ANNIE

What a wonderful weekend we had watching our son and his friends perform in Haven Academy of the Arts production of ANNIE. These kids get better and better every show! I watched my son for the first time do on stage what he does normally at home: perform! LOL He has always had the ability to sing and act but he took the role of "Rooster" and really made it his own. The results were fantastic!

BACK ON TRACK

It has been such a long time since my last post. I apologize for not being more active and keeping in touch with you.

It has been a long journey to this moment. One I will not quickly forget. On Monday my husband started a new job after being out of work for nearly 2 1/2 years. He is nervous and not sure if he is the "right" man for the job yet. I cannot image how a man feels when he cannot take care of his family but I do know how my man feels, lost.

He has been Blessed with a job back in his own field! That is our God at work for sure. After a major healing in the relationship with his prior boss, it was, in the end, his prior boss who got him the interview and went to bat for him. He told the new boss that Eddie was still working for him and that work had slowed down so he wanted to help him get a new job since he had a family. How amazing redempion is! How great is our God!!

I wish I could say that I knew it all along but I did not. I have had many ups and downs over the past 2 years and have wondered if I somehow disobeyed God in such a way that he turned His back on me. How wrong I was! Our God is a loving God. "'The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion." Numbers 14:18a

The moment I realized that I felt something lift from me. It was a large bolder I had been carrying around for way too long. I was not raised with a loving God so for me I figured I was being punished in some way. But God does not put us through anything that He cannot handle. I know, it suppose to be "that we cannot handle", but I guess I do not see it that way anymore.

I am grateful for the job that the Lord has given Eddie and pray my husband excels in it! In the meantime, I am getting my family and home back on track. I am also getting me back on track too. For the past 8 months I have been looking for work that I can do to supplement our income without being away from home too often. Since I love network marketing I decided to research companies to work for. All together I found 3 that I liked. through prayer and God's intervention, I settled on a skin care company called NU SKIN. Funny that it never occurred to me before since I have always loved skin care and make-up. Anyway, a very dear friend of mine told my story to a women who has been very successful in that company. When she heard my story she called me and asked to meet. I joined the Nu Skin family with her constant guidance, support and help. I am actually loving what I am doing! So I will be talking about skin care and products as I learn them. Hope you don't mind?

All in all I know that the journey continues. That is why I love life and my Savior. I am never alone, never a failure and never unloved.

God Bless you all.

A THANKFUL HEART

A very Happy Thanksgiving to you all! There is so much that I am grateful for in my life today. With my husband still unemployed (18 months), I have had a chance too look back and see how we got to today.

There are so many people in my life that have been our "angels" for our Heavenly Father. They have given us money randomly, dropped off bags of food periodically and prayed and loved us all the way through. I have tried to figure out why God still has us in this situation. You see, I believe in a VERY LARGE God who is bigger than the government, bigger than the economy and much bigger than everyone else. So that said, why are we still without a job? I do not have that answer yet, but I do know that our Heavenly F ather is in control of everything.

Over the last few months I have been very busy with taking care of my Mom who was hospitalized at the beginning of October. Prior to that my husband's oldest sister was very sick with cancer and we lost her in September. Needless to say, life is in session!

One-day-at-a-time we are healing and just beginning to come back to life. I put my 2 side businesses on hold and have been home mostly taking care of what needed to be done each day. Again, I could not have survived without the love and support of the people I have chosen to call Family. God may have our life on hold in one area, but he is busy at work in many others for the good.

Most of my life I have been independent of the help of others, enjoyed pitching in to help wherever I could and loved to just give things away. I never really "needed" people until now. The most amazing part of my journey is that I have had to learn to be dependent. That has been very hard for me. I never realized how much ego is involved in independence. The Lord has showered me with riches. Showered me with love. Showered me with help. My walls have been so high and so thick it was only recently that I was able to see all this. Feeling loved has never come easy for me either and when you are in a situation like ours and the people you deeply love and care about are at risk, you go into survival mode. When that happens it is so hard to feel anything else. But the Lord has melted the hard tough wall, self-willed heart through His mighty power of love.

I will be forever grateful to Dianne, Irene, Trish (just for starters!) and many others for the great love, care and support they have given to me and to my family. But most of all I will always be grateful to them for overwhelming my life and heart with their precious love.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and to yours. I hope you will find the part of your life that has been touched this year and find a way to share it.

STILL....THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME

After almost 3 weeks away, we are finally home. It felt so good to walk into my humble home. There are 5 of us in this sweet 3 bedroom, 2 bath, no den or Family room house. We spend much of our time here together. So having an opportunity to get away to a LARGE home on 1/2 acre (almost) of land was quite a treat for us!

I love the peace and quiet as I live near one of the Country's (and the World's) largest airports. I live in a large City with lot's of traffic noise, sirens and car horns. So the calm of Kernville was quite a shock to mine and my Family's systems for the first few days. LOL

I wrote last week about my older son's bordem. How he had such a hard time finding a way to just "be". THAT I have found is learned behavior for sure as I have had to learn that too.

My friend Jane suggested that I give Dante a camera and just let him go on an adventure with it! Jane, that was just the BEST advice. Thank you so much for that. He had fun shooting pictures all over Deb's property. I asked him to take pictures of God's creation. To try and see it through the eyes of God. Below are some of my favorites.

I LOVE this picture! it is the grapevines that grow just the most wonderful sweet grapes!

One of the many trees on the property.

This is one of Jake's personal favorites, the frog pond!

This morning our Pastor talked about being "content". Mmm, someone talked to me about that very thing this week?

Through the past almost 2 years that we have been going through all the changes I have shared with you in the past, being "content" has tapped me on the shoulder once or twice but I quickly ignored it! After all, who wants to be content on 3/4 less that what they lived on before? However, if I put all my hope in that same old basket of wants, I will never get away from the place I am in. I hope that makes sense?

Today's message topped off my week of thinking about do I want to be content in the first place? LOL Of course I do because I believe I am powerless to change many of what is happening in my life in the first place so why not open my eyes and heart to the idea that, this may be all there will ever be again, and if that is so, why not just be happy and content with what God has given me? This is not a bad thing, it is a spiritual thing. I have had a lot in my life and blessed beyond my dreams. To be content to me means to be at peace, to have acceptance and to know that I am right where I am suppose to be. I am getting there and it feels pretty good. After all, the most important things in life I realized, I already have. My husband, my children, my mom, my family and my friends. We all have great health and that alone IS great welath! As long as we can keep or kids eating and playing, they are happy too! LOL Sound good to me!

I am working on just being content. It feels right and it feels good.

Until next time........enjoy your self!

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:11-13)

Here are a few highlights of our trip!

Dante with the Kern River behind him.

Lunch on the Kern River!

It's a good day!

Daddy & Jake River rafting.

Tourist!

The beautiful River Kern.

Kunf Fu Jake!

WHAT TO DO...WHAT TO DO...

We are still here in beautiful Kernville. The weather is gorgeous and HOT! My husband Eddie is busy working on his "to do" list which is the main reason we are here. Jake is continuously looking for frogs in the "frog" pond (they are ceramic but he is hoping for a real one real soon) and Dante is just bored! Ugh the teen years. I am not ready. Don't think I ever will be but they are on my "door step" now and I have to get ready.

It use to be that I could entertain Dante pretty easily. Not now. He is a great kid tho and is always fun to be with. It is just keeping him entertained seems harder than before.

Whenever we come up here we are on the go. This time there is an agenda that much be met first. How do you convince a 12 1/2 year old that helping is a fun thing? LOL

We will go off to the lake and he will swim until he drops. Boys; keep them physically active and they are happy. It is just the way God made them.

Being up here always gets me thinking about living somewhere else. I see the beauty and want to have more of that in my own life. Living in a City that is crowded and now water rationing is killing off gardens, makes me feel like cement is not my friend. But where to go? The unemployment level is rising in California and Eddie has been on so many interviews and put out so many resumes that he is getting very discouraged. I pray about it all the time. But I get disappointed too sometimes. It is hard to understand why we are still in this situation because I see God as bigger that the recession, bigger than the issues in California and bigger than the issues in the U.S. It has me thinking about leaving California to hopefully find a healthy economy in another State where we can raise our kids and live simply.

Los Angeles is over rated and over charging to live here. Since my zip code is a Los Angeles zip code, we are charged for everything! Only my relationship with Christ seems to be improving because I must lean into Him to stay strong. Some days are easier than others, but it is always where I get peace.

I hope that you and your family are surviving the problems this economy is bringing on and that you do not loose hope because without hope we have nothing. Hope is the one thing I cannot live without. I live without a lot these days and I am just fine. So are my children. Maybe that is why Dante is so bored? Have we given him too much and now that we have cut back on so much he feels lost as to know what to do? Wow, if so that is sad. Back to prayer. Prayer is my answer to everything and the ONLY tool in my tool box that has ever constantly sustained me.

When I come to Kernville I feel at peace with everything. The mighty hand of God is everywhere. The trees, the river, the lake, the birds, the animals and all the amazing blooming flowers. Getting a break from the noise, the cement and the fears I have is a huge blessing.

I know that our Father has a great plan for us. He knows everything and sees everything. I also am coming to terms with the fact that if He wanted Eddie to have a job he would have one. Until then, both Eddie and I are doing whatever work comes our way and grateful to have it. My heart goes out to anyone going through this too. I know first hand a mother's concerns for caring for her family but God is good and His promises are real. And that we CAN count on!

"And we know that all things work together for the good to them who love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose". Romans 8:28 (KJV)