25 Random Things About Me

This 25 things list is a trend going around on Facebook - you share it with 25 people who you want to get to know better. I normally don't participate in chain type things but I've really enjoyed learning more about people who've sent me their lists. I thought since I took the time to write it I'd post it here also. Have a great week - Jennifer

1. I don't like retracing steps or taking unneccessary steps if at all avoidable (I love strategy which I believe is related).

2. One area of faith I sometimes worry will be tested is having my kids suffer and being unable to do anything to help them. Thankfully God has helped me with this and other anxieties that crop up from time to time.

3. After answering my calling from God the next most incredible blessing I've received is a better understanding of what it means to be a wife in the way that God intends. That answer arrived partly in the form of a book called "Created to be His Helpmeet" by Debbie Pearl (given to me by my sister not long after I had started praying for understanding). I've learned that becoming a Godly wife is a life long commitment and continual growth process requiring God's help - strikingly similar in a lot of respects to our spiritual growth process.

4. I often feel frustrated when I can't focus my full attention on a project - such as trying to finish a 25 things list while a little boy stands behind me putting hair in my face and wanting me to play a game :) I have come a long way though in the patience and multi-tasking department since having children...

5. I have a tendency to write too much because I don't want to be misunderstood... anyone reading this list or who has email communications with me may already realize this :)

6. I tend to be lacking in the chit chat department. I like to have time to gather my thoughts on a given subject and I also spend a lot of energy observing and processing information. I'd much prefer to write than speak my personal thoughts - but when it comes to business for whatever reason this is not the case at all... I am much more outgoing and confident in a business setting than a social one.

7. I miss my husband very much since he started commuting 2 hours to Dallas a few weeks ago for work - we went from having him work from home every day - to this.

8. I really enjoy baking.

9. The first time I met my husband (at barely 18) we joked about what we would one day name our kids, we have now been married for 11 1/2 years and he is the man I hoped for as a little girl plus more.

10. I sometimes have a hard time asking personal questions of people... for fear that they will think I'm prying or judging. This makes it difficult to really get to know people but I am getting bolder by the year! The ones who I consider my dearest friends have been persistent and open - I'm so grateful for them!

11. I am very loyal and commited to friends and loved ones when it counts but I sometimes lack the ability to tell people how I feel about them, I have been working on this for a few years.

12. Every year that has gone by since my baptism I find certain things more and more abrasive - gossip is near the top of the list, song lyrics, romance movies that paint relationships as fairytale situations which do not exist in real life. (I could and maybe will write about this in my blog - frankly, I think this is one more tool Satan uses to prevent contentedness in marriage)

13. I'm not easily offended and almost always give people the benefit of the doubt. I have however, been offended before and I've learned that forgiveness is not always a one time thing - it can sometimes keep cropping up requiring continued prayer for help (especially when the offending person is slow to change). In praying for God to help me forgive someone once for a serious and hurtful offense - I was shown that I had said something about someone that didn't seem a big deal at all to me at the time. I realized then that unless there is a good and fruitful purpose in talking about someone - then there's no excuse for talking about them at all - even about seemingly minor things.

14. I'm learning that honoring our parents is not a commandment just for kids living at home. It can actually be much more difficult as an adult to honor our parents. I think this has deep meaning for us as our parents age and we are put in the position of covering their shortcomings and/or providing them with a dignified last stage in their lives. Its something I've been learning and growing in with God's help for the last few years (in a boot camp sort of way).

15. I have a "utilitarian" personality... according to an extensive evaluation as part of an effort by a software company to understand their employees. This means I'm a nuts and bolts kind of person, no frills really. I don't enjoy spending time or money on something fleeting like a pedicure or luxury hotel but I do enjoy owning quality items that will last (but not at full price these days!). Money has never been a very effective motivator for me but satisfaction from achievement has always been.

16. I became successful in business at a very early age. I've traveled to most major cities in our country and some in Canada, mostly for business. I see myself one day returning to some form of professional position that will not interfere with those things that I've come to believe are the most important in life.

17. I am making strides to clear out the bad stuff from my family's diet. I used to be good at this but have fallen off the wagon the last couple of years... living far away from any decent grocery stores have almost gotten me down - but I am back on the wagon! More raw food and juice! (at the time of publication my child is consuming a chicken strip from chicken express...sigh)

18. I love playing competitive sports. Playing volleyball with our adult teams for church has brought out that old competitive fire again - its been so much fun getting to know people on a different level! Next year I hope to play basketball as well.

19. I have no idea where we will be living in 6 months and I'm trying to be relaxed about that.

20. I don't let myself get down about world affairs because I know that God has a plan and certain things have to play out before His Kingdom will come. When I start to feel anxious about things to come I ask God for relief and He always provides it. He's proven through trials that He won't leave our sides during difficult times - I find a lot of comfort in hope in this.

21. I love Piano - tinkered on my grandpa's piano for many childhood years and took lessons briefly as a teenager. I hope to one day learn enough to play for enjoyment. I'm picking up bits from my daughter's piano classes.

22. I prefer symetry and soothing colors.

23. I enjoy houseplants and landscaping but dislike washing dishes and ironing...

24. I am happiest and most successful when I can set my own goals and paths to achieve them.

25. I would love to have more time to write and to one day find a professional outlet for it.

The Greatest Tests of Faith...

Today I'm focused on God's tender and attentive care when it has come to difficult trials in my life. I remember the many small but incredibly meaningful things He's done through the years to bring me to this amazing place where I can both recognize and accept His help in stressful times. Remembering the many trials that have built faith slowly and steadily, reminds me of a woman's labor in childbirth. The pains become gradually more intense but because the body and mind have had a chance to adjust its bearable under normal circumstances. If, however, you were thrown directly into the last phase of labor, the fear, stress and pain would be unbearable! God does so many things in patterns - birth, death, building faith through trials to name a few. I've come to believe that these are not so very different from each other. Having given birth twice and having been at the bedside of now 4 very dear family members each in their turn at the end of their lives has provided clarity on the link between the labor of birth, the labor of death and faith building through trials. All three are painful in a productive way, they each follow definitive and predictable patterns under natural circumstances and are all bearable especially with God at your side. Birth and death both involve strikingly similar stages of labor which grow steadily more intense but with natural processes built in to make them bearable. The trials of our lives seem to follow this same pattern of growing intensity but with more faith being built through each one so that we become more able to handle the next trial. Recognizing that the Creator of the universe is focused on my relatively small life leaves me awe inspired, humbled and incredibly grateful.

As in many trials, laboring in childbirth or death requires intense support, comfort and gentle words of encouragement from loved ones. When a loved one is dying - in the last stage of life, you find yourself hoping that the end will not be long in coming. You pour your heart out to God with tears, asking Him to ease your loved one and allow them to have rest from the labor of dying. Though sadness comes with the death of a loved one, there is also relief when their final stage of labor is over and they are at rest. If you have been blessed to have cared for them through to the end then you have been cradled in God's hand and you know it without question. Your faith has been bolstered, you have seen His hand on your loved one. You have grieved slowly, in stages, leading to their final push to the end. You have done all that you could do to comfort and encourage them through their final trial. In birth, the labor ends with a new beginning for a little baby, ideally the father and mother hold her dreamily, maybe not quite grasping the reality of the long road ahead. Each stage of parenting will grow more intense, building on the last - another familiar pattern. So I'm reminded to follow God's instruction to take each day as it comes without worrying about tomorrow. God is preparing us for tomorrow, leave that in His hands. He will not allow us to fall into a final stage of labor without having prepared us for it. He will not allow us to suffer unbearable trials. He knows exactly what we can handle because He has been the One slowly and steadily building our faith, with great purpose, to handle each new trial that comes. He is building in us Godly character and faith each step of the way. Don't ever let seeds of doubt and fear take root lest you lose heart, God is intently focused on the suffering and trials of His children and gives us so many small and wonderful signs to let us know that He is caring for our many needs in such a way that we cannot even fully grasp.

What Happens After Death?: http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/AD/

Holiday shoppers trample employee to death and keep shopping...

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html

I don't know that there are any words to add... sickening. If you watch the video clip on the New York Daily News article page (above link) you'll even hear people who are standing around watching the EMT's work on the guy - they are laughing, talking, carrying on completely disconnected to the human life that was just lost...

Pings, Patience and Big Picture... Keys to Happiness

So many times I've cut in front of God in deciding what He would want me to do (for the sake of time of course) and pressed on under great stress because I wasn't sure whether it was the right decision. (Of course it wasn't! I'd only reasoned that God would want me to do the thing I wanted to do -- totally different than actually doing what God wants you to do... sorry for the run on). The process of making stressful life decisions tempts us to choose based on what would seem likely to lead us out of the stress most quickly. But "the way that seems right to a man"... is almost always wrong. Unless you have prayed, meditated & WAITED - waited for God to show you the answer, you can be pretty confident that you will drag out your stressful situation much further than need be. This subject can be so confusing - especially in the early days of learning to follow God's Holy Spirit as it pings your conscience... Those pings take some training to recognize and further training and faith building is required to learn to follow them courageously (I have been known to be quite the coward many a time!). God trains us by positive reinforcement and by allowing us to suffer trials through which He can build powerful faith. Every single time we recognize that ping from God's Spirit in our conscience and we choose to follow it - we are rewarded in spades. We receive peace and confidence and comfort in knowing that the most powerful creator God the Father and His Son are intently focused on us and leading us personally by the hand when we choose to follow. There is no greater reward. He gives us everything we need to be happy. Making the decision to follow God's lead in a given situation is always the hardest part - after you get past that part, its all downhill because He then gives you the strength and courage you need to follow through.

I often consider that the things I used to believe represented security and happiness are NOTHING - less than nothing - compared to what I have now. My life looks so vastly different now than it did just a short 8 years ago. My husband was relating trials that led to our conversion to friends today and so its on my mind. We appeared back then to have it all - perfect homes, nice cars, lots of money. We cared about our friends and family, were fun and generous to boot. I loved my career and was extremely driven to be the absolute best at anything I was doing. Looking back on it now through eyes washed with many tears from many trials, its easy to see that what I really wanted then was recognition - the money was just a bonus. I wanted to be something special. "I" is the key word here - it was all about me. I achieved everything I attempted plus more and thought that I was pretty talented - but more importantly others thought that I was special. What a shame that in the process of becoming so "successful" my marriage almost fell apart and I had no relationship with God - but that was something I didn't waste too much time thinking about - what really mattered was that I kept conquering new levels of success one after the other. The irony in my case was that the more "success" I attained the less I appreciated what I had already attained. How sad to have been so absorbed in something so futile and meaningless in the big picture of God's plan for us. Today I am by no means well off, could care less about the latest fashion, drive a Jeep Cherokee that has almost 200,000 miles on it (still have a BMW from the old money days but it is almost embarrassing to me to drive it - a deeper discussion there I suspect). I wouldn't go back to that lonely, miserable, pointless life for any amount of money. I now consider myself to be in boot camp, having been broken down and built back up - serving a better purpose and waiting on God to show me if there is a healthy way to use the talents He has given me. There is a certain type of challenge that comes from professional work which I do miss at times, but until God has developed my character to suit His purpose for me, it seems clear that He does not intend for me to return to the professional arena. I'm for now just thankful that God has been so patiently developing new facets of my character so that I might be so blessed as to one day help in achieving His awesome goals.

Original hebrew scripture allows for earth to be as old as scientistists believe...

The link below will take you to a study on the book of Genesis from United Church of God's bible reading program. I looked it up to remember the details because I saw a show on tv making fun of christians who apparently believe that the earth is only 6000 years old. At about the 3rd bold title down on the page (website below) you see that the lesson explains in great detail, the original hebrew words and how there is easily room for the earth to be as old as scientists believe it is... Understanding scripture in its complete form is one thing I feel is critical to helping us and by extention our kids, understand that God is real and is completely logical and scientific. Hope you find it helpful. - have a great week, Jennifer

http://www.ucg.org/brp/brp.asp?get=daily&day=1&month=February&year=2002&Layout=

Really it took a month to put up a new post?

I felt completely spent after the last post. I haven't felt like writing at all since then which is pretty unusual for me. Today I feel like I need to write but I don't have the energy to devote to crafting words to convey the feelings and weight of soul that go along with preparing to care for a loved one through their final days... the feelings that go along with the image stuck in your mind of the feeble elderly man who weakly smiled at you from underneath tubes and oxygen mask so happy to see familiar faces.

Little Girl Not Forgotten

Last night I had trouble getting to sleep because of thoughts that needed some working through. This happens once in a while and I've just accepted it and don't bother fighting for sleep anymore. I have thought about my biological father a little more often since a visit with a friend where we discussed our sadly similar childhoods as far as being abandoned by our fathers. Although I used to think that I'd reached some resolution about it I now realize that's not the case. Occasionally, like last night, the wound opens unexpectedly and its impossible to close it quickly enough to prevent the flood of emotions from pouring out. Last night I started out thinking that my little daughter who adores and looks so intently to her parents for approval is about to turn 6 years old. What an age - she's just beginning to learn the importance of her place in our family, the importance of her place in the world, what her destiny can possibly be. The journey will be long and focused for both of her parents, to ensure that she owns the tools she needs to succeed in 'True Happiness' for herself and her family when she grows up. Unexpectedly it then occurred to me that I was just her age when my 'daddy' whom I adored and looked to for approval, left us and didn't look back or so it seemed to me. He sadly compartmentalized us into a category that he could not face and so just filed us away in the past and moved on with his life. The thought of my little 6 year old losing her daddy at her age makes me literally sick to my stomach. Parents divorcing or leaving their children behind is something that happens so frequently in this age and apparently continues to grow worse as more justifications are now accepted as credible. I've heard parents say things like "its better for the children - they shouldn't be around all that arguing" or "I can't offer them what they deserve so they're better off without me around" Translation: "I want to live the way I want with more independence but without the nagging conscience so I will justify it away". I would go to the ends of the earth to prevent my children from knowing the pain and long term suffering of losing a parent - surely because I have lived it and I understand what it really does to a child and how it affects their entire lives as they become adults with so much baggage to overcome. When parents divorce, kids don't just lose one parent - they lose both. This is because inevitably the 'single' parent left with the kids ends up having to work more and/or is stretched too thin to care for the enormous emotional needs of even normally developing children, much less those of emotionally unstable children of divorce. Its clear that the family was designed to have both parents working together at full throttle to meet children's needs emotionally & physically. Anybody who has kids, knows that even with two people it sometimes feels as though you can never get caught up. What makes me the most sad about my father is the wonderful memory I still have of him before he left. He would come home on Fridays from driving a truck and we would wait watching the door when we heard his truck drive up. I still remember so vividly the way it felt when he opened the door - the squeals of excitement and pouncing on him. He'd hoist me up and sometimes give me his chewed gum (to me a special privilege). I remember exactly the way it felt to be held in his arms his smile and teasing way that made you feel like a million dollars. Kisses all around, playing horsey on the floor with the boys. I remember once when he had at least 3 kids hanging on him, one on his neck, one his back and one, probably the baby, he held in front as we walked across the "trail" to our grandparents house where he picked a fig and shared it with me. He was such a huge part of me, I loved him so much and will never forget the 'feelings' from that happy time. There aren't many more memories of him - most have faded. I remember the day that he left for good. It was right at dusk on a warm evening. Apparently mom (mama at that time) and daddy had explained that he was moving away though I don't remember that part. I do remember following him out to his truck where he gave me a hug said "I love you baby" and drove away. I remember the exact way his truck looked the exact way the lighting was and the exact way it felt to watch him drive around the corner, past my grandparents house and out of sight. I stood there looking in the direction his truck had gone for a long time, hands clasped on top of my head off and on. Desperately willing that he would come back. I stood there in the yard alone for a long time as the light faded in the sky. I didn't want anybody to see me cry. That would become who I was thereafter, never to let anybody see me cry and never let anybody in. At some point - maybe in the following year I wrote him a letter and remember begging him to please come back, with drawings of a crying faces along the sides. I look back now on that and see the significance - how completely confused and hopeful I must have been still to have thought that he might come back if I could just get him to understand how much I was hurting. He didn't answer my letters or come back, and when he did visit maybe once a year he'd always bring a girlfriend to put between us and himself. I now know that he did it because he was afraid to face us alone. Eventually I began to feel resentment toward him and remember telling mom that I hated him - she would always just say "don't say that, you don't mean it - he loves you in his own way - he's had a hard life" not very helpful to me at the time. She did the best she could. Having 5 kids and no financial support from their father meant she didn't have time or energy to coddle her now wrecked children as they tried to cope with their enormous loss. I became very introverted - playing mostly alone on the playground, extremely insecure and anxious to the point of not being able to walk with a natural gate - desperately shy and afraid to put myself out there which made it difficult to make friends. Its funny I haven't said the word 'daddy' in many, many years in reference to my father - and strangely as I thought about him today I realized something. I remember still talking about him frequently after he left and still referring to him as daddy - I don't know for how long maybe several years. Of course I still referred to him as 'daddy' because that's all I knew him to be. Eventually, as kids do, I transitioned to calling him 'dad' - but I never understood why this subject has always been sensitive for me. I just realized now that its because 'daddy' was a term with deep feeling attached - of mutual love, devotion, security, adoration. I guess the significance for me is that when I stopped calling him 'daddy' and switched to 'dad' - he wasn't even a part of my life - in a way it was as if I finally let go of my daddy and stopped hoping he'd come back. Maybe I was old enough at that point to see the reality. To this day the term 'dad' has no feeling associated with it for me. His leaving us behind went against everything I knew up to that point in my short life. All that I'd known to be true and certain was suddenly turned completely upside down and I couldn't count on any reality to be what I thought it was. I remember feeling very confused, deeply frustrated, sad and worst of all - alone, no matter if others were around. Thanks to God for my oldest brother who was 11 at the time - he suffered quietly in his own way and took on the responsibilities of comforting and caring for us little ones and never letting us see that he was down.

I still struggle to forgive my father - and my mother for her part whether fair or not. It's not because I don't want to forgive them, but because I don't know how yet. I am working on it and completely trust God to grant it to me in His own time and in His own way - I wouldn't even speculate how it will come about. My dad has had a terrible life and I can't even imagine going through the things he has but so far that hasn't helped me reach true forgiveness. I've been surprised and amazed so many times at the way God provides what we need and at the way He answers our prayers. It almost never happens the way I expect. But it always works out better His way than anything I could have dreamed up myself. I'm learning to trust Him and be patient. That's worth everything when it comes to those things in life that frustrate and confound us. As a young kid - no older than 10 but maybe even younger - I decided certain things about the way my life would be when I grew up. I knew that I would marry a man who would be a very good father and husband and would never leave us - no matter what - I reasoned that most likely to get these qualities I'd have to forfeit any hope of being attracted to the man (I'm not kidding - at age 10 I dreamed this up) but I was committed to that sacrifice. I also knew that I would stay home with my children and have a happy home. These things God has given me in His own time and way - and an attractive husband to boot! He has provided for me all that I could have hoped for and much more. And definitely not in the way I expected. And I have learned that He expects you to work hard for it but he mercifully gives you the understanding and encouragement you need if you ask for it sincerely. Its a meaningful and full life if we understand there's a much greater purpose for it than just following the masses of unhappy or uncertain people who go through life not being sure what it's all for. Writing this has been surprisingly emotional for me - I've cried sitting here but feel grateful more than anything for where I am now - as I sit here I'm being served play-dough cookies and water from my little chef who's using my muffin tins to tout her wares. I have my happy home. God never left me and He never forgot my pleading prayers from so long ago.