Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A blog-worthy day...

*****This is a poop story so don't keep reading if you don't want to hear about that!

What a day yesterday was!  It started with me getting some time away at the gym. I came home with my tank full and excited to spend the day with my kids...and man was I going to need it. I told Eli that we could paint because he has really gotten into doing crafts lately.  He painted a couple of pictures and here are 2 of them.

When he showed the pictures to Daddy he said, "This is the pipe with the water."  He has also become fascinated with how the water in the toilet magically disappears into the ground.  Little did I know these pictures were actually like prophetic art!  I should have known.  So about 30 minutes later and Eli says to me, "I made poopies."  "In your underwear?!?!"  I exclaimed.  "Yep.  Its hot its hot!"  So I rushed him to the bathroom and low and behold he had complete diarrhea, all liquid in his underwear. As we were taking the underwear off the poop ran all down his legs and onto the floor.  It was truly disgusting!  When it got on the floor he then accidentally stepped in it and he started freaking out.  Eli really values being clean and he was mortified!  He started crying and screaming, and looked like he had been playing in the mud with no clothes on.
  So I took his underwear and was rinsing them out in the toilet to try and get as much of the crap off as I could.  Oh, and to make matters worse, these were his new underwear that he picked out himself that have Yo Gabba Gabba on them.  So I rinse the undies a little and lay them over the side of the toilet so I can start cleaning him up.  I'm cleaning him and throwing toilet paper in the toilet and I flush it and turn to keep cleaning him.  Then I hear, "OOOOHHHHHH NNNOOOOOOO!!!!!!!  MY UNDERWEAR!!!!!!!!!! ITS GONE!!!!"  "What?!?!" And I turn and look and the underwear had fallen off the edge of the toilet and had been flushed down the toilet.  Oh my Lord!  I was freaking out thinking I had just destroyed our plumbing system! A year ago Eli flushed a bunch of trash and toilet paper down the toilet and backed up our system and it was an enormous mess with our bathtub filling up with sewer water too.  All I could think of now was flashbacks to how horrible that was.
   So at this point Eli is now in stage 10 hysteria and keeps crying for his underwear.  I call my husband to figure out how to fix this but he didn't answer.  When I finally got him on the phone he told me I had to flush the toilet again to see what would happen.  But I knew I needed to finish cleaning Eli up in case the whole plumbing system did back up because then I would have 2 huge messes.  So Eli is in the shower, which he hates, and I'm cleaning him up while he's screaming crying for his Daddy.  I am just laughing at this point because I cannot believe this is happening.  I finally just asked Eli if he could find a way to stop crying for just a minute.  "You can cry about this later but I need you to just not cry for a minute."  And he agreed to trying to calm down.
   I was able to get him all cleaned up and the bathroom as well and we started running all the water in the house to try and flush the underwear all the out of our pipes.  By the grace of God we have not had any plumbing problems from that.  But the rest of the day Eli kept saying, "Mommy, you flushed my underwear down the toilet."  "Yea buddy, I did. I'm really sorry." I would say.  And every person that came to our house yesterday, about 7 people, he proceeded to tell them I flushed his underwear!
  But the best part of the story is what happened next!  That evening I was meeting with some of my youth leader girls and Eli says, "Mommy, I have to go pee pee!" very enthusiastically.  "Well ok, go go go!"  I shouted.  Then from the bathroom I hear, "Pee Pee to the rescue!"  I'm thinking...what in the world does that mean?  Eli comes back out from the bathroom and says "Mommy, I sent my pee pees to rescue my underwear...in the neighborhood."  "Well ok!  I hope they find them." And I hope I never have to go through something like that again.

Eli...my man of God!

This is a story I wanted to remember and I so wish I had snapped a photo of this moment.  I have it clear in my mind. Me sitting on a folding chair in our garage with the door open and the beautiful fall weather outside.  I was holding Callie and Eli was playing around with all our "garage toys".  Those are the ones I don't want to get rid of but don't want to see everyday.  Anyway, Eli had started playing with a little metal rod from IKEA and he came over and hit me on the foot with it (it didn't really hurt).  After he hit me he said, "Oh, you hurt? I pray for you!  Jesus, heal him..."  Then he paused as if he was listening to God.  Then he said, "No pain...Is it better?" And he took off my shoe so we could see if it was still hurt.  I love that his imaginary role play often involved him working a miracle for someone!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

We are all orphans....

   I have been in a 3 month whirlwind of revelation and insight from my Heaven Daddy about the orphan spirit, and today I felt like I was supposed to share as much as I can with whoever reads this.  Honestly so much of what God has been doing in me is a spirit to spirit download (meaning straight from the heart of God to my soul and somehow bypasses my mind) and it is hard at times to articulate the profoundness of all of this.  But I will do my best.  

   Recently I heard the gospel summed up in this:  There is a Father who was separated from His most beloved children (by sin).  He is heartbroken and will stop at nothing to get His children back with Him!  Through Faith in Jesus, the son of God, we are restored and redeemed back into the right relationship with the Father.  In other words, really the whole gospel is about the Father!  Yes we worship Jesus and thank Him for the sacrifice of the cross.  I mean, without the cross it wouldn't be possible to be restored to our Father.  But Jesus says He ONLY did what He saw the Father doing and what the Father had asked Him to do, including the cross.  The bible also says that Jesus was the exact representation of the Father.  Jesus says if you have seen Him then you have seen the Father.  I heard an insight on this recently that elaborated on some reasons as to Why Jesus.  Why didn't the Father send Himself or send a more militant commander type King that the Jews were looking for.  But the Father couldn't do that because He was not trying to establish Jesus as King yet, He was trying to reconcile His children to Himself!  

   After the fall we all became Orphans.  The definition of an orphan is someone who has been deprived of both parents, or who has lost both parents.  When sin came into the world we lost our Father.  Its not that God abandoned us, but it is that the sin brought separation that forever changed the way we relate to Him as daddy.  The chief orphan of all time is Satan.  When he revolted against God and was cast out of Heaven Satan became an orphan.  And he wants nothing more then for God's children, the Father's beloved sons and daughters, to be separated from their Father and live as orphans as well! I believe this was a major motivation, if not the chief goal, of why Satan's temptations on Adam and Eve were so good and so tempting.  Adam and Eve loved the Father.  They were living in unveiled face to face awesomeness EVERYDAY! They were affirmed and loved by their Father and literally walked with Him in the garden of Eden.  When Satan offered to Eve that she could be like God if she ate the apple it probably seemed so wonderful to her because of how much she LOVED her Father.  We cannot understand the purity that was in her heart before the fall because we are all tainted by sin.  I have often read that story and thought that Eve was feeling mischievous or a little rebellious and thats what made her do it.  But I don't believe that was the case at all.  [I'll save all my thoughts about the moment of the fall for another day :) ]   I believe that Eve's heart was full with love and adoration for her Father and Satan used that to twist and manipulate things that the Father had told them to get her to do it.

     So the fall happens and the orphan spirit that Satan operates under is now passed to mankind. Stop and ask yourselves these questions: 

Have you ever said or thought, "There's no free lunch?"  "If I don't take care of myself then no one else will."   "No one is looking out for me?"  "If I don't make a name for myself then it will never happen."   or "I'm the only one who cares if I succeed or fail."

   This is the voice of the orphan.  An orphan doesn't have anyone to provide a meal for them so they have to rely on themselves if they want to eat.  An orphan has to work hard to make a penny.  An orphan has to comfort himself.  I have heard countless stories about small orphan children in places like Russia that rock back and forth on their own trying to comfort themselves.  Some orphanages have said that the babies and toddlers stop crying when they want something because they have learned that no one is going to respond to their cries!  The plight of an orphan is terrible!  

   But on the contrary, a son with loving parents never wonders where dinner is going to come from.  A son never wonders where the money is going to come from for a winter coat or shoes.  A son relies and trusts in his parents to care for his physical, emotion, and spiritual needs.  

  We are all orphans until we come into our sonship as sons and daughters of the Father! I see  hundreds of people around me who are believers in Jesus and are still scraping around like orphans!  Just coming to faith in Jesus unfortunately doesn't mean that you will come under the Father and rid yourself of the orphan mentality.  But the reason you are coming to Faith in Jesus IS to be RECONCILED BACK TO THE FATHER!  

    God knew that the orphan mentality had riddled His children and He knew if He sent a father-figure type person the Jews would not have received Him.  People who have had a hard relationship with their dads often have a really hard time with other father figures or older men in authority over them.  The response can be anything from desperately wanting that man to see you and become a father to you, only to be hurt tremendously when that man doesn't meet your expectations, all the way to absolute rejection of anything they would say with a hook line like "YOUR NOT MY FATHER!"  The Father knew that He needed to send Jesus as a brother figure to point people back to the Father.  That was His whole assignment.  I can almost see what it must have been like in Heaven.  I see the Father broken hearted over losing His children.  I see the Father so hurt by His children refusing to let Him be Daddy anymore.  I see Jesus looking at the Father and saying, "I have an idea!  I'll go and I'll point them back to you!"  And I see the Father anguishing over having to lose yet another Son but knowing this is the absolute only way to get His kids back.

And so Jesus comes to Earth and people begin to love and worship Him.  Then He begins to say things like, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father" and "I only do what I see the Father doing"  and I see the Jews beginning to question....If this is true, then the Father must be magnificent!  And then Jesus tells the story of the Prodigal son and continues to point and lead people back to the Father.  

   Jesus says in John 14:6 that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus.  One of Jesus' responsibilities is to give people a revelation of the Father.  No one can get a revelation of the Father without Jesus deciding to give it...and of course He will give that revelation to ANYONE who wants it. 

   If you have found yourself asking or saying the orphan mentality thoughts its time to come to the Father and let Him do what He does best.  Let the Father speak His love and affirmation over you.  Let Him restore you back to your place as son or daughter.  Let Him heal you of the affects of the orphan spirit.  As sons and daughters of God it is not our destiny to scrounge around and control things and try to make things happen for ourselves!  Your destiny is to REST in your relationship with your Father knowing with absolute trust that He has your BEST INTEREST in mind and He is preparing for you EVERYTHING you need!

   If you are wanting this touch from the Father, start by praying this prayer:

  "Jesus!  I want to receive a revelation of the Father!  I need to feel my Heavenly Father's love and affirmation for me.  Remove me from the clutch of the orphan spirit and restore me to sonship with the Father.  Redeem me back to the heart of the one who loves me most. To my Father who made me and loves me."  And now take a moment and ask God to speak His Fatherly love over you.  Just quiet your heart and open your ears and you will hear Him speak.


   I know I am barely scratching the surface of all the our Father is and wants to do in and through you.  But my prayer for you is that you will find yourself falling more and more in love with the Father and coming into more and more rest in Him.  I have a very good friend who had an interesting home life growing up.  I wouldn't go so far as to say it was really abusive, but he had a very withdrawn father and a lot of hostility in his environment.  When I met him and heard his story I couldn't believe how he seemed to be so untouched by some of the trauma that had occurred in his household.  I know a LOT of people with a similar home life to him who had and have a lot on woundings that keep them from being able to receive the Father's love.  One day I just had to ask him how he had made it through all these years without major woundings.  His response shocked me.  He said, "Well, when I was in about 8th grade I was really upset at how withdrawn my dad was and I was hurting in my heart a lot.  Then I asked God to help me get through it."  He said, "The Lord spoke to me and said, if you will forgive your dad for his failures and let Me be your Father I will teach you everything you need to know."  And that is what my friend did.  And every day since 8th grade my friend gets up and spends time with God and spends time with his Father.  And you would think He had the absolute best parents in the world by the things he knows and the freedom he has.  

  The Father is waiting for you today.  No matter if you have a great dad or a terrible one, the Father is ready for you.


  

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Brown Sugar Lasagna!

    


 I tried this recipe (and added the brown sugar of course) this past weekend for our family night dinner and it was a HUGE success!  So I thought I would share the recipe with all of you.  For those of you that don't know, I add a little brown sugar any time I make a spaghetti sauce. I know what your thinking, and I can honestly say I was VERY skeptical at first.  But I assure you, you will LOVE it!  It all started when my husband went to a dinner with our small group last year.  I couldn't go that night and he came home RAVING about the spaghetti.  He just kept saying that all night all he could think was how he wanted to drink the sauce and how he couldn't wait for me to make it for him again.  Honestly, that made me even more skeptical! Those of you that know my husband well know that he LOVES things to be sweet.  And he loves candy! So I was certain I wasn't going to like it but I made it for him anyway because I can't help it...i love the guy and love to see him happy.  And much to my surprise I too fell in love with it and now we eat it about every ten days! [All you do for the spaghetti is add about 3 to 4 tablespoons to your completed red sauce and heat about 5 more minutes.  You can use whatever sauce you like.  Our fav is Ragu Traditional flavored with meat]
   So on to the lasagna... Truly, my husband's absolute favorite meal is lasagna.  Honestly, I really don't like lasagna but I eat it for him from time to time.  But he asked if I would make it soon so I decided it would be fun to make one from scratch.  I found this recipe and it looked easy to make and was not too unhealthy so I thought I would give it a shot.  It was great!  Give it a try and see if your surprised!!  The whole pan (13x9 dish) is about 1200 calories and it only took about 15-20 minutes to prepare.




Here's the recipe:


1 pk of lasagna noodles prepared according to the box  (it takes about 10 prepared noodles)
1 medium jar of spaghetti sauce (I used Ragu flavored with mushroom and garlic)
1 bag of shredded mozzarella
1 bag of shredded Italian blend cheeses
1 package of sliced Mozzarella (deil sauce)
2 lbs ground meat (browned)


1. Brown the ground beef and drain the fat
2. Cook the noodles
3. Mix the 2 bags of shredded cheese together
4. Add spaghetti sauce to meat and heat.
5. Add 4 Tablespoons of brown sugar to meat sauce, stir and cook another 3-4 minutes
6. Layer your 13x9 pan as follows:  sauce first, then noodles covering the dish, then sauce, then a layer of the mixed shredded cheese, layer with noodles, sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce, then top with the sliced mozzarella.
7. Cover with foil and cook at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
8. Take the foil off and cook additional 5 minutes.
9. Eat and enjoy :)