Prideful comparison.

Ya know.....

You're scrolling through Instagram because you are refined to a couch, nursing a baby for the 100th time today, you have spit-up on your shoulder, the house is a wreck, and you see that perfect mom with her perfectly clean house, her 9 month old is walking, reading, and baking a cake--okkkaaaay, her 9 month old isn't reading OR baking a cake, but you get the picture. It leaves us feeling inadequate and depressed. I'm so guilty of doing this. So guilty. There's so many ways that prideful comparing gets in the way.  As a mom it is so hard not too and it starts so early; a friends baby starts sitting up before yours and your kid is older, another baby starts walking before yours, talking, reading, etc. And boy is it hard to not compare and wonder if you're doing it all wrong. I caught myself doing something a few weeks ago and God opened my eyes to it. Normally when I start comparing I say to myself "Well, she's doing that, but I can do this and this and this, and she doesn't do all that" Now tell me, how is that encouraging? How is that helpful? I was purposefully looking at another person and finding all the things they do wrong and I do right.  

"Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves."  Philippians 2:3

Ouch. God sure slapped me on the side of the head with that one. 

So how exactly is one supposed to stop comparing?  I don't believe we will stop doing this completely (big shout out to sin nature) because I've messed up so.many.times, but I think the more we stop it with scripture the easier it will be. 

1) Pray! 

When you start feeling this way, ask God to help you. Because once you start comparing discouragement sets in, and when discouragement sets in, you better believe feeling depressed comes right after that. If you pray as soon as you start comparing, you wont go through the cycle of awfulness. 


2) God made me just who I am for His calling. Just like He made every one else for theirs. 

By the grace of God I am what I am. (1 Corin 5:10)

God made me to be me and gave me gifts to use for his glory.

 "We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; ⁷ if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; ⁸ if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully." Romans 12:6


3) Satan wants me to feel this way. He really does. 

He must feel happy when he see's a mom of four feeling discouraged, inadequate and depressed because shes comparing. The bible says he is the father of lies.  

"He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies." John 8:44

Satan wants me to feel discouraged when thinking "she can do it all and I can't". Satan wants me to compare someone else to myself.

I think it's a normal to feel like you can't do it all, because we can't. We are not good enough. 

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone."Mark 10:18

 "As the Scriptures say,"No one is righteous—  not even one.
No one is truly wise;  no one is seeking God.
All have turned away;  all have become useless.No one does good,  not a single one."
 
But, you know what? Christ in me makes me good enough. Not only good enough, but justified and righteous before God.

"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corin 5:21)."



So when you start feeling this way and comparing; remember these truths:

Pray. 

God made me who I am for His calling.

Satan wants me to feel this way.

I am good enough because Christ dwells in me. 

I hope this encourages you as much as it has me. I'm sure I'll be coming back to this many, many times.  

Apple pie

I know, I know. I've been MIA for a few weeks. I had Luke on June 12th and I'm hoping to write up my birth story soon! 

Every morning I try and write out a to-do list for the day and this morning, along with laundry (you should see my dining room table right now, its covered in laundry), cleaning the bathroom and Tuckers room, I wrote "Do something fun with the kids". I'm so guilty of writing out a to-do list and just letting the kids do their thing while I do my mine. I don't want them to depend on me for their entertain source because I think them learning to keep themselves busy is a good thing, but trying to get my to-do list done and then stressing out about it while telling them "One more minute" over and over again when they ask me to read them a book isn't the best thing either. This lead me to the idea to just do one fun them with them every day, if I can. I know some days are just plain crazy.  I mostly just want to make it a priority to do something fun. Examples: Going on a bike ride, coloring with them, reading them a book, etc. So I thought it would be fun to pick some apples in our back yard and bake an apple pie. So off we go!

                                                          


                                                                   Almost there!

Tucker found one.

                                                   While the kids were picking apples, Tucker found something to climb on.

                         
                                                                 Looking inside the bucket

                                                       She thought it would be funny to sit on the bucket.

                                                                Showing off the apples!

                                                           Shes so sweet!

                                                      I picked the kids a blackberry.

                                                                Tucker was very happy about it!

                                                    I set a self-timer and got a picture of all of us!

                                                       Cutting up butter for the apple pie crust.

                                                               Emily took this picture of me peeling apples and Jake eating them.

                                              

And after making the biggest kitchen mess known to man, tucker eating a handful of sugar while I wasn't paying attention, and Emily and Jake eating cinnamon sugar and spreading it all over the counter, we have an apple pie! Oh, and Jake was all offended that we couldn't eat it "now". Being told that you couldn't eat an apple pie before lunch is not cool. Not cool.

Farm house table update.

I've been looking for chairs for my table for awhile. I knew I wanted a bench on one side and found the perfect plan for that. Pintrest had a bunch of cute ideas but the chairs I wanted easily went for $120 a piece (OUCH. I ain't got the money for that). I started browsing Craigslist and all of the chairs on there needed to be heavily sanded and stained, (waaaaay too pregnant for that!) so I decided to look at Ikea. I found exactly what I wanted and the chairs were $25 a piece. Way more reasonable, so I grabbed two of them when we went up there a couple weeks ago. I LOVE how they look and they were so easy to put together. I really regretted not buying two more so when my sister-in-law said she was making a trip up there, I asked her if she could pick me up two. She just dropped them off yesterday and sweetly put them together while the guys were working on the shop and I was making dinner.  I took some pictures of the table a couple days ago so I'm hoping to take some more once we stain the other two. 

Here's what we have going on right now:



                                         Tucker wanted to be in this one. Haha! Love that kid!

 

I found the Ikea chairs here: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90263902/

Isn't the bench CUTE?! I have one handy husband, thats for sure!! 

"Do not be anxious about anything...."

We all know that bible verse right? If not, it goes something like this:

 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."

I think I need to tattoo this verse on my forehead, so every time I look in the mirror I see it. Why is it so easy to forget and get worked up about something? God has never let me down. He never will. But over and over again I forget that. I'll be honest with y'all. I have that "I'm going to do it myself" attitude more than I should. That's what lead me in the situation I'm writing about right now. 

Charlie and I have been looking for property for 4-5 months, so not very long. We really would love to get 3-5 acres (more if we could afford it, but land out here is CRAZY expensive) of build-able land to build a house, or a fixer upper with land. We'd prefer to have a new house because fixing up an old house is hard work. It's a constant thing you have to mess with since your house is a bijillion years old. 

We've looked at 4-5 houses in the past few months and none of them were right. Too close to the road, not enough property, the house was being held together by duck tape and bubble-gum, too far from family, etc. So when our dream house with our dream property popped up we went to look at it right away. I just knew by the pictures that I was going to love it, and I was right. The house needed some work, but every thing about it was exactly what we had on our list:  Almost 10 acres, backed by a creek, two bedroom farm house with three bonus rooms up stairs, massive 1100sq barn with electric, up a gravel road, 20 minutes from Charlies family. You get the picture. The house had been on the market for two days and when we showed up there were already two couples there. We knew this place would go fast, so we had to act fast. We still needed to get pre-approved for a loan, and in all honesty we should have done that weeks ago, but we didn't. Our realtor suggested that we put in an offer and then get pre-approved. She said that with Charlies income and the fact that we have little debt (just our mortgage) that it shouldn't be a problem. She said that we would most likely be approved. On the way home charlie and I talked about what we wanted to do. Of course we wanted this house, it was everything and more. But putting in an offer not knowing for sure if we would get approved was not something that we were willing to do. Something about it just didn't seem right to us because that meant putting in an offer, not having the money, and not knowing for sure if we would even be approved for the money. We really believe that every thing we have is Gods: The kids, our house, every thing. This house we were looking at would be His. We always want to try and make sure that every thing we do is fair and honest, and His will, not ours. 

But here comes human nature: I was stressing out. I was anxious. I wanted this house. How could it not be the one? That night we got online and found a VA lender and submitted the paper work. We had to get this stuff figured out FAST because Charlie was leaving for drill in one day and we only had ONE day to do this. We needed to put an offer in on this house. The next morning I woke up, checked our email, and found out that the house already had two offers; one in cash and the other a loan. I heard God telling me to "Let it go". What?! Let the house go? Let what go? I tried calling the VA and my phone wouldn't even ring. It wouldn't even ring, guys. I tried again. It wouldn't call out. In frustration I turned it off and back on. Then we got an email with this massive list of stuff we needed to send to get pre-approved. MASSIVE LIST. Bank statements, W'2s for the last two years, pay stubs over the last 40 days, etc. All the things that just give you a headache thinking about. Charlie was at work and it was pretty much left up to me to get all this stuff together. Well, at least that's what I told myself. I was getting impatient and cranky because I was trying to do all these things and take care of kids and I could tell they were picking up on my moodiness. But I still couldn't let it go. So after trying to print off papers (the printer messed up and wouldn't print them out right) I tried calling the VA again. At this point it was 1pm and the kids were down for a nap. I could tell I was already struggling to keep it together by this point. When the guy answered the phone I asked him if I could have our mortgage statement papers. He said he couldn't give them out. I said I didn't understand since it was our house and our mortgage (hasty much? Not a proud moment). He said something like this "WELL, I've been doing this for 30 YEARS, so I think I know what I'm talking about......whats your mortgage number again...?!" I instantly broke down into tears and hung up the phone. Thank you 37 week pregnancy hormones. I went and sat on the bed and tried to call Charlie. He didn't answer. I looked up and saw a sign that I had hung on our bedroom wall that said "He makes all things beautiful" and I wanted to cry more. Buying a house is not beautiful, this is just awful (dramatic? maaaaybe a little).  I finally talked to Charlie and I was still crying. I couldn't believe that guy was so rude. Ok, I don't think he was as rude as I thought, but it sure seemed like it at the time. Charlie very sweetly told me to stop worrying about it,  not look at emails or do anymore paper work stuff. To just let.it.go. The exact same thing God told me to do that morning, but I didn't listen. Instead of "letting it go" I decided to spend my day being cranky, frantically trying to do-it myself, and not trusting God in any of it. And look what happened. Remember that bible verse I mentioned earlier? Well here's the second part:

" And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.:

So I let it go. And you know what happened? I felt peace. 100% peace. I took the kids on a bike ride and really enjoyed being around all the chaos. 

I haven't heard if the offer went through on the house. I'm trusting God with all of it. Who knows what could happen? I'm choosing to listen to that voice that tells me let things go. Next time I start to let myself get worked up like that, I'm going to ask myself if I'm truly giving it to God. 100% trusting in Him. Or at least making an effort. I'm sure I'll have another moment like this, but that's human nature. Thank God we have His grace to get us through. And here's a picture of my kids because they are just.that.CUTE.

 

 

Camping at Blackberry.

We decided to do one last camping trip before the baby comes, so off to Blackberry campground we went! We also needed to make sure the camp trailer worked well without water and electrical hook-ups since we are loaning it to my sister-in-law for a camping trip they're taking in a couple weeks. Every thing worked great other than forgetting my Pam spray. You kinda need that to make pancakes, and it wouldn't be a camping trip if you didn't forget something. At least it was Pam spray and not my SD card like last time. *face palm*.  Hey, being 36 weeks pregnant and only forgetting Pam spray is pretty impressive, right? Hello, pregnancy brain (x4)?! Pregnancy brain is a real thing. Google it sometime. 

Anyhooo, we had a blast and the kids absolutely loved camping. 

                                                       Tucker picked me a flower. He's so cute!

Playing hide-n-seek.

Tucker playing football

Playing in the water.

Showing these kids my child of the mountain ways. 36 weeks pregnant and catching crawdads like a pro. No big deal.

They weren't too sure about it.

All you have to do is say "AAAAAAHHH", shake it at em' and they scream. BEST MOM EVER.

He can't like it.

I love this sweet boy!

Mommy's catch!

Daddy showing kids the crawdads.

Big girl.

No pants and fishing. A two year olds dream ha!

What happens when you tell Tucker he can't have a cracker.

Looking at the crawdads.

Watching Daddy cook them.

Trying some crawdads.

At the beach!

He's so CUTE!!

Jakey boy!

A few cell phone pictures:

How cute are they?!?

                                                     

                                                           Walking with Daddy

                                                 

                                                          Eating S'mores in style

                                                         
                                                           Jake thought they were pretty good. Emily wasn't a fan.

                                                                       At the beach!

                                                         

                                                         
                                                                  Mommy and Tucker