Do not be anxious........

Phil. 4:16 says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God"

This has been the verse I've been clinging to this weekend!  Friday we received word that our attorney has been in contact with the mortgage company's attorney and that we should receive word "early next week" on their decision with the short sale agreement!

My stomach has been in knots and my sleep has been lacking, but my faith and prayer life have never been better!  The nights have been long and the days have been short, and those long nights have been spent praying and petitioning the Lord to give us favor!  During the day I feel shaky and distracted and completely panicked unless I can continue to be in prayer!  Prayer is the only thing that keeps me calm and focused the last few days.  When I lay down to sleep I begin praying until I fall to sleep, but that never happens...I just keep praying!  During the day I have to stop and have everyone come together and pray together at random times.  I can't even imagine God not answering our prayer after we've gone through all this so far.  Through the whole process God has constantly showed up and taken the impossible and made it possible!  Throughout all this, I've been able to say "I'm not horribly worried I feel like it will work out" and through it all it has worked out even when it has been bad news!  This time- I feel it's a final decision, this is the end, this is what we've been praying for, for SO long!  It's a bit scary to be honest!

If it's bad news, we will again fight for the house as long as we can until we have to legally pack up and head to the streets, but if it's good news this house will be used for God's glory!  This house will be used for Him to do his work!  My life is not my own, but His to do with it what he will- and I know he has plans to prosper us, and not harm us!  His will for us is better than my own!  Keeping these things in my head and remembering that "we are right where we are supposed to be, right when we are supposed to be there" and  that this is all part of His plan for us is all that keeps me going some days!

Thank God that we are able to flood God's news feed with our prayer petitions and he doesn't "De-friend" us but adds us as a "close friend," subscribes to our life and is able to "like" each prayer letting us know he hears us!  What an amazing God we have!  No wonder he tells us "Do not be Anxious" He has it all under control!

Update on our house.....

In the words of my 7 year old, Ay yi yi!!  We got more news on our house situation this morning and it was not promising.  After living here for two months we've made this house a home!  I strive to keep it clean all the time (although it does get away from me often during the week when we homeschool) because it is God's house that was given to us and we need to make sure we treat it with respect and take care of it.  I've made sure I sweep the floors daily and mop once a week because I do not want to ever take for granted that we have this home.  We have gotten our family on a schedule, and gotten things back to normal around here the last three weeks and even began our search for a new home church last week.  Nathan and I even talked about our desire to start a church and use the play room here to meet in for now, after all our desire for this home was to use it for God whether it be filling up all the bedrooms with our children, adopted children, foster children or just maybe His desire would be to fill the house with the church family we've been seeking!  Those desires haven't changed in our hearts and only makes that desire grow!  

After waiting for our short sale on the home to be approved for the third time, we got news this morning that the new mortgage company (and I may  not be explaining this quite right) #1 does not do short sales, #2 feels they can get 40k more out of the house if they put it into foreclosure.  They have scheduled the house to be put into foreclosure on  Wed, day before Thanksgiving!  From what I have been told our attorney is continuing to work on this and we will hopefully know more Monday.  

My first reaction to this was that I'm not worried, God is in Control, it will work out.  But as time went on today I began to feel sick about it, I mean, weds. does not give us much time to get things ironed out! After talking to Nathan we gathered the girls in the foyer and explained to them (in kid terms) what was happening.  There was many tears but we also explained to them that we were trusting God.  As we encouraged our children that God was in control, and reminded them of all the prayers he has answered for us: I prayed and asked God to allow me to have children, We prayed and asked God to heal our 4th child after having a positive DS test while pregnant, We prayed for this house and we are LIVING in it, We prayed he would normalize our 6th child's heart rate during birth; I was encouraged and realized that I have nothing to fear!  A week before we got the first short sale approval on this home we came over to the house and prayed over the property and claimed it for our family in Jesus Name and a week later they approved it so why can't God do that now!?  We all held hands and prayed as a family and cried and asked God to give us favor!  We (as a family) took anointing oil and prayed over every window, every door, all around the property line, every room, and every porch- asking God to not allow anyone to take it from us and to bless us with this home in Jesus Name!  

Tonight as we settle down and get ready for dinner and get ready to put the kids to bed we are still feeling broken, and lost.  I've continued to pray continually, seeking out wisdom from the Lord and asking for peace, yet I still feel so unsettled in my spirit.  I know that I just need to come to the place where I can say "even if we have to leave we want your will to be done."   "Even if we have to leave we know you have a better plan."  I've been listening to the song "we won't be shaken" by Building 429.  The lyrics to that song are like my life's motto, and yet it's exactly what I needed to hear:  This world has nothing for me

This life is not my own
I know you go before me
And I am not alone
This mountain rises higher
This way seems so unclear
But I know that you go with me
I will trust in you

       

You know my every longing
You've heard my every prayer
You've held me in my weakness
Cause you are always there
So I'll stand in full surrender
It's your way and not my own
My mind is set on nothing less
Than you and you alone
I will not be moved oh

Whatever will come my way
Through fire or pouring rain
We won't be shaken
No we won't be shaken
Whatever tomorrow brings
Together we'll rise and sing
That we won't be shaken

This is my prayer, and the song in my heart this week as we move forward and strive to do God's will for our family.  I never know the outcome of any situation we find ourselves in but I do know that there has always been a light at the end of the tunnel and there has never been any situation we've gone through where I haven't been able to look back and say, "wow look what God did!"   I'm looking forward to that day with our home!  Please continue to pray for us this week!!  Love you all!  

 

Living with Hope....

The past few weeks has been an emotional roller coaster for me!  I've really been trying so hard to keep God at the front of my mind, remember that this is his perfect timing and will for us, and that whatever happens is His plan.  It's not an easy mindset to have all the time and I find myself starting to panic a lot so I will have to go outside on the porch or in my room and close the door and just pray!  This doesn't just happen once a day, more like 50x a day!  As if the hormones from being almost 27 weeks pregnant isn't enough!  I'm in the stage of my pregnancy where I've become extremely weepy!  I seriously cried two nights ago because I was watching my husband eat Doritos and he was not eating them the correct way!  Don't ask me what the correct way is because I have no idea, all I know is that the thought of eating Doritos slowly (while pregnant) is unthinkable and that crying over something as silly as that is not the type of person I am.  So with that said, it has been a constant fight trying to push aside my emotions and hormones and just focus on what God wants for me!

After a few calculations the other day (which I wish I never did) I came to the conclusion that if we end up getting our new home, closing date will come really close to my 35th week!  This realization had me in a panic because I've had several children at 35 weeks and even have had preterm labor as early as 30 weeks!  So thinking that I could be in labor the day we close on the house is a bit rattling!  So I started to get weepy again!  I believe I cried for two days over the fact that I cannot "nest" and get things ready for the baby, nor do I know where we will be living when the baby actually comes home.  These unknown things are enough to make a pregnant woman crazy!  So fighting against it I went to the Lord in prayer asking for a quick answer and peace!  I just need His peace.

I had decided this time around to attempt my first all natural birth without an epidural!  I had an epidural with all 5 of my children and after the last one I began experiencing nerve pain in my arms and legs that I couldn't get rid of.  After much consideration I decided that it was time to try it naturally.  My husband wasn't on board right away, he said that he didn't know if he could sit there and watch me be in such agonizing pain for that length of time and not be able to do anything about it.  On Saturday we attending 1/3 of our first birthing classes.  We never took any of them with the other children since I had planned to get an epidural, so it was a lot of new information I never knew before!  I was completely shocked by the things that you can actually do while in labor like, moving around, eating, taking a shower, wearing your own clothes!  It was all so foreign to me that I kept struggling within myself "Wait that's not right, you can't eat while in labor!"  lol   Part of me felt sad that I did not do this with the other five, I feel like I missed out on a strong, immediate bond with them when they were first born.

Part of doing a natural birth is being able to prepare yourself mentally that this is what is going to happen.  When I had Sweet-pea, I had in my mind that I would be getting an epidural.  I was in labor from 8pm till 8am.  At 2am, I was given pitocin to make my contractions stronger and I immediately asked for an epidural.  The nurse kept putting me off and at 7am I still did not have my epidural!  I was in severe pain, clinging to the bed, and really REALLY flustered!  Finally after the nurses switched shifts I asked the new nurse for it and had it within 3 minutes of asking!  When the guy came in to do it he said he had a great night of sleep and had not had a call all night long!!  I was SO furious!!   Then while he was putting in the epidural I actually felt her head come down and hit the bed! I had her less than an hour later!  I believe that if I had prepared myself for that birth that I was not going to have an epidural it would have been easier, also if I had learned to move around and work through the contractions instead of tensing up and hanging onto the bed  railing for dear life it would have been a lot better!

With that said I have had in my mind that once my class started for the bradly method I would be putting aside all other things and filling my mind with things to prepare, lots of reading mostly!  I felt a little overwhelmed with all the stuff going on around me with trying to get the new house that it has become super hard to do this!

As I was running some errands yesterday I started thinking about how far I have come over the last two years.  How I made it through some of the darkest times in my life and spiritually what has come of it all.  I started thinking about what life would be like if I did not have the promises of God to fall back on.  I remember being in the darkest place in my life, not knowing how to get out, feeling like the only way out was to end it all, however; deep down I knew it would all be okay.  Now that I am finally in a better place and can actually see outside of the darkness I can look back and be so thankful that even though I didn't think God was near during those times, or even though I didn't feel him at work, I knew in my mind that God always keeps his promises and that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  I was so thankful that now in all this stress and uncertainty that I can still do the same thing.  I know without a doubt that God had everything under control, however things turn out is all part of his perfect plan.  I remember a few years ago I lead a small group of ladies.  One of the lessons that week I was teaching was about how as Christians we will always have hope because we know that God has our lives in his hands.  We also tried to imagine life without hope and what a difference knowing God makes in our lives compared to others who do not believe.  I can honestly say that I do not understand how others who do not believe in God even get through one day!  The thought of living your life and expecting to just die at the end with nothing waiting for you is really the hardest life to live in my opinion!  I am just so thankful that through everything I've had the promises of God.

So this week my goal is to continue to work on allowing God to take my burdens, and to continue to trust Him that everything is happening in his perfect timing!

God's little blessings...

I feel like it's been forever since I've written a blog post, I have so much to say I almost do not know where to start to fit it all in in a smooth way; so if this post is a bit scattered (lol) that would be why.

April 25th, Nathan and I went to the perinatal center to find out if we were going to have another sweet little girl, or our first son.  I had so much anxiety about it!  On one hand I have been longing for a boy for the last seven years and my desire for that little guy has not subsided one bit, however; on the other I am so unbelievably scared to have a boy!  I've never had a brother so...having a little boy around would be foreign to me, and a bit scary!  I have thought every baby I have had so far was going to be a boy, so I'm not great at guessing, but I was convinced that this one had to be!  All my pregnancies were different in their own way, but this one had one thing that I knew I never experienced before, an aversion to meat!  Mostly beef!  The smell of it, thought of it made my stomach churn!  I also took the gender prediction test that you pay $44.00 for at the drug store and it said BOY, so I was COMPLETELY convinced that this time we were having a boy!  Imagine my surprise when we found out that we were in fact having another baby GIRL!

Of course I did cry for a minute when I found out, I tried my best to hold it together until we left the appointment but when my midwife came in and started asking me questions I just lost it completely!  So many things were going through my head!  Since before Nathan and I were married I felt that God gave me a name for a boy; I have had periodic dreams of that little boy over the last 7 years and have held him and talked to him from the time he was a newborn till he was five years old!  I felt like God has been trying to tell me all these years that we are supposed to have a boy!  I also had told Nathan I thought this was going to be our last child.  I am over 30 now and I'm tired, I do not like pregnancy one bit and each time I do it it has gotten harder than the last.  Does this mean I didn't really hear God?  Does this mean we are supposed to have more children?  Maybe I just clung onto something that wasn't really from God and said it was??  What was going on??!!  My crying and disappointment wasn't because I didn't want another beautiful girl but it was because I thought I knew what God had in store for me and I was wrong!  I spent the remainder of the next few hours doubting my ability to hear the Lord, and doubting my understanding of what he wanted for me in my life.  Then after all the questioning and sobbing, Nathan says to me, "If you never had those dreams we would not have 6 beautiful daughters!  If you never had those dreams, we would have stopped after 2 children!  If we had the boy after the first or second child we would not have anymore than that.  If God didn't give us this desire for another child that we do not have yet, then baby #6 would be our last, but we can have another!"  His words were so true!

I was then reminded of something I had read in one of Beth Moore's books.  She said that she wanted a boy so badly but ended up with a few girls.  She realized that God had given her an amazing task of raising Godly women!  Made me feel a bit intimidated but I think I'm up for the task!

So once I got myself together and was able to take some time to change my mindset that it was now a girl instead of a boy, it was time to find a name!  Again, another thing that makes me anxious!  I feel like we've already exhausted all the names that we've liked so finding another girl name that held up to our standards was going to be a task!  We didn't want something that started with a letter we already had so A, S, E, T, J, were out.  It had to have a good meaning and also be fairly rare, nothing you hear ALL the time.  So after much searching and rummaging through my over used baby name book, we found a name.

     "Vaerity Cossette"  which means "Truthful and Victorious!"

So needless to say I am extremely excited to meet our little girl!  I'm at 24 weeks right now and the days cannot go by fast enough!

So becoming a family of 8 means we have to increase the size of our van.  We no longer will be able to take the entire family together somewhere.  We currently have a 7 passenger van and will now need to upgrade to a 12 passenger!  The downfall we JUST paid off our van so not having a van payment has been wonderful!!  We've also been on the search for another house.  We currently are in the same home that we purchased when we first got married and have been out of room for some time now.  We started looking for homes back in October of 2012 and did not have the best of luck.  We found a white house we loved, put in an offer and it was accepted.  Thirty minutes later they accepted another offer from someone else!  So we went on with the search!  We found a great house that we loved even more than the last one and put in an offer.  The house was a short-sale and so it was possible it would take a while!  So we waited, and waited, and waited....we received a few updates on the house but never good news, then after a 5 month wait we were told that it probably wasn't going to happen, the bank wasn't being cooperative and we need to move on.  So we looked at another home.  It was a forclosure but a great price, we put in an offer and it wasn't accepted.  At that point I was becoming further along in my pregnancy, so we decided that we were going to wait till next year to "look" for a home, however if something came our way that was EXACTLY what we wanted and nothing less we would go look.  Nothing did.

This week we got word that after waiting 7.5 month on the short-sale the bank has finally promised that they will approve and close on the house within 45 day!

This was nothing less than a miracle!  I was excited but kinda numb about it.  Nathan and I went back and forth about if it's the right decision to go ahead with it, while we thought it was perfect for our family we did become content with not moving this year!  I don't want a larger home JUST because it would be more comfortable, or just because we want it, I want it to be God's plan for us!  So after lots of praying we decided to go ahead and resubmit our offer, and if it is God's will things will go smoothly and work out well...if it is not it will fall apart and either one will be fine with us.  So we will be praying and would love others to pray for us through this as well!

In the meantime, we found out the news about the house while we were on vacation.  We had planned to go on vacation with Nathan's family this year but because of our time constraint with the pregnancy and not being able to travel after the second week in July we had to go ahead and go ourselves before then.  The only thing available was Massanutten, which turned out to be a lot of fun with the girls!  We visited the water park, got to ride ponies, went fishing and just had fun together as a family.  I'm so thankful that we are able to give our children fun family memories like this!  I hope they will cherish them forever!!

House fire...

Nathan and I got married in 2005.  When we married we never imagined that God would bless us with so many children in such a short time, so we bought a house that was 1,095 square foot, three bedrooms, and two baths.  We purchased this home right before we got married, and after a two week honeymoon in Cancun, a week later we found out we were expecting our first child!  We moved into our home a month later and have been there ever since.

God has used this tiny home to mold me and shape me into the person I am today.  Who would have ever thought that he could use our living situation to strengthen our faith.  After a few months in our home, we realized that there was a leak in the kitchen.  We shut off the dishwasher, and the leak stopped.  We began to pray that we would get a new kitchen floor for free, because the floor was messed up from the water.  So for the first few years we washed dishes by hand until we were able to save up some money to get the leak fixed.  By the time 2009 came I was pregnant with baby #3 and somehow the leak got worse and just shutting off the dishwasher didn't work anymore.  We came home to water gushing up between the floor boards in our kitchen floor!  We were so upset and had no idea what to do, or that we could even afford the amount of money it was going to take to clean up that mess!  So we prayed!  Someone mentioned we should call our insurance company, so we took the chance and did it.  Although it was a huge headache, a huge mess, and a long process; God answered our prayers!  Not only did he give us a brand new floor for FREE, he gave us a BRAND NEW KITCHEN!!  They replaced the cabinets, the flooring, we were able to add MORE cabinets, and painted the entire kitchen!  We got a 14k kitchen for free!!

Not only were we praying for the floor in our kitchen, but we were praying that God would supply us with a new refrigerator!  While ours worked perfectly, it was cracked on the door on the inside and was held together by duct tape!  While they were doing the flooring in our kitchen they were being pretty rough on our fridge and when they were finished with it and had it back in place, it would cool my feet as I walked past it instead of our food that we had inside!  So we ended up getting a new fridge for FREE because they had damaged the one we had!

After baby #3 things became very tight in our home.  The living situation was becoming crowded, but still do-able.  I think my biggest complaint was that we didn't have storage space.  So I began to pray for a larger house!  I didn't need something huge, just something big enough for the family we had, plus room to expand that family with how ever many more children God wanted to bless us with.  After baby #4, I just became bitter!  I was angry that we didn't have a larger house yet and I didn't even feel financially that we were able to even make that step to look for a larger house because everything larger was a higher payment.  As our family got larger our house became smaller!!  

One day I was listening to a CD from our homeschool convention.  There was a woman talking about how bitter she had been because God would not bless her with a larger house.  She realized that she had been so obsessed with wanting a larger house that she couldn't enjoy what God had given her.  Her "larger house" became an idol to her.  As I listened to this story, I was immediately convicted that I was doing the exact same thing!  So I repented, and began to love the house that God had already blessed us with.  I built a garden out back, and we got a trampoline and swing set and we love our back yard!!  We made our kitchen into a homeschool classroom (who says a kitchen has to be decorated like a kitchen) and we love our learning space.  I love our spacious new kitchen.  There are so many things that I have fallen in love with about our little house, that I became completely comfortable and content with not moving ever!  UNTIL A MONTH AGO>....

Everyone in our family has had birthday's this year.  They are all getting so big.  Our 5th baby is 1 year old now and everyone is walking and climbing and fighting, and no one gets naps because they are all sharing a room and keep each other awake all day long!  I have a whole house full of crabby, babies!!  So after lots of talking, Nathan and I decided we needed to start looking.  We decided the best thing would be to rent out our home and buy another.  So we started looking.  We chose a Realtor who has been a family friend since I was little.  I actually used to babysit his daughter!  He has been fantastic!  After months of looking we kept going back to this ONE house that was just perfect for what we needed!!  

We felt for sure this house was the only one on the market so far that was that large, in a good neighborhood, and had a school room, play room, office and 4 bedrooms, at an affordable price.  We were pre-approved to get another home without having to sell our current home, which I felt was a miracle!  So we drew up an offer for the house and felt very peaceful!!  We were told it was accepted, but thirty minutes later another offer came in and they said they would let us know in the morning because they had to allow the seller to decide the next day.   

That night all 7 of us got on our knees and prayed that if it was God's will he would give us that house!  The next morning I woke up with a song in my heart:

    "Lord you are more precious than silver, Lord you are more costly than Gold, Lord you are more     beautiful than diamonds, and nothing I desire compares with you."

I knew immediately that God was teaching me a lesson and testing my faith.  Could my desire for that home compare with my desire for God himself?  Who did I desire more and seek after more...the house or my Savior?  That morning I woke up with a heart-change.  I knew that morning even before I received the call that we would not be getting that home, and that God had other plans.  And sure enough I received the call that they went with the third offer.  I was heartbroken over it, but I wasn't torn down.  I knew that God had a plan and there was something else out there for us!   

So for now we remain in our crowded, suffocating, loud, chaotic small amazing house that we were blessed with from God, because to Him those things were not important.  What was important was that we made God and only God, enough for us.  That we seek him and want him more than we seek and want a larger house because it will make things easier in our lives.  I've learned that God isn't in the business of making life easier, but he is in the business of making life a series of fire pits that will shape us and refine us as we walk over the burning embers, through the fire to the other side.  This time it just happened to be a "house fire."  We never look the same as when we went in, and once we are melted and shaped we never go back to the way we were before.  That I am thankful for.  I pray that through this process he continues to mold our hearts for him!