It came

I got a package today and was surprised to find:

Oh yeah.  I guess I ordered that this week after my coworker talked me into it.  I wasn't going to buy it until I raised the money for it, but she suggested that I start on it, and get the money for it later.  Oh, I am so easily persuaded.  I will work on these when I have down time.  I didn't buy the book because I'm too cheap so I will be learning from doing questions and reading the answers when I get them wrong.

Contentment Week 1

Today marks a week after I have asked God to help me with contentment while waiting on God.  I had a wonderfully motivated Monday, a less motivated but great Tuesday, a Backtrack Wednesday, a pretty motivated Thursday, and a pretty peaceful Friday.

I discovered a song by Chris Tomlin today which I can't buy on iTunes yet:

I know who goes before me
I know who stands behind 

The God of angel armies
Is always by my side

The One who reigns forever
He is a friend of mine
The God of angel armies is always by my side

I also read the book, "Fearless" by Max Lucado this evening, which I have been wanting to read for a long time.  I looked through my Amazon Wishlist, and searched for every book I had on my local library's electronic database.  It wasn't available at my library, but I requested them and I picked them all up.  My next book I will start reading tonight is "Get out of that pit" by Beth Moore.  I wanted to get Breaking Free but that wasn't available at any of the libraries.  I even picked up 5 Christian CD's.  I didn't use to like going to the library to borrow books since I'm germaphobic, but I'm allowing myself to touch the books this time around...

On Wednesday I had a fallback day, and then instead of working out like I did on Thursday, B and I went to eat at a hole in the wall restaurant inside of a Mexican grocery store.  It was delish, and our total came to a little under $20, and I left a $20 in the tip jar, and bought a $.99 avocado.  Then we randomly found a Bloomberry and shared a soft serve covered in goodies.  I decided sometimes you can steal your own joy by being so hard on yourself about not wasting money.  That was my live and let live moment of the week. 

Best things in life are free

The best things in life are free and you can't buy them!  Today I'm thankful for my precious boyfriend.

• He tells me he loves me every day
• He always puts my needs above his, because he is selfless
• He always wants hugs and back rubs, and tells me he could hug me forever and ever
• He tells me I'm beautiful every day
• He always opens the car door for me
• He cleans my house even if I'm not home
• He thinks of all these precious things to do for me without me asking
• He does cute things like gets me a bouquet of roses and sets it in a vase after cleaning my entire house
• He renovated my house with me like it's his own
• He's building me a patio
• He made my entire kitchen, installed cabinets, appliances
• He brought home a farm door and told me that he asked to keep it so he can re-purpose it and make me a desk.
• He helps to cook food
• He washes dishes
• He helps me with anything heavy
• He is a man of good character with a really sharp sense of right and wrong
• He is godly and goes to God in prayer and goes to the Bible for wisdom
• He is a good, loyal friend to the few friends that he has
• He massages my feet and my arches when they hurt
• When I have PMS pity fits, he melts them with a sweet kiss on my forehead
• He's so kind to me even when I don't deserve it, which is the sweetest part of it all
• He treats me like a queen and I don't know where he gets all these ideas of how to be the most precious boyfriend.  I always tell him he came trained.
• He gets really geeked out about Lord of the Rings/Star Wars/The Hobbit
• I don't have to feel like I'm speaking to a zombie when he's thinking about sports.  He isn't sports obsessed.
• He goes to my house when I'm not there and makes my bed for me!! On soo many occasions.  
• He's working 10 hour days overnight this week in construction.  He didn't want to be on unemployment so he took a temporary hourly job doing something unrelated.  God doesn't make any mistakes, and surely he will use everything.
• He pursued me even when I wouldn't date him. 
• He always sends me flowers. 
• One day after I got home from class, he had been waiting for me at my house.  He asked if I was hungry and after I said I was, he pulled out two bowls of salad for us, and he cut out the shape of a star out of an apple slice and had it sitting in the middle of my salad.  
• One time I came home from work and he was at my house painstakingly making me ravioli from scratch.  It took him three and a half hours.  He shaped all the ridges with a fork too.
• I honestly don't know how I got so lucky.  He didn't fit any of my traits on my dumb "boyfriend list." So go ahead, make your lists, but your real man will not fit that list, and that's a good thing.  Maybe it's because my dad said he has been praying every day for my spouse to be a godly Christian man since the day I was born.  It's too bad my dad won't warm up to him, even though the guy he's asked God for has already been in my life for years.   Sometimes families can be really awkward, and I have one high up on the awkward list.  I think with each generation of a Christian home, you build a stronger family tree with the kinks worked out every generation.  I am really hopeful for the kind of relationship Ben and I can share with our children!
• I love him more and more and we've been together for over 5 years
• Even if my parents won't be excited for my marriage, we will be, and that's all that matters.

The cover of a card he got me one Valentine's day

Contentment Day 1

Yesterday night I admitted to God through my tears that I don't understand how to have contentment and how I get it.  My dear friend A pointed out that I only suppress my desires but it's there.

If I:
-get impatient with my situation and where I am at,
-think I am created to have a different job, to do something else,
-wish I had more time in my day to get everything done,
-wish to be married,
-wish for a change of scenery,
-wish to get on with my life,
-think how long I must wait for my boyfriend to find a salaried job working in his field of interest (he is temporarily working hourly in construction)
-get impatient wanting to see my boyfriend's job situation line up with his area of study,

then I am discontent.

Most simply speaking, if I wish for anything that isn't what I am currently living today, I have not contentment.  I had denied the extent of my discontentment because I did such a good job not thinking about my desires.  I told myself contentment is for people who want to buy a bunch of things and want a big house or a job that pays a lot of money.  I kept it to materialism and dismissed that I needed any help being content. Oh, but contentment extends so much further.  I can lack contentment even while wishing for something good. 

I believe that I can only have contentment by allowing the Holy Spirit to fill me with it by spending time in God's word.  How do I spend time with God? Reading my bible and meditating on his wisdom.  It's that simple.  I don't need to plan how to tackle the million things to do in a day.  I don't need to wonder if I'm doing the right things or if I am spinning my wheels.  I am supposed to love the relationship with God.  I am supposed to be in love with his presence, and nothing else is supposed to matter more.  That's the only part of my responsibility, and if I am obedient in this, God will change my heart each day and equip me to handle only that day.  I don't have to plan, I don't have to ponder, I only need to be still in his presence.  Then God will make everything else fall in to place.  I will do His will effortlessly without trying so hard by my own might.

This morning, I slept in til past 11.  I just kept on laying in my bed even after I gained consciousness.  I didn't care if I had a million I'd like to do.  I wanted to get the rest.  I awoke and studied his Word some more after last night. After spending quality time with God, I ended up cooking, grocery shopping, prepared 6 nights of taco meat, 2 nights of fajita meat, froze all the meals in individual bags, made fruit salad, cleaned the house, organized my shelves and all the papers, washed all the dishes, cleared off the dining table, ordered pea gravel for the patio to be delivered on Monday, cooked and ate dinner with B, walked 2 miles with my next door neighbor, met a new neighbor, made a flower arrangement, took a shower, had more Bible time, blogged, all before 10 pm.  Without the kind of stress that accompanies a usual day like that.  When I spend quality time with Jesus, He sets my desires and my heart to do the things he wills me to do.  When I try to do things on my own, I become a stressed out, pout-y disaster.   I have to tell God I am surrendering my day to him.

So how do I change my heart so that I won't be impatiently counting the days that I spend waiting on God?  By not doing anything about it.  By putting my mind on Christ and enjoying the relationship.  By living in the moment and nothing past today.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.  Matthew 6:34

1. Read my Bible, spend time with God
2. He will lead my heart, mind, and actions for the day, and everything else will fall into place.

It seems so counter intuitive.  There's so much to do, yet you let everything go and just enjoy the moment with God?  Funny how everything God teaches is so simple. 

Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4

And our desire should be God.  So simple.  And when He calls, I will say "yes."

Made this for my friend that I am seeing tomorrow to celebrate her birthday.

I'll have to plant some of these next spring!

A Good Leader

A good leader never blames problems on someone else, but takes full responsibility for the tasks he has agreed to take on.  A good leader is quick to compliment and encourage others and is slow to compliment himself.

Seeing the Positives of Today

There are things about today that really aggravated me, but instead of dwelling on those things, I decided to think about what I did do today, and amazingly I found a few positives:

The positives:
+I created several colored flow charts to explain the flow of structured notes from different accounts
+Got close to finalizing a bunch of exhibits or diagrams that could be used in arbitration
+Had 8 hours of billable work constantly working away
+Found some free CPE webinars that I can do tomorrow
+Ran on the elliptical for 20 minutes and burned 200 calories, hey, 20 minutes is at least something
+Didn't drink soda for two days in a row
+Ate the last of the slow cooker pot roast I made and froze into four meals
+Listened to Taylor Swift - Begin Again on replay
+Resisted my 5 chocolate bars in my work desk
+Used a buy one get one free for the Big Macs and a free Monopoly sticker for the medium fries
+Downloaded a bunch of free Kindle for PC books
+May have finally gotten an idea for what I want to do as my next job
+Haven't gone on Facebook since Saturday, despite getting emails of notifications
+Crossed two things off my running to-do list in my Google Task List

The negatives:
-Ate two Big Macs and a medium fry for dinner
-Wasn't content with my blessings today.  I shouldn't be getting frustrated at my job or my bosses if this is where God wants me to be right now.
-Didn't cook a dinner
-Didn't pay a lot of attention to the neighbor children today even though they all greeted me.  I usually talk to them a lot, but today I was so mad about work that I just went home and said, "hi." and went inside.  They also asked me where I was leaving later and I told them "McDonalds," to which one boy said, "The usual for me."
-Didn't read any free Kindle for PC books I have been amassing
-Didn't work on the patio

And that's a typical Wednesday.  Now I am blogging and will read my Bible soon and go to bed.  This is me attempting to really cut down all the things I do.  I want to have a lot of "veg" time at night on weeknights.  Weekends I want to make time for freezer cooking and crock pot cooking/meal planning, and cleaning my house.

Haircut

I chopped off my hair this weekend.  It was kind of an accident- I said "shoulder length" when asked if I was really sure I only wanted to cut 2 inches off.  At the end, when given the mirror, I was kind of shocked at how short "shoulder length" actually looks like.  It's not so bad now, and I'm not sure if I just got used to it, or if it just looks better since it isn't as poofy now.

After my haircut, I went to see my sister and had lunch at Chipotle.  I saw her new apartment/studio and her air mattress on the floor.  The bathroom is a shared one by the whole complex.  I also lost one flip-flop and had to go home with only one on.  When I borrowed my sister's boots, I must have dropped a shoe while walking with them in my hands.

I also got to go see the Tigers play this weekend with my bf and his family.  It was cold, and I didn't talk to anybody, because I wasn't sure if people who love baseball want you to shut up while they are trying to watch a game.