SAT Reflections

I just returned from a 5 day trip to Virginia Beach to work with a group of fantastic people on a Student Action Team.  For those of you who don't know, a Student Action Team (SAT) is where we pull in teenagers from all over the United States to campaign  in political races on behalf of conservative, pro-life, pro-family candidates. They are one of my favorite things to do.  Not so much because I like the campaigning but because of the people.  I loved the students and parents we had on our team this year, but today I want to focus on the group of people who led the team that I was on!  Each of them was an incredible blessing to work with and as usually happens when an SAT is over I feel sad that it's over so soon. I love it when God puts you in a place where you can learn from serving with others.  Student Action Teams are one of these places.  They are an incredibly high pressure situation. The average leader probably gets 5 hours of sleep each night and even less the last night of the trip.  There is  little time to be by yourself (for those introverts that thrive on that time) and recharge. You don't get the healthiest food (campaign food typically involves a lot of pizza and soda), you see people and interact with them from the time you get up until the time you go to sleep.  You have to become a navigator, driver, or both.  You have to keep your spirits up so that you can encourage the kids that what they are doing is making a difference.  You become the biggest cheerleader of the kids that you are in charge of.  In such a situation it would be so easy to start snapping at the other leaders and the kids that you're leading.  However, that didn't happen.  Each leader displayed an amazing amount of maturity and wisdom.  They were servant leaders who led by example when they felt like collapsing from exhaustion.  A theme that kind of became our default this week was "Hold Fast" so we decided to remind ourselves by using sharpies on our hands.  At the end of the day we didn't win every election that we needed to.  But in the bigger picture I felt like we did Hold Fast. We came through having built relationships that have God as the foundation. Relationships like that are the best!

Sharpie artwork to keep us going. I may or may not have been a little obsessive about this.

The fact that 11 people under the age of 25 were able to keep a team of 80 people fed, transported and alive wasn't due to any super power or skills.  God was the enabler of all the good that happened this week.  What happened brings 1 Timothy 4:12 alive: "Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity." Those of us who lead are young, very young.  We as leaders have very little life experience, but God can still use us to accomplish many things!  A very exciting thought. Thank you to each of you who let us be your leader and a part of your life for 5 short days!

Our group minus one on the last day. 

Happy Mother's Day

I need to quit saying that I am going to be more regular in writing and just be happy posting when my strokes of writing genius strike (which many of you may have noticed is not very often.)

I'd like to take this post to thank a person who has been instrumental in shaping me to be the person I am today.  The person who carried me around inside of her for almost 10 months and then spent over twenty-four hours bringing me into this world.  My mom and my best friend. I am so thankful that God has blessed me and my mom with such an incredible relationship. As I was growing up my mom was never to busy to take the time to talk to me and listen to what I had to say.  She never let me get in her way even if that meant letting me follow her around when I was a tiny tot and "help" her while she was cleaning.  My mom made the decision to educate me at home and spent so much time investing time in doing so.  But she taught me more than my Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.  She taught me my need of a Savior and what it meant to love God with all of my heart and mind and soul.  She taught me that we are not on this earth just living for the here and now, rather we are living for eternity.  When I was very ill for several years she spent hours upon countless hours researching and taking me to different doctor's to figure out what was going on with me and what the best treatments were.  Over the years I also saw my mom grow so much.  It was such a great thing for me to see that.  To see her freely admit her mistakes and see her grow in faith was and is such a testimony to me.  When I felt that God was calling me to move across the country and do something that had never been on the radar my mom was such an encouragement to me.  She didn't want to see me go, but she let me know that if I felt God was calling me she would support me.  She has done a fantabulous job of that.  Any time I need to call her and just chat she is there.  When I get on a 5 mile bridge and start hyper-ventilating she is the person I call to get me over the bridge.  When I crack my knee she is the person I want to get advice from.  When a light goes on in my car that I am unsure of I text her to find out "what the light in your car is that looks like Aladdin's lantern with a drip coming out of it?'  Needless to say, in the months since I've left home I've learned that you never outgrow your need for your mom.

Thank you mom for making the hard choices and investing so much into my life!  Happy Mother's Day.

"I'll love you forever,

I'll like you for always,

As long as I'm living

my mommy you'll be."

It's Spring..Or is it?

Wednesday marked the first day of Spring.  As far as I can tell, the memo that was supposed to be delivered to Mr. Winter letting him know that he could take a nice long rest has been delayed in delivery.  I think we need to hire a new delivery service next year.  I usually love Winter, but it has seemed to drag on for so long this year.  It has played a lot of games.  It will be sunny, beautiful, and warm on one day, and then the next there is snow and wind.  Needless to say it has left me slightly in doubt of the existence of anything besides Winter.  Today I took a road trip into Maryland and was assured that Spring is indeed trying come.  I can't tell you the indescribable happiness I felt in seeing new lambs, calves, patches of blooming daffodils, and the beginnings of what look like buds starting on trees!   Here's to hoping that the memory of seeing these beautiful things will help me make it through the 3-6 inches of snow that is being forecasted for tomorrow evening and Monday.

Childhood Dreams and Letting Go

Since we are so close to another weekend I thought that I should share two noteworthy happenings of my past weekend.  One of them was a childhood dream come true (well, sort of, but more on that later.)  The other was something that I had hoped wouldn't happen for a long time to come, my realist side would always tell me that it would happen, but hey, you can always hope right?  Let's start with the sort-of-fulfilled-childhood-dream.

When I was young I loved to read (still do, but in a different way).  I loved all of the different worlds I could enter.  I would come away from many books wanting to bring a certain part of that book to my world and experience for myself what the characters of the book had experienced.  Somehow I would get a picture in my mind that these things were "romantic," not in the lovey-dovey definition of the word, but more in a rosy, vintage way.  Two things that really stick out to me that I really wanted to do for the longest time were apple-picking and ice-skating.  I've tried to remember what books I could have read that would put the ideas that these things were "romantic".  I can't.  But, somehow, somewhere, the idea entered my mind.  This Fall I was able to go apple-picking and therefore fulfill one childhood dream.  It wasn't "romantic," "rosy", or "vintagey," but it was a lot of fun!  So as you've probably picked up on, this left me with the childhood dream of ice-skating to fulfill sometime in the future.  Well, on Saturday I went ice-skating....Sort of....If you can call what I did ice-skating.  My analogy loving mind is trying to come up with some sort of a mental picture for you...But I am not having much success.  The closest I can get is to tell you to imagine the clumsiest person you can, then imagine that person blindfolded and very, very tipsy....On skates.....On ice.  I had known that I wouldn't be a good ice skater.  I didn't know how bad that meant I'd be. I fell.  A lot.  If that ice-skating rink would have been a pond or a lake with a weak spot a lot of people would have been drowned.  Some of my very kind and patient friends attempted to help me stay standing but it just wasn't working.  After a while of falling every 5 (or at least what seemed like 5) steps I decided to sit out and watch for awhile.  Note: if you have to sit out of ice-skating and you are watching the people on the ice DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, set your focus on the 5 year old little girl out there who is an amazing skater.  It could quite possibly shatter your confidence.  Anyways, after watching for awhile I decided that I should get back out there and try again.  Thanks to one very special friend who put up with my incredible slowness, I made it around the rink three times without falling.  I think I found out that I can't talk and skate at the same time (one of the only things I've ever found that I can't talk and do at the same time.)  I also discovered that ice-skating is a lot like life.  You fall down, you get up, you fall down, you get up, and you get the picture.  So, I now have another childhood dream fulfilled, and another career crossed off of my dwindling list.  But I would totally do it again!

The sad thing that happened on Saturday was that I lost my sunglasses.  I got them when I moved here in September, and I loved them.  They were the pair of sunglasses I swore I'd never have because they were big.  I went through a time period in my life where I didn't like big sunglasses.  Matter of fact I despised them.  But then that all changed.  I decided that the next pair of sunglasses I purchased would be big.  And they were.  And I loved them.  They actually lived longer than most of my sunglasses typically do.  Usually I get a pair and lose them in about a month.  But not these ones, that was how I knew they were special.  They didn't get lost when I went flew to CO in Nov, they didn't get lost in all of the vehicle changing I did while in CO, they didn't get lost on the way back, they didn't get lost on the way to and from OK in Dec, and they didn't break or get lost when I fell with them on the ice.  But I go to the grocery store, take them off to try on some reading glasses and leave them in the basket when I leave the store.  By the time I got to my car, realized that I had left them, and got back to check the basket they were gone.  I was crushed.  I feel like I let them down.  I have finally come to grips with the fact that they are gone and I have to let them go.  But it's not easy.  And the thought of buying a new pair crushes my soul...Like a grape (for all you Tangled lovers out there;)

I'm still alive

Dear Readers,

This post is to prove to you that I am still alive, I didn't fall off of the face of the earth, I wasn't kidnapped, I didn't get lost and/or stranded on a deserted/no technology available island, I didn't.....Well, you get the point!  I am still here, and I apologize for the lack of posts.  The biggest reason for a bare blog is a terrible lack of my ability to convert the many tumbling, swirling thoughts in my head to something understandable in written form (most of the time the thoughts aren't terribly understandable in my head either, so don't worry, you're not missing out on much.)  This post will be an attempt to catch you up on what has happened in my life since September 2012.

In September I moved 1,200 miles away from my home in Oklahoma to Virginia for a job with Home School Legal Defense Association.  That was a big move, but one I felt that God led me to.  There have been many adjustments to get used to, but the biggest one has been being away from my family.  Going from being the oldest of 7 kids to being on your own is quite the change.  A very quiet one at that!  Thankfully God has provided me with a living situation that has been an incredible blessing.  And I LOVE my job.  I am a receptionist so that means I get to answer phones and talk to people which is one of my favorite things in the world to do!!  The people I work with are amazing and it's been a blessing working with them.

In October I started feeling like I was getting a lot more settled into my job.  During that month I had the incredible privilege of helping the Generation Joshua office prepare for the Student Action Teams that would be deployed at the beginning of November.  Lots of work, but I loved it!

In November I headed to Denver, CO to help lead a Student Action Team.  If you imagined me with about 4 hours of sleep every night, adjusting to the altitude, not eating very much, and drinking lots of coffee and earl grey tea, you'd have a slight picture of that week!  All of those factors combined create a person who runs around in a lot of circles like a chicken with it's head cut off, forgets some very important facts, and doesn't handle stress as well as she normally does.  But despite the high stress of the week, God used it in some amazing ways in my life.  I met some of the most incredible people! I was blessed to have a mom on my team who was such a joy to work with and get to know. Also, my family got to come and help out that week and I was so happy to see them and spend a couple of extra days after the team ended with them in Colorado Springs touring Adventures in Odyssey and seeing some dear friends!  A little later that month I celebrated Thanksgiving with some new friends.

In December I got to see Handel's Messiah in the Washington Cathedral.  That was one of the best things I've ever done!  The only downside was losing my camera somewhere while I was there. ( Note: Do not carry the flash drive storing your pictures in the case with your camera.)  In the middle of the month I was Oklahoma and family bound!  After some slight travel delays, I made it safe and sound.  It's an amazing thing how you can be gone from home for almost 4 months, come back, and feel like you are picking up where you left off.  I got to spend a little over two weeks at home and we had a blast.  Sleepovers and singing hymns and Christmas carol in the living room, in front of the fireplace with my two youngest siblings, seeing Rise of the Guardians with my sibs, Les Mis with my mom, Dutch Blitz, Apples to Apples, Spiced Cider, Coffee, Christmas Cookies, Christmas Lights, hugs and kisses, and late night talks were some of the best parts of being home.  Did I mention how happy it can make you feel to hear your 9 year old brother tell you after the completion of singing a hymn at bedtime "Tatum, I love it when we harmonize."  Best.thing.ever!  Someday he'll know what real harmonizing sounds like, and he'll know Tatum fails miserably in that area, but for now we'll let him think that we harmonize together :)  The worst part of going home was leaving again.  Going to the airport and leaving behind 5 crying siblings and your mom isn't an easy thing to do.  But, knowing how you are loved is priceless.

I can't think of anything very noteworthy besides work in January.  And we are only 8 days (already) into February so I won't comment on it yet!

So there is a very short summary of my life over the past 5 months.  I am excited to see what adventures God has in store for me over the next months!  One of my goals is to write here more.  But I need help.  I'd love a list of suggested posts or reader questions to start with.  I do much better at that than just coming up with a subject off of the top of my head (as you my have noticed.)  So shoot me your ideas and comments and I'll do my best.

Living Hope

The sermon at church this Sunday was taken from 1 Peter 1.  It was such a good reminder to me and I thought I'd share a little of what hit me the most.  


1 Peter 1 :3-5
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

These verses are so amazing if you take the time to just think about them for a little while!  God in His great mercy sent His only Son to die so that we could live with Him in Heaven some day and experience the wonders of being in His presence continually.  Just the thought of being in Heaven with Christ  for all eternity is absolutely mind-blowing.  I somehow think that if I kept my mind more on the expectation of what is to come, this life wouldn't seem nearly so weighty at times.  

The preacher used the example of a person who has an extremely hard time with money, he lives paycheck to paycheck and sometimes don't even make it to the next paycheck.  Bills pile up and life seems quite bleak.  But let's just say this person knows that when his dear, rich, relation dies he's going to inherit 50 million dollars.  His present money troubles don't seem quite so bad.  He knows that things will get better eventually.  He won't always be in the straits that he is in now.  When he gets the 50 million dollars he won't even really remember the money troubles that he had.

In a way, that is a picture of Heaven, only Heaven will be 50 million times better than 50 million dollars.  It is so hard for our human minds to grasp the thought of something better than our best laid out, planned life.  We spend so many futile years planning what we think is the "perfect" life and just hope that our dreams will come true. Sometimes the dreams do all come true and we wonder why we still feel an emptiness. 

But, if we are believers we have the hope of Heaven that makes the emptiness so different. Which, to me, is why these verses make so much more sense.

1 Peter 1:6-9
"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,  that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,  receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls."

2 Corinthians 4:17-18
" For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

The troubles of life seem so much clearer when you can look at them with this perspective.   If we can remember in the middle of our trials that they are "for a little while," that they are testing the "genuineness of our faith."  And if we can "rejoice with joy inexpressible," the end of our faith will be the final salvation of our souls!!  

That is so mind-blowing!  While it doesn't automatically fix every problem in the here and now, or answer every question I may have, it does give me the hope that Christ can give me "Strength for today" and that there is a "Bright hope for tomorrow"!!!

Camp Reflections

Over the last week I had the amazing privilege of being a counselor at Generation Joshua's iGovern East.  There aren't enough words to describe how amazing this week was.  One of the things I have always appreciated the most about Generation Joshua is the focus that is put on God.  Anyone can have a teen camp.  It takes an extra amount of God's grace to pull off a teen camp that teaches kids how they can be involved in government while still modelling to them the importance of staying focused on God.  Sometimes (most of the time) showing a group of homeschooled kids how to lay down their pride and how to excercise humility is an extremely hard task.  Having 140 different teenage personalities together in one camp is like......Well I can't even think of something that it is similar to.  Let's just say it is very interesting!!  One of my favorite things to see is the changes that take place in lives when you start showing these different personalities the biblical reason for not being prideful, showing humility, and most importantly modeling the love of Christ in a way that makes people wonder what you have and where they can get it.  In politics that is an extremely hard thing to do.  Honesty, integrity, and honor aren't looked upon in a favorable light many times.  Being set apart from the world for Christ's glory is misunderstood by many.  Teaching the kids how to be all of those things without being offensive is hard.  Most of the time you are operating on about 5 hours or less of sleep.  In order to teach the kids the things that I have mentioned, you must model each of those things.  Modeling Godly attitudes and behaviors on little sleep is a challenge.  The only way you are able to do it is with God's help. I pray that the experience these kids had and that with the lessons they learned they will be able " to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

I am going to switch gears from campers now to the staff that I was blessed to work with.  They were INCREDIBLE!!  It is amazing to me how you can pull 20 people together, many of whom don't know each other that well and walk away at the end of the week feeling like you lost your best friend.  It is a powerful testimony of what the power of the Gospel can do and how it can draw people together.  Each and every single one of the people I worked with this week impacted my life in some way or another.  I love the way that I am challenged to grow and think by these people.  If you are reading this post and you worked with me in the past week, I thank you from the bottom of my heart!!