Conquering Fears

A few of our children have a fear of animals. Anything furry with four legs causes Elijah to scream terribly. 

One day while we were waiting for Joshua to get done with his work on a nearby farm, the rest of the children and I decided to help by giving hay to the horses.

Hannah was pretty proud that she could climb up to the feed trough with her arms full of hay.

Jonathan declared himself a real cowboy. He also said that he was a real farmer because he was wearing overalls.

 

Then there was Elijah. The closer we got to the barn the more planted his feet became. 

I offered to hold him. He agreed. I put him on my hip and carried him into the barn. 

Then it happened...

A horse looked at him! 

He started hollering and screaming. You'd have thought I was about to feed him to the horse how he was carrying on.

Until his sweet big sister, Ruth, came to his rescue. She offered him her back. He was okay as long as his sister was between him and the horse. 

He would even take hay and throw it into the stall from her back. 

By the end, she had him standing on the ground throwing hay into the stall without anyone even holding his hand. Now that's pretty good!

And what did Elisabeth think of it all?

Well, she didn't seem to mind his hollering. And was pretty happy to watch the others feeding the animals. 



Maybe we'll get Elijah over his fears before Elisabeth is swayed by them.

You know two year olds are not the only ones to be afraid of something.

Even grown ups have fears. 

I am afraid of hurting people. I worry sometimes that if I say or write the wrong thing someone might get upset. I fear conflict.

I fear the time that someone will disagree with me and turn me into the "bad" guy. I've had that happen before. 

Once I was trying to help someone in a Christian chat room many years ago. (This was before Facebook and Twitter.) Chat rooms were an exciting place back then.

A person asked for help and I tried to give them what they needed.
Somehow they turned what I was saying to help them into my not caring. 

Then someone else came into the chat room and backed them. I looked like a terrible person. When I was honestly trying to help.

 The real problem was they didn't want the help. I tried to explain that I was only trying to help. They told me they forgave me. Forgave me for what? I hadn't said or done anything against them. 

That one experience had me so upset that I never went back to that chat room for fear that it would happen again. 

Is that any different than Elijah being afraid of the horse that looked at him? 

I've been working on facing my fears. I have slowly started reaching back out to try to help people. 

Maybe a bit cautiously at first. Like Elijah hiding behind his big sister. But I'm finally sharing that bite of hay. 

I am setting a goal to conquer my fears. I am going to do my best to  help people even when I'm afraid.

How about you? What fears do you have to conquer?

Feel free to share in the comments. I'd love to hear how you are working to conquer your fears.


What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me. (Psalms 56:3-4)

"Why?"

Every night our family gathers together to pray before the children climb in their beds. My husband and I use this time to not only pray with our children but for discussion as well. 

Friday night having just heard the news ourselves, we decided we should tell our children about the tragedy. I told them how a man shot his mother and then went to the local school and shot 20 students and 6 teachers and then he killed himself.

"Why?" 

This question came from my 5 year old Jonathan. "Why?" 

I know I need to write about it. But I stare at my computer and the only thing I can type is "Why?" 

Every time I hear of yet another shooting. Why?

How do you answer your child? I told him that I didn't know what was going on in that man's mind. 

We know for a fact that God isn't happy with what that man did. And we also know that the man wasn't trusting God with his problems instead he killed his mother, 26 innocent lives, and then himself. Why?

I really don't know why. I could speculate. That seems to be what many other people all over the internet are doing. Speculating. There is a lot of dangerous ground in speculations. I am not going to tell you what I think all the possible reasons are.

The things I know for sure... 
God wants us to love our neighbor. (Matthew 19:19)
God wants us to love our enemies. Doing good to those that hate us.(Matthew 5:43)

I am going to continue doing my part to raise my children to trust God with all their hearts, souls, and minds.


And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. 
(Mark 12:30-31)

How has the news affected you? Did you find yourself speechless? What have you found to help get past the sinking feeling? Or are you past it yet?

For me it is finally finding the words to write.

Team Work -- How NOT to put together a bunk bed!

Scott had the week of Thanksgiving off from his work. We went and visited my parents at the beginning of that week. 

When we arrived at their house my mom mentioned that she wanted to put together the bunk bed so that each child has a real bed to sleep on instead of some having to sleep on the floor.

I decided to volunteer myself as well as the older kids for the job. To measure the space that my mom wanted to put the bed in I brought in one of the mattress frames that was already put together. I told my mom it was easier than finding a tape measure. You can probably already see where this is going. 

Then I determined that it had to be about the right amount of space. We brought in all the parts to the bed. This bed had been one of our beds but we gave it to my parents in exchange for a 3 tiered bunk bed. We put this thing together before. How hard could it be?

Let's just say we managed to put the top bunk where the bottom bunk should have been. We noticed that the rail was on the wrong side after we screwed all of the bolts into the bed. 

No problem! We just unscrewed the whole thing and turned the mattress frame a complete 180 degrees so that the holes would line up for the top rail. 

Now mind you there was a full sized bed and a twin bed in the room as well. We have to dodge and climb over those beds as well. We required 8 sets of hands to accomplish all the work we put into that bunk bed.

Finally, it was time to put the final rail on the bed. The holes were in the wrong place. In fact, they were in the wrong place on the other side of the bed as well. That's when it dawned on us. We had put the top bunk on the bottom and the bottom bunk on the top. Then we managed to lose some of the screws that were made for the bed and put some bolts in backwards. We had a mess on our hands.

We called in the cavalry. My dad and Scott came in the room to try to sort it all out.  

Thankfully, they didn't have to take the whole bed apart again.  They did wind up rigging it a bit. 

Dad helped pop out the bolts. Scott screwed in the screws and rigged the areas that didn't have screws.
I don't know how they managed to sort it all out but they did. 

We did get one thing out of this.  A lot of laughs! We were laughing so hard at the problems we were having putting the bed together. That's when I decided to take out my camera. This much laughter needed to be recorded. We didn't get mad about it. We just laughed. 

Did you know that laughing is very good for you? The Bible says that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones."  Proverbs 17:22

Have you ever had a failed attempt at team work? When was the last time you tried to put something together and it turned out all wrong? Do you have a funny story you want to share?

Tell us about it in the comments below. 

I have 8 more posts to write before the New Year and a Christmas Present to give my readers in about a week. Don't miss any of the upcoming gifts and updates by signing up for our free email updates. You can also "like" our RockSolidFamily Facebook Page.

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

Have you been noticing changes to my blog lately? Well, I'm not done yet.

All of this has been bringing me yet one step closer to fulfilling my childhood dream. Today, I am going to tell you about my next step.

I was invited to participate in "The Next Big Thing Blog Tour" by my friend, Katina. In this blog hop, I am to answer 10 questions about a book that I have written or am working on.

Did I hear a gasp? Yes, I am working on a book. I have several book ideas but decided to tell you about a book that I am almost ready to publish.

1) What is the working title of your book?

     The Year Santa Meets Jesus

2) Where did the idea come from for your book?
     Several years ago, I noticed the crowds of children at malls waiting in line to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas. I started thinking about how many Christians visit their local Santa and yet never introduce him to Jesus. That's where the idea for my book came from.

3) What genre does your book fall under?
This would be labeled as Christian Fiction and Poetry.

4) Which actors would you choose to play in your movie rendition?

Hmm... I'm not good at remembering actors' names. And if I were to name an actor I do know, you'd say why he's not a kid anymore. So I'll just describe what I think the actors would look like.

 I imagine Santa being a normal middle aged shopping mall Santa. Extra stuffing padding his belly and an overly white cottony beard.  For the boy I imagine him being around 7 or 8 years old with big brown eyes.

5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Everyone, including Santa, needs someone to care about them.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Right now I plan to self-publish. Unless an agent just happens to be reading this. ;-)

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
It probably took me a week to write the first draft. The first draft was not a poem. It took me a few months to modify it and make it exactly what I want it to be.

8) What other books would you compare this story to?

It's a picture book. Once I have the pictures, I'd probably be able to compare it then.

9) Who or what inspired you to write the book?

Well, God inspired me to write it. Most of the short stories and tracts I've written were simply things I felt I had to write because of problems I saw around me.

10) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It is short and sweet. It's about a boy that cares more about giving to Santa rather than receiving something from him.

I see this as a story that parents can read to their children and show them where their hearts should be this Christmas. And who knows it may stir some grown up heart strings as well.

I was tagged by Katina Vaselopulos of Life's Incredible Journeys. Last week Katina wrote about her upcoming book on her Next Big Thing Blog post here.

Do you have something big you are planning? What "Big Thing" does God have you working on right now?

As always feel free to share in the comments below.

And keep an eye out for a special Christmas present from our family to yours coming soon.
 
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Our First Fight: "No, I won't eat my children!"

Most people don't believe that my husband and I ever fight. We're normally smiling ear to ear no matter where we go.

I don't want to disappoint you but I need to set the record straight right here and now.

We're not perfect! There I said it.

In my last post, 16 Happy Years I mentioned that things weren't always easy during our 16 years of marriage. We have had our moments of what we called in the early years "interesting discussions".

I'm going to share one of our first fights interesting discussions with you now.

After I met Scott I got a job at the same grocery store he worked at. He told me later that he thought I was coming there because he was there. The truth was I needed a job and a friend of my mom's just happened to work there. She set me up for an interview with the manager the very week after I met Scott.

I got the job! I scanned groceries while Scott bagged them. We were fast becoming good friends. We both worked late shifts. I would often wait around for about an hour after I got off to wait for him.

Scott took two months off for the summer to go to Honduras. I spent all my summer's pay checks on phone calls. Then he came back. Asked me to marry him. All those details you can read in my last post here

Scott then returned to Seminary, and working the evening shift. He would often think about the things he studied in school.

One day in Seminary there was a deep theological discussion of how bad mankind's sin can be.

That discussion stayed in Scott's mind the rest of the day. He was ready in season and out of season to give an answer. (2 Timothy 4:2)

This is normally a good thing unless your bride-to-be is not a seminary trained theologian. Then you might just get fireworks.

I was waiting in the back room for Scott to clock out. We were about to leave with several other workers. We saw one of the other employees go into the bakery and steal a cookie. I was shocked!

I asked Scott about it. He said that wasn't the first time that had happened. Then the lesson they discussed that day kicked in. Just as I was about to say it he said, "Don't say that you wouldn't do that."

I looked at him in disbelief. "I would not steal a cookie!" I said emphatically. Did he think that I was so low that I would do such a thing?

He then told me about the verse in the Bible that talks about how times were so bad that even the most upright and delicate women ate their children. Was I suggesting that I was better than them?

My eyes were as big as saucers at that point as I insisted that I would NOT eat my children.
I'd give my children my own limbs if it came to that.

Poor guy thought I was declaring myself incapable of sin.

Once we got to my home we both decided to listen.

I told him about the teacher that I had in elementary that told us not to say we wouldn't do something because we would. Her example was we should not say we wouldn't smoke because we might smoke. Well, I didn't hear the might. I spent several years afraid to say I wouldn't do something.

Later I realized that it actually was good to be resolved against doing evil. And so I had a firm determination that I wouldn't do something that I know is wrong.

Scott explained that in his class they discussed Deuteronomy 28:56-57
and talked about how bad mankind can be under dire situations. I can't say that I wouldn't steal a cookie if I was hungry enough.

I admitted that I knew I was capable of doing bad things. But I would never eat my children. To me that verse speaks of how spiritually messed up the people during that time were if their best mothers would stoop so low as to eat their children.

Scott was glad to hear that I didn't think I was perfect. And I was glad to hear him say that I didn't have to eat my children.

We laugh about it now. Scott even bought a huge pot as a gag gift to me after our firstborn son was born. We used the pot for tamales but the kids sure enjoyed playing in it too.

Have you and your spouse ever had an interesting discussion? How did you finally resolve it?

Next time you have an argument interesting discussion brewing...Listen.