Guarding Your Heart.

It has been a busy and fun season so far. In all that is going on it is easy to let my quiet time with God slip away undone. But I have made an effort to have that time even if it is cut a little shorter then normal. So, yesterday as I was reading I was hit by something so simple and so well known that I wanted to share it. I think that by now in my Christian life this idea or concept should be well in practice but I will admit it isn't always. What touched me was a chapter in a book called, Just Like Jesus, by Max Lucado and I want to share this excerpt:

" Everyone knows you harvest what you sow. Galations 6:7, 'People harvest only what they plant.'
'Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.' Some of our hearts are trashed out. Let any riffraff knock at the door, and we throw it open. Anger shows up, and we let him in. Revenge needs a place to stay, so we have him pull up a chair. Pity wants to have a party, so we show him the kitchen. Lust rings the bell, and we change the sheets on the bed. Don't we know how to say no?

For most of us, thought management is, well, unthought of. We think about time management, weight management, personnel management, even scalp management. But what about thought management? Shouldn't we be as concerned about managing our thoughts as we are managing anything else?

We need to deny entry to many thoughts. The Holy Spirit is ready to help you manage and filter the thoughts that try to enter. He can help you guard your heart. A thought approaches, a questionable thought. Do you throw the door open and let it enter? Of course not. You 'fight to capture every thought until it acknowledges the authority of Christ' (2 Cor. 10:5). you don't leave the door unguarded. You stand equipped with handcuffs and leg irons, ready to capture any thought not fit to enter."

I needed this simple reminder. Why do I find myself in a bad mood so often or angry...is it because life is hard? No, it is because my thoughts were not captured and brought under the authority of Christ. So many times we think life revolves around our circumstances when really as Chuck Swindoll said, "The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it. This may shock you. But I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day to day basis is my choice of attitude."

So, my prayer is that I can fill my mind with Christ like thoughts so I can have a Christ like response when things go wrong...rarely does life go the way we plan it but we can make the best of a situation with our attitude!

Merry Christmas!

I just refuse to let that baa humbug spirit in...even though I live in Romania where nothing goes as planned! I won't let it get the best of me...I won't!! I have to keep telling that to myself otherwise I will get the baa humbug spirit. My husband, the dear man that he is, gave me some money and told me to buy myself some clothes for Christmas (I've been complaining that my closet is full of $1 gypsy market finds and that just isn't good enough :). So, I find that LandsEnd has good quality clothes and they send it directly to me. I didn't want my mom or Baron's mom paying postage on a gift for me. So, I place my order and low and behold it was here via UPS in like 7 days...that was just amazing. The problem was it was sitting in the UPS office in Timisoara for 2 days. So, I called to find out what was up. Well, she tells me I have to pay a tariff! What? A tariff, I have never in 7 years here paid a tariff on things I bought or boxes I received with new stuff in it. I asked if it was just a UPS thing she said no, its because you bought something on line from America. I explained to her that didn't make sense because I have bought stuff on line before from America but never used UPS before and never paid a tariff before. We will actually stop by the office today to pick up the box on our way out of town and argue a little more about it but I think we will end up paying the tariff...$50! Yes, it kind of put a damper on my Christmas present, but Baron told me not to worry about it, it was a gift from him and he would pay the tariff. He is so calm about things like that. I want to shout out, "It's not fair!!" Well, life isn't fair so get over it! Go with the flow. Do what you can to fight injustice but know that you can't save the world. It doesn't do any good to get all uptight about something you can't do anything about so don't waste your time (I'm talking to myself now, trying to convince myself I shouldn't get up tight).
So, as you are waiting in lines with grumpy people this season, do what you can to smile and spread some Christmas cheer and share the love and joy that Jesus gives us. Just think about the grumpy person this way, you have no idea what news they got this morning or what trials they are going through that made them that way.

Precious Moments

I have wanted to write more lately but have a hard time putting into words things I experience here. Let me start by saying it is wonderful to have my friend Kendra here. She actually has gone by the nickname "Corky" ever since she moved away from Greenville after our 16th birthday. Her little girl, JaneBatson, and Nate love to play and fight and apologize to each other and then hug and start all over again. I love it!
The twins are here for a visit. I had a precious moment this morning with Gina. I was fixing her hair and she looks at me and says, "mommy, you used to live in heaven until God saw that we needed a family and so then you came down from heaven to live here and be our family." Can you say "oh my word that is the sweetest thing I have ever heard" ? Well, its the sweetest thing I have ever heard. I just love them so much and can't wait to end the chaos of visiting and get settled into real life with them. It is so chaotic to me when they are just here for a visit because they never get settled into family life. I believe they will settle in beautifully when the time comes. We await our day in court anxiously and await to see the outcome of whether or not the aunt decides to pursue them. Please pray that she decides over Christmas that she will just release them to be with the only family they have ever knonw! She has only visited them twice and she has grown children and she said she would speak to them when they come for Christmas about what they think she should do.
We will be putting up the tree tomorrow and the kids are so excited about that except Georgie isn't excited that there will not be presents tomorrow :-). Pray for Georgie that he will learn how to play with his siblings without being aggressive and combative. He has had some struggles this visit because he is just so used to being rough all the time. He is such a sweet little boy and I love the twinkle in his eye when he smiles. I need to figure out how to channel all that energy into something good!
I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. The Lord is good and worthy of our thanks and praise. He saved us and made us His children and that is something to sing and dance about! So, sing happy songs and leap for joy because of the inheritance you have received! He pulled us from the pit and the miserable existence we would have had trying to do it on our own and set us on the Rock! Sing, sing praises to His name.

Visit with the lawyer.

We went to Oradea and met with a lawyer. He looked at our file and listened to our story. He seems to think if she really is the aunt that she has a good chance of getting them...if she really and truly wants them. He did say it was suspicious that she showed up after never meeting them before. He said he would investigate for us. We also talked with the director of the children's home and were encouraged a little by that conversation. She seems to think the aunt isn't being really aggressive. She has only visited twice in two months and didn't show up for a visit on Saturday like she said she would. She has filed no papers as of yet and she knows another family is puruing them. We will proceed with our court date and more than likely receive custody of the twins. We will wait for about 30 days for papers to go through and then they can move in with us. We will have to call all of the family for the adoption court date and that is when it may be a problem. She or anyone else could show up and say they want them. The good thing is they would have to meet a certain standard of living before they could actually be approved to take them.
We are waiting on God who is our help and who is always good. We will trust that He will do whatever is best. We will have the twins for a visit next week.
Please continue to pray as this will likely drag out for many months to come.

What I am learning.

I will be honest and tell you I am sick to my stomach with thoughts of loosing our twins. I am trusting and claiming God's peace. These are the passages I read this morning:
Psalm 52:9 I will praise You forever, Because You have done it; And in the presence of Your saints I will wait on Your name, for it is good.
Psalm 62: Truly my soul waits for God because my expectations are in Him alone.
Psalm 71:14 I will hope continually.
Psalm 28:7 My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped.
Psalm 50:15 Call upon Me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.
Psalm 42 Why should my sould be disquieted in me, my hope is in God. He is my hope and the one who lifts up my countenance with his love.
Isaiah 40 Those who wait on the Lord: shall renew their strength, shall mount up with wings as eagles, shall run and not be weary, shall run and not faint.

Please pray that God will grant the peace to not fret and worry about the what ifs. Pray for us as we meet with a lawyer on Monday that he will be an honest one and one who will fight.

Need More Prayer.

Obviously we need prayer today because it is election day in American. We need prayer as a family here in Romania. We were hit with the news a few days ago that the county where our case is got in trouble for not giving more rapid court dates. So, we had a lawyer go check on the possibility of getting us a court date sooner. This was good news and we were excited about the possibility of getting our date moved up.
Today we received bad news, the twins aunt has showed up again. This time she met the twins and told the director she has bought a place to live in their town and her husband has a job and she wants to take the twins home with her.
Please be in prayer for the twins and for us. I am leaving out a lot of information but just know we need your prayers. We will fight for them and pray and believe God wants them in our family. We feel like they are our kids and no one has the right to waltz in and take them. We just pray the law seeks out what is best for the kids.
We appreciate your prayers.

Homeschoolers

I am thinking of making a curriculum switch. Any homeschoolers out there feel free to give me some input. I am using a mixture right now simply because I received a lot of free stuff but I am not happy with what I am doing. It takes a lot of planning and work. I have been looking at a Sonlight catalog and so far am impressed with what they have to offer. They have a lot of reading which I like and it is all planned out for you which I like. I think the biggest draw back is the price but education is expensive. So, I guess I would just like to hear from someone who uses Sonlight or has heard about it and can recommend it. I always start planning for next school year around this time because I have to get it ordered so it gets to my parents before they come in the spring. I would greatly appreciate any input.