Monday's Letters...Nurture, Destroy.

I have been thinking a lot about what matters in my life since my first post like this two weeks ago, if nothing else these posts have helped me in that capacity. Hopefully they have helped you too?! Hopefully you started a private personal blog and are uploading pictures you take of your family and writing down your memories and thoughts. It's okay if you haven't yet, hopefully you will soon :) It took me a long while to commit to keeping a family journal. If it didn't include pictures I wouldn't do it, pictures are worth a thousand words each so I really don't do a ton of writing. I upload pictures and then come back later and write in each post. I will say the one thing I want to improve is throwing in posts without pictures. Posts that are just my thoughts on life and learning like these posts here. We may not realize all we are learning and going through until we put our fingers to the keyboard and let it out. To go back and read from a post from a month ( or year etc.) ago may just be the advice you were looking for. What seems profound one week may be a lost to you a month later, not that it has lost profundity (spell check didn't say this word is wrong so I am going with it) we just can't keep it all in the fore front of our minds, there is only so much space there.

What I have noticed about life...we learn by Repetition for a reason, we can't absorb all that we need to know about a subject in one instance thus the need for repetition. I like you have known this a long while, but on occasion get a good reminder why that is. This happened to me a few weeks ago, and had a huge impact on me as I am still thinking about it. It was a moment when things clicked into place in my mind and heart at the same time. It left me with a greater understanding, one which surpasses what I thought I knew. I was sitting on the couch my husbands head in my lap as I pulled his hair and rubbed his head, the good kind of hair pulling! (try it sometime, grab a handful of hair as close to the roots as you can and gently pull = heaven) As I pull his hair I swear I can see the stress evaporating, I am glad he's not a stress eater or we would be in trouble! As he lay there telling me his troubles, I was also holding in my heart my kids and there different needs and it suddenly hit me, yes, like a ton of bricks. I know these moments where things coalesce in my heart and mind are by the power of the Holy Ghost. It's a sudden knowledge and understanding of something we have heard about or thought about a hundred million times and now "get it' in a new way. In one instance I realized the role of wife and mother, we are the keeper of the flame, without us things deteriorate and fall into chaos. Without a caring and nurturing touch to keep a pulse on how everyone is doing things fall apart.

The emotion of the mother sums up the joy of motherhood.

I don't want to be so busy with what I have going on that I pull my focus away from my family. Using an example from this last week...like not taking the time to offer up a sincere prayer in my husbands behalf. My testimony of prayer was strengthened as I truly prayed for my husband as he has a lot of stress at work and he came home that night and said he started feeling much better around noon, I had prayed for him in the late morning.  He tells me to pray for him often and I usually utter a few words for him, but sadly not often enough do I pray for him with real intent. In all my quick prayers for him he has never come home saying anything close to "my whole outlook and feeling changed". He leaves weary and usually comes home that way (during trial, regular work stuff is usually not near as rough). Though I may not be able to take the stress from him myself, I can't go to work with him and help him, but the Lord can. I can serve him by praying for him which creates real tangible results. Lesson learned, until I need another reminder that is, oh repetition, whenever will I keep this stuff in my thick skull?!

Don't even think for a minute however that I think taking care of the family is solely my job, he has his role and he does a good job. He works hard to provide for our family, he listens to me, he's good tempered, he supports me in my endeavors and is never domineering. I didn't plan on writing a book on this matter, heck I didn't know what was going to come out as I sat down to write I just wanted to be open and honest like I would be if I were writing in my private journal.

I have two kids I know many families with more and I feel like I can barely keep up with two kids needs. A year or so before I started The SIP project I felt like I really needed to focus on serving my family and naturally the circle of serving would grow outwards from there. Makes perfect sense right?! Me being the big idea person that I am I didn't fully do this, I wanted to do something bigger. It made perfect sense, but I didn't fully embrace it. Now I am in the throws of The SIP project and Service Beans and many other good things ,but if I had fully embraced those promptings I would have an easier time always putting my family first. I know I  have some room to grow here, I want my husband to feel loved, cherished and supported. I want my kids to be ready for life when they leave our home. I don't want them to go out into the world at 18 and spend 10 years "finding themselves" I want them to leave knowing exactly who they are and feeling such confidence that they step right into making a positive impact in the world. For our family I know this will require me staying home with my kids,  manning the back door so to speak with my husband at the front door. We won't keep our kids and marriage safe if were both consumed only with ourselves. I have thought about finding a job, after weighing it all out in my mind I think I will just work on getting paying photography gigs. Not everyone is willing to do service for pictures I may as well let them pay me if they won't do a service project. All of this has started rolling around in my heart because my son will be in school in a year and I never thought I would find myself in this position so early. My daughter will be 7 next month, I don't know where time has gone! If life keeps speeding up from here then it would stand to reason the next 7 years will go by even faster. We really don't have much time to raise our kids. This life is all about choosing our priorities, we can't do it all, we weren't meant to, so choose wisely and prayerfully.

one more note...

Recently it's been a great joy to take these two beautiful women's maternity photos at such a pivotal time in their lives. I have known one for about 9 years and the other about 5 years. I had my daughter when I was 23 and I am sure people looked at me with this tiny baby and thought "she's so young!" Now I am 30 and see mothers in their early 20's and think "she's so young." I know I'm not much older then them but it's amazing how much you can learn in 7 years, and how much my eyes have been opened to how much more I need to grow. I dedicate this letter to all moms and moms to be :) There is no greater job on earth then being a mom. It can be hard to let go of what we want to do in this life and focus on our kids, but here again when we lose ourselves find ourselves, I am still working on the losing part ha ha!

 Now go write your letter...