So as I ended 2013 I had a beautiful 2 year old girl
(Little), a newborn bouncing baby boy (C), a ugly case of postpartum
depression, a new house (4 years in the making), our starter house that needed
to be emptied and put up for sale, and a desire to find the path God had laid
out for my family. I was lost and just wanted something to cling to just get me
though the day. My God is so awesome, as I searched blog after blog on
organizing, parenting, being the perfect Christian mother, he directed me to an
awesome post about a focus word for the year. As a meditated on it all I could
think was how silly it was, and how out of all the words in the world would I
find one to put focus and meaning to the new year of 2014 that seemed like it
encompassed my life and where God wanted me to be. I thought how crazy my
darling husband would think I was for saying “Let’s pick a word and make it our
theme word”. And, as I so often tend to
do, I let the awesome idea that God so freely give me to run with spiral into
the depressing thoughts of all I can’t do, and all I should be able to do, and
what is everyone else going to think of me, and on and on with all the lies I
tell myself to keep from having to be accountable. So out of desperation to get this idea that
kept coming to my heart out in the open, even though I still had no clue what
the word God had in store for us was, I oh so casually tried to steer the
conversation to “this silly blog post I saw on one of my Christian mom blogs”.
Inside I was just bracing for Stephen to say that is just weird, totally ready
for another wave of spiraling to the dark place with the depression in full
swing, all he said was I don’t know how you would pick just one word to sum up
our goals. Relief –having reached the same conclusion I let it drop, and we kept
walking through our path in the woods talking, as we love to do, about all the
things that need to be done and how with a new baby it was all such a big chore
the words “We just need to push to get them done. There isn’t any other way
around it. I just don’t know how to find the time.” fell from my sweet
husband’s lips. And in that moment in my spirit that clouds rolled back, the
waters parted, that longing to cling to something tangible, to put some kind of
order in my crazy life it leaped out – PUSH. There was so much God wanted for our
lives, and I was letting fear, worry, and self-doubt rob me of the joy and
service he called me to be to my family. I stopped and told him that was it.
That what we needed this year was to PUSH, in every area of our lives. To his
credit he went along for the ride. He even made me a sign the hang on the
fridge. God just wanted us to take a step so he could take one too. I had come
to a place that I had sat down and stopped trying out of pure, unadulterated
fear. There was so much we wanted to accomplish for God and our family and we
were spinning our wheels just talking about the shear volume of what we wanted
to accomplish without every putting in any effort to make it happen. So 2014
has been our year to PUSH. Not to say that there aren’t times (quite a lot of
it) that I haven’t just sat down and gotten complacent along the way, but we
have accomplished some of our goals. Our big girl will be 3 in a month and has
flourished this year, our bouncing baby boy is trying to walk, our starter
house is (finally) up for sale, and our marriage has never been stronger. So as I sit in my house with toys to my eye
balls, cleaning to be done, and more projects that I can count that we want to
accomplish I can truly say that I am thankful God directed me to our word for
the year because we really did need to PUSH to make room for him move in our lives.
So that sums up the first ¾ of our year PUSHing to catch up
because we were so far behind we thought we were ahead. Last week we started
planning Little’s first real birthday party. Her request was a
chocolate/vanilla heart shaped cake, jumping, dancing, music, and fairy’s. I’ve
got this under control. Bouncy house party place booked, momma and Little
making her cake, and mom searching Pinterest for ideas for a fairy themed
birthday party. Now we come the part that lead to the creation of this blog.
After looking up crafty, and homemade, and a host of other diy stuff for
birthday parties I was solid in the mood to create something. (Side note I am
going to be trying to applique here a wand shirt and a fairy skirt stay tuned
for that) As things in life tend to do, all this desire to create overlapped
into my search to choose a new personalized license plate for my new to me car.
I looked up everything under the sun that I could think of relating to crafty
but they were all taken. So I googled “what is another word for crafty”. After
searching for a while I found this awesome post on Mad in Crafts site about
“What is a Crafter”. It’s a great read you should totally check it out, but
basically she says “Makers are people who make….If
your hands have ever itched to MAKE something, whether it was a quilt, a batch
of cookies, a robot, a necklace, or a China hutch, you are a maker. “ I
WAS IN LOVE, period. The thing God had been PUSHing me toward all year was so
neatly placed right in front of my face. God was calling me to be a “maker”, to
be a producer and not a consumer, to help others by getting out of my head and
putting my hand to work. So I hope you will join me as I start my journey to
follow God’s call to become a Maker!
