Two years later...it's easier to breathe

Yesterday marked the two year anniversary of the tragic death of the man I loved. 

In the beginning there were days that I did not think I could breathe.

Physiologically, there was something in my body that would go off around 2:30 every afternoon when our daily phone call after my work shift occurred.

For almost a year, around the 27th of each month, again my body responded physically to the ongoing loss.

I often wondered how I would commemorate each year after his leaving this world.

Last March 27th I was in Dalton, Georgia's hospital loving on my Mary Catherine, who incurred an extreme injury the day before playing softball. As I ushered in a year of loss, MC laid in pain from a torn spleen, bruised kidney, and a pneumothorax, a small tear in her lung. I know.... right.

At day's end, as I pondered my state, I knew I was honoring my memory in the best way...loving on my  kids. It would have been right where he would have me were he still here.

This year I am more hopeful than ever and breathing not only easier but deeper as the Father continues to fill my soul with His love and goodness. Yesterday, I tried to slow down to reflect almost feeling guilty for feeling such joy.

But the truth is God is healing me, growing me, and expanding my borders.

 So, after a long day at work, I  ushered in year two watching my tall-man John Jay hit the winning run in to win last night's baseball game.

What I am learning is that love multiplies. Spiritually, I remain connected to my lost love here on earth as he continues to cheer me on from heaven....I am constantly surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. He continues to be my number one fan and greatest encourager.

Although he is not here physically, my experience two years ago has afforded me deep and meaningful friendships with people so dear to my love. I have gained mommas and children to love on in His physical absence to honor him and our shared time well.

Furthermore, because our time together was truly a time when God taught me about His incredible love for me, it has filled my soul in such a way that it bursts to be poured out onto others. So...what has that looked like?

Well, it has included Mom Heart small groups, weekly and monthly, Christmas outreaches with the local YMCA afterschool care program, local retreats and national conferences.
But that's not all...

There are two enormous opportunities in front of me...all a result of loving, being loved, and going deeper into the love of God.

First, a Mom Heart launch is on the horizon this fall at our local elementary school. There will be potential opportunity to push back the darkness in our community by loving on moms and their children through children's literature, and gospel storytelling.

And finally, on a larger note, which I still can't get my head or heart wrapped around...and I not sure I ever will...

I will travel this August, alongside, two of my children...Lawren, my firstborn daughter, and John Jay, my firstborn son. We will be serving in Kampala, Uganda as well as Kisoro where our church sponsors 40 children to attend schools in the area.

My arena of ministry appears to be speaking to moms on the biblical design of motherhood to three churches in the Kisoro area.

So, today, two years later I must feel like John, the disciple did, when he wrote, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."

How is He stretching your heart today to love more deeply and fully. I would love to hear from you!

Come and Share Your Master's Happiness

This past weekend nineteen beautiful women gathered around  Lake Guntersville in North Alabama to celebrate motherhood at our very first Mom Heart retreat. The weekend was a culmination of the previous twelve years of my discipleship and recent training under speaker and author Sally Clarkson.

It was twelve years ago when there were three children under the age of six when I was introduced to Educating the Wholehearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson. Little did I know there were to be two more children added to our nest in less than four years.

Thank goodness the Father afforded me the opportunities to regularly attend annual Mom Heart conferences where the training, inspiration, and discipleship  method of parenting was instilled and modeled by the Clarkson family.

Having been raised in a broken home, I longed for something solid to ground myself and my family. The banner of Christ along with the nature and character of God has been the driving force of Mom Heart conferences as we have embraced  the biblical design of motherhood given to us by God.

Over the past twelve years as I practiced this method of discipleship and put into place certain elements in our family, I am seeing the fruit of my labor as I celebrate each unique season of my individual children's lives.

This past weekend I was able to, in turn, pass on some of these methods to a group of moms hungry as well to reach the hearts of their children. But I forgot to tell them something...

I forgot to tell them that on Sunday when we departed our spiritual mountain top experience beside the lake that they were entering back into the trenches of nothing less than warfare. I have had three of my gals calling in tears because it's just so hard...so hard to be in a broken marriage, so hard to deal with the spiritual training and development of our children when they are angry and rebellious. One woman even called me about another friend who needs to be encouraged and has no one to talk to.

So, today, I am so thankful for Mom Heart online, another resource to help us as we journey together to weather the storms of life. It is an honor to be considered a contributor to this powerful tool to encourage women. Thank you Father.

Why is it worth your valuable time to spend time here.

 

​Mom Heart Online is spiritual harbor. We’re here not just to bring you in to stay, but also to send you out to sail. We are a place any mom can come to be encouraged, equipped, and enabled as a mother after God’s heart. We are here to inspire and engage your heart with great content that calls you to a high vision for your life as a mother, to create an online community of moms where you can network and interact with others who share your heart, to train you how to easily start and lead your own Mom Heart Group to continue in life what you find online, and to provide quality and original materials and resources that will fill your heart and mind with life-changing wisdom and truth.

 

Please take a moment to visit TODAY the brand new  Mom Heart website. Also, the button on the right side  of my blog  will take you directly to the source of encouragement which has inspired me over the past twelve years.

You can also find us on twitter and facebook.

Matthew 25:21 "His master replied, Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful for a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!"

This is my heart after this past weekend. I felt the Father saying,  "Pam, you have been faithful with the children I entrusted to you, and now I am giving you more...these beautiful hearts of these women. Pass on my greatness to them. Love them. Care for them."

My gut level emotional response...."But Master, I am afraid"

Yet, my heart with overwhelming joy says, "May it be to me as you have said."

Who will you disciple? Who is the Father continuously bringing into your path that you can share the secrets of the kingdom of God. Your willing heart can be difference in the heart and life of a precious mom and child.

Finally, for the freebie....visit wholeheart.org to find the book by Sally you are most interested in reading to grow in your journey as a mother. Leave a comment below or on my facebook page. I will announce the winner and book title on Monday.


 

What I Shared at the Momheart Conference

Dallas Momheart Conference 2012

After thirteen years of attending Wholeheart Ministries conferences for moms, I returned to Dallas this past weekend for a time of inspiration and fellowship with 800 other like minded moms.  The beautiful part was that God went ahead of me and brought other single moms to the conference who encouraged me. It has been so challenging attending as the only single mom for so many years.

I was to prepare a 5 minute talk to answer the following question on Friday. "Pam, share some of the struggles you have had as a single parent." Here was my response:

"You know recently, I find myself coining the phrase, 'I never knew it would be so hard but I never knew it could be so good.' I've been able to identify different seasons of my parenting journey even prior to the onset of working outside the home. Each season had unique challenges; yet I've seen the faithfulness of God in each arena.

For example, during the early years when there were five under the age of ten, life felt very overwhelming. I had a newborn, two and four year old, while trying to homeschool my eight and ten year old daughters.


Some days it felt as though I never left the rocking chair. The demands of so many young children, along with severe financial strain, produced many days of tears and frustrations. Yet, God met me in the midst of those desperate feelings. One day, tearfully, I was sitting in that same rocker looking through my living room windows out across the river when God made Psalm 121:1 come alive to me. 'I lift my eyes unto the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.'

Later that same day, as my dear friend Pat and I took off with our older daughters to missions camp, I had hurriedly grabbed the mail on the way out the door. As we stopped for lunch, I opened a birthday card that had come for me. Inside the card, from my college roommate was $40...money to help with our weekend...the very item which had so troubled me earlier from the rocking chair when I cried out to the Lord.

The second season I call the middle years with three primary grade kids and two middle school girls. I was walking through an abusive marriage, an absent spouse which left me feeling like a single parent, homeschooling five kids, lack of financial support, and my sweet Aunt Peg, who brought me to my first conference here in Dallas 13 years ago, was dying with bone cancer.

It was during that difficult season my sweet friend Laura sat on my kitchen bench and said "just hang on" and left me with Matthew 6:34 'Sufficient are the worries unto today tomorrow has enough of its own' and my paraphrase of 2 Cor 3:18 'we are being transformed from glory to glory.' This verse became very important for me to heal and forgive as my marriage was ending. It helped me accept those that hurt us the most trusting God with the outcome.

Finally, this third quarter season of my life with preteens, teens, and young adults in the home has proved equally challenging and equally blessed. I now have a 19 yr old daughter who is presently in Africa on a missions trip and serves as missions intern for our church, a 17 year old daughter who is a homeschooled senior and plans to enter  college this fall possibly playing college softball, and three public school children...a seventh grade 6'2" son, a fifth grade daughter and fourth grade son all while I am working 26 hours a week outside the home.

The reality of parenting teens and young adults has been more draining emotionally,  physically, and spiritually than I could have imagined. These relationships require alot of late night talks and the welcoming of college students into my home as they question the hard things in life and I get to listen and point them to the sufficiency of Christ. Most days I am completely exhausted but thoroughly exhilarated as  I ponder the grace afforded me to speak into the lives of the next generation.

It is the time that Isaiah 55: 8-12 has meant the most to me..knowing the truth of God's word will not return void. All of His promises that have sustained me throughout the various seasons of parenting..like Hebrews 13:5 'I will never leave you or forsake you' and the Phillipians passage 'he who began a good work in each of my children will see it through to completion.'

In looking back over these seasons of life it seems three principles have strengthened my journey:

First, community...walking intimately with others who continually point me to Christ

Second, bible study...whether it's a structured program or meditating on one verse for a whole week.

and finally..these two elements produced the third principle..which is worship.

As the Father reveals Himself to me through His body and His word, my life and heart respond in worship.

I believe these principles will strengthen your mom journey as well. It is my prayer for each of you!

A saga followed by a litany of praise....

Last night the Christmas tree fell. I was in one of those deep sleep times that come only rarely.  My heavy heart welcomed the rest. So, when I am awakened by a combination of water pouring all over the living room floor and the crash of the tree, my heart picks right back up on the sadness and feelings of despair.

I am only worried about the fragile hand painted egg ornament given to me by my bible study leader  eleven years ago when Hannah was born as a babygift. In the most delicate artistry, painted is a baby in a cradle with a beautiful array of color and the scripting from Matthew...let the little children come to me...Hannah's First Christmas 2000. It is the only ornament every year that gets its own special box and tissue paper. My prayer is that Hannah can always have her egg as a keepsake. Lawren, my 19 yr old, who has been awakened as well, finds the egg resting sweetly in a chair atop of a pile of unfolded laundry.

We have mice....and not Christmas mice...at least two of them...one that hangs out in the kitchen area and another that stays in the back of the house. It is so bad that the bedroom mouse made a nest in my son's dresser drawer and ate a hole in his Ocean City, Maryland lifeguard shirt. The critter had to pick a fave shirt:(

I pay Cooks $31 a month for pest control. That's $372 a year on a single mom's budget. I don't feel as though this fee should require I scout out mice poison from Wal-Mart and I do not care for cats. So today I will call Cooks AGAIN but I will most likely stop for pellets because I am feeling so desperate in general and need to be rid of the mice. The story about them being friends with Hannah's hampster Squirt just isn't washing anymore.

I had to work a twelve hour day yesterday after a ten hour day on Monday. I am tired.

Forgot to mention the dishwasher leaks...in a family of six that is crisis overload. We eat alot and often. The struggle to be green sets in and I refuse to purchase paperplates but the kids are not stepping up to help wash dishes, saying, "that's not my chore". I try to talk to them about honor and consideration and they look at me like I am an alien. TODAY I FEEL LIKE AN ALIEN...A NON VISIBLE WOMAN who feels completely alone.

Oh yeah, and one of my closest friends has recently moved to Arizona...ARIZONA for goodness sake...across the country. She is the one whose shoulder I cry on over coffee, the one just one step ahead of me in parenting and grace who listens, cries too, and encourages me. AND NOW SHE IS NOT HERE.

I am sure these are issues that shepherd boy/King/man after God's own heart David never dealt with. He was too busy running from enemies, sleeping in fields, fighting his battles and leading his men.

Yet, the emotional gamut that runs through our souls as we walk through life parallel each other.

May I, like David, finish the day in praise:

                                               Litany of Praise (based on David's Psalm 105)

How great is my God, and how I love to sing His praises.

Whereas I am often frightened when I think about my future, and confused and disturbed by the rapidly changing events about me,
My heart is secured and made glad when I remember how He has cared for me throughout the past.

When I was brought forth from my mother's womb, 
God's hand was upon me.

Through parents and people who cared,
He loved me and sheltered me and set me upon His course for my life.

Through illness and accident
My God has sustained me.

Around pitfalls and precipices
He has safely led me.


When I became rebellious an struck out on my own,
He waited patiently for me to return.

When I fell on my face in weakness and failure,
He gently set me upon my feet again.

He did not always prevent me from hurting myself,
but He took me back to heal my wounds.

Even out of the broken pieces of my defeats,
He created a vessel of beauty and usefulness.


Through trials and errors, failures and successes, my God has cared for me.
From infancy to adulthood He has never let me go.

His love has led me, or followed me, through the valleys or sorrow and the highlands of joy,
Through times of want and years of abundance.

He has bridged impassable rivers and moved impossible mountains. Sometimes through me, sometimes in spite of me.
He seeks to accomplish His purpose in my life.

He has kept me through the stormy past.
He will secure and guide me through the perilous future.

I need never be afraid.
No matter how uncertain the months or years ahead of me.

How great is My God, and how I love to sing His praises

Content in relationships

Our first relationships in life are those formed in the home. The relationships we have with parents, siblings, grandparents, and other close relatives. I tell my kids that here, at home, we get to practice on each other how to treat one another so we can be a light to a lost world.

My hopes are that my children respond to one another and me in such a way that they are inviting to others. We don't always get that right.

I keep hoping after nineteen years of parenting that the "policing" years are almost over. Yet, regularly...sometimes more than once a day I am correcting my almost teenage son and administering discipline in some regard.

Presently, we are working on ridding the ugly element of "name calling" in our home. All four offenders have a unique disciplinary consequence awaiting them should they choose to name call someone.

I have come to believe that children, siblings, and even parents "act out" the most at home. Most feel the safest there to be who they are....the good, bad, and ugly.

In reality, when we belong to Christ though, "we are new creations...and have the mind and body of Christ indwelling us" to ward off reacting in our flesh when we are offended.  However this is an ongoing part of our sanctification process as we mature.

Meanwhile, I have found the most needed character traits in the home are love and forgiveness. What does that look like in relationships in the home? I think it looks a lot like the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

In Luke 15 Jesus tells us two stories that illustrate what has already been done for us as believers...we were lost and Christ sought us out. In both stories the shepherd and the woman go to great lengths to bring reconciliation by bringing the sheep back and finding the lost coin.

Realizing what lengths God has gone to procure us....to bring us into the family of God....to give us everlasting life and love illustrates what we are to do when there is separation between individuals in relationships. Because we realize what provisions have been made for us, we seek out individuals whom we have harmed or been harmed by and attempt to be reconciled.

Prayerfully, hearts are softened and turned toward one another. When we "hear each other out" I find not only is there greater understanding but also value is placed on the relationship.

We ward off bitterness which causes walls to build up between us and practice lots and lots of forgiveness over and over again. I find this necessary as a mom almost daily when one of the kids says or does something I deem disrespectful.  There are days I want to throw in the towel, give up, let them go there on way. But the voice of truth reminds me...

"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed
Yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
Nor my convenant of peace be removed from you
Says the Lord
Who has compassion on you."
Isaiah 54:10

If God is going to keep on loving me and keep peace with me and I continue to fall short regularly of His commandments....how much more should I extend love and peace to those around me.

Relationships are work. They require careful attention and in my opinion, because human beings are involved, demand personal involvement with either face to face interaction or at a minimum a phone call. We press into those we love who are struggling so like the lost sheep or coin they are found and their value is celebrated.

Who are you pressing into to bring reconciliation? How are you valuing those around you the most. Does your wife feel as important as your boss? How about your kids?

The past fifteen hours....

I was drill sergeant mom this morning when I woke the kids fifteen minutes early reminding them I had an appointment on the other side of town at eight am and  we needed to leave early.

I was encourager/reminder mom when the kids piled out of the car at school and I say, "do good on your science test! I love you!"

I was forgetful and figure it out mom when on the way to my counseling appointment Hannah calls. "Exactly where on the parkway are you because we forgot to send a note so I can stay after today for basketball practice."

I was counselee mom as I sit across from my counselor and she shares the hard things with me about life...and the sweetness of the Father...in those hard places.

I was investigative mom as I phone my cousin in Powder Springs, Georgia to inquire about college for Mary. Three of her four children have all finished high school and her husband in athletic director at Shorter College in Rome. I, as a single mom, have no clue as to how to get my daughter recruited....Of course I think she is a phenomenal athlete and every school would be tremendously blessed to have her!

I was a thoughtful mom as at approximately 10 am I text my friend in Birmingham who is on my mind. I tell her I am praying for her and thinking of her.

I was planning mom as I phone my step mom to arrange tutoring time for the afternoon with my niece.

I was working mom as I served the "Farmer's Market Plate" today at Lyn's  for lunch.

I was take care of myself mom as I met my girlfriend for coffee around 2:30 and we spent an hour and half catching up.

I was push over mom as I stop at GAMESTOP against my better judgement and use John's birthday momey to putrchase a new game.

I am figure out the dinner plan mom before any one leaves for youth.

This only brings me to twelve hours of today and I am tired of remembering all the roles I have as I am most certain you are tired of reading.

As women we have multiple roles every day we find ourselves playing out. Being a mother requires flexibility, intuitiveness, and strength at a minimum. Switching from role to role as our day plays out can often leave us discontent especially if mothering requires us to drop our own agenda to step into the life of one of our children who needs attention, encouragement, direction, or a listening ear.


As a mother of five ranging in age from nine to nineteen many days I find myself switching back and forth between corrective discipline with the younger ones to late night counseling sessions with the older.

 Needless to say, the role swapping can be wearysome. Often we as moms also can't wait until one season changes thinking that as soon as "we arrive" at another time we will find contentment such as waiting for a child to finish potty training or surviving the rough arena of middle school.

In chapter four of Calm my Anxious Heart, the author states, "We grow up when we see life and our role from God's perspective: when we thank God for the role He has assigned us and begin to see our cup as a gift instead of a cross; when each morning we ask, 'God, how can I glorify You today in my given role?'"

Thankfully, the author shares God's requirement for us as believers in our many roles assigned by Him, the blessed controller: the requirement is faithfulness.NOT perfection or success. i Corinthians 4:2 says, "Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful."

Will you trust Him that what roles you are walking in today are from Him, orchestrated by  Him for His glory. How is your present situation conforming you to the image of Christ or causing you to be more dependent on HIm for your every need.

My " Two Birthday " Week

This week we celebrated two birthdays. Hannah Rosie was 11 on Wednesday the fourteenth and Lawren turned 19 on Friday. They are as different as daylight and dark yet have shared a bedroom since Lawren returned from Europe in March. Hannah only wears Nike and Under Armour while Lawren is a fashion diva and accents every outfit with either earrings, a big belt, or scarf. Hannah is athletic playing soccer, basketball, and fast pitch softball while Lawren lights the floor with dance or periodically breaks out in song. The two bring so much diversity to our little nest. Idealistic Lawren thinks big thoughts, dreams big dreams, and embraces truth in a manner that continues to stretch me and inspire me.  Hannah is by far my most joy filled child. She is compassionate and thoughtful knowing just what words to say or action to take to bring joy in a painful moment. Parenting these two polar opposites brings great blessing into our lives on a daily basis. Happy Birthday girls from  your biggest fan!