Okay so here I am again posting within one week of my last post. Amazing! Well, I wanted to post the pictures of my kiddos that I have right now - and I figured out how to do it!!! If you look up in the left corner of this screen you will see the link for "photos". Once on that page you just click on the one picture that is on there and you can see my three beautiful children!!! This picture is a year and a half old now so it exactly a recent picture but it is better than nothing! I am mainly posting it so that my old high school buddy can see it from Germany!!! Hi Connie!!! I have some newer pictures on my home computer but that one isn't connected to the Internet so I need to copy those pictures on a cd and bring it to a computer that is linked to the Internet. I will hopefully get that done this week so that there are more recent pictures of my family up.
The book that I am reading now is really fantastic...Here is a great quote:
"When you learn to ride a bike, you don't just learn that you ought to ride it; you actually attempt to ride it and then you do ride it. Belief works the same way."
For some reason that analogy really touched my heart. My hearts cry is to draw closer to God's heart - to hear His voice - to really believe. So I try, and try but I think I have been missing the point. Believing isn't something you try to do - you just have to jump of the cliff and DO it. The difference is small but definitely there. When you try to ride a bike you don't just look at and think real hard about how to do it - you got on it and ride, and when you fall you just brush yourself off and do it again.
Ted Dekker is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. It has been so difficult for me to find a Christian author who writes as well as most secular authors. I love good literature and in a Christian author I don't want a watered down "spiritualized" version of secular writers, I want true creative, well-written, Christian fiction. I don't have any problems reading non-Christian writers because any truth that I find is God's truth (All truth is God's truth!). But it is nice now and again to read something that is blatantly Christian. Ted Dekker fits the bill beautifully! I love the Harry Potter series - the messages in those books are messages that I want my kids to know: i.e. there is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend; doing the right thing is usually the harder path but it is worth taking; all kinds of good lessons. My mom and I did a class on the Harry Potter series at church - talking about why it is good literature. There are so many stupid rumors out there in the Christian community about the series and I think it is really unfortunate because it makes us Christians look like idiots!!! Do you know that some Christians who condemn the series haven't even read the books??? Sometimes I have to wonder if some of us lost our ability to think when we gave our lives to God. I know this is a sensitive issue for so many people because of the "witch-craft" aspect of the books, but I don't understand why that is a problem because the Lord of the Rings books have as much wizardry as the Harry Potter books, but for some reason Christians don't have a problem with Tolkien. Talk about double standards! I could probably go on for pages and pages about this subject but I won't. I will say that the Potter series has provided me opportunity after opportunity to talk to my non-believing friends about the Lord. For the first time in my life I have quite a few friends who don't know the Lord and it is very exciting because I get to minister to them in so many different ways and touch their lives just by being who I am.
I got a little miracle on Thursday. My mom forwarded me my paycheck so I went to the bank to deposit it and I ended up talking to a bank person who decided they would refund the bounced check fee for me because my account is in such good standing. So, the miracle is that I got that money back and my budget is back on track. Plus, Jesse made some extra money that will tide us over till we get paid. God is so faithful! I knew something would happen to make it all work out, but I hadn't expected something that quickly.
Jessica's birthday is quickly approaching and I am pretty excited about that. We are doing something totally different this year by going to Chuck E. Cheese. Usually we just have a big family picnic but Jessica really wanted something different and it is within our means to make that happen. She invited three friends from school and I am really hoping that they can come. My friend is making her a cat birthday cake and I think we are getting her a little gift from Walmart that is like a little Polly Pocket, only it is Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
Only a few weeks until school starts again. I am a little nervous about being class president on top of all the academic work. It is going to be a very big class-load this semester with a quite a few days of clinicals thrown in for good measure. The challenge will be balancing school, working out, and family. I have committed to going to a "bible-study" with my girlfriend from church. To be honest I don't think it is a bible study as much as it is two people meeting together to keep each other sharp and accountable. It should be interesting because she thinks I am too "grace-minded". She has as much Biblical knowledge as I do and so we are well matched in that area, it is our perspectives that are so vastly different. I am looking forward to a lot of great discussion in the coming months. I am going to really focus too on going on a date at least once a month with Jesse - our marriage is too important to me to let it get pushed to the side. I know that nursing school is what God wants me to be doing right now, but I won't let my marriage or my kids suffer because of the demands that nursing school requires. I am asking my friends to pray that God shows me the balance I need for the next 8 months.
Well, this was a much longer posting than I thought it would be - that is the beauty of these blog thingys; you can just go wherever your head and heart take you. Well, I will try to post some newer pictures in the next few days if I get the time... | 
