I can not promise that it will always be upbeat and rejoicing – though God has blessed me with a pretty even temperament, I do still experience those extremes brought on by stress, emotions and hormones – if you don’t believe me, ask my dear husband who has lovingly listened to many a tirade and held me through many a tear!

Also keep in mind that I am working on conquering the need to be perfect.  One of the ways I have been convicted about this is in the area of “always having a godly response” – I have expected myself to have that response instantly and unquestioningly.  I am realizing (this is probably one of those “Well, duh” moments) that God doesn’t mind when I am frustrated or even when I ask “why” or even when I am so mad I want to spit nails.  He made me this way and He understands my emotional needs.  The only time that these become sinful is when I dwell on them and don’t move on in the grace He has so abundantly provided.  With this in mind, I will always try to come back with how God has helped me work through those emotions and brought me to rest again in His loving arms.

This blog will NOT be an avenue to blame others.  Though I probably could find someone to pin every one of my foibles to and come out squeaky clean in the blame department, I know this isn’t healthy or godly.  No matter what the contributing factors, I will take personal responsibility for any wrong attitudes or actions and for any messes I may find myself in as a result.

Now that you know a little of my heart behind this blog, I will warn you that I am a VERY visual learner.  This means that one of the greatest avenues of growth for me is through reading.  You will see lots of different books mentioned (that is a whole separate “extreme” I could tell you about) and some of my posts may actually end up looking somewhat like a book review.  This will simply be because the best way for me to truly absorb and then apply truths is by reading them and then putting what I have learned into writing and eventually into an action plan.  I won’t bore you with my action plans, but I will be putting the truths that impact me the most into written form to help me make them a part of my life.

Instead of living life to the best of my ability, I spent hours playing online games where I could do everything perfectly…I could have my crops in neat and tidy rows, I could complete tasks with relative ease and be rewarded with a “job well done” notice.

The worst part of all of this was, I had truly gone into survival mode.  I was going through the motions of life, but not enjoying life to the fullest or for that matter, much at all.  I was wearing my “Little Miss Perfect” mask faithfully for the world to see, but I was withering and hurting underneath.

How could this be?  Well, I had even managed to transfer this need for perfection and the inability to obtain it to my spiritual life and relationship with God.  I would fore go time in God’s Word pretty much every day because a)I was so far behind in my commitment to spend time with God daily that I was never going to be able to “catch up” and b) because I just didn’t have the time to “do it right” – aka haul out the Strong’s concordance, the Bible commentaries and at least 3 translations of the Bible and then spend an hour researching a verse or two.

I had forgotten the true meaning of grace – unmerited favor.  There wasn’t anything I could do to “be perfect” before God – He had already washed me clean and made me perfect through His Son.  How arrogant to think that I could “please” an Almighty God with how I studied the Bible!  His pleasure is in me spending time with Him – not in a formula of how I think He wants me to in order to receive maximum benefit!

I am not sure what finally starting waking me up out of my self-induced emotional coma, but it took a very long time.  The final jolt that brought me out of my stupor was when my job suddenly ended in June.  I  had 20 to 30 extra hours per week and believe me, you can only farm an electronic farm for so long before even that will drive you crazy!  Suddenly I was faced with how empty my life was and how I had let inactivity and “busyness” direct the course I was taking.

I am so grateful to a loving Heavenly Father and an understanding, supportive husband who have walked with me each step of the journey so far.  I am sure they would both have liked to hit me over the head or said, “Well, duh” a few times, but I have never once felt any condemnation or judgement from either of them.  Just love and grace and understanding.

Even my kids have become my cheerleaders as I have shared my failures that have directly affected them and sought their forgiveness and help in taking little steps to be the mom God wants me to be.

I know I have a long way to go, but each day I am taking baby steps…like letting the kids dust with little hand held dusters and not going behind them to get what they miss!  The balance to that will be taking the time to help them see where their dust is consistently building up to know how to do it better next time, but at the same time instilling in them that it doesn’t have to be perfect!

I want this need for humanly obtained perfection to end with me and to help my children see the joy of doing something wholeheartedly without being paralyzed by the fear of messing up!  I also want them to see me, not as the “perfect mom” , but as a human mom who has an active and thriving relationship with a perfect God!

Granted I come from a family that does just about everything all or nothing – whether it is playing or working.  I can remember games that lasted long into the night that were being played just out of sheer competitiveness.  I can also remember times of “spring cleaning” where we have even been know to polish plant leaves and clean decorative parts of furniture with Q-tips.

At first, I thought that the problem was going to extremes.  Then I realized that much of life is about extremes we have no control over – the terrible drought that pretty much the whole state of Texas is enduring right now came to mind on this one!  Even the section in Ecclesiastes that talks about balance in life is really a list of extremes – a time to laugh and a time to cry, etc.

So, if God works in extremes, why does it feel like life is so out of kilter when I am chasing extremes?  I realized that the answer to that was that I never balanced one extreme with its opposite extreme.

If I was exercising, I was exercising in every spare minute of my day and was leaving no time for the “extreme” in the other direction of taking time to rest and letting my body rejuvenate after the exercise.

If I was “organizing”, everything else had to stop because it was such a monumental ordeal – and yet I never seemed to make it past the first room or two – I was just reorganizing the same junk every time I went on an organizing binge and while on this binge, everything else fell terribly behind until I would move to the next thing that cried urgently for my attention and then “the house will just have to wait”.

As I have worked through this and seen that extremes are okay and sometimes God takes us through the extremes of life whether it is the mountaintop experience of a time of close fellowship with Him or walking through the valley of the shadow of death, I have come to realize that the real truth I need to wrap my mind around is that there is always a balance for an extreme.

This will be something that I am sure I will have to work towards for the rest of my days here on earth and will only truly achieve when I reach Heaven.  However, I feel that working towards balance will help make me a much more pleasant person to be around!

Then this past several months, several very unexpected things happened in my life.  The first event was my sister loaning me a book about intentional motherhood.  As I read through it, I realized that I had been living life by the seat of my pants and just reacting to things as they happened.  There was nothing “intentional” about my mothering or any part of my life.

The second was that my part time job that I thought I really enjoyed was pulled out from under me.  I thought I was truly making a difference and helping my employer (a fellow Christian) be more successful.  I also viewed my students as “my mission field” – people I would not have come in contact with otherwise.  I suddenly had 20 to 30 hours per week available that had been not been there.  I picked up a second book my sister had loaned me by the same author and found God using it to heal my wounds and to bring me to a place where I was truly willing to take stock of my life - every aspect of it – and see where I really was.

Next came a very wonderful heart-to-heart talk with my sister.  As we talked, and I shared some of the things that had impacted me from the books she loaned me, I was amazed to hear that she was walking through some of the very things I was – questioning our very foundational beliefs and both echoing that there had to be more to truly living a full, God-centered life than we had found.

Then in July, just 3 weeks shy of my 40th birthday, we found out that our 4th child was on the way.  We went through the full range of emotions – shock (we had thought God had “finished” our family as our youngest was 6), worry (how would this affect our family make up and concern over the already stretched budget of a self-employed family who was suddenly without the small paycheck I had been bringing in), but all of these were quickly replaced with great joy and anticipation.  Yes, this was a major life change, but we had a huge God that had ordained this little life growing in me and would provide for all of our family needs.

Then just as quickly, this great joy turned to grief when God chose to take our little one home much sooner than we could have even imagined.  So, I suddenly found myself ready to “celebrate” my 40th birthday with a deep grief when I had determined that I was going to look at 40 as an accomplishment and celebrate life.

It is now 4 weeks past our little one’s home going and I am still slowly working on healing both physically and emotionally.  But sometimes, it is in these crucibles of hurt and questioning that God can bring the clearest picture of where we are at and where we should be.

All of these events have led me to where I am now….realizing that I have been surviving rather than living – not just through the last weeks of grief, but for many years.  As I have finally started to truly be honest with myself, it has led to some very startling discoveries.  And it is these discoveries that I hope to share in the posts of this blog.