Tag Archives: job

When You Need to Rock the Muumuu

I don’t live a glamorous life.

While my Facebook statuses (is the plural stati?) and Instagram photos show my children loving each other and me spending copious amounts of time loving my husband and reading God’s Word, that’s not always how it rolls.

On any given day, I drag my bleary-eyed, bed-headed self to my daughter’s room to wake her and supervise her fashion selection for the day. Often this time of the day is sprinkled with pouts, foot stomps and tears. We rush downstairs to eat breakfast – your choice of seven boxes of cereal in various degrees of sugary sweetness, except on standardized testing days when I fire up the stovetop.

I drive, first my daughter, and then my son to the bus stop without brushing my teeth, my hair or adorning certain important undergarments meant for holding up the masses. (Just keeping it real.) Then I pray I don’t need to leave the car for any reason.

I am a mom.

You’ll often find me writing the things bursting from within me to keep the actual verbal word count down to a few hundred thousand a day. That means I don’t talk as much. My husband thanks me for this.

I’ve published a few things, but you won’t find me on the New York Times Best Sellers list. I speak at MOPS and churches here and there, but my name isn’t listed beside greats like Beth Moore or Priscilla Shirer on the Women of Faith ticket.

And just between you and me, I sometimes wonder why? I have a fabulous southern drawl and a complete sequined wardrobe. Does Lifeway Women realize what they are missing out on?

But sitting at the kitchen table one morning, bowing my unkempt head over my Bible, I read, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ…But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.” (1 Cor. 12:12, 18-19 NIV, emphasis mine)

So, I was meant to rock the muumuu.

God placed me here. As it is, I’m doing what He has called me to do – crazy hair and all. Right now, I’m supposed to be a wife and mother. I’m sharing the truths He’s given me with the written word. I’m filling sippy cups by day and watching Sci Fi with my hubby by night. I work at slipping Jesus into the conversations at the supermarket and occasionally pop in at the prison.

Perhaps one day, I’ll share sparkly eye shadow with Beth or rescue orphans with Rich. But today, I’m going to build blanket forts and faith by doing the last thing I know He called me to do. And if I’m going to be hanging around the house and all, I can at least rock a good sequined muumuu.

Where does God have you now? Do you ever feel like your job for God isn’t important? Try walking without toes, and remember all the little parts are important for the function of the body as a whole.

Carol

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Foxes in Facebook


Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom. Song of Solomon 2:15 NIV

It all starts so innocently. No one is supposed to get hurt. But you are faced with a decision. Nothing monumental. Just a simple request.

Add as friend…

Or

Ignore.

Which do you choose? It’s been years since this person was in your life. You wonder what they are up to. Just out of curiosity, you slide the mouse over the blue box and click. It’s done. You are now friends again. You can open the window to their life and peek inside – just to see. Or can you?

The Facebook phenomenon is sweeping the nation. It’s not just teenagers or thirty-somethings logging in to Facebook; even the baby boomers are getting in on the action. This social network has been monumental in reconnecting old school mates and acquaintances otherwise forgotten. But ask any Facebooker and they will tell you of the old flames that have discovered them.

How is this affecting marriages? And is it wrong to befriend your long lost love?

Here are five steadfast rules to play it safe with Facebook.

1. Share your friend with your mate. It’s okay to accept a friend request from an old flame or friend, but be sure your spouse knows of this friendship. That just helps keep you accountable.

2. Know when to say when. If you find yourself looking forward to getting on Facebook just to find out information about a certain person or to leave messages for them, stop. Remove them from your friend list. This can be done easily, and they won’t even know you’ve done it.

3. Don’t build new bridges. While it’s fine to send a message to an old friend or flame letting them know what is going on in your life, it is NOT fine to continue to send messages back and forth on a regular basis. In doing so, you are building a new bridge to this person – a bridge perfect for “little foxes” to cross. Keep the foxes out!

4. Share information, not feelings. When communicating with this person, give them information about your life. Tell them about your spouse, your kids, and your job. Don’t share personal feelings. Don’t tell them you hate your job and you are unhappy in your marriage. You are opening the door for disaster to walk right in.

5. Make it obvious how you feel about your spouse. If you are sharing information about your life with this person, be sure to include information about your spouse. That lets the other person know how important your husband or wife is to you. It’s a great idea to use a picture of you and your mate as your profile picture. It screams, “I’m happy and married,” to all who see it.

Facebook is a wonderful way to reconnect with old friends, but be ware of its downfalls, as well. It’s easy to think you are impervious to the darts Satan flings. You are not. None of us are. Don’t allow the little foxes to get into your marriage because you are playing the comparison game. Everybody looks good on Facebook, but every one of them wakes up with bad breath in the morning. Protect the sanctity of your marriage by following these five simple rules; you’ll send the little foxes running.

Carol

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A Journey to Africa – Part 3

This is the 3rd part to my interview with Heather Ricks. Her family of four is getting ready to follow God’s call to Africa. If you haven’t read the other parts of the interview, please don’t miss them. I don’t know about you, but just reading Heather’s responses gets me excited about missions.


CAROL:  How long will you be spending in Africa?


HEATHER: Initially, we were going to Tanzania for long term (however long it took to get the school up and running and turned over to nationals. Which could be about ten or so years).

           

When we signed up with SIM (Serving In Mission), we signed up for a two-year term. However, God must’ve had different plans.

  

After trying to raise support again, we got up to about 49 % before Jason lost his job. (The ministry was hit by the economy and had to let all the office staff go). When this happened, we had a decision to make. SIM was not paying us yet, and Jason again was put in the position of having to make money to provide for his family. It was kind of hard going to an interview saying that we were planning on leaving for Africa whenever we got enough support raised—which we we’re hoping would be less than a year from then. You can’t find too many jobs, making more than unemployment, that way.

            

We looked at different options to get us to Africa and provide for the family (a difficult thing to juggle). One option was the possibility of Jason getting a Bible teaching job here at a high school, and us going to Africa during the summer to teach. We already had enough money raised for that, but Jason could neither get a teaching job here nor did any of the African countries need someone during the summer at their universities at that time. So, we nixed that idea. The other idea was to see how much money it would cost us to go to Africa for a year. Because they treat one-year people as ‘volunteers’, we were able to get paid differently, thus cutting our costs by over half. When this happened, we had enough to go this summer. All we had to finish raising was our one-time expenses.

            

So, we are technically going for a year, but we are available for whatever. I’m through trying to figure out what’s going to happen after a year!

  

CAROL:  Do you have any reservations about leaving?

 

HEATHER:  Whew, do I ever! It’s always scary leaving the known and going into the unknown. What keeps me going is knowing we’re doing what God has made us to do.

 

What keeps me going is knowing we’re doing what God has made us to do.

 

CAROL:  What do your boys think about the move?

 

HEATHER:  Although we’ve kept our boys involved with the process the whole way, it hasn’t made it any easier for them. They’ve had to say goodbye to friends a lot, especially Jeremy. We were hoping we would be able to make the transition from Wyoming to Africa quickly enough that they would not grow ‘roots’. But, during this two-year waiting period, they’ve made close friends, and it is hard.

            

On the flip side, they do understand what we are doing. This has given us many opportunities to talk to them about how God has something special planned for them, as well. God didn’t just ‘call’ dad to go and the rest of us have to be dragged along. If I didn’t feel our boys were on board, I would feel this enough reason to abort the move. I don’t want to plow over my family because I feel like we’re doing God’s work. Our family has to be healthy before ministry can be done. We’ve had many conversations about how hard it is to move. Jason and I allow them to cry and grieve.

           

One thing that has helped is we’ve been in contact with other SIM missionaries that have boys around Jeremy and Jonathan’s age. They’ve been emailing Jeremy and Jonathan, so they are establishing friendships even before they move.  Jason and I have learned that kids are more resilient than they look.

Don’t miss the final part to this interview on Friday! 

   

Carol

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A Journey to Africa – Part 1


Here is the beginning of my interview with Heather Ricks. If you missed Friday’s post, click HERE to catch up.


CAROL:   I know you are planning to move on mission to Africa with your family of four.  Help us understand how you got started in missions.           

 

HEATHER:  When Jason and I first got married, we dedicated our lives to doing ministry.  Soon Jason found a job at Reach Out Youth Solutions, he was placed at Oxford Baptist church doing youth ministry. This was quite a stretch for me because we had to live off support. I’ll have to admit that living off support is scary. **This is important to note, because this had a huge impact on me for future ministry decisions.

 

Often, we have this expectation for God to provide for us how we want Him to provide for us—such as raising 100% of support, having money fall from the sky at unexpected moments, etc… But, needless to say, that doesn’t happen all the time, and it didn’t happen that way for Jason and me. We did NOT see our support come pouring in. In fact, even though we had a house provided for us by the church, we still were not able to meet our financial needs—food, insurance and utility expenses. This made it very difficult, because we knew we were doing what God wanted us to do. But it did leave us a little confused.

 

When our support bottomed out, around two months after our son Jeremy was born, we were forced to move in with Jason’s parents. This was a very dark time for me. Though I had a roof over my head and food on the table, I was left reeling, wondering what happened. Did we do something wrong? Was ministry worth this? Why was God not providing for us (overlooking that He had)? By this time, our friends were getting married, getting good jobs, making lots of money, getting nice cars, buying houses, living the American Dream. We were the losers with no money, living with parents. I was embarrassed. I let society dictate who I was and blamed God on my circumstances.

           

What we thought would only be a few months of living with the in-laws, turned into a long, drawn-out eighteen months of living there. My hope was that one day we would make enough money to buy our own house (a worthy goal, I thought). But God gave us another decision to make. Jason came home from work one day and said, “Heather, they are making some changes at Reach-Out. They offered me another job making ‘x’ amount of dollars, but if I don’t take it, I have to quit.”

 

Now, the ‘x’ amount of dollars was more money than what I had seen in any paycheck of mine, but what Jason said next hit home with me. He said, “This job they are offering me is not my passion. It’s not what God made me to do. If I don’t take this job, I don’t know what we’ll do, but I don’t feel right in taking it. Please pray about it with me, and see if God is telling you the same thing.” Well, I knew what I wanted to say, “Take it, you idiot! We’ll finally be able to buy a house!” But that wasn’t what God was saying for us to do. I knew that. We both agreed that Jason should not take the other job at Reach-Out, thus ending the small amount of money we were already getting, and spiraling us into the unknown.

           

 

We finally found a house and put in an offer. The morning after, I prayed, “God, I’m so excited, but, if you don’t want us to get this house, then please don’t let us get it. I don’t want to do anything out of Your will.” A couple of hours later, our realtor called and said that someone else outbid us. I knew there must have been a reason for God pulling the house out from under us, but I cried. (If you hadn’t noticed, I did a lot of crying). I was tired of being stuck where I was.

           

Shortly after that, God moved us to Portland, Oregon. We stepped out in faith. We lived there four years when I found I was expecting our second son. Jason called his friend in Wyoming to tell him of my pregnancy. Our friend started telling Jason about the church he was planting in Laramie, WY. Jason’s heart began to burn because this was exactly what he wanted to do! Without Jason’s prompting, our friend even said, “This is a little weird me asking you this, but are you looking for a place in ministry, because it sounds like you’re a good fit.”

           

 

Jason got off the phone and said, “Heather, how do you feel about moving to Wyoming?”  My first reaction was, “Uhm, Honey, you only called Raul to tell him about me being pregnant, how does that translate into us moving to Wyoming?”

           

There was a lot at stake here for me. I LOVED Oregon. It is the most beautiful state I’ve ever lived. We loved hiking, camping, skiing on the weekends. I had my house I wanted so badly. And the catch about moving to Wyoming is that we had to live off support again. That was a HUGE no-no for me. It didn’t work out so well the first time, so why would I ever go back to doing that again?

           

Because I was so comfortable, it was hard for me to pray for us to leave Oregon and move to a place where the antelope out numbered the people three to one. But I felt God telling me that I could trust Him, because He is always faithful. Not only was there a place for Jason to do ministry in Laramie, but God had a place for me too. He had bigger blessings in store. I knew I had to trust God with everything, even if it meant we had to live off support again.  (It’s funny, because I told Jason, “After this, no more living off support. Uh-uh. I’ll do it one more time, but won’t do it anymore!” Never say never!)

           

           

We moved to Wyoming and everything fell into place with perfect timing. This time, we raised about 80% of our support, and I was able to keep my job from Oregon (because I worked from home). God is so cool that way.

           

In Wyoming, Jason did what he loved, and we made a great community of friends. I was even able to help Jason out and do other ministry roles. We lived in Wyoming around 4 ½ years. Jason and I had no plans to leave. But God…

Join me Wednesday for Part 2 of my interview. 

Would you please pray for my Memaw? She is 92 and fell and broke her leg on Saturday. She will be having surgery to place a pin in it sometime today. Your prayers would be coveted. I love you all!

 

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Carol

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