Learning to Say “Yes”- Whenever, Whatever, Wherever

I’ve been a Christian my whole life, and one thing I am still learning is to say “yes” to God “whenever, whatever, wherever”.  You see, I’m still learning to submit to Him daily.  I hate that regretful feeling I get when I know He wanted me to do something and I just  brushed it off and told God I was too busy.  Dumb!

I recently found out about a boy who grew up in foster care in my area.  He’s a leader, great student and very responsible.  However, this December he will be aging out of his group home.  With no family to speak of, he becomes an instant adult- with no one to fall back on.  Thankfully, my husband’s non-profit has found mentors for him and he has a job and community college all lined up.  The problem is that he will need a used car to get back and forth to work and school.

God spoke directly to my heart Sunday night and told me “500”.  It took me a second and then I realized what “500” stood for… He wants me to raise $500 towards a car for Floyd.  “Darn it, God.”  I thought.  “I don’t have time.”  I think He probably laughed at me.  So I decided to suck it up and obediently gave my “yes” to God… remembering “whenever, whatever, wherever”.

“What can I possibly do to raise the money, God?”  I asked Him this morning.  “Offer to make something,” he told my heart.

So here is what I’m offering to you… up for raffle is one Autumn Blessings photo album (sample pages below and one above).  I will design 10 pages with room for 14 of your pictures.  The winner will email me pictures, and I will custom edit each to look their best.  I will professionally print the pages and bind them with a metal ring and decorate with cute shabby ribbons… or I can email the pages to you to use on your blog.  The choice is yours!

Every dollar you “chip in” is one entry. This raffle will run through October 29th, 2009.  100% of funds raised will go to help Floyd purchase his first used car.  Just click the “Chip In” button on the widget below.

Please don’t feel any pressure to join in.  I am fully trusting God to do His thing in His timing- whatever that may be! 

Below are three sample pages (with pictures of my sister-in-law’s family) that I would be delighted to design for the winner:

My sister-in-law (last fall) eight months pregnant with twins. 

Can you believe how good she looks?  So not fair!

My bro-in-law with my niece and nephew

It would blow my mind to be able to hand Floyd a check and tell him that people from near and far have come to help him.

Encourage one another,

Pineapple Princess

You Rock!

First of all before this post really gets started, I wanted to say thank you  for all the awesome insight and comments on the previous post.  It’s encouraging to me to know there are others out there with a passion like mine to teach our children that character counts!  That’s the truth!

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Ok, now onto business…

Goofy Foot just celebrated his ninth birthday.  We always give our kids the option of a present from mom and dad or a small party with a few friends.  This year he chose to go rock climbing with his best buds from school.  It turned out to be really fun, and I didn’t even have to clean my house (Come on.  Admit you know what I’m talking about).  The boys climbed and climbed for an hour and a half.  As each friend took turns to climb the walls, the others would shout encouraging words to keep the climber             motivated, “You’re almost there!” …  “Just a little further!”

I was pretty impressed with these little guys!  They made it look easy, but it was seriously hard work!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from his party:

I love you, Bud! 

You Rock!

Happy ninth birthday!!!

Things She’s Learning

 

 

Two years and two months is a funny age. She is an amusing mixture- part baby and part little girl. She has just discovered what feeling “pretty” means. I thing that down deep every girl wants to feel pretty one time or another. We’ve just noticed that when she hears daddy coming home, she will run to put something fancy in her hair or put on a nice, clean outfit. She always meets daddy at the door with such enthusiasm. He scoops her up and tells her, “Wow! You look pretty!” She, being two years old, always replies back, “Ya! I priiitty!”

 

As she’s growing up I think the tricky part is going to be to teach her that pretty on the “inside” is even more valuable than pretty on the “outside”. Sometimes it’s hard to live this because our culture and world are all about the outside. As I’m typing this, a verse from Samuel comes to mind… “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

Do you agree or disagree with the importance of that verse? How in the world do we teach this to our girls (boys, too!) when every media outlet tells them the opposite?

Your Photo- My Edit

My wonderful friend, Cheri, recently sent this picture to me of her beautiful little niece, Lauren Grace. I felt so honored to edit a picture for Cheri. I am enamored with her photography style, and I jumped at the chance to collaborate on this project with her.

Here are the basics on how I edited this image…

*Enhanced the natural light of this photo in Lightroom 2.3

*Imported image to Photoshop Elements 7 and desaturated the color

*Coffeeshop’s Powder Room 2 on her eyes

*Used four different textures from the Florabella texture collection

*Flattened image

*Duplicated background layer and made the layer copy “color burn” at 19%

Cheri, it was truly a blessing to work with you. Let’s do it again!!!

Freedom

I heard a great message this weekend, so I thought I’d type it out and save it here.  My hope is that one day when my kids are older they may run across this post and might find it encouraging.

Staying Free Spiritually

To stay free spiritually, we must be watching for the subtle things that can destroy us.

#1:  The blessing of influence can be ruined by the worm of pride.

Don’t fall into the trap where making a great impression is overly prioritized; and where making a Godly impact gets minimized.

#2:  The blessing of romance can be ruined by the worm of lust.

Don’t fall into the trap where quick gratification becomes the high value.

#3:  The blessing of affluence can be ruined by the worm of greed.

Don’t fall into the trap where getting stuff means everything and having stuff means nothing. 

Now what?

Saturate your life with God’s perspective.

It will keep you humble.

It will keep you accountable.

It will keep you on the right path.

It will keep you at the heart of God’s blessing.

 

Deuteronomy 6:5

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

*The picture in this post is from our beach day today and represents “freedom” to me.  Bethany (my friend’s daughter) is 10 years old and loves gymnastics!

Me and my Shadow

I haven’t had a chance to blog in a few days, and I’m having withdrawals! Our best friends took a vacation to Puerto Rico, and we got to keep their kids for a few days. That made six kids at my house… three boys and three girls- Brady Bunch style. Man, I sure could have used Alice’s help! No wonder she lived with them!!

I went outside to take a few pictures of all six kids as they were playing S.O.P. (Spy On Parents), as they call it. They get all decked out in homemade disguises and use walkie-talkies and then they “spy” on us. We pretend we don’t see them. It’s a riot!

Beach Bunny isn’t a very good spy yet, but she is good at being my shadow. I love that she always wants to be with me, AND I find it an exercise in patience sometimes. Tell me, do you have a little shadow that follows you wherever you go?