Surrender-ing

Can I say that I love Experience Life more than anywhere I have ever been? It is not that any of the churches I have gone to our bad, it's just I absolutely LOVE EL! But this weekend Chris started "Confessions of a Pastor". This series he will be uncovering some of his struggles in sinning to the world! I think this is so amazing. How often do we see the Pastors of our churches as "perfect, flawless, sinless, shameless"??? I know that sometimes it has been extremely hard for me to relate to some of the messages I have heard from pastors because I feel they have no experience in that particular subject matter. I have often caught myself pondering the question of "do they really sin?". Well that is what is amazing about the Confessions of a Pastor series! Chris is becoming transparent to anyone and everyone and therefore I think it will make him more human-like and more relate able to the fellow sinners in the congregation! Love it!

Anyways- this past weekend he gave us an Easter challenge of "Surrender". That we need to surrender everything we got, and our struggles to him! So as we walked into the service we were handed a nail, and I thought it was going to be one of those cheesy things you just walk away with, and probably use to hang a picture around the house. But no, when we sat down their were index cards. After Chris shared the sermon, each pastor of the the church got up, shared with EVERYONE their personal struggles/sins, and then nailed them to the cross... So we were challenged to write on the index card some of the things that we need to surrender to Jesus and then use the nail we got when we walked in and nail it to the cross! Can I just say how emotional this was for me! It brought some heavy duty tears to my eyes! I have never felt so close to the Lord when it came to me surrendering! I guess in a way you could say I totally re-dedicated myself to the Lord! I surrendered, and I am surrendering to him daily! I nailed those struggles to the cross just as my precious Savior was nailed for those struggles to a wooden cross!

I will never forget that day... April 12, 2009! It will forever be etched in my mind as the day I fully surrendered to Christ and made it real! Not that I didn't give my heart to the Lord when I was 8, but this time, I will walk away changed and I have!

I challenge you to surrender!

Like the old hymn says "All to Jesus, I surrender, All to thee I freely give..."

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Also, I am sharing a song that our church sings, and right now, it is on every breath I take... watch it by clicking

HERE

Really, listen to it and read the lyrics as it goes along...

Nasty Tude!

Before I start this post... this was when I was about 9 weeks pregnant with Joshua... It's not recent and I am NOT pregnant again.. haha...

So I decided lately, that I do not deserve any award for World's Best Wife! There has been something in my spirit that has just made me so ugly! I don't know what is causing it or why I have it, but I haven't been the sweetest wife by any means! I have the world's best husband, and I tell him that all the time I have just had such an ugly spirit! God has called me to be a wife to John, and it's not that I'm abusive or anything, I have just been hormonal. I just snap or nag... yes! It has just caused such a heaviness on my heart lately and I see it as something that has to change, and change now! God has given John a spirit of patience and love lately and I know its to combat my nastiness! Have any other wives out there struggled with this? Am I alone!? Please rattle of some verses that I can memorize to help with this!

John if you are reading this ~ I love you! You are the world's best husband! Be patient with me as the Lord works on me! You are so loving and supportive and I love you! God is working on my heart and I am well aware, and you, my love, are the reason I strive to be a better wife! Mwa! I love you my sweet darling!

Onto night 2...

** Update**
It is 12:15 am. Joshua cried less than 45 minutes! That is an hour and 15 minutes shorter than last night... Have I mentioned how I HATE letting my baby cry? Ugh!

And so, night 2 of crying it out begins!!!

All prayers appreciated as it is hard to not give in!!

Crying out...

So you probably read the title of this post and thought to yourself.."This is got to be about Casey crying out to God about something" right? Well I will be doing alot of crying out to God, but I have decided to take the dreaded step of...

Letting Joshua cry it out.

Let me give you a bit of history. Starting about 8 months Joshua got colds quite frequently, there for he wasn't sleeping that great thru the night. And when he wasn't dealing with a cold, he was cutting teeth. Needless to say there was a WHOLE lot of us going in there and comforting him, or bringing him to bed with us until he fell asleep, or me and John taking turns laying on the couch with him until he would fall asleep. But here it is, Joshua is now 14 months old and we are still having the night wakes. He will just scream and scream. Me and John evaluate the situation with questions like "Is it to cold in his room? Is it to hot in his room? Is he teething? No maybe he isn't feeling that great" And after about 5 minutes of crying, we go in there, pick him up, and as SOON as you walk out of the room with him he is silent. So that is a sure sign that nothing is wrong with him; we just have trained him. I hate it when you know that you have done something to cause your child to have a hard time. We have conditioned Joshua into thinking that if he wakes up during the night and puts up enough fight, that we will go in there and he can sleep with us, or we will cuddle with him as long as needed. This for me and John has left us tired and drained all day, every day. It's really not about our lack of sleep that I am doing this, but for the well being of my son! He has a big ole nice bed that is just his, and he is old enough.

Do you know how hard it is for me to let him cry, scream, and whimper? It is killing me right now as I type this post. Here it is, 2:34am, and I am on blogger writing a post. Joshua will sleep off and on for about a minute and then start crying again. I have decided that since it is my Spring Break, I will take the responsibility of sitting up in the Living room with the monitor on (just to make sure he doesn't throw up or kill himself in there) until he falls asleep. I want John to be able to function for work! I have read all over the internet that the reason he cries so much now is because of his age, and if I am persistant, and am strong willed in doing this that this won't last longer than a week! So I am venturing out on the crying out method! It's hard! WAY HARD.

But I am reminded that sometimes God has to let us cry it out too. He cannot always give us EVERYTHING we want. He has to sit back and say "no not yet", or just "no", and he has to watch us cry it out. I bet that it is hard for him to listen to us cry it out, but in the long run, he knows whats best for us. He knows that it will make us stronger if he lets us cry it out.

So... I am trying to be a great mother, and teach my child a small amount of independence. Can you pray for me over the next couple of nights??? Pray for my strength and indurance as I venture out on "Sleep Boot Camp"?? Pray that God would come to me in this time and comfort me and let me know that I am doing what is best for Joshua, and that it will work! Joshua will begin to sleep thru the night and be able to soothe himself back to sleep!

I will update!

Woah, hold on God!

So tonight, as I was sitting there in silence reading Psalm, the Lord presented me with a passage that I probably have read a dozen times, but tonight it took on a completely different meaning. Don't you hate...okay not hate, but love when God reveals something about you, something that your inner self is crying out but you just can't seem to find the words. So what does God do? Point you to a scripture or passage that had someone else feeling the exact same way you do?

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So I present you with Psalm 3 (mine is in New Living Translation)

"O Lord, I have so many enemies:

so many are against me.

So many are saying, "God will never rescue him"

But you, O Lord are a shield around me;

you are my glory, the one who holds my head high.

I cried out to the Lord, and he answered me from his Holy Mountain.

I lay down and slept,

yet I woke up in safety,

for the Lord was watching over me.

I am not afraid of ten thousand enemies who

surround me on every side.

Arise, O Lord! Rescue me, my God!

Slap all my enemies in the face!

Shatter the teeth of the wicked!

Victory comes from you, O Lord.

May you bless your people.

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So yeah, this passage is my heart right now. I shared with the two ladies in my Life transformation group this Saturday morning that my heart is hurting. It's hurting because of so many issues going on in our family. On my side, and on John's side. It hurts! And honestly, I feel as if I am standing up and their are enemies all around me. This verse was simply the cry of my heart because no matter how I feel right now, God is watching over me and he will not let my enemies get to me. I think sometimes I forget that God does hear me! He is answering my prayers. He will take care of my enemies, and he wants me to just trust in him and have a heart for serving and seeking him in this situation. I really believe that the Lord does have reconciliation in plan, but my plan may be wrong. For our sake as a family I hope reconciliation is the plan because there is nothing more dear to my heart than family.

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Also, this cries volumes on my struggle with Anxiety. Many of you know I have been REALLY struggling with this for almost 6 years! Can I tell you from experience how much it stinks to be in bondage to something like this for so long!?!? God truly is the one who can rescue me from this. I consider my anxiety an enemy.. most certainly Satan. I always let it feed at me and eat me away until the point I think I have some life altering disease. Its always this way.. I remember a quote a bible professor at LCU told me

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"Two natures beat within my breast, one is foul and one is blessed.

One I love, and one I hate. The one I feed will dominate"

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Its so very true! The more and more I continue to let the chains on my mind and soul continue to get tighter and heavier, the more and more I feed it, and the more and more I become a SLAVE to it! So praise be to God, because I know, I am on my way to experiencing true freedom from anxiety!!

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Praise: This Saturday I was able to rekindle a relationship with a cousin of mine and it was the most amazing thing to feel the warmth of the Lord covering me as I spoke to her in confidence. Sometimes it just SUCKS to say your sorry when you feel you really aren't. But the Lord is silly in that he always shows me something about myself that needs to change critically when I pray for the hearts of those I love to change. That funny God! He wants us to be in his image, and that means that there are things in our lives, as sinful humans, that need to be broken off of us. We need to get rid of them, and sometimes that takes noticing it in someone we love for us to begin to pray for them, and in reality, it's us that needs to change!

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Also in Psalm 4:4, the Lord commands us to not let our anger get the best of us! He tells us to sleep on our thoughts. I think this is so true! How often do you go to bed pissed off (can I say that on here??) and when you finally do go to sleep, you wake up in the morning with a new understanding about the situation or person. You can honestly see how your attitude needed rest to change. I think it's so important to realize that even David (the Man after Gods own heart) struggled with anger just like I do!

Run to him!!!

What IS important?

So I was going to attempt to go to bed again early tonight just incase Joshua has a rough night, but as I was sitting there in bed, something really hit me... okay it was God hitting me upside the head. Here I am exhausted and literally tired, and why? Because I just spent over an hour on the internet reading blogs and checking out facebook and somehow I had no time for God today. I am really convicted.

I really feel the Lord calling me to take a hiatus away from the internet for some undetermined time to get things straight... to weigh what really is important to me. Sure I could have spent time with the Lord, or even spent time with my husband.. But no, I spent it reading blogs and searching the internet for stupid things... not really stupid, but just pointless in the scheme of things. The only websites I plan on doing anything on is Joshua's Blog... seeing how Joshua has dedicated readers and such, and well he isn't quite the age of updating his own blog and everything just yet (all in time) ha! And my school stuff considering I am taking an online class. But besides those two websites, I am taking a break!

I have wasted so much time during the day looking at less important things than what I should be. I am about to start a life transformation group at Experience Life, and something tells me that God is really going to whip me into shape, and that I am really excited yet REALLY scared about. I am not so much scared. Oh I dont know how to describe it...

So I ask those of you that read my blog, that God would grant me clarity. God would show me freedom from my anxiety. And a brief synopsis on what I have anxious thoughts about... I self diagnose myself... yep, I will be so analytical over the tinest symptom that I go search the internet and somehow it all ties back to some random type of cancer. So, that is the BIGGEST reason for my hiatus away from the internet. So pray for clarity, freedom, and for me to fall more in love with him than I ever have! Also, that God would allow me some amazing quality time with my son and husband that I have wasted because of the stupid internet!

So here I am, taking a semi-vacation from the internet world...

My heart...

So I have really been struggling lately. I think it's the lack of sleep I have been getting. Joshua has been sick, off and on now for 3 weeks, and it tends to wear me down. Not that he is at fault, but I just think " is there something I am doing wrong?"...

I have cried out several times in the past 3 weeks to heal my child. He healed him from his heart condition, so I know he can heal him now. He has pnemonia - the "walking" version of that! It just wears on my heart.

Recently I was driving in the car, and I heard the song "By Your Side" by Tenth Avenue North, and it really almost made me cry. The situation with Joshua hasn't been the only thing that has been wearing me down, there are others, ones that I won't list for the world to see.. But when I heard this song, it was as if the Lord was screaming this at me in his own loving way! Just please turn on your speakers, and watch the video that I have posted.. if you can't see it, I will also post the link to it

CLICK HERE

Let me know what you think...