Rawwwwwr! I just typed a whole entry and it was deleted!

OK, here goes again!

First – I go to Vanguard Church (to answer the question posed in my last entry from a reader).

OK, now for my blog:

My copy of Yourself!Fitness came in the mail today and it is completely awesome! Maya worked me like a mule, but it felt great! I tested in the highest level for all but upper body strength (I could only do 25 pushups), so she chose for my overall goal to be cardio and today’s focus was on upper body. I did everything beautifully except she wanted me to do 4 sets, which totalled 44, UNmodified straight-leg pushups. As I said above, I could only do 25 MODIFIED pushups in the evaluation, so obviously I had to ask her to go easier on me when it came to the straight pushups.

She had me do a lot of really cool different moves though, and she used my stability ball and free weights (which were actually big jars of Prego sauce, hehe). I’m really looking forward to my next workout, and I’m guessing that I’ll be sore tomorrow. At the end of the workout it said that I had burned almost 250 calories, which isn’t bad for 45 minutes of work.

Oh, and its a good thing that I burned that many calories, because I really needed to work off my dinner tonight! I didn’t eat a lot of food, but the food that I did eat was pretty unhealthy. I had some cheese fries (totalling about the size of my palm), 1/2 of a caesar side salad, and 4 coconut shrimp. I was quite full at the end of the meal, but luckily not too full, otherwise I probably would’ve thrown up during my workout

Anyhoo….
Tonight I finished day 2 of my Bible study, so I’m going to wrap up my blog by answering the final question in there.

Q:
Write out your reflections on areas in which you are especially susceptible to taking on the burdens of the old self. Then write a prayer to the Lord asking Him to help you live in freedom of the new self in these areas.
(Suggested possible areas include prideful independence, failure to recognize our worth as individuals, false comparisons of ourselves with others, preoccupation with our performance, etc).

In the author’s notes, she mentions that one area that she struggles with is that when people compliment her, sometimes she’ll put herself down so that they’ll go on about how great she is. I don’t remember ever intentionally doing this, but I know that there are times when I have disagreed with a compliment, which is wrong of me. Plus, I’m sure that when I did that, I didn’t mind if people went on about whatever they were complimenting me on, so I’m probably guilty in this area.

I definitely struggle with prideful independence. I think I’m just still learning how much I have conformed to the world and the feminist viewpoint in a lot of ways. Until the past few years, I was very proud of the fact that I could stand on my own, didn’t need anyone, and didn’t want any help. I have problems even trying things with people watching because I don’t want anyone to see me doing something if I can’t do it perfectly. The fact is that God has called us to rely on one another and has really built us so that its necessary, and by refusing to accept that, its as though I’m telling God that He didn’t set things up properly.

I am also very guilty of falsely comparing myself to others, whether that is to build myself up or tear myself down. I think that I can very easily slip into a mode of relativity, where I judge myself based on the fact that I am better or worse than others, rather than seeing God as the only being that I need to compare myself to and with whom I should try to align myself.

Finally, I know I am preoccupied with my performance. This is something that has always been very important to me. My mom will confirm this from an early age. I like to know that I have performed well and that others were pleased or impressed by my performance. I need to learn to put that aside and just do my best to live my life for God.

Well, here’s my prayer:
Heavenly Father,
Please help me to live in the freedom of my “new self” in all of these areas that I have listed. Please help me to cast off all of my earthly ways and focus on the true tasks at hand, not these distractions. Thank you for showing me the areas that need attention and thank you for forgiving me and giving me grace so that I can move on. I love you, Lord, and its in Jesus’ name that I pray. Amen.

I just started Cynthia Heald’s book “Becoming a Woman of Freedom” and part of it asks you to journal out your thoughts to answers at the end of each chapter, so I think I’m going to blog them. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this study!

Questions for today:
In what areas do you long to be free?
How would your life be different if you were able to experience God’s freedom in these areas?

Hebrews 12:1 – “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us”

In my life, I have truly come to the point where I want to experience full freedom in my fears and insecurities. I often let a fear that something bad will happen drown out the possibilities for good things. I am not doing a good job of trusting in God that He will take care of me, and I also don’t trust that I’ll be able to survive if I experience something terrible. I long to have a full trust in God. (As I type this, I fear that He’ll make something terrible happen to me so that I learn to trust Him and myself through the bad times)

I also want freedom from my selfish desires. I know that everyone tells me that I am a very giving, compassionate, selfless person, but I really feel like I choose myself over others SO MANY times during each day. I feel like my selfishness is intertwined with laziness, because I am often choosing to NOT do something just because I don’t feel like it, and as a result I am acting both lazy and selfish.

If I were able to experience God’s freedom in these areas, then I think I’d be free to focus on God’s purpose for my life and I could move ahead in my life without caution or mistrust in where God is leading me. I’d be able to live each day to the fullest and enjoy every breath of life. I wouldn’t have to deal with the anxiety, because I could give it to God. I could be a better wife and mother because I’d be more positive and uplifting.

I’d be able to feel the sense of accomplishment of knowing that I am willing to do anything that God wants me to do, even if its not glamorous or fun. Every spiritual gift profile that I’ve ever taken says that I have wisdom, knowledge, and great leadership skills, but it also rates “service” and “giving” at the very bottom. At this point, its honestly still hard for me to even desire to give and serve. My natural tendency is to want to learn all that I can and then lead others. Even though I know that Jesus was a great servant-leader, my first goal when I get involved with something is to find a way to take over and make it better. I want to be able to use my natural leadership skills, but I also want to be able to be used in selfless service when its needed. (I get a knot in my stomach just thinking that God is going to make me do this, LOL)

I also want to be a better listener, and that also is strongly influenced by my desire to always lead. I currently want to lead conversations, be the center of attention, and always stand out. I want that to change so that I can be a better friend, wife, and mother.

Hmmm, At this point, I can honestly say that I don’t know if I even deeply *want* these things, but I “want to want” to be more like God calls me to be, even though it goes against every fiber in me :silly

I LOVE my new haircut! Its super cute!!!

When I got to the salon, I went back for my appointment and the stylist said “What do you want to do with your color today?” and I told her that I was just there for a cut, but apparently she doesn’t do cuts, only color, and I had no cut appointment! She ran to the front and set up a cut appointment, but I decided to go ahead and have her color it while I was already there. I told her to put in a couple of shades of lowlights to get rid of the rest of the blue and the blonde that I had. She did a WONDERFUL job!

Then I went to another stylist for my cut and it is exactly what I wanted! Its layered like it was in the other picture, but she also took her regular sheers and texturized big pieces out so it lays nice and flat now. It moves really nicely too. I’m very pleased!

On to less superficial and vain topics:
This morning I found out that the skin that they had tested on my mom came back as cancerous. I can’t believe that both my mother-in-law and my mom have been diagnosed with cancer in just a few weeks. (sigh) Its not like I really expect my life to be perfect and without trials and pain, but I still wasn’t totally planning for this. I can say that I really feel like Kelly’s sermons this past year on Joseph’s life have really prepared me to handle it much better than I normally would have. I think that his series really helped me fix some false impressions that I had, like the expectation that God is going to save us from all pain and difficult times. The study on Joseph’s life really opened my eyes to the fact that God doesn’t promise us an easy life, just that He’ll be there for us as we go through the bad times and that He’ll use those times to make us better people. The funny thing is that the entire series I kept thinking “I hope that this isn’t just warning me that hard times are ahead!”, Oh well, at least I feel a little more prepared.

The other “good” news is that my mom’s cancer came back “mild” which means that they’ll probably just cut off the pieces that may be cancerous, rather than having to do chemo or anything like that. If it had been diagnosed as “moderate” or “severe” then she’d have to undergo chemo. The only questionable part on the report is that they said that it was “focally involving” the skin around it, so they may not have gotten it all out during this last surgery. Apparently her doctor called 5 different dermatologists and none of them could agree on what the “focally involving” part meant, so they’re going to have to figure out what to do now.

My house is super clean right now. Its so nice. I love a clean house. It makes me so much more relaxed! I mean, its not like my house is ever nasty or anything, but when everything is all sparkly and wiped off, it makes such a huge difference.

Well, I think I’m either going to go read some more of Dr. Laura’s book or else watch some reality tv on my TiVo. I need to do something mindless…

I didn’t get to post last night, so I’m going to write it now and then hopefully post later to give an update on today In about an hour I’ll be getting my haircut, so maybe I’ll have a new pic to add!

Yesterday was really great. I took the kids to the library and then we went to the park. At the park I met one of our neighbors (just a few houses down) who has a son who is only a few months older than Matt. Her son’s birthday is very close to when our first baby would’ve been born, so it made me have some weird feelings at first when she said his birthday. All that I could think was that that’s how old our baby would’ve been, which is a strange thought. Of course, I’m very happy to have Matt and I know that he’s the perfect kid for us, and I wasn’t feeling regrets or anything, it was more like I hadn’t’ thought about how old the baby would’ve been now, so I had a flash of all of the things that we would’ve already gone through if that baby had been born. I hope that makes sense…

While at the library, I had put on hold a few books, one of which was Dr. Laura’s “Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands”. I decided to check it out since I had heard pretty good things about it on GCM. I decided to try to put what I had learned in the first chapter in to practice, so when Joe came downstairs from working at around 5:30 (which alone could’ve caused nagging in the past since he technically gets off at 3 if he starts at 7), I gave him a kiss hello, didn’t complain, and basically just treated him how I wanted to be treated. I know its hard to believe (note the sarcasm in that previous phrase), but we had a really great evening, and I know its because I started it off on the right foot. He apologized for working late, and I said that its OK because he takes off early for us sometimes too, and he looked shocked that I was so understanding. After dinner we gave the kids a bath and then all played upstairs together, wrestling on the floor and playing games, and it was just so nice. I need to act that way on a more permanent basis.

Well, I need to get ready to head off to the salon! I have an appointment with a great stylist (judging from the people I’ve seen that she’s cut), but its not for another 5 weeks, so I decided to make this appointment today at Toni and Guy, just to get a trim. I can’t believe that I haven’t had my haircut since last July or August! Its so much longer now! All of this motivation was caused by finding this picture

from right after it was cut, and I realized that my shortest layer there (the one by my eyes) is now down to my shoulders, so I think I’m pretty overdue for a trim. I’ve been keeping an eye out for split ends and making sure that it still styled well, which it has, but this picture just reminded me that I look best with that shorter layer, so I’m going to take the pic to the stylist at Toni and Guy and hopefully get it trimmed enough to hold me another 5 weeks before I get to go to the really great stylist.

OK, wish me luck!

Today was just one of those days that I couldn’t wait for it to be over!

It seems as though Matt is either getting sick or just going through a generally grumpy period because my normally angelic little guy was just testing every limit that he could today! It was all stupid stuff too, like standing on the couch or pulling down my mop in the pantry. Grrrrr. It would figure that I’d have a day like this just one day after I wrote that I have seemingly unending patience with my kids, haha! It was so bad that Joe even mentioned the *s* word, SPANKING. Poor Matt was so exhausted by the end of the day (which only further confirms my theory that he may be feeling under the weather) that when Joe threatened to make him go to bed for acting out, Matt asked if he could please go to bed. Poor guy!

In happy news, we had a virtually accident-free day on the potty training front, and that is akin to hearing that I won the lottery, LOL. I’m so glad that he’s finally making that transition. I was afraid that Juli would be potty trained before he was.

Other than that, today was pretty much just a typical stay-at-home-mom kind of day. I sang “poopoo in the potty” songs, cleaned up some puke, grocery shopped, and got lots of kisses and hugs. So I guess that all in all, it was a good day

Now I’m just praying that Matt will sleep off whatever the funk is that he was in today so that my chipper son will come back and the troublemaker in him will be gone

Wow, its been a really long time since I wrote… I thought about writing in my paper journal tonight, but I thought that it’d be nice to update my blog instead.

Basically the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of revelations, although I still haven’t really sorted them all out. I’m reading a book right now called “When Life is Changed Forever by the Death of Someone Near”, and in there the author talks about how we can change our minds based on logic in a split-second, but it sometimes takes a while for our emotions to catch up, and I think that’s where I am. He talks about how you can get spooked by a tree rustling in the middle of the night, and although you can logically know that its OK, it can still take time to calm down. I can really relate…

When my family came to visit over Christmas, I was able to have some really great talks with my mom and with Joe about my seemingly recently-surfaced issues of being over-controlling, easily angered, unable to forgive, etc, etc. I had been trying to kind of push my way through all of them with brute force rather than searching for the cause, and when I took the time to get some feedback and really examine my emotions, it hurt as though I had ran into a brick wall.

When I asked my mom what my personality was like when I was little, she said that I was very organized, very considerate and sensitive, and generally happy-go-lucky. She said that I followed instruction and was very respectful to authority, although I was also pretty shy. I asked what my negative traits were, and she said that all that she could think of was that I was a perfectionist and sometimes hard on myself, but I was still kind to others and very patient.

Once she said all of that, I started thinking, “OK, so why don’t I act that way anymore?” I had kind of explained away my recent issues by saying that its “just the way I am”, but the truth is that I wasn’t that way before, so that excuse wasn’t very valid. I’ve noticed that in recent years, I’ve become very critical of other people, even if I never vocalize it, and I easily become frustrated and feel like my patience is very low, with the exception of dealing with my kids, because for some reason I generally have a lot of patience with them and don’t lose my cool.

So I asked when she saw a change in me, and she said that she noticed that after Nick was killed, I started fighting with my dad and having more problems with fear. Later that night I asked Joe what he thought, and he said that he had seen the same thing happen when Nick died and that after we lost our baby that he noticed that I became even more fearful and that he had heard me make comments that made him uncomfortable about my trust for God and the afterlife.

All of the sudden I started bawling as I realized that when Nick died and when we lost our baby, I lost some of my faith in God. I was/am so pissed off that Nick died a horrible death with no justice that I subconsciously decided that God wasn’t doing things the way that I wanted and so I needed to take over. My feelings only got stronger after the baby died, and I know that 9/11 didn’t help much either. I became fearful in situations that never bothered me, and as I sat there in bed crying and talking to Joe, I had a flood of memories from before Nick’s death, when I wasn’t fearful at all, and contrasting thoughts of after Nick and the baby died and how I was freaked out and uncontrollably upset from the same thing. The first thing that came to mind was with driving because I remember riding in Joe’s car before we were dating and he almost hit the car in front of us. At the time, I wasn’t worried about my life or my safety, even though I had been in a terrible accident less than a year earlier. Instead I thought “Who cares? Its not my car.” I can’t even IMAGINE thinking that now. In recent years, no matter who is driving, even my dad, I put my foot on the dash, grab the handle, totally freak out and fear that I’m going to die. This all happened after I (obviously wrongly) decided that I couldn’t trust God anymore to take care of me.

Before Nick died, I hadn’t experienced death that seemed unfair. Sure, I had seen older relatives die, but that’s expected, and I wasn’t really close to any of them. I had very mistakingly decided that I was “blessed” by God (which I am, but I thought of it in a genie-in-a-bottle way) and therefore He would protect me and those around me from the sting of early death. The fact is that God never promised me that, and just a quick glance at the Bible shows dozens of stories that contradict my thoughts, yet somehow I really thought that I was immune to that kind of pain. I felt let down by God, but I was so in denial that I hadn’t even realized it….

Anyways, so now I’m working through all of these new feelings and trying to learn to trust God in a way that is more accurate to the nature of God. The things that I expected from God and the thoughts that led me to feel betrayed were not true of God’s nature in the first place, so I need to relearn about Him and love Him for who He truly is, not for the god (little “g”) that I had made in my head that was more of a god of my own design.

I know that He is guiding me through all of this and I feel like such an idiot for thinking that everything was hunky-dory in my life when I had this huge elephant of an issue that I was completely ignoring. I’ve thought that my quiet times and life were going great and that my short fuse and fear were just something random that came from growing older, and now I see that I was totally in the wrong and that I need a serious attitude adjustment…