my mum

Responding to Faith's comment has reminded me of the power of praying Mums. Made me think of my Mum and how her prayers have covered me over my 40 yrs. So wanted to write a positive post about her. Mum has certain traits that I would love to emulate. Here's my list:

• prayer and worship. Mum is a prayer warrior. She spends every morning praying and singing praise to the LORD before she even gets out of bed. I can always hear her singing traditional hymns as she goes about her day. When she rocks my little ones, she sings more worship songs.
• she taught herself how to knit and cook. I remember her baking cookies and cakes. There was always a container full of something yummy when i was young. She knitted us clothes and now my children are blessed to have clothes from her too. And she taught me.
• she very rarely follows the crowd and she comes from a big family so it can be overwhelming not following everyone else! She normally stands up for what she believes in and is not afraid to stand alone.
• family and church are very important to her. When we were little and 1st moved to NZ from Samoa she would send us to english speaking churches. As for family...she loves her family and always tries to gather them together wherever she is. So when she's here visiting me, my house can get rather full!
• she's extremely hardworking. To the point of exhaustion sometimes! She does get out of balance with it, but she always wants to tackle everything and doesn't like leaving things for the next day.
• she plays with children. She doesn't just give them something to play with but actually takes time out to play with them and enjoys it.
• she's young at heart. Mum turns 60 this year but she's like a big kid sometimes.
• she loves the LORD. Spends time with him and always remembers him in everything she does.

my daughter

I pray the LORD binds us together so whenever you need me I will know. I worried that I wouldn't love you as much as i love Caleb. I worried in vain. When i hold you in my arms, see you look at me, I am flooded with dreams, hopes and love for you.

I dream that your dreams come true
I hope that you will fly like an eagle
That all the LORD has planned for you will come true
And you will open all the awesome gifts he has for you.

I feel like the LORD. Hoping and dreaming the impossible for you will be possible. Why dream only for some when the LORD is offering it all? Even as a 40 yr old I still dream the impossible. My life has not fazed me because I know my Redeemer lives.

But as a Mum, I worry for your safety. Girls are so vulnerable in this world. I hope and pray that the LORD will keep you safe from harm and that his angels will carry you away from danger. Be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.

skin rash

my son has had this skin irritation just under his bottom lip. He 1st had it when he was sick with the cold. We thought it could have been his teeth. At night he's woken up by it and touches his bottom lip with his fingers pulling it out in the process...not exactly tugging at it, but just pushing it. It's almost become a habit now. Then he rubs the left side of his mouth with the back of his hand because it's itchy. This causes a red patch on the right side of his mouth. You can kind of see it on the picture above with him and riley.

We have tried different creams recommended by our Doctor and even had a 2nd opinion with other creams. Tried putting vaseline on it. It's very upsetting because it goes away and we think hooray it's cleared up. Then a couple of weeks later it's back.

Last night it happened again. I've tried googling it but because it could be a number of things there's no other solution apart from what we're doing already. I held him in my arms last night and I couldn't stop crying to see him so disturbed because he was so tired but kept trying to press him lip with his fingers. Then the scratching started.

It could be teething, drooling, an allergy, overheating....all of the above!

I have prayed about it. But the LORD hasn't taken it away yet. And I'm still no clearer as to what it is. So going to take him to the doctor again. I'm worried it's going to leave a scar because it's been happening on and off for months now.

Need to be observant about it. So i can narrow down when it happens. It's always when he's asleep that it irritates him. My poor son.

movies

i have not spent a lot of time with the LORD lately. I thank the LORD for prayer! The ability to talk to the LORD whenever and wherever has been my life saver over the years. And yet again, this is keeping me afloat. I always have time to talk to him.

I have watched two stink movies lately in my after midnight sessions with riley. But both had messages straight from the LORD. That shed light on my life - in both these cases about my marriage. How do i know it was from the LORD? Because i recognised it immediately as truth. It was about me and it's always as if they looked into my soul and found what I already knew was there but couldn't put my finger on. As always the LORD being the creator of my soul cut right to the heart of me.

I said to him, why are you using these two mediocre movies to speak to me - i mean they could at least be memorable ones! And i realised it's because I haven't spent a lot of time in study or reading my daily sources or in the word. So typical of him - he stepped into my every day life.

I love it when he does that because it shows me how much he cares that he can still touch my life right where I'm at. I watched these movies because I don't need to concentrate on them, but they might be funny or a bit of a story that i can follow in the background while i hang with my daughter. A romantic comedy would be great...but haven't found anything yet :)

Anyways he's given me a lot of food for thought. I have a lot of personal homework to do!

day dreaming

every now and then i have crazy ideas and get the travel bug. I have a list of places i would love to visit before i die. The biggest on this list would be Antarctica. I hope I get to go. An even bigger dream is space travel, but that wont be in my life time...and even if it was, it would be waaay too expensive.

So last week was hanging with my son and another idea popped into my head. Why can't we go live in New York for a year or two. Myles could get a transfer...We've always wanted to go to New York. But then the whole 9/11 happened and put that idea to bed for a while.

If we did, then what year would that be? How disruptive would that be for the kids education? It would have to be before they went to school which means in the next couple of years. But then I would miss out on crucial years in my nieces and nephews lives. Especially the older two and the youngest one!

I still haven't ruled it out. But thought maybe we could just go there for a couple of months and explore the place. That way myles gets to spend time with us rather than at work.

I'm such a dreamer! But dreaming did get me to London, Paris, Jerusalem, the Serengeti, the Disney castle in Germany with the impossible name Neuw...stein, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, etc. So will happily keep dreaming :)