Not so unlike an Israelite

I have been studying the Old Testament, partly because it is what I have been teaching to my Sunday school class.... partly because I love the history and the way I can identify with the ones who have walked before.

I read chapter 6 of that book and Ann is honest and silently I am relieved that she is human and that she forgets too. Even the one who wrote the book on it forgets to count and suddenly I realize I'm too hard on myself, expect too much, and essentially set myself up for failure.

"I am a wandering Israelite who sees the flame in the sky above, the pillar, the smoke from the mountain, the earth open up and give way, and still I forget."

How many times do I read those stories and laugh at their stupidity, at how many times they screw up, time and time again they forget that He always comes through. But then I stop and and I think about myself and at how many times I do the same thing. I forget every day, I fail to live the yes, and I live the no, yet I criticize the Israelites for the very thing I am so good at doing myself. They lived under reminders, a cloud during the day and a flame at night, and yet, still, they forgot.

So I keep reading. I read of her chasing the moon and smile because I have my own "chasing the moon experiences." Slowly my mind traces back over those "chasing the moon" experiences and suddenly I feel a smidgen of that desire for Him that has been covered by dark and all of a sudden a spark of light is seen.

"Eucharisteo is everywhere and I want to see eucharisteo everywhere and I want to remember how badly I really want to see it."

And that has been my prayer as of late, that I would remember how badly I want Him, how badly I need Him. That I would want to want Him.

My attention is drawn back to the fact that we live in a sin-cursed world and in sin-cursed bodies that need reminding. And sometimes the only way to remember is to fall.

"Pain is everywhere, and wherever the pain there can be everywhere grace, and yes Jesus, I am struggling and I get turned around but I think I know, at least, in part, what I want. If I had never run, if I had never fallen, and here, I am not sure I would have known with blazing clarity. I may not know all that it means, but this is what I want."

And the cycle will be endless, because we are just like the Israelites, and history always repeats itself. That is why we cling to faith because faith is not something that we did but it is something that we live. It's not a thing to put in the past, its a thing to cling to in the present. 

"Faith is not a one-in-the-past action, but faith is always a way of seeing, a seeking for God in everything."

We must look and we must seek because we only find what we are looking for when we seek. And to find Him we cannot seek merely with our eyes, no, to find Him we must seek with all our heart, all our mind, and with all our soul. For it is not enough to just gaze upon Him, we must empty ourselves of all that is meaningless and allow Him to make us whole.

* I wrote about chapter 5 here
* All quotes come from Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts Ch 6

A Gingerbread football stadium

A few years ago the oldest P kid and I decided to build a real gingerbread house.... not one of those things out of a kit.

The first one was a Victorian style house complete with a bay window. It was about a foot tall and we were really impressed with ourselves.

Little did I know what I was getting myself into:-o

This year I asked Aust what we were going to make and he didn't bat an eye, "the razorback stadium."

"Oh really!" said a very surprised me.

"Yep, I thought we could use a challenge."

"Hmmmm.... welll...... ok as long as you figured out how to support it."

While shopping for materials the 8 yr old P daughter and I ran into a friend and was asked what we were doing... she replies, "getting stuff to build a gingerbread football stadium." To which I just smiled and said that we didn't know how to do simple at the P house. KK didn't miss a beat!! She just looked at me and said, "Well that would be boring!"

Oh my, what kind of monsters have I created??!!!

Since my handy iPhone has been causing me all sorts of problems I don't have pictures of the first few stages. But here are the first ones I took.....

At this point we had already spent 10+ hours on it

Yes that is a hot glue gun you see.... we are cheaters.... but did you really expect us to use just icing???

Other then hot glue and some popsicle sticks baked into the gingerbread for support, everything else is somewhat edible.

For those of you who are Arkansans you will notice this is NOT Donald W Reynolds football stadium, it happens to be War Memorial!!

We decided to scale back just a bit when we saw that our original plans wouldn't fit on the 4x5 (FOOT!!) table Aust built to hold the thing:-) So no upper deck and the stands don't go all the way around.

Here are the two end zones in process

The words are M&M's cut in half and glued down.
The middle picture is the field house (I know War Memorial doesn't have one but the original plan was for this to be the D.W.R. so we just stuck with the field house) and behind the field house is the where the jumbo tron will go.

Monkey wanted to help and she LOVES washing dishes and did so for over an hour:-)

Ok so next up is the almost finished field... this process of laying white coconut and green coconut took FOREVER!!! At least 4 hours with three of us working on it!!!

This pic shows the almost complete stands. The corner took a few times to get right:-/

And this is what it looks like after at least 20 hours put into it.... Jumbo tron still needs to be finished, i.e. the final score of that wonderful AR vs LSU game that was played a few weeks ago:-)

Closeup of the finished field with the uprights in place.

I tried to get an aerial pick my phone wouldn't cooperate with me. Here's the best one I got.

It really is pretty sweet.... (no pun intended, hehe)

Now what to create next year..........

Jesus is not crazy

I babysit this sweet little 5 yr old 2 nights a week. Her mommy does not know Him and lives a life full of darkness. I get to love on her little girl, take her to church, and tell her about her Father who loves her. I get to pray over her, with her, and plant seed after seed in her little heart. She loves AWANA'S and I can't even begin to tell you just how important Wed are to her... to me as I care for her. There is not much in this world as precious as a little one reciting words... but not just any words... His Words.

Words are powerful... as I writer I am well aware of this fact, and so are many of you.

His words are powerful but more importantly they are life changing.

Today they might not mean anything to this little girl... but He says that if you hide His word in your heart then He will make it a lamp to your path.

My prayer is of course that through Sparks this little one will come to know Him as her personal Savior... that she will grasp as much as she can the greatness of His love.

I also pray that one day... maybe a long time from now... maybe not....

That one day, when she is older... when she is lost... when she doesn't know which way is up.... when she feels lonely... sad... or unloved....

That on that day she will remember the Words memorized so long ago at the tender age of 5 that He is mighty in power. That for He so LOVED the world that He sent His son. That He loves her. That in her darkest hour it is His light that provides the way out.

She may not ever remember the name of her babysitter but I pray that she reminders that babysitters God.

This sweet little girl already knows that God is great, the maker of all things. She already knows that He loves her and that He made her to be sooooo special. Sparks has been a great tool for us to talk to about the concept of sin and last night we had a great conversation about why Jesus had to die.

Just this morning on the way to meeting her mommy we had this conversation.

Me- "Dually (my roommates dog) is crazy!!"
5 yr old- (laughing) "Yes he is!!"
Me- "And so are we!!"
5yr old- "Yep, we sure are!!"
   - long pause -
5 yr old- "Jesus isn't crazy. God isn't crazy."
Me- "Your right He's not."
5 yr old- "Nope, God is wise."

Theses words warmed my heart. I think that God has some special plans for this little girl.

My monkey

Yesterday was Krista's youngest daughter's birthday. She turned 4!! It is hard to believe how much she has grown up in the last year. I stole her and her 5 yr old sister after lunch today and we have spent the afternoon eating pizza, taking naps, and now they are making a mess painting at my table...and having an absolute blast:) They are growing up into such pretty young ladies. I of course do not have favorite children. There are 8 about to be 9 very special children in my life. Of course my nephew Ryan is one, Krista's 6 and then her brother's newborn little girl, Lexi. My friend Tracy is expecting a little boy named Ben in just a few months. These kids bring such joy to my life. Since it is Brityn's birthday I am going to just write about her.. so no hurt feelings from any of you mom's out there..lol. I remember like it was yesterday when Brit Brit was born. It had been a long almost 9 months. Kris was bedridden for a lot of it and oh was that an experience. I am just glad that Brityn is the last:) There had been many false alarms but one evening while at Bible study with some high school girls I was teaching Jared called. After the lesson I listened to my voicemail...it was Jared informing that my newest "niece" had arrived and that I had better get up to the hospital.


Oh she was soooo beautiful!!! A true miracle. How can you look at a newborn and not see God's hand written all over their face? Up to this point in my life I had never been extremely close to anyone who had a baby (my nephew wasn't born till the next year). I had been apart of the Pavatt family for about a year and a half by this point. I spent most of my free time between classes hanging out there and often spent weekends babysitting the 3 kids that were around at that point (now there are 6, two recently adopted). When I held that little girl for the first time I was amazed at just how much love I felt. Since then Brityn and I have been very close. She is very dear to my heart. She is the baby and spoiled to the core. She has been held and rocked and sung to sleep since she was born. She has all of us college/young couples/early career people or whatever you want to call the big group of 18-35 yrs old that hang out on Sundays at the Pavatt house, completely wrapped multiple times around her fingers.

(Okay.... I have to stop now and head over to start dinner at the Pavatts, so I'll have to finish this up later)

Tonight was bitter sweet.... Everyone showed up plus a new couple. There haven't been many new people here recently, I wonder what God is going to do next with our group...something crazy... I can just feel it.

Back to my sweet Brityn or as we often call her, monkey. So she is just about as rotten as a child can be but oh is she ever a sweetie. She loves to be held. She often looks up at me and says, "Kaffer hold you," and of course I almost aways do:) One of my favorite things about her is the way God uses her to make me feel so special. All the kids are very affectionate and give great hugs and kisses and say I love you all the time. Brityn does too... but she does it very differently. Sometimes she and I will be back in her room playing whatever and she will just stop, look up and say, "kaffer, I love you." Sometimes when I am holding her she looks me in the eyes, grabs my face with her hands and says, "Kaffer, I love you." Other times she will just simple remind me that I am her Kaffer. (Kaffer is the name that was given to me by Kailyn, now 8, when she was 2 and could not pronounce Kathryn). I don't think that a day has gone by spent with her where she didn't say at least one of those phrases to me.



I am amazed at the way God works. We read in church today from 1 Peter and the verse that says to cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for us. Do you get that last part. We don't cast our cares on Him just because He is strong enough to bear the weight. He wants us to because He actually cares...about me. Those things that I think are just stupid.... God cares about. Those worries I have about my future... God cares about. I really don't like this feeling of loneliness that has crept in my life here lately. I often drive up my driveway and sigh...another night of coming home to an empty house. All of my friends, but one, are married. One has 6 kids, one is expecting and the other married for almost a year now. I often wonder and ask God... when is it going to be my turn??

I was having one of those hard, lonely nights tonight. So I'm getting ready for bed...feeling sorry for myself and trying to have my own pity party and I look on my nightstand and see evidence of two sweet little girls all around my house... and I just smiled. Then I opened my computer to this page. I sat down to finish this post and as I began writing about my sweet little monkey the tears just started flowing. God cares about that loneliness inside of me. He may not be ready to fulfill that need the way I think He should but He so in His own way. I hear His voice in the form of a little one whispering I love you Kaffer as I tuck her in and sing to her. God uses a small little girl to remind me that I am special, that there is a reason why I am where I am. Yeah maybe I come every night to an empty house but God is here. He doesn't think that this struggle that I am having is silly. Tonight will not let the enemy win. Maybe I'm not where I think I should be at 24, but I am right where God wants me to be. So the plans I have/had for my life are a little different then what is actually taking place, but God is preparing me for something amazing. So tonight, I am casting my loneliness on Him, because He cares about me. I am also throwing away my plans, His are far better, even if they don't make any sense right now. I am going to choose right now to trust in Him. Completely trust in Him. I can hold my head up high, Satan has no foothold in this life. My Father loves me and is here with me. He is all I need, more than I could ever want, and I'm going to rest in His faithfulness.