Tuesday, January 24, 2012

A New Year at MOPS

Here we are at the end of January already!  We have had some fun times in MOPS this month, as well as some serious discussion about our heart health.   In our first meeting of the new year we heard from Ellen Abramson about heart health.  She shared her personal story of turning a heart attack into an opportunity to help others and gave us some very good information on heart health and warning signs of concern.  She has written a book titled "Live to Dance".  
In our second meeting for January we heard from Delana Mazdra about photography.  She gave us some great tips to help us take great photos at home of our sweet little ones!  She gave us much to remember, but if you missed it, the biggest lesson I can pass along is, turn off your flash and use as much natural light as possible!  
Our next meeting will be about Love Languages. (What else could be better for the month of Love!) 
I will leave you with this last thought... As we talked about photography in our last meeting, we talked about leaving pictures for your children that they could look back on with sweet memories of their childhood.  Each picture tells a story, evokes an emotion, a memory.  As we think about how our children will remember their childhood, let's remember that God tells us in Deuteronomy 4:8-10 to teach our children His word, that they may learn to fear Him and then they will teach their children as well.  The things we teach our children now will have an affect on generations to come after us, and what better could we leave to them than God's love!?!  

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Finding Direction

This morning as I was coming home from dropping the kids off at preschool, the traffic report came on the radio.  As I listened to the person rattling off locations, I thought about where they were, and I could picture most of the places in my mind.  I thought back to a year ago, when my family first moved to St. Louis, and I remembered how terrible it felt to have NO CLUE where I was at most of the time.  I never knew if I was going east or west,  north or south, and I hated that feeling.  I like to have a sense of direction.  I like to know if I'm looking north, south, east or west.  I don't know why; it just really bugs me if I don't know.  And today as I was driving I felt peaceful knowing that I knew my direction.
I started thinking about my direction in life, and a year ago, I was not only frustrated that I had no sense of direction in terms of physical location, but I was also very unsettled with my direction spiritually.  My life as I knew it was turning upside down with so many changes, and things I thought God had planned for me and my family were not His plan at all.  I'm sure many of you have experienced this in life as well.  Maybe you are going through this right now.
This lack of spiritual direction was not as easily fixed as my problem of not knowing where I was physically.  There were a lot of tears, a lot of struggles with God, and a lot of hours spent reading His word.  But I finally found my direction in this new journey He has sent me on, and there is a lot more peace now that I am trusting in God to guide my days ahead.  The road has not been perfect, and I have not been without fault, but knowing my direction makes life so much more peaceful.  It makes the little hiccups less dramatic, and it grounds me in those hard times.
Being a wife and a mother brings so much joy, but it is not an easy task.  If you've ever read Proverbs 31, you know that the virtuous woman God calls us to be requires a lot of time and energy, and it's easy to get lost in the laundry and the lullaby's, but realizing that God has a direction for our live's as a women of God will go a long way in making us better at that highest calling He has placed on our life.  
If you haven't already, I hope that in this new year, you will seek God's direction for your own life.  He tells us in Isaiah 55:6 to "Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near."  He has a purpose and direction for each of us... All we have to do is seek Him. If you know God's direction for your life, don't stop being faithful.  The devil is always right there, waiting to pull you off course, get you down.  Be encouraged that others around you want to see God succeed in your life, and find friends that you can pray with, read scripture with, share with in the good, the bad, and the ugly.
And let's as a MOPS group, remember to encourage one another, be there for one another, and help each other on this journey of motherhood and life!