This Joy of Burden

I have been really struggling with this past week with my emotions and feeling overwhelmed throughout the day with this overpowering love for my children. I am not articulate or that clever in my communication so forgive me if my thoughts are random and/or scattered, but I do want to try to put in words this feeling.
 I will start by saying I do not want my children to be an idol. I want to be aware of that when processing this burden I have felt (more strong in the past week than ever). I have been so worried this week, that something would happen to my children before I would hear them accept Christ as their personal Savior, or that they would never choose to do this. I feel this overwhelming burden to speak the Gospel (the good news) to my children every day, all throughout the day, that they will understand and know truth always. Being pregnant, I know, makes this more emotional for me (hormones), though I have felt like this since the day we found out we were expecting Evelyn (maybe even sooner).
So this week, Pastor Brian preached a sermon on being intentional, and guess who it was addressed to... parents.... huh... God has heard me all week:).
Brian literally started preaching about the responsibility we have as parents to be intentionally talking to our children about the Gospel, witnessing to and shepherding our children. I have felt conflicted about my feelings all week, feeling like I may be idolizing my children, putting them before God because I love them too much, feeling like worrying may be sinning because worrying is not trusting. God reminded me in His word though.

Philippians 4:6-7

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁶ Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. ⁷ Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

It is human to worry, but pray and ask God for the desires of my heart (this particular time being the eternal salvation of my children) Pastor Brian highlighted 3 points in being intentional with our children about the Gospel in his sermon: 1. Know the Gospel.. 2. Model it. 3. Share it.
I am racking my brain, know it, live it, share it, I mess this up all the time. Am I living a life that reflects an eternal perspective? What really matters, and am I showing that to my children? Does the brand my clothes are, the size of my house, the way it is decorated, how many people like me matter? Not really, or at least it shouldn't.

Jeremiah 15:16

New Living Translation (NLT)

¹⁶ When I discovered your words, I devoured them.
    They are my joy and my heart’s delight,
for I bear your name,    O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies.

Psalm 27:4

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁴ The one thing I ask of the Lord—
    the thing I seek most—
is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
    delighting in the Lord’s perfections
    and meditating in his Temple.

 I have struggled with insecurity as a stay at home mom, feeling sometimes like others look down on my position, belittle it, doesn't understand how much work goes into this EXTREMELY important job. I know that we may not have two incomes, so we don't have the nicest things, or the most extravagant vacations, but I go to sleep at night knowing what my children hear, what they have been taught, and who they are as little people, and to me, that is more rewarding, more profitable, more important, than any of the things more money would ever get us. I have no doubt that I mess up every single day, to live in a fallen world. But....

Proverbs 22:6  Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

God is bigger and I trust Him. I know whatever my shortcomings, He can continue to do a work in me and in my children. Thank God for using Brian to encourage me that I am doing what is right and that there is joy in shepherding my children.

Anyway, I thought this week, what if I felt this "overwhelming" burden/urgency to lead all of my unbelieving friends to Christ the way I do for my kids? Why don't I? I feel it towards certain friends, stronger at times than others. I pray for them, I speak truth to them. But I don't cry and grieve over the thought of them not accepting Christ. I have been praying for this burden. I want to feel so strongly that I do not stop thinking about those that do not know their Savior. I want my believing friends to feel this burden, to not be afraid to speak out boldly and with urgency. I don't know who all is reading the blog, several moms I know have mentioned they have read it, but whoever is, please pray with me this week. I really do not want to feel crippled by this burden but empowered. I want to feel confident I am sharing the good news and remember always my purpose here on Earth, without letting Satan send my emotions into a frantic panic attack every day. Praise God for His body of believers. It feels good to know that I have a big church family, all over who know this same truth.

This mom is near the end of her second trimester:)

We are well into the second trimester of baby ding #3. We are excited and nervous. Steve and I got to see the baby on our second trimester ultrasound a couple weeks ago. It was such a relief to see sweet little baby arms, legs, toes.... etc. We did find out that with this pregnancy we have placenta previa. I have done too much googling since finding out and have myself even more nervous about the pregnancy. We were encouraged that the location of the placenta puts us in a low risk of c-section but we do have another ultrasound at 28 weeks to see if the placenta has migrated upward or if it is blocking the cervix, forcing us into an early cesarean delivery. We trust God and know that He is sovereign. We continue to ask Him the desires of our hearts which would be a healthy delivery (hopefully not by c-section). :) Please pray with us for the safety of our baby and a normal placenta location by our next ultrasound.

On a lighter note... we have kept our our original decision to not find out the gender of our new addition. We do, however enjoy guessing about whether or not it is Gage or Elsee. Below is a nineteen week comparison.

The far left is Cy's pregnancy and the far right is Evie's pregnancy at 19 weeks, to be compared to the center photo, which is baby #3. I personally think that it is looks more like Cy's, what do y'all think? Do you think the baby looks low or high? Guesses are welcome:)

This was 20 weeks.... I have yet to take a picture this week and will already be 22 weeks on Wednesday. We have a lot to look forward to between now and November but I find myself getting antsy to meet this new member of our family! Over the half way mark... :)

This new baby bump (names)

IT HAS HAPPENED! Steve and I are having another bundle of joy. We are sooooooooo thrilled. I don't think that it is a secret that I love pregnancy and babies. I have started the countdown to labor already. We are not finding out the gender again with baby 3, which makes that delivery day that more exciting for Stephen and I. We have picked our names already.
We are staying with Elsee Ren (which would have been Cyrus' name if he had been a girl). "Elsie" is a family name but when researching it, I found the spelling Elsee and loved the look of it, so it does have our spin on it. Ren is from my middle name, Renee, but I like one syllable middle names for girls (Evie Rae).
Gage Alton for a boy. Gage is a name of a friend of Stephens brother, Caleb. He has always loved the name and I had to agree, it does fit our little family. Alton is my Great-Grandpa's name, which I have always loved.
I have had minor nausea a handful of days and been a little tired. This pregnancy had been totally different from both of my other pregnancies, which makes it hard to guess the gender. But I am sure as my belly grows I will have a stronger opinion one way or the other.
We are praying for a healthy baby and healthy birth. So thankful for such a wonderful pregnancy so far. More pictures and updates to come (hopefully some side by side comparison belly shots from previous baby bumps.) Here is 12 week belly shot.

This mom's END TABLES

So I dabble in woodworking thanks to ana-white.com. We were borrowing end tables from the Johnston's which was so kind of them to loan them to our sparsely furnished home. They had glass on the top though, and the older and more curious the kids got, the more nervous I was to have borrowed end tables. I found the following plans on Ana's website and fell in love. They are small, simple, and unique. I also found this "recipe" for a homemade stain (which I had hoped would turn out more gray, but unfortunately didn't) Weathered Stain. It was still fun to make my own stain, and I may try using it again on something else to get a grayer look from it.

Sorry the first couple are sideways

So I added the stain and it continued to get darker the longer it sat.

My little helper

They are a much warmer color than I wanted but I have thought about painting them eventually

I made the coffee table too, they go together well

This Easter Celebration

HAPPY EASTER... HE IS RISEN!

We spent this month preparing Evelyn for Easter. The Johnston Family got Evelyn a nice set of resurrection eggs last year, so we spent a lot of time going through them. They have a set of 12 eggs with something in each egg to tell the story of Easter. Each egg also has a verse and a little story that is read along with the opening of the egg, the last egg being empty, representing the empty tomb since Christ rose from the grave. She is very good at memorizing (which she must get from her father) so she was learning what came next from in the egg sequence. She is always interested in Jesus, wanting to read his book (the Bible) during rest time and wanting me to show her which one is Jesus. We really enjoyed the resurrection eggs this year and looking forward to her understanding the Word, a little better every day.
Since we only had Evie last year, we went a little overboard with her Easter basket. This year, I (we) decided to be very minimal. As much as a love to spoil our children, something that Steve and I have talked about it instilling in the the gift of generosity. It is so important to us that are children find joy in loving and blessing other people. There are obviously many ways to do this but giving is a good start.

So this ended up being our babies Easter baskets this year... which of course are not from us... but from the Easter bunny! woot woot :) We had fun telling Evie about the bunny coming to leave her a surprise on Easter morning.

We did all just wake up...

Then we also had their Easter outfits. One of my favorite memory's of childhood in general was the beautiful Easter dress (and hat, and gloves, and purse) that we got for this holiday. Thanks Lady! :) Cyrus was more fun to dress this year than Evelyn. So trendy.

After a great Easter service with our wonderful church family, we headed over to the Johnston home for lunch and "the hunt". This family was a wonderful example of what I want to teach our children. We are invited to their home for any holiday that we are not spending in Indiana. They know our family is far away and they want to make sure that we are loved on and reminded about what being a part of the body of Christ is all about. We were one of several families invited to their home to celebrate. They are an amazing example of Jesus, we are lucky to call them friends.

Cy was not interested in hunting eggs

They even had coloring pages for the kids

It was a great day. Praise God that He conquered the grave so sinners like us can live with joy knowing that we have the gift of everlasting life because of the sacrifice made for us by Jesus Christ!

This burger joint

With Stephen taking night classes and studying on his nights home, this mom gets a little stir crazy. I have decided to take the kids out for lunch/dinner once a week for....well, many reasons: weather is getting nice, kids need practice in restaurants, mom wants a treat too....

We picked a "burger joint" next to our house for our first trip out. It was so nice to get the kids excited about this outing and to not have to prepare dinner:). It was a great success too. Evie started her fun in the parking lot, jumping up on the curb and giggling, she has so much joy. The food was mediocre and we probably won't return, but as I said, it wasn't about the food.

She wanted to sit in a high chair too because she saw Cy's

Cy was more excited about the keys, but he behaved so well

she ate all her burger and then enjoyed her chocolate shake

We feel very lucky to have Stephen working so hard for our family, and we are so proud of how great he is doing in Grad School. We still miss him though, so it is nice to have a distraction on evenings we won't see him for dinner. I feel "uber" blessed to have two amazing (and beautiful) kids to spend my time with!