Supernatural Grace - it's real!!!

Wow, so Happy New Year everyone!
I brought in the new year at home doing a puzzle by myself drinking white tea with so much honey in it, it was more like a dessert. Sigh.
It may sound drab, but after having my house stuffed full of house guests for four days, having a night to myself in a quiet house was like the best kind of treat.
But onto my main topic for today, supernatural grace! It is real, and my life was just a living example of it for a little over four days.
The Tuesday after Christmas was the day OneThing started in Kansas City! For those who don't know, OneThing is a young adult conference that is put on by the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, and almost everyone who has ever been or thought to be at IHOP comes out for OneThing. It is the biggest event the House of Prayer puts on every year at no cost to the people who attend. It's amazing!
So a lot of people come, and a lot of the peopel who come are not able to afford the hotel prices down by the convention center, so almost every IHOP family I know hosts people in their house; friends, family, and even strangers.
This year was our first year to do so, and I was so excited. The day before I made my house as spotless as I could manage with two babies, and then the crowds came. We had three guys sleeping in our living room, a guy sleeping downstairs with one of our room mates, our two room mates, and a girl who shared my bedroom with me, while Ken slept on the floor in the living room. It was a full house, but so much fun.
The night everyone arrived I did not get to sleep until after midnight because some of our guests did not arrive until late, but even after that, I still could not sleep. I was so excited for all the great fellowship I knew I would have that it was like waiting for Christmas morning.
So bright and early I got up and made myself a cup of coffee, and then everyone else woke up when my babies came into the kitchen for their breakfast, go figure. Everyone ended up in the kitchen. Ken was rocking the French Press and people were cooking eggs and making oatmeal. I was tending babies in the midst of it, and the whole scene worked so harmoniously I was shocked.
I am not a morning person in general, and I don't handle stress very well at all, so the fact that I was so calm and even enjoying this early morning scene was supernatual to me. I could feel the Lord's peace all over me as I manuevered around people and helped to clean up the beds from the living room. It was like when you have a dream, and you know you're playing the part of someone else, but it feels natural at the same time to be 'them'.
I knew I should have been on the edge of freak out mode, but I was calm, collected, gracious, kind, and patient above all things. It was wildly cool.
Even now I'm looking back at those four days of visitors in my house and I know it was not me in those moments. I would have been sharp with my words, yelling at my kids, grumbling to my husband, and/or running away completely and letting my house fall apart.
In the Lord's goodness to me, I was in the mix the whole time, I made sure the house was clean after everyone would leave for the day, I tried to make extra food, and I kept my children out of our guests bags. The girls napped on time, and they only watched a few movies. I'm telling you, it was supernatural!!!
There were several times throughout the whole thing where I kept thinking, when is this great feeling of ease going to lift and leave me in freak out mode, but it never left until after the guests were all gone and my house was clean again.
Then it was a noticable shift. It was suddenly harder than before to say yes graciously to my children and super hard to be motivated to do anything domestic. I was tired and I wanted sugar more than anything else. I slept a lot that day, and then I spent the next day asking the Lord why I couldn't be that 'other' person all the time?
I felt like He said I could, though, and so I asked Him how, and I don't know that He has really answered me, but when I have found myself in situations that could be stressful, I think to myself something like this:
'What would that other 'me' have done in this situation?" and then I try to do it that way. It works out some times, but other times I still find myself on the edge of freak out mode.
So who was that other 'me' you may ask? It was Jesus living through me at a greater level I'm convinced, and it was such a beautiful thing for me to experience. It wasn't all rosy and unreal, it was real life with two babies and a bunch of house guests and I had a supernatural Grace flowing through me. Sigh.
Oh well, I've had a taste now of what supernatural Grace is like, and I'm addicted. I was a better mother, wife and friend those couple of days, in general that is, and I would like to operate in that mode more often.
One of my reasons for writing it in a blog is so that this miracle is recorded somewhere to remind myself that it really did happen this way, so I can believe for other Grace miracles in the future.
Be blessed!

Welcome to my new blog!

Hello my beloved friends and family.

I have had a deep desire to blog again, and yet I just hate all those sites like MySpace and FaceBook. I wanted a place where I could pour out my daily thoughts on life, where my loved ones could read it and know how I am, how I really am, and not just what I have time to share in our brief phone calls and reunions. So I ran across this site from a friend of mine who uses it, and she is a mother of two, so I figure if she finds time to blog, then I can do it too.

She is my inspiration for lots of things. I see her do it with two kids and I say to myself, I can do it too then, with only one kid! For those of you who have visited us here in Kansas City in the past year or so, it is our very dear neighbor, Lydia Harrigan. She lives right across the driveway from us and she, on an average week, gets at least 4 visits from me and Kinsey, if not more.

I keep telling her she can shooo me away if she wants to, but she insists I don't bother her, so I take her at her word and take full advantage of the hours of free entertainment for Kinsey. Her two boys are so active, usually Kinsey just sits and watches them and all their antics, while I sit and chat and strategize our next Arbonne exploits.

Yes, that's right, she is my dear friend as well as my Arbonne sponoring consultant. Again, if she can do it with two kids and make money, then I can do it too! And for those of you who haven't heard about Arbonne from me or someone else, well you just wait 'til I see you next, it is my newest pursuit, and I'm loving it!

So enough of the 'why' I'm blogging and how I came about with this spot, and on to the sharing of my life. Nothing earth-shattering has happened, yet I think what is happening is very grand indeed for me. I have a 9 month old and I feel like I have been in a slump for about 9 months. Yet this past weekend, September 27th to be exact, I had a revelation. I went to a teaching at IHOP on 'healing and deliverance' taught by Steven Beauchamp, and it was amazing for me.

I won't go into all of it right here because it would take more time than I have, but I felt like the Holy Spirit pierced my heart with the truth of my situtation. He (Steven Beauchamp) talked about reasons why Christians feel 'oppression' from the enemy, but that most times they are not 'oppressed' at all, but lack spiritual discipline and are lazy in their pursuit of God. Therefore, they do not have the revelation or encounters with Jesus that they so desire, or see others enjoying.

Well, I haven't spent hardly any time with the Lord since a little while before Kinsey was born, and it has really been bothering me for a while, and so I have tried to schedule in specific time with the Lord, but making the time seems so hard, and so I never end up sticking to my schedule. In fact, I probably only follow my well planned out schedule about 45% of the time.

So in that teaching on Saturday I felt like the Lord said to do my schedule, and do it to the fullest for two weeks, and if it really is too hard to keep, then modify it based on what I've learned from the experience. Up until now I have looked at my schedule as a set of goals I could never keep, and so never really tried, and was rather half-hazard in the way I did plan out my days.

Having said all that, on to the action plan! So, I am now keeping to my schedule as much as possible with a 9 month old, and I'm not overwhelm so far. It is actually doable and I had a great day yesterday! Amazing in fact. I exercised which has been on my schedule for months, and I worked on Arbonne, and cleaned and balanced my checkbook, and felt so great afterwards. I also started taking my multi-vitamins again, and I think that has aready helped too. I have more energy than I have had in, like, probably over a year!

Yesterday I also had a little bit of time with the Lord and it was like gold to me. It was just a few little snippets of time, but it was so sweet and wonderful, and it has given me even more resolve to keep to my schedule, because if I keep to it, I can spend more sweet moments with Him daily.

My struggle to find even a few seconds with the Lord most days has been a silent struggle that I have kept hidden from most people, out of shame. Now the Lord has spoken to me and reminded me that shame is never from Him, and He has taken it away now. Even if I stumble in my new goals to spend more time with Him, He is just so pleased that my heart wants to spend more time with Him, and He promises to be my strength when I am weak.

Well, what an awesome God we serve! That is all for today. Welcome to my blog.