Luck

*Warning--This post contains personal information about my life, so if you don't want to hear it, feel free to stop here.  In my view, being honest and sharing our stories is great for women and should happen more often, especially when done purposefully and not spewed like some garbage on facebook.  I have been blessed to find some of those honest people lately and to know I am not the "only one" is a relief to say the least.  So, although I'm not putting it 100% out there, maybe I can be an honest person to someone else who is in a similar situation.*

I swear, anything that could be spilled, dropped, messed up, forgotten has been this week!  Example:  I had mail to send out & sealed it, then realized I had forgotten to put the check in, so I had to cut it open and then put the check in and seal it back up.  Times that by 100 and you'll have my week!  Just little things like that.

Thurs. night I made lasagna, did my usual no-boil recipe, but with brown rice noodles. Well 20 minutes in I check on it to see the top layer of noodles hard & curled up, none of it cooked!  Turns out, gluten free lasagna doesn't work with no boil.  I was hungry, not to mention supposed to be leaving for a basketball game in half an hour.  But I decided no way was I going to waste an entire pan of lasagna ingredients!  So, for the next half hour or so I stood over the stove picking out lasagna noodles & threw them in a pot to boil (also turns out rice noodles are super delicate and fall into a million little peices grr), while my hungry one year old whined at my legs so I finally made her some frozen veggie chicken nuggets which I'm pretty sure she fed half of to the dog.  In the end it was edible but it was a huge disaster.  So, if you're using gluten free noodles, boil first!

Sometimes you just have to laugh at your life though.  The other day as I'm eating my husband is yelling at me from the nursery changing P's diaper: "Oh kay I changed my mind now, OHHHH, WHAT is THAT, BABE come HERE she has a HERNIA or something!"  I say, "What?? Don't try to trick me into coming in there just because you don't wanna change a poopy diaper." He says, "No for real there's blood!" Off I go imagining that he's totally overexaggerating and interrupting my meal for nothing.  So I look.  In the diaper that is.  A cherry.  A little cherry from her fruit cocktail she must not have chewed up.  What can you do but just crack up.  "How was I supposed to know she had cherries today?" he said.  Oh boy...

But I have to say my luck has been good in other ways, bigger ways. Fri. morning I went to my mom group and the speaker just really spoke to me, like I could have been her in her earlier life.  It made me think how there really is a purpose for everything, and how all the events that led me to start going to this group, and therefore hearing this speaker happened for a reason.  I went to the library the other day for sugar free recipe books and came across another totally off topic book that just happened to be written by another speaker we had listened to, so I picked it up.  Another voice that really spoke to me (Julie Barnhill). 

I always just thought it was luck or like I said, that it "happened for a reason", but I never really thought of God in all of it, or thanked Him for leading me to these things.  But I'm starting to see it now.  Quitting my job, attending Mom2Mom, coming in contact with these speakers and other people who have made an impact in my life that I never would have met....are the reason I am searching for what I am searching for now and am on the spiritual journey I'm on.  And I am so thankful for that.  I didn't see the need for God to really be in my life before, to help me with my struggles, but now I am starting to.  It's a good feeling, a bit daunting but good. 

Listening to our speaker today (Connie Johnson), I thought, if she can go from where she was, to where she is today, with all she went through, then there is hope for me too!  Her message was about if God really cares about the little things, and not just praying but having a relationship with Him and how she came to build one.  She talked about talking to God all day and having a prayer journal to write down prayers and answers and using the ACTS method to pray.  I'll admit, not too long ago I would have thought I would never be that kind of person, or even necessarily want to.  I might have even it was a little extreme, or even a little weird.  I didn't want them to judge me for where I was but in a way I was judging them.  And how much would I have to change my life to make it happen?  How much more would I have to hold myself accountable?  But my mind has been changed.  I am starting to see it is kind of all or nothing.  That doesn't mean I am, just that I want to be.  I'm not even close, but I'm a lot closer than I was. 

Here are the ACTS she uses :

Adore- Praising Jesus for who He is
Confession- Seeking forgiveness for sins
Thanksgiving- Giving thanks for all the blessings you've been given
Supplication- Things you need