream” shatter. We’ve found a far better dream—to live each day WITH God. We’ve leaned into God and discovered just how much we can trust Him to provide our daily bread. We’ve received random checks in the mail and gifts that were exactly what we needed at that moment. We’ve huddled close as a family. In all the shaky times, our faith has become steadfast, immovable.

Our security is no longer found in the economy, in home ownership, or in a great job with great benefits. We’ve seen just how uncertain those can be.

But God, God is always Faithful. Though life may constantly change, in Him we have found a security that never fails.

In the midst of having to reevaluate what he wanted to do with his life, Mike looked into a particular career that had always interested him: law enforcement. He got hired with an agency that paid for him to go academy. Three weeks shy of graduation, he failed out (meaning he missed the passing score by one on one single test. He had done well at everything.) He lost that dream job.

We felt so crushed. 

A few years later, while looking into going back to school, I encouraged him to try for that dream job one more time. This time, we paid for the schooling. Mike worked full-time during the day and went to school at night and the weekends. It was hard (you may have heard me mention this… a lot). After failing out of one academy, this time around he managed to graduate at the top of his class, maintained perfect attendance, and was honored with a special award for integrity. 

In less than two weeks, after a grueling and uncertain hiring process, Mike will start his new job. And even better, it’s with the same agency he had the original job with when he failed out of academy. Can you say RESTORATION?!

5 years after the initial job loss that led Mike to rethink what he wanted to do with his life, 4 years after being hired in law enforcement, 3 years after failing out of academy, after 9 long months of schooling and working fulltime, after a 7 month hiring process that has included a whole lot of rejection… God has made a way for Mike to do what he believes he’s called to do.

And you know, looking back, I can honestly say God wasn’t sporadic. He didn’t stop blessing us when the economy went south and suddenly decide to start blessing us again. No. He has been with us, blessing us, every.single.step.in.this.journey. And I know He will continue to, no matter what the future holds.

God is so Good. So Faithful. And it isn’t today that we start living now that Mike has the job he wants. No, we’ve been living all along. And it has been hard, yes. But, oh, it has been so good too.

Okay. And now I get to shout out loud:

WHOO-HOO!!!

It’s time to celebrate God’s faithfulness, goodness, and grace… and welcome this new season into our lives.

It's time to celebrate the hard-working man who persevered, who put his family before his pride, who may have felt so beat up along the way, who pressed thru with excellence. I couldn't be prouder to be his wife, or more blessed. My husband is a champion. And a hero.

Okay, one more time, please:

WHOO-HOO!!!

By Grace,

Amanda

Making Sense

Photo Credit

I wanted to check in and let you know how my prayer visit to the park went. 

Nothing major happened. There were no lightning flashes or jet plane line writing in the sky saying, “This is My will for you, Amanda.” There were a couple of Latinos hanging around, an old woman shouting into her cell phone in what sounded like a Southeast Asian language, a black man carrying his groceries. City. I saw lots of blue tagging, remnants from a birthday party scattered throughout the park, colorful apartments, windows with bars… I saw a place God wanted to touch. And not because it’s colorful or poor, but because God wants to reach it.

I saw hope.

I keep trying to make sense of what God is doing. It’s like I want to take the few puzzle pieces God has given me, color in what I don’t have and try to see the whole picture. I want it to make sense. 

Because, really, it doesn’t make sense. 

My mom and I were talking about the story of the rich young ruler (Mark 10:17-22). She had written a devotional on holding back. For some reason our conversation went to how not only can we struggle with holding back our money or our time, but we can also hold back the “sense-making.” I may not be a rich woman, but I surely value knowledge. I want to make sense of it all. I want to know the reasons why. I want to be able to give a reasonable explanation to someone. And I suppose I don’t trust God to make sense of it. In a way, I am holding back “sense” because I keep trying to do the sense-making.

(Does that make sense??) :)

And I think of familiar Bible stories. Gideon. David and Goliath. The walls of Jericho. The jars of oil. The birth Isaac. I could go on, but perhaps you see it. God loves to do things that don't make any human sense. 

I don’t know exactly what to do other than to wait, fast and pray. So that’s exactly what I am doing.

I might want to hear now. To know exactly what to do now. But I told God that I didn’t want to live FOR Him, I want to live WITH Him. I refuse to race down to the end of this journey so I can know where I am going (as if I could even know that anyways), and I am grabbing His hand. I am trusting. One day at a time.

And today, I really don’t know very much… but I do get to know Him better! 

Have you ever obeyed God when it didn't make sense?? I'd love to hear about it!

By Grace, 

Amanda

I'm back from break!! Some news, some dreams, some scary and some hope.

Okay. So this picture doesn't really have anything to with this post. But seriously, red rain boots, overalls, and a super hero cape?? I may be biased because it's my son and all, but this is cute! :)

I am back from my break.

And I have some news. I have been wanting to write about what it means to follow Christ. God’s been dealing with my heart about obedience.

You know that count the cost, pick up my cross, care way more about “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done” than what anyone else thinks about me—Crazy Obedience.

Okay. And this may make me sound all super spiritual and like I am something special. I’m not. I’m just Amanda: housewife and mom who dabbles a little in writing and is falling in love with her Savior. I mess up. I get it wrong. I struggle with pride. I am easily side-tracked. I require coffee to function in the morning and have been known to growl at my husband before said coffee is flowing through me. I’ve ignored God’s voice before because I didn’t like what He asked me to do. I’m not the person that can strike up conversations with perfect strangers in the grocery store. I think you get it… I am just me.

I prayed a prayer a while back. “God I will do anything… God I don’t want to be where it’s safe anymore…” and immediately following that prayer God asked me to walk to a pub in the middle of an unfamiliar city to share the gospel with a man from the Ivory Coast. I am forever changed. God and I started on a journey of what it means to obey.

Starting February, I get to share with you some of what it means be crazy obedient… and how anyone (no matter who you are or where you’re at) can walk it out in their own life. I even have some dear-Jesus-blogging-sisters participating in this journey with me (more on this to come).

But starting right now, I think God is asking me to write here. To write my journey. Where I am at now.

This is super uncomfortable for me. I share lots of stuff here… and most of it scares me to share. But I rarely write my current struggles. I think God is asking me to share with you my daily, walking-it-out, crazy-obedience journey.

And this is scary (like 10,000 miles out of my comfort zone scary) because it means sharing some of the God-sized dreams God’s put in my heart. Dreams that I worry you would laugh at or roll your eyes at if you knew what I thought God wanted little, prideful, silly Amanda to do. I worry I will get it wrong, fail miserably, or even get it right but it be just some little tiny thing that’s no big deal when compared with, say, Heidi Baker’s crazy obedience (like why in the world would I think it’s worth sharing with you?).

And yet, in spite of the fear, I have to obey.

So today, I am driving to a gnarly neighborhood in the currently most violent city in the United States, and I am praying because God’s called me to the poor, the broken, the gang-banger, and especially the children of these. I am quieting my self to hear what God would speak. I always thought this was something I would do later in life when my kids were grown, but for some reason I think the time might be now. All of a sudden, God’s flung the door wide open.

I am terrified.

But here’s what God spoke to me this morning as I prayed: My sufficiency has an end. God’s sufficiency knows no bounds. And if God’s put a God-sized dream in your heart… yep! It means you WILL be insufficient to carry it out. But, good news: God is ALWAYS sufficient.

And when you live beyond the limits of your own abilities, you get to see God show up.

And hey reader, whether God’s asking you to do the big thing of evangelizing to perfect strangers or the what-seems-like-a-small-thing-but-is-really-a-super-big-thing of being faithful to your job or loving on your children… where you lack, you can trust Him to be sufficient. His grace, His love, His strength, His patience, His goodness… it knows no bounds.

And another little side note: Whether obedience looks like praying over a ghetto or getting up and making breakfast for little people… obedience is all God requires. And obedience is always a BIG thing to do!

So good to be back to writing! And I sure would love to hear from you. Have you ever lived outside your own sufficiency and saw God show up?? Like seriously, maybe you would share?! It might encourage us! (I know this girl could use it! :))

Amanda

On Fear and Freedom

I am stroking blonde strands on a tired head. She nuzzles into me in pink sheets covered with the faces of Rapunzel, Snow White, Belle and Aurora. It’s past her bedtime. She should already be asleep. But she’s flung herself across my lap. She’s sweet and quiet, and I am enjoying this moment.

My fingers run across something rough in her hair. What sticky mess is in your hair now, dear one? I pull at it. It’s stuck. Sticker? Candy?

 

I pull back the honey-gold hair curtain fully expecting to see something along the lines of a flower sticker from her Pretty Pink Doodle Purse. I am immediately jarred… I see a tick on her scalp. TICK!

A shriek escapes my throat before I can catch it. I missed the first rule of parenting under duress… keep calm so your child remains calm. My daughter caught my shriek and now she is gripped.

“What is it?” her shrill response from a face with eyes larger than the moon—panic-stricken.

I begin searching for calm, soothing words. I struggle to find them. “I need you to sit real still and don’t touch your head. It’s just a tick, baby. It startled me. It’s fine. I’ll get it.”

I call my husband who is out of town and doesn't answer. I call my mom who's not quite sure what to do. I call the advice nurse who looks up the proper removal technique and then leaves me alone to deal with the tick.

And I feel alone. Gripped. No one to do this thing I feel I can’t do on my own.

I pray. I muster courage. I grab tweezers and a plastic baggy. I take a deep breath (okay, 10 deep breaths). I grab that sucker and pull. I see the skin lift away from my daughter's skull as I tug. I keep pulling. She screams and jerks away. The tick would not let go.

I feel Helpless. Hopeless. Defeated. And Alone.

I do the only thing this girl knows to do when her husband, mom and the advice nurse can’t help. I cry. And then I pray. And then I call my mom again.

“You have to be brave, Amanda. You’re her mom. You might not like this part of your job. But you have to be brave. You can do this. You have to try again.”

My mom sings silly songs to my daughter and I try again. I pull. I muster all my strength against the anchor this foul creature has under my daughter’s skin. After the 5 seconds that feel like an hour, it releases.

It Releases. I Exhale.

My mom, my daughter, and I rejoice.

I place the tick in the plastic baggy, and with my daughter watching, I do what any homemaking momma would do to a nasty bug… I take a meat mallet to it.

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In my teen years I struggled with panic attacks. It got to the point where I had 2-3 a week. I experienced a supernatural touch from God when I was just shy of 18. I gave God my life, and He gave me freedom from anxiety.

Fast forward 10 years. I am pregnant with my son. I am in a crowded parking lot searching for a space so I can get to my 24 week check-up. I find a space about to be emptied. I wait. A car drives around me and tries to take the parking space for which I had been patiently waiting. When I attempt to assert my “dibs,” she tries to run into me. I peel away—angry, racked with panic—and hyper-ventilation immediately ensues (and then in classic pregnant woman fashion… I boo-hoo cry).

After that experience, I was fine… until I found myself in another crowded parking lot. I began to find myself more anxious than usual. I seemed to become over-wrought with worry over all the horrific things than could happen in my life or to my children. I stopped wanting to go shopping because of what the parking lot might look like. When one minor misunderstanding with a neighbor left me hyper-ventilating and gripped with fear, I realized it. I pulled back the curtain and saw the life-sucking parasite named fear anchored in me.

A tick finds its host by sensing body heat. A tick likes a furry host so it can gorge itself in privacy. Upon finding its victim, it cuts a small hole and inserts its hypestome (works just like an anchor). Its saliva produces an anticoagulant and an immune suppressor so the host’s natural healing and defense mechanisms against parasites can’t work. As it sucks blood, it simultaneously releases by-products (your digested blood) back into you, making them great disease distributors.

Fear is kind of like the tick. It looks for an unsuspecting victim. It sets itself upon us when we are too flustered to notice or care (maybe a car accident, a death, a tragic event…). It anchors down into us so that it isn’t until a similar situation comes up that we find it, and, by then, it has sunk down deep and will not easily let go. It manages to suppress our ability to heal from a distressing situation. Fear is isolating: it suppresses our Christian immune system of community. Fear will suck life and truth out of you and simultaneously release toxic ideas into you that skew the way you perceive life and God.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

I had began this post like 6 months ago, but for some reason I didn't think it was time to share it. And now, since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened, I can’t shake the knowing that I must share. I sense the fear in my own life. I want to add that tragedy to the list of reasons why I want to homeschool. I hear it from my friends, the horror, the weeping, the way they didn’t want to send their own children to school the next Monday. 

It is horrific.

And I make no offering of sense where there isn’t any. 

How?! And why?! And if God is good, and this is so evil, how could He let this happen? 

I see the way this tragic event like so many before it becomes like a blood sucking tick. The way it latches on during a tragedy, changes the way we behave, the way we perceive life and God. The way we become gripped with fear when we come face to face with the reality of how fleeting and precious life is and that evil does exist in the most awful of ways. The way we grasp for control and take away our trust in God.

Guns or no guns. Prayer in schools or not. Fear remains.

And life in fear is no freedom. In fact, fear is the opposite of freedom.

I do believe that there are two kinds of fear. One whose other name is wisdom. It recognizes we live in a fallen world and that accidents happen.  Wisdom is alert and active. It teaches her children things like not getting into cars with strangers and where to find peace in the midst of chaos. Wisdom points us to the Answer. It points us to God.

 

And then there is the fear that grips and distorts and replaces freedom with worry. It worries to send her children to school, it justifies her actions by what she is afraid of, and it imprisons her from the very life God intended her to have. It whispers promises of control. And fear is controlling. It is irrational. It sees problems as bigger and more present than they are. Fear isolates. Fear doubts God.

 

It is for freedom that you have been set free.  

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

And how is it that one lives free from fear??

The first step is recognizing fear and its hold on one’s life. It’s searching like I searched my daughter’s scalp for the foreign object latched to her head, like I searched my life for what was causing anxiety attacks.

The Bible says, “Perfect Love casts out all fear.” Love is the tweezers that plucks fear out. The crux of the gospel isn’t found in you figuring out how to love God, it’s in embracing just how much God loves you. That’s the hard part. It’s trusting and believing that if God loves You, He won’t withhold anything from you, that He is good even when we can’t make sense of this life. And when you begin to catch a glimpse of God’s Love, fear cannot stand. We fear when we doubt God’s love, when we think He would take something away. Hope is what gives sight to what life could be, the freedom you were meant for, that fear is no way to live. Faith is the courage that causes you to grab your tweezers and pull and to keep pulling... and if necessary to still keep on pulling till fear releases its grip. Faith, Hope, and Love. And the greatest is Love.

Ann Voskamp says:

 All fear is but the notion that God’s love ends… Fear thinks God is finite and fear believes that there is never going to be enough… In [God] blessings never end because [His] love for you never ends. (from 1000 Gifts, 161)

Really, worry is just disbelief in God. And are we not believers? Should we not trust in spite of evil and unknowns?? Is this place even our home?

And these three things will remain:

Hope that God will set things right. Hope that we could live free in a broken world. Hope that this place is not our home.

Faith, a courageous action, that obeys and trusts God and takes Him at His word… no matter what this world looks like or how you might feel. Faith that is bigger than irrational worries.

And Love. Oh, lean into His love! Love that casts out fear. For He loves you and is so good.

It is time to get out the tweezers and pluck.

Perfect love casts out all fear.

And it is for freedom that you have been set free.

 

Maybe you would like to share? How has Friday's tragedy affected you? Have you found yourself afraid?

By Grace,

Amanda 

Credits: Information about ticks was found here on the Purdue University's entomology website.

Verses Used in the order that they appear: Galatians 5:1, 1 John 4:18, and 1 Corinthians 13:13