Wear Your Helmet

On Friday March 28th at 4:30pm the Lord revealed to me just how much he loves me, my family and especially my niece. Brittany was in a 4 wheeling accident. She was racing with a friend through a field and hit a small 8-12 inch ditch. She was thrown 80 feet landing on her front side. Brittany was airlifted unconscious to the children's trauma center in Greenville. Her parents or any other family for that matter were not allowed to ride with her, instead had to drive the 1.5 hours to the hospital. I am so thankful I live in Greenville, I was able to meet the Helicopter.

Brittany is going to be ok. She does have a broken wrist, a concussion, bruised lungs, lots of scratches and scrapes... I will take all of this because she is going to be ok. I thought I would loose her. She and I have been so close her whole life. She tells me things that no one else knows. We have the best time just hanging out together... and to see her like this was so hard.

None of this even comes close to her broken spirit. Brittany is such an independent, healthy and active little 11 year old girl. It is so hard for her to be patient with her parents, the nurses and the doctors. She wants nothing more than to go home. But she won't until the doctors believe she is strong enough. She is so sad. I weep with her when she needs to weep. I smile with her the few times she has smiled. Today was one of those days. Her teacher called and put the whole class on speaker phone. She was glowing, it really was amazing.

Please pray that we have more glowing moments. I am so thankful that the Lord had his protective hands around Brittany. I know He has many amazing things planned for this child.

and for goodness sakes... make your children wear helmets all the time. no matter how uncool. This 11 year old would be dead!

Thanks for the support my blogging friends.

Grace

I am really struggling right now with the fact that people in general disappoint me. I am trying to remind myself that there is only one who will never disappoint and that is my Lord! I am so discouraged by peoples choices... even when it seems so obvious. How can one be so entangled with sin and not care... or at least avoid anyone who might call them on it. Isn't it our job as the church to bare one another's burdens... those burdens are sin.. how can we do that if people don't acknowledge... I don't understand at all.

Ministry is so hard, you care about these people and you want them to Love the Lord and make the right decisions, but really there is nothing you can do to make them. This must be what some parents feel like.

Taxes

I have to say that CPA's earn every dime they charge to do peoples taxes. I give them mad props just for understanding the language. This is the first year my husband and I will file with him being in fulltime ministry and let me tell you there is no easy "checklist". I have spent the better part of good friday and saturday working on a spreadsheet to be able to turnover to our CPA and I just know I have forgotten a ton of stuff. Next year will be so much better, because I will have had this first year under my belt.

I just hope we don't have to pay anymore than we already have.

What kind of experiences have you had with your taxes? Do you know of an easy go to "ministry" tax website?

Organizing

Less really is more people. I have found that unless there is room for everything to have it's own place you will never be able to get ahead of the game. The truth is most people can't organize because they simply have too much stuff. Clean sweep taught me alot and I have been able to live by their philosophy.

Take one room at a time, even if you only have an hour. Grab one bag for trash, one back for giveaway and one basket for keep.

Now spend time in that pile and sort it into one of the three options. I think the key is for you to "finish" by throwing the trash away, loading the giveaway stuff in the car, and putting away the keep items. Unless you complete the task you won't feel like you have done anything.

Also in my house my husband has the luxury of one drawer for dark t-shirts, one for white t-shirts, one for socks, one for underwear and one for shorts.... everything else is hung up. Since we are able to sort things like this it is easy to see when it is necessary for things to be weeded out. For example... when I can't fit anymore t-shirts in his drawer I pull out out 10 old maybe ugly ones that I don't like and lay them on the bed for him to choose 5 to keep :) never in a million years would i get away with just throwing his out or get him to sort through his drawer but if I do the leg work i usually don't have any trouble getting him to go through them and "rescuing" a few poor shirts that were headed to the dust rag pile. :)

I am definately one of those organize junkies so I could say alot but I will leave room for everyone else to part with their knowledge on Lysa's blog.

go to http://lysaterkeurst.blogspot.com/ for more tips.