Joy in the Journey

 My oldest son has been interested in playing basketball. We went through a whirl-wind of a basketball season with my  daughter right after soccer and before Christmas, but we had had a little break so I said I would sign him up. When I found out that it would only require one hour of commitment each Saturday I was thrilled. My son was thrilled that he would get a chance to play against kids his own age (his big sisters are 3 and 5 years older than him, so family basketball games were always a bit discouraging). But it didn’t exactly go as planned… My son has OCD. Often he gets very firm ideas in his head and it is very shocking to him when things don’t go as he has imagined they would. I know we all deal with this on some level, but it’s more challenging for his brain to adapt to quick changes. So when we walked into the big high school gym and he saw the bleachers of people (all the parents and kids from the previous grade that was finishing up their session AND all the pare...

I feel like God has been whispering to me about the topic of fear a lot lately, so that is what I'm going to talk about again this week. Most of you know about my pain journey. If not, you can search "hernias" and "pain" up in this blog's search bar and the various articles I have written about it will pop up. Many kind people have encouraged me by saying I went through those incredibly hard years so bravely, but, me being me, I'm the only one who truly knows how very much I struggled with fear during that time.  Understandably so. It's pretty easy to be fearful when it feels like every single step you take is ripping you apart (it literally was!). The pregnancy I had with my fourth baby was one of the most painful experiences of my life. It's no wonder I was afraid to have another child when insurance was refusing to fix my two open hernias, and then later after the one hernia was botched. That botched surgery occurred when my fourth was only se...

Seekers Chapel  Hey mamas! How in the world are we already 1.5 months into the new year? It seems like 2023 is already flying by.  How are you doing on your resolutions or goals for this year?  I don't have a scale, so I have no idea how much weight I have lost by prioritizing my exercise and nutrition this year (which I kind of like because I feel like I'm doing it more for the right reasons and less to achieve a number). I know I am making better choices for myself and my family, and that is the real goal.  My feelings towards my other resolution are a bit different.  I feel like decluttering and purging is so mentally exhausting! Do you agree? Going through my possessions and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of really works my brain and sometimes emotions. I’m a sucker for sentimentality, it makes it hard to keep a level head when downsizing. I’m also on a budget, and with things so expensive lately, I don’t want to get rid of something we might need...