Houston bound!

I sure am looking forward to this upcoming weekend. Friday morning a friend and I will be meeting up to drive to Houston together for Beth Moore's 2016 SSMT Celebration.

A lady in my Bible study two summers ago talked about Beth's Scripture memory challenge to memorize two verses a month for a year and then attend a celebration at her church the following year.

I thought it sounded great, so I decided to give it a try. What a lifeline those verses became to me through quite a challenging year. I am now headed to Houston to celebrate with my new friend, Jan, the same lady that showed up in that Bible study two summers ago. I can hardly wait!

Here's my ticket to get in: my collection of verses from 2015. 

A new Scripture memory challenge will begin again next January for the year of 2017. My new challenge for the current year is to continue learning verses while applying art to them. I bought myself one of those new adult coloring books that has a verse on each page. I love it! Adding art back into my life has really helped me to slow down, unplug, to relax and refocus. I highly encourage it.

I'm thinking maybe some of the pages I color will need a frame to go up in my prayer corner, aka war room. :)

Stay tuned for pics  and for my reaction to my weekend in Houston.

Names of God

My last story on the names of God, Jehovah Tsebaioth, came out yesterday. (A new one I had not shared with any one yet.)

https://communitymoms.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/jehovah-tsebaioth-the-lord-of-hosts-commander-of-the-lords-army-by-rachelle-alspaugh/

I hope these stories have encouraged your heart and challenged you to hold on to God's promises even in the midst of trials. I learned personally that we cannot know God by many of His names without struggling through trials because they give Him the perfect backdrop to show up.

He is there in every one of them, though. He is our treasure in the darkness.

I will continue writing short stories and blog entries for this blog on a weekly basis and for the Me Too Moments for Moms blog on a monthly basis at least until I get word from ABH Books that my next book, Painful Waiting,  is coming out.

After that, I will see where God directs my writing. 

(The family pic on this is actually different from the final cover because that is a picture of us on the day we met Julian for the first time. But I don't have a current cover photo since we changed the pic.)

Thank you for faithfully reading. Please feel free to share any of my stories with someone who needs to hear them. Rather than focusing extra time and energy that I don't always have for self-marketing, my new daily prayer is that God will use something I've written to touch at least one person's heart each day and draw them closer to Him, whether it be through a book sale, a blog entry, a Facebook share, or word of mouth.

Also, check out all the great stories and entries on the Me Too Moments for Moms blog. Lots of great parenting and spiritual insight.

Me Too Moments for Moms

Jehovah Shalom

Here is story # 8, Jehovah Shalom, Our Perfecr Peace. May it be an encouragement to you as you embark upon this new year.

https://communitymoms.wordpress.com/2016/01/02/jehovah-shalom-our-perfect-peace-by-rachelle-alspaugh/

A different approach

I'm going to break my tradition on my blog today in an effort to stick with my new "less is more" focus.

I am not making resolutions or setting a bunch of goals. Last year I wrote that I wanted to budget more effectively so I wasn't caught off guard as much by all the boys' expenses, and I wanted to give more. Then four months into the year, Mike lost his job and stayed unemployed for nearly five months. Instead of giving more, God put us in a position to receive more from Him than we ever imagined. Instead of living securely by a carefully planned budget, we had to live week by week, month by month, not knowing where the money might come from to keep up with the expenses of raising two teenage boys.

Not quite the year I had envisioned. It never is, though.

So here is my verse for today, one I hope to claim for the year ahead. It is on a notecard, stapled to the wall in my prayer corner, along with a written prayer underneath.

Psalm 118:24-- This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

Thank you, God, for everything on the calendar today, for the life I am blessed to live, and the people I am blessed to know. 

My motto for this year: take it one day at a time, with a grateful heart. Make each and every day count.

(I guess another way to say it might be, "Stop planning and start living." As we've recently seen with the tornado, you never know what tomorrow might bring.)

Less is more, so much more

I still remember helping my friend with her estate sale earlier this summer, as I watched her sell almost the entire contents of her house. Stuff she'd had for years. She and her husband answered the call to move to Hawaii, so they packed up only the absolute necessities and let the rest of their belongings go.

I remember thinking, "Wow. How freeing that must feel."

To stop holding on to ''stuff". To strive no more for the accumulation of more "stuff". To embrace only the necessities and let go of the rest. Honestly, all that "junk" just gets in the way of living an abundant life, anyway.

I know as a teacher, it's so true. Less is more. So much more. When I taught second grade, I had a classroom filled to the brim with extra supplies, manipulatives, books, files, etc. When I moved into my Pre-K classroom, I was so overwhelmed with "junk" that I started throwing it all away. I wanted to start fresh in an empty, clean classroom. After the first year, I threw more away (or gave it to other teachers). The less stuff I had to keep track of, organize, and store, the freer I felt to teach.

I heard someone at the Global Leadership Summit say, "Throw away all your notes at the end of each year, because every new group of students deserves fresh thinking."

Less is more. So much more. And so much better.

The less you have, the more freedom you have to move and live. The less you have, the more you appreciate what's really important in life (people, not things).

Having more doesn't satisfy, anyway. As soon as we get what we want, we're immediately wanting to add more to it.

This Christmas we finally brought our kitchen up to date by replacing old, broken appliances with new matching ones (for which I am very thankful). (I'm the thrifty queen, so I find more satisfaction in a good deal than I do with appearance. It takes me a long time to give in to replacing something that's been long broken or out of date.) I smile when I walk in the kitchen now and see that everything matches and looks nice.

Then yesterday I walked into my friend's kitchen to help her salvage what she could after the tornado destroyed most of her home. At this point, no one cared if her appliances matched or not. No one cared if she had nice furniture still standing. No one cared if the clothes in her closet were fancy or a certain name brand. All that mattered was that they all made it safely into her tiny bathroom before the storm tore the roof completely off the house. All that matters now is salvaging the necessities and a few memories.

When I walked up to her, the first words out of her mouth after she hugged me were, "It's all just stuff."

I will never forget the opportunity I had to visit a family in Montevideo, Uruguay back in 1997. They lived in the tiniest apartment and possessed very few belongings. Yet they gave of the little they had to feed three extra guests and host us for the evening. I remember the light in their eyes and the warmth that I felt in that home, and I remember thinking, "Those are the richest people I have ever met."

Less is more. So much more. The less you have, the more you appreciate what really matters. I hope that truth will stick with me and influence my decisions and my attitude over the coming year.

15 Blessings from the year 2015

In keeping with tradition on my blog, every New Year's Eve I like to look back over the year and count my blessings. This last year was a difficult one with Mike being out of work for so long, but God carried us and never ceased to take care of us and bless us. I feel rather selfish sharing these blessings when so many people in my community have literally lost everything and are now living in temporary shelters as they begin the new year.  Yet God wants us to continually thank Him and praise Him for His goodness to us, so that is my point in this post. I am sure many God-fearing victims of this recent tornado will have their own stories of blessing to share over the next year, as well.

Psalm 107:8-9

Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for me, for He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.

(These are in no particular order of importance.)

1. A spring camping trip catching up with friends we hadn't hung out with in awhile in an RV that held all of us comfortably
   
   
   
   
   
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2. A summer camping trip right on the beach in Galveston, the first time David got to swim in the ocean. 

3. Six Flags season passes that came in handy quite often over a summer when all our vacation plans had to be canceled.

4. A quick trip to St. Louis to visit my parents.

5. A second post adoption tax refund that covered quite a bit of expenses while Mike looked for work. 

6. A friend who unexpectedly gave us a significant amount of cash to cover two weeks of our missed income and another family who gave us a check to cover at least five more weeks of our missing income.

7. Unexpected checks that came in the mail at times when we desperately needed them. 

8. I got to go to the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta with several other teachers from school. 

 9. Teaching a summer Bible study to dig deeper into the prayer of Jabez.

10. A new (used) fridge filled with food from friends who moved away.

11. Our ReEngage group at church for 16 weeks--and all that we learned about how to strengthen our marriage.

12. My book got republished with a better title and cover (and improved writing), along with an advertisement for the sequel!

13. Working with Authenticity Book House.

14. Mike's new job and all the financial blessings that came with it.

15. Spending an unexpected Christmas with my parents again and the chance to celebrate my mom's birthday with her now two years in a row.

What's on the inside

I love Christmas.

I am so thankful for my husband's new job and income so we could participate in giving to our children and our families this year. I love watching my boys think critically over how to spend the little money they had to buy something special for each family member. I love putting up the tree and letting its lights shine in the darkness each night and early each morning. I love baking sweet treats to share with my coworkers and friends. I love the thoughtfulness that happens at this time of the year when we take the focus off of ourselves and think about others.  I love learning about the significance behind each of our Christmas symbols that we use to decorate our homes. I love wrapping gifts and watching the pile of gifts beneath the tree grow over the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, knowing that we are all thinking of ways to bless and surprise each other. I love watching the childlike wonder in my adoptive son's eyes as Christmas drew near. I love how observant he is to each tradition he sees us keeping over the three Christmases we've spent with him so far.

We never go all out on Christmas. We've never done the "Santa" thing, and we don't make wish lists (although we did have to ask Juan David to come up with a verbal list of things he might like under a certain price since the original items he asked for were way out of our budget). We have always kept things simple. Even my wrap jobs are simple. Not real neat. No bows. No cute tags. Just covered in whatever paper I can find. The paper all gets torn off, anyway, and it's what's on the inside that counts, right? That's my philosophy.

And if what's on the inside is filled with thought, consideration, and love, then that's what matters.

Which leads me to consider that to be an overall life perspective, one that God began to challenge me with several years ago.

I can decorate and fill my house with a bunch of fancy stuff, but it doesn't fulfill anyone if my house is not filled with love and consideration for others.

I can spend a fortune of time and money making sure I walk out of the house each day with the best personal appearance possible, but if I don't take time to work on what's on the inside, then I've wasted all that time and money on nothing.

I grew up with an incredible sense of insecurity, always consumed with how I looked on the outside. Did I have the right clothes, the right make-up, the right hairstyle? Did I attract the right people? I spent an obsessive amount of time in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, popping zits, putting on make-up, and fixing my hair.

Then one day I started realizing that I saw people the same whether their hair looked good or not, whether they wore a ton of make-up or not, and whether their clothes were in style or not. If I didn't see them differently based on what I saw on the outside, then I realized that other people probably didn't either. I slowly stopped spending so much time on the outside because it didn't change a bit of who I was on the inside.

Then God challenged me to work on making myself beautiful from the inside out. There's only one way to do that, though. It's to let Christ have all of me and to let Him live through me.  I wrote a whole chapter in my next book about this transformation that took place in my life, but I realized that if I don't seek Christ first thing every day, then my focus gets skewed for the rest of the day. I start to worry about how I look or appear on the outside, and I forget that it's what on the inside that really counts. If Christ is not at the core of my being, people will just see a flawed, sinful, selfish me.

It doesn't matter how pretty we can wrap ourselves up. When the paper gets ripped off, what gift will others see inside? My challenge is to make sure they see Jesus instead of me.

Here are two songs to encourage you in that direction today and into the new year coming.