Tied To Being Fit

Being pregnant and giving birth 13 times means I have went through the gain weight, lose weight cycle......LOTS!!!! One of the most important things I have learned through this journey is FOCUS and BALANCE.

I am always amazed after Christmas how all the "weight loss and fitness" kicks start. Like clockwork....every year! But this year I've paid attention to something different....the attitude behind most of it. And what I have noticed is the meism....and to be even bolder....the worship of self-image.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for staying fit and eating healthy. I believe that is the way God intended it to be. I don't necessarily agree with the way people "get fit and eat healthy" though. Mark and I always joke and say..."imagine if you would take all those people who go work out at the gym and bring them to a farm to do manual labor instead...WOW!!! How much work we could get accomplished!!!!" Such wasted energy....don't send me hate mail....just sayin' :)

In my life I have learned that if my focus is in the wrong place, staying fit and eating healthy can quickly become an idol in my life. I have also learned that I need to be real careful anytime I decide to "get back on track". Careful to not let it consume me.

God should be the center of my life....always and in every area. This includes the area of health and fitness. But I have found this is so much easier said than done. For God to be the center in this area means I need do it His way.

What is His way????? A focus and a desire to please and honor God. I find that the times I am most dissatisfied with my weight and eating is the times when I loose focus....focus on the One Who created me. When my focus in not on Him my motives become prideful and selfish.

It doesn't take me long to realize when my focus has gotten in the wrong place because weight gain and fitness becomes the center of my thoughts and they dictate my actions.  Rather than dealing with the issues behind my weight gain, I try to put a band-aid on it by some quick fixin healthy eating and exercise.  And guess what? I do well for awhile and then inevitably....I FAIL...and fall back into the same pattern as before.

What are some of the underlying issues? Lack of Self-control would be a big one!!! Being able to say no to a cookie when I am not hungry...and yes to exercise when my flesh is weak. DisContentment would be another one. Contentment for the way God made me. Contentment for the "baby fat".  Not Trusting is right up there to. When I am in a stressful situation...I tend to eat more and exercise less...and this just adds to my stress. Rather I need to be able to deal with stress...by trusting. If my heart is truly trusting God...I will be able to handle stress...I will be able to give it over to Him. Of course there are many more underlying issues, but these are probably the ones I struggle with most.

But when I keep God as the centre of my weight loss journey, that's when the weight comes off the easiest and stays off!!! If I am losing weight for my own selfish desires....I loose focus and my balance becomes all out of whack....I am more apt to try the next diet fad...or weight loss gimick....or the perfect exercise program. But when I do it because I want to be the person God created me to be...the results are amazing!!! In these times I am NOT consumed by foods and excercise...rather I AM consumed with pleasing HIM!!!! And it really becomes a heart thing rather than a physical thing. And this is where I'd rather be. The results are longer lasting and much more gratifying. And my focus is where it should be....on the ONE who gave me this body in the first place!!!

And then I am no longer tied to being fit....but rather tied to honoring and pleasing my Creator...God Himself!

So I challenge you. If you are on a journey of weight loss...or weight maintaining....where is your FOCUS? Are you BALANCED? Is your desire to please and honor God CONSUMING you?

The More I Seek You

This morning when I went for a walk I was listening to the song "The More I Seek You". 

Do you ever have those moments that you are just overwhelmed with the majesty and beauty of God?

As I looked around at the beauty of our Creator, I was just in awe of Him.

I felt so humbled that He loves me and wants a relationship with me. 

I am such a tiny speck on this earth, yet He cares about me.

I was so honoured that He chose to give me another day to worship Him.

I felt unworthy of the blood that He shed for me.

I was just in awe of Him!

Apology Accepted?

Last night a couple of our children decided to disobey our instructions to go to bed, lie down and listen to a CD.

Instead they decided to play a game.

So of course they were brought back upstairs for a training moment. As I was talking to them about how serious it was to disobey I also brought up the fact that not only were they being disobedient, but they were also being a very poor example to their younger siblings (who happen to share a room with them.) I went on to say that God entrusted them to the special position of being an older sibling and what a privilege that was. After all, God could have chosen them to be the youngest, but instead He chose them to have younger siblings. Siblings who watch and learn from them.

When we were done talking, I told them that this time I would give them grace (normally I would make tomorrow’s bedtime earlier) and then we proceeded to go through the apology process.

The older one started to say, “I’m sorry…” and I stopped him right there….. I’m sorry would not be acceptable. Here’s why.

Ever since our children were little we have taught them that relationships are nothing to take lightly. And when we offend or hurt someone we need to apologize to them and restore the relationship. But we do not use the words “I am sorry” when we apologize for these things. We use the words, “Will you please forgive me for…..” We reserve the words I am sorry for times when we accidentally do something….like step on their toe, bump into them….things like that. But when we intentionally do something to hurt our relationship with someone, it takes more than an ‘I’m sorry’ to make things right again.

So in this situation last night when one of the boys started to say, “I’m sorry“ ….I stopped him and said, “Did you step on my toe?” This is how I bring them to the seriousness of the moment. They didn’t ‘accidentally’ hurt me…..instead they deliberately and intentionally hurt our relationship.

He then proceeded to say, “Will you please forgive me for playing a game in bed”. Now you may say this was sufficient, he asked for forgiveness, but that still wasn’t the apology I was looking for. Why? Because this was not the moral offence. There are times where they can play a game in bed, and I don’t mind one bit. But playing a game in bed was not the underlying issue here. When I brought this to his attention, he looked into his heart and said, “Will you please forgive me for disobeying you and not going to bed like you asked us to?” Ahhh….there it was. The apology for the heart issue. That’s what asking forgiveness is all about.

We have found that asking someone to forgive you vs. saying I’m sorry takes a lot more humility. And to ask forgiveness for the attitude and actions of the heart takes heart searching.

This principle works between husbands and wives, family or friends. Saying sorry is not easy, but asking for forgiveness takes even more guts and in the end means a lot more.

When I look in the Bible, I never see the word sorry in it. We really believe in using Biblical terminology when we train our children. For instance when we teach our children obedience, we do not say, LISTEN to Daddy or Mommy, instead we say OBEY Daddy and Mommy. When we teach them to be kind we don’t say DON’T HIT, instead we will say be GENTLE. When we teach them to be content we don’t say be SATISFIED, we instead say, be CONTENT. And likewise with forgiveness. We don’t teach them to say I’m sorry when they hurt relationship with another, instead we teach them to say “Will you forgive me for….”

And we see a definite difference in their attitude towards God, us and each other when they apologize this way. There is a much deeper understanding of restoring relationship. And in this they also learn how to ask their heavenly Father for forgiveness.

So here’s the end of our “episode” last night. As they were going back downstairs I heard them say to each other, “Let’s go ask - - - - - - - for forgiveness for being a bad example to them. And as a mother, when I heard those words, it made me joyful inside. Because not only did they get it, they REALLY got it! And that’s what one of our goals should be as parents . Not to make these little robots that say sorry when we tell them to, but rather children that know in their hearts why we ask of them what we do and take the initiative to take these values as part of their own and act on them. This is what parenting is all about! What a great opportunity and privilege we have :)

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139: 23-24

Blessed Beyond Words

For those of you who checked the blog late last night or early today you would have caught my post that 'somehow' got published, but it wasn't yet finished. That MR. NOBODY again!!!

Well here is the real post with photos and all. As if I am not blessed enough just having 11 children, our children decided to bless me beyond words on Mother's Day. Here's a glimpse of my day. It started out with a breakfast of fresh cinnamon buns (my request:)

Then I got some wonderful gifts.

A frame with these photos in it:

And some of my favorite snack foods, red licorice and chocolate.

A necklace with a crown and a note saying that it was a symbol of what I meant to them.

And probably the best gift was a movie interview made by the kids themselves.

It was very very funny.

I wish I could share it with you all but our computer is giving us grief in this area :)

I also got this cheery plant from Josh & Rebecca

Then we went to church where our family sang a song for special number.

From there we headed to Mark's parents for a pizza meal

(another one of my favorites yum, yum).

Then the older kids headed to the Penner's (Rebecca's family) and prepared a special candlelight dinner for Henry, Esther, Mark & I.

Just before the meal the children of both our families serenaded us with this song: (Jen & Kerri changed the words to the last verse because they knew I didn't care for it :) Four years old, with dirt on my face I'd been out in the yard pickin dandelions all day I burst through the front door when I'd gathered enough to give to my mom, to show her my love when I held out my hands she looked down at me, she said I've never seen flowers as beautiful as these She's the one who told me about Jesus she's the one who taught me to sing she deserves, an armful of roses she's satisfied with a handful of weeds Now that I'm older I see with a new light the things that you've done to improve my life together with Daddy you've obeyed the call to train up a child in the way he should go and I want her to know there was never a doubt she's the best mother in the whole wide world During this song Esther & I were given 'literally' an armful of roses. one from each of our children. It was a very special tear jerking moment, can you tell?

And after the meal was said and done we sat around a perfect campfire. You know, the kind where the smoke goes straight up instead of in your face. It was a beautiful evening and an amazing ending to the day.

Thanks again to our children for going through so much work to make this day so special for me.

It is truly an honor and a privelage to be your mom and I wouldn't want it any other way :)

“…this is an unbelievable responsibility God has given us. He has entrusted to us His little person and expects us to be good stewards with what He’s given us, not only in caring for him physically, but spiritually–leading him to Jesus. The enormity of it frightens me. It reminds me of how desperate I am for the strength of the Lord in this life long endeavor. In giving us this baby, God has given us the greatest means of drawing us closer to Himself. We see now, more than ever, how weak we are and how great God is. My baby… my blessing… It is all summed up when I hear his tiny little voice learning to mouth the word I’ve longed to hear. ‘Mama.’”-Ashleigh, from “Mama” on ylcf.org, 2006

Brothers & Sisters as Best Friends

Since the time our children are just little we tell them that they are each other's best friends. We tell them that there is a good chance that their 'friends' will one day leave, but they will always be family. So it is most important to work on being each others best friends. We don't go out of our way to make sure our kids have friends, rather we cultivate the friends that we have right in our own home. Not that we don't have outside friends, we do. But our family of friends is a priority. Some of the ways we encourage our kids to be best friends? No talking mean or down to each other or calling each other names. No tattling in order to get the other in trouble. When a sibling asks another sibling to play a game or something else we tell them if at all possible to do so. If we do have outside friends over, our children are not allowed to leave out their siblings if they want to join in. We don't have separate bedrooms for each child, we have one big girls room and one big boys room. We don't encourage 'time to yourself'. And there is so much more right now I can't even think of. But we are always on the lookout for opportunities to train into their relationship with each other.

We also teach them to rejoice when one rejoices and cry with those who cry (not usually literally:) If someone receives something or gets to go somewhere that the other sibling does not, we encourage them to rejoice with them rather than let jealousy take over. If someone gets hurt or loses or breaks something we encourage them to comfort their sibling in any way possible.

We have talked with our kids about how God has been so kind to give each other the perfect environment in which to learn these things and so much more. Having many siblings, there are many opportunties to learn the Godly characteristics that will grow them into Godly men and women. And that is our goal as parents. God made the family as a perfect, safe place to learn all this and so much more.

And every once in awhile we are blessed to witness a beautiful moment between our children and see the fruits of our labor. Such a moment happened yesterday and made me realize again that even though training our children according to God's Word is hard, constant work, IT IS WORTH IT :)

We went to Brandon yesterday with a load of cattle. We took with us Caleb, Zachary & Jesse. Afterward we did some shopping and went to a .99 cent store and I told the boys they could each pick out 1 item. They each chose a pair of sunglasses (in hopes of having some warm sunshiny weather I am sure :) They were all quite pleased with them and wore them the rest of the day. But SOMEHOW on the way home, the arm of Jesse's glasses broke off. Needless to say he was quite saddened by this and the truck became quiet. A little while later I looked back and saw that Jesse was wearing Zachary's glasses. Jesse told me that Zachary had given his pair to him. I was touched. A little while later I looked back again only to see that Zachary was now wearing Caleb's sunglasses. DOUBLE TOUCHED :) It truly was a beautiful moment that was shared between brothers, BEST FRIENDS. A beautiful moment.

I cannot, of course, tell you just this part of the story because it might make us seem like we are the perfect family:) So....here's the rest of the story. We got up this morning and noticed that Zachary and Caleb were both again wearing their regular sunglasses, the ones they had bought. So we asked Zachary what was going on and he proceeded to tell us that he was now sharing his glasses with Jesse (funny they were on his face!) and he had given Caleb's back to him :( Well Mark then took this opportunity to politely tell Zachary that the glasses he gave Jesse were Jesse's and it was Jesse who would decide if he wanted to share, and Caleb's were now Caleb's since he had given them back! So now Zachary is once again without glasses (last I checked).

So there you have it, the training moments continue and just when you think things are going just peachy, reality hits :) But there will be many more years to train and for that we are grateful!