Last night, I felt restless in my spirit. You know that sensation that you get when you have plenty to do, but you don’t WANT to do any of it? I had the need to get out. Some people call it “ME” time.

I don’t call it “ME” time. I never found spending an hour pampering myself to be refreshing at all. However, I DO find a nice, long, not too slow, and not too fast, walk to work WONDERS. I didn’t allow any little boys to come with me, because that would have been counterproductive. This was not family time. This was not ME time. This was God time. Oh yeah, I’m talkin’ Jesus again.

In person, I’m not comfortable sharing my spiritual thoughts with others, but I have become so accustomed to sharing them right out loud on the internet that I honestly forget that anyone reads it.

I’ve been hearing the Holy Spirit speaking to me a lot lately. (I’ve discussed this before. It’s not an audible voice. Please don’t mail me a straight jacket.)

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” John 14:25-26

Lately this is what I have heard from God.
-Trust me.
-If you stay in tune with Me, it will go so much better for you.

I sometimes joke that I am “just not good at life.” Of course, I am no better or worse than most folks at life, but I love to exaggerate to the negative, focus on the problems rather than the blessings, and forget to just trust God.

I am still slowly reading through the New Testament this year. My focus is on learning more about Jesus. Jesus is an amazing window into the heart of God.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” John 14:12

It is greater, but I had a hard time figuring out how anything we could do could be greater than anything Jesus did, so I looked it up in my favorite reference book:

The works that we do are greater in that we are doing these works in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a miraculous thing in this world!! For God to have taken His Spirit, and rested it on the heart of every single HUMAN believer, that we may be his agents here on Earth, that is AMAZING. How can we be so unholy, and yet be agents of God?

Only through Jesus, only through God’s grace.

Today I got to do something, at church, that is great fun to me. I got to sing. I love to sing. However, singing in front of an audience is not as fun, because I get so nervous my body actually shakes. I quiver, right down to my legs. I can’t steady my spirit. I’m a sickly, selfish, vain little soul, but if I rely on the Holy Spirit, I can. God will help us do things that are done for his glory.

Stories of our boys……from this week:

This whole week is exciting for our family. This week we fly again. We are flying back to the South. First, just the boys and I are going. Alan will join us later. I will get to go to Destin TWO times, once with my mom, and once with Alan and the boys.

I’ve had a sore throat all week. Thursday I couldn’t even read out loud to the boys without coughing, so I had to cancel reading time. Joshua had all of his brothers stop what they were doing right there and pray for their mom to feel better. LOVE!!

I took this photo from the boys’ window. JD and Dan love to play in their dirt pile, usually with cars. Joshua was eating watermelon, which he consumes unbelievable amounts of. Caleb was repairing the trampoline net, where he had ripped it straight across.

JD has earned the name “the Great Communicator”. This boy cracks me up. He is so good at getting his point across. He always knows exactly what he wants and finds the words to get that across. Sometimes we have to guess…

“Eck. Uck. Ruck!”

“Back?”

*Scowl.* “No,” in his cute little tiny voice.

“Truck?”

*Smile. Giggle.* Then he runs in the direction of whatever he is currently calling a truck. Any vehicle that is not a car is a truck, even motorcycles.

********

“Juice?” (By far, his favorite word)

“No, JD, you’ve already had enough juice. I will pour you some milk. You need to drink a little milk.”

*Scowl.* Then he almost howls, in a fretful, fretful voice, “Noooo! Juice. Juice.”

Poor dear. I don’t drink milk either, but disappointment is just one of those things you have to learn how to deal with. Besides, if he drank all the juice he wanted that’d be a never-ending case of runny poop….

By the way, JD has finally fully recovered from his ear infection and is sleeping through the night again. 🙂 Hallelujah! By the fourth kid, I’ve just forgotten to worry about sleep issues. I just go with the phases, and eventually, “This too will pass.” It takes a long time to fully recover from colds sometimes, and sleeping is the hardest when you have snot in the back of your throat.

***********

One last thing I’m excited about this week:
Money Saving Mom is teaching a course on increasing productivity by “making over your mornings”. Oh, you’d better believe I will be there!
Money Saving Mom is one of my favorite blogs. Crystal has accomplished an insane amount to include writing several best sellers, maintaining a successful website, keeping a tidy house, and home schooling her 3 children. As you can imagine, I feel like I can learn a lot from her!

For my full review on this Make Over Your Morning course after I took it, click here.

The post Me Time? Or God Time? Juice, Or Milk? appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Just a quick post to let all of you WONDERFUL folks know that you can stop voting now. The results are in and I am……..drum roll please……..

#9 on Voicebok.com’s list of the Most Influential Blogs of 2014!!!!

The list will be posted later this month, and I will, of course, be sharing it with ya’ll as soon as it’s posted.

I think it’s like one of those countdown of the year’s most influential blogs kind of deals. Exciting huh???  This is what happens when you blog obsessively, admit things in public that others wouldn’t, and have relatives and friends like my parents, Alan’s parents, Alan’s aunts, my aunts, and several of my friends both old and new, dedicated enough to vote for you every single day!!  I had several friends and readers who let me know they were voting for me too, and it always takes me by surprise.

I don’t really know who reads the blog, unless you tell me that you read it, or you leave a comment. Please know that it makes me ecstatic when someone says, “Oh, I read your blog all the time. I liked what you said about….” Best feeling ever! I may act cool about it on the outside, but on the inside, I’m throwing a “Wahoo! They read my blog!!” party. 🙂

Meanwhile, most people I’ve met here don’t even know I have a blog, for several reasons:

1. It embarrasses me to admit that I blog. Why? I have no idea.

2. The amount of people that I have spoken more than a few sentences to here is still a very small number. I am still quiet-hermit-in my shell April for now. I’m slowly but surely integrating, though, thanks to a few dedicated souls who simply haven’t let me completely withdraw from society. More on that in my next post!

Moving takes so much time to adjust, apparently more so for some (me) than others!

Well, I won’t go off chasing rabbits tonight. I just wanted to say…..

Thank you!!!!

This is me saying, “Thank you!” while Daniel combs my hair with a pumpkin scooper. 🙂

“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.”  

Proverbs 13:20

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”       1 John 4:7-8

The post The results are in!! Thank you for your votes!!! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I don’t know how, and I don’t know what all their criteria is, but believe it or not, I am in the top 50.

It’s okay. You can be surprised. I am too! This is a Voiceboks.com contest. I didn’t do anything to enter it. They just picked me. Talk about a nice pat on the back. I’m going to enjoy this today, and I won’t let it bother me at all that I have 3 votes so far, while this one chick already has 51……

So this will not be mine to win. However, I’d love to make a good showing, so if you enjoy my blog at all–or just are related to me and want to help me (ha!), that’d make me really happy.

Here’s the link, if you’d like to go vote for me:http://voiceboks.com/category/blog-influencer-nominee/

You just scroll down until you see my picture and then click on the thumbs up.

Thank you so much!

And in return, here’s a little adorable-ness to brighten your day:

He says “cheese” surprisingly well. Also, I just said the sentence, “No, JD, not the bathroom,” and he actually listened and came back. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thank you!

Through 3 babies, I kept this dalmation costume clean. Enter Halloween 2014.  Sigh.

Joshua’s birthday dinner.  I said, “Joshua, we will have anything in the whole world you want for supper.” I was thinking to myself, “And I bet it’ll be pizza, and I won’t have to cook.  Squeal!”

No.

Healthy boy picked this, but of course I was also proud:

This summer I gave away ALL of JD’s 18 month pants. He was so big and wearing all 24 month summer clothes, so why keep the 18 month pants?  Notice the cuffs. Now none of his pants fit. Never mind that Goodwill got 24 pairs of 18 month pants…..

Roll Tide……and thanks for voting!

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