All Christians Need to Ask Themselves these Tough Questions
Look Who’s Back!!
So once again here I am in a position to explain my absence. I honestly don’t have a good reason other than writers block and life. Therefore, I will spare you all the boring details and just start out by catching everyone up.
I am still homeschooling my oldest two kids. We are coming to the end of their sixth grade year! I think as they get older it’s not as challenging to get them to take it more seriously. I have saw some pretty big changes this year in attitude towards their education especially with my daughter, which makes me happy because she was the one that was always the more difficult one to deal with when it came to doing her school work, staying on task and just looking at school in a positive light.
My littlest one is now two years old and we will be starting potty training within the next week. I will have to admit, I am not great at potty training. My oldest two were very difficult to train, my son more than my daughter (they are twins) and I am having some apprehension with this little one. I just hope that God helps me to be patient, understanding and loving even in the difficult times. I know we will get through it.
I am also now a working mom. Last September I decided to get a part time job. Mostly just to get out of the house and have some adults to talk to…it gets hard when you spend a lot of time at home mostly around kids. You really start to miss adult conversation. So I ended up getting this job that I have now, it’s in retail at one of my absolute favorite stores, and I love it! Honestly, I think it’s the best retail job I have ever had. I really like the people I work with and I get along great with my boss, which I haven’t really had that experience before. It’s really nice not only getting out and having a bit of a life outside of motherhood and being a fiancé but also to know that I am helping to financially contribute to our family while still being able to homeschool my children which is something extremely important to me. God gets all the glory for that for sure!
There hasn’t been any huge things that has happened to update you guys on (well not good things anyway), there is one thing but I will save that for a whole new post because it deserves it’s on slot in my blog because it was a God given miracle! I am going shopping today. I have a list of items I am looking for. I am doing some organizing and redecorating a bit on the apartment. I love doing stuff like this. We were going to try and move this year but decided to stay one more year where we are and pay off some credit cards and just work on building our credit a bit more before moving out into a house. Maybe next year if that is God’s plan for our family. If not then we will be just fine where we are until God says it’s time for us to move somewhere else. I never wanna be one of those people who try and keep up with others as far as materialistic possessions. Life isn’t about that. It’s about love. Jesus said love is the greatest of all the commandments. We can’t take any material possessions with us when we pass from this world into the next but we can and do take the love we have for our loved ones. Sure it’s nice to have nice things, but we shouldn’t allow those things to define who we are or how we view our life. After all, they are just things.
Back to the redecorating and organizing. There is something about organizing things and rearranging things that relaxes me. It also makes you feel like your living in a new place even if your not. Try it sometime if you haven’t. Rearrange your living room furniture one day or your bedroom and see how you feel. It’s that feeling you had when you first moved in. I love it! Yesterday, we bought a new tv stand and a bigger tv for our living room and put our old entertainment center and tv in our bedroom. I can’t even begin to explain how those minor changes made our whole family feel. It felt so new and fresh in our home and most of all, everyone just had a really great day yesterday making memories that we will remember for a lifetime.
Anyway, this may be a bit of an abrupt way to end this entry but my little one is giving me no more time so I will have to say see ya later for now. However, I will be back soon with lots more regular posts about life in general, faith based posts, house and home type posts, it’s honestly hard to tell what kind of things you will read here but I hope to keep you interested and entertained. Much love to you all!
Xoxo,
Vee
The BEST Journaling Bible Ever!
I recently decided to get a journaling bible. However, I was not looking forward to paying the expensive price tag that come with bibles of this type. What if I told you that after searching Amazon, I found the most perfect one for only $26.00?! It’s so beautiful! I did an unboxing video on my YouTube channel of the Bible so click the link below if your interested and it will take you straight to the video. I have posted the link to the exact bible in the information box under the video itself Incase you would like to purchase your own after watching the video. Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel while your there and become a part of our YouTube family!
I’ll Treasure this ForLife!
I adore this! Check out my newest video showing this gorgeous keepsake ring that you can get as well!
Life Now After Then…
So hello my lovely readers! I hope that wherever you are right now and what ever your doing, I hope your having a blessed day. Today I wanted to blog a bit about something that I have been dealing with for the past four years now. A new life. Let me start from the beginning.
2015 was honestly one of the best years of my life in many ways. The first major way was my relationship with God. At the beginning of the year I made a promise to myself that I would spend that entire year getting closer to God and building a relationship with him. For the first time in my life I actually followed through with a New Years resolution. By late summer I felt my relationship with God was stronger than it had ever been in my life. I was spending hours, sometimes up to six hours a day just reading his word and doing bible study. I had such a peace within myself. No matter what hardship came my way I always had this inner peace. So that was the main reason why that year really was a great one for me. I also finally had my apartment decorated the way I wanted and was completely happy with the way it looked. My family was healthy for the most part and my kids were thriving. Our homeschooling was going great and honestly I had so many things to be grateful for. I can’t put into words how content I was with the majority of my life. However, there was one area of my life that I was not content with. My marriage. We had been having trouble for years but we continued to push it under the rug and ignore it. We stayed in survival mode for the most part for the kids. We had no connection with eachother on any level besides being parents to our kids. I prayed about my marriage a lot but things just kept getting worse.
In 2016 at the beginning of the year we decided to pack up and move to West Virginia. It was a big move. I thought it would be best to get away from the busy life of Texas and move to a small town around my family and friends. Where everything was a lot slower and values were a bit different. I thought that not only would it benefit the kids to grow up in a country setting but it would also benefit my marriage. Long story short, nothing that I wanted to happen actually happened. Infact things got so much worse. The relationship between me and my husband was just horrible. I won’t go into details but believe me when I say this, it was intolerable. Our plans of getting a house never happened. Our plans of him finding a job right away never happened. We moved in with my best friend and her husband and only planned on being there a month or two at the most before we would get our own place. I was now the bread winner. I was the only one working. My best friend took over homeschooling my children. I went from a stay at home mom, being there for every second of my kids lives since they were born, to hardly ever seeing them. I would leave for work before they woke and most days wouldn’t get home until they were already in bed. If I was lucky I would get one day off a week. It would break my heart to come home and see little notes on my pillows from my kids because that would be the only way they could talk to me. “Goodnight mommy. Sweet dreams. We miss you so much. Hope we can see you tomorrow.” As I type that it still brings tears to my eyes. Anyway, me and my husband finally decided to call our marriage quits by May of that year. He remained friends and on good terms. The kids didn’t take it as hard as I figured they would. They were seven years old at the time. I have twins, boy and a girl. Two months later I met someone else and started dating. Life still didn’t feel the same. Even though I was happy with the new person in my life, my peace was gone. I had no home to call my own. My dream of being a stay at home mom was gone. I had to work to support my babies. I felt like I would never be stable again.
By the end of September that year all of us, including my ex husband and the new guy I was with decided it would be better to move back to Texas. I know seems a bit like a Jerry Springer episode but that’s what happened. So by the last day of September we were back in Texas. Once here our struggles were not over. However, everything did have a brighter outlook for us. I had to live with my sister in her one bedroom apartment for another three months before me and my new boyfriend finally got a place of our own. The first week of January 2017 me, him and my two kids moved into a two bedroom upstairs apartment. We were so happy because for the past year I had not had a place to call my own and I was so grateful. He was working, I was working and I unfortunately because of that I had to enroll the kids back into public school for the rest of their third grade year. Jump forward a month to February. The first week of February I found out that I was pregnant. That was a complete surprise. I was so scared. He on the other hand was excited. This would be his first child.
I know it seems like I am getting a bit off track but just stay with me. I have to tell you the back story in order to get to the point of the reason behind this whole post.
So, I was working in laundry at a nursing home. I loved my job. I loved the people I worked with. However, it’s not exactly an easy job. Lifting very heavy wet bed clothes in and out of huge washers and dryers all day and being on my feet really started to take a toll on me since I was pregnant. To shorten this story a bit, my now fiancé got a second job so that when I was eight and half months pregnant I was finally able to quit my job. Two weeks later on September 14th, one day before my 38th birthday, I had a baby girl! She was perfect.
Even with all this my peace was still not back. I wasn’t happy with my home. We were so cramped in this two bedroom apartment. None of us had much privacy. We were doing well to pay bills. My fiancé was gone all the time because he was working two jobs to pay the bills. I was home taking care of a newborn and my twins. I wanted to homeschool them so bad but I knew that with a new baby that wouldn’t be the best decision so once again I made the choice to put them in public school for their fourth grade year.
I would find myself crying so many nights because I would think back to that inner peace I once had. Now it was gone. Would ever be back? Would I feel complete again? I don’t consider myself as a materialistic person at all. However, once you have became used to a certain environment and certain possessions, its hard to adapt to not having life like that anymore. Starting over is not easy. Especially when the two years had been full of such drastic life changes.
We moved across country. My marriage ended. I had to go to work. My kids had to get used to not having mom around all the time. We moved back to Texas. Had to live with my sister. Not to mention the new relationship I was in that my kids and even myself had to get used to. Having to put the kids into public school. Getting pregnant with a third child and now having a newborn. It was all so much!
All that to say this. Today as I look around at our three bedroom apartment and see what a nice home we have made for our little family with God’s help, knowing that my fiancé has a good job now and we are finally to a point where we aren’t rich by any means but we don’t worry so much anymore. I am a stay at home mom again. I am home schooling again. As I realized all this I had to take a deep breath and just thank God above. My peace was back!!!! After four years mistakes, probably not the best decisions with some things, struggles after struggles, worry after worry and tear after tear, my peace was back. All glory be to God! Only He could be capable of such miracles! Only He could turn a complete chaotic mess into something stable, loving, and peaceful! God is so good! I don’t deserve his blessings, to no degree certainly not to this degree (and I didn’t even tell you all half the story, I had to leave so much out) but yet He gave these blessings to my family. I am making it a point to get back that relationship I once had with my Lord and Savior. I am starting my bible study again and I hope and pray that one day I can get even closer to God than I ever was in 2015.
My advice to anyone reading this. Don’t ever give up hope. Don’t ever give up on God and don’t ever give up on yourself or your situation. God can make something beautiful out of the most ugliest things. He can turn the most dire situations into the most promising life you could ever dream of. All he asks of us is that we trust IN HIM! Have faith in him and his promises. He loves us he will take care of his children. We are his children. He is our father. His love knows no boundaries. His love for us is endless. If it feels like God isn’t around anymore, or that he isn’t listening, it’s not God that’s moved away from you it’s you who have moved away from Him. It was that way in my case and it’s that way in every case. God will never leave us nor forsake us! Don’t loose faith in Him. He is able! He is forever! Today may look bad but in one instant life could turn around. Be patient. In the meantime while we wait we need to pray and worship our loving, merciful heavenly Father because that’s the least we could do for him. He is deserving of our worship and our love!
If you made it to the end of this post I thank you for reading a portion of my life story. I hope that it helps you see that none of us are perfect. We never will be. God still loves us. He is still there and waiting for us to just embrace him again. There is nothing you can or will or have done in your life that could ever change God’s love for you. NOTHING! He is forgiving above all things.
God bless you…
Again I disappeared….
I know I know and I’m sorry. To anyone still around and reading this blog, I’m sorry for once again not updating as promised. Life is busy. I won’t make excuses. I won’t make promises. However, I am back….for now…lol So I figured I would update in this post as much as I can before my sweet toddler decides my time is up and I must give her my complete attention.
So as I just mentioned, my baby girl is now 18 months old. She’s walking and trying to talk a lot more. Her little personality isn’t so little, it’s a mighty one! She already seems so strong willed and determined. That makes me happy because I want her to grow into a strong woman, yet I want her to not be afraid to show her soft side as well. I severely lacked in that throughout my life. Up until a few years ago I always thought having a soft side meant weakness. That of course had a lot to do with how I was raised but we will save that story for another day. Grace is a joy to my life. I am reminded every single day just how blessed I am to have been given the chance to once again be a mom when there are so many women in this world who want that same chance and can’t.
I have been doing some minor redecorating in our apartment. It looks so good and finally for the first time in three years I’m content with my home and it finally feels like a home to me again. We all got new beds, that was exciting. We needed them so bad. The beds we had were so very old and although we were grateful to have a warm place to sleep at night, we were even more grateful to have a new warm place to sleep every night..lol. We were co sleeping with Gracie but for two weeks now she has been sleeping in her new bed, which is still in our room, and she has done great! I thought the transition would be a lot more painful than it was. I redid the décor in my kitchen to a more “light” colored theme. I went for the more farmhouse style décor. I had dark woods and deep reds and burgundy in there before and it just made my already small kitchen look smaller and darker. I just didn’t enjoy being in the kitchen at all. Now it’s my favorite place to be! It looks so much better. I don’t have before pictures unfortunately but I do have after pictures. If I remember I will post them at the end of this post. The best part about redecorating the kitchen is that it cost me under $100 to do it! I was quite pleased with myself. I’ve always been pretty good at budgeting things though. I’ve had to all my life. I’m grateful for that skill because I think it’s a valuable one for sure.
We are getting ready to leave to go on vacation back home to West Virginia in four days. I’m so excited but at the same time my normal anxiety is back again about the huge drive we have to make. We drive the 1500 miles because it’s cheaper for us to do it. However this year should be interesting with a toddler. It’s one thing to do it with older kids, they cope pretty well as long as they get to stop every couple hundred miles and stretch their legs and eat. Not so much the case with a toddler who already hates sitting in her car seat for more than ten minutes and she gets car sick every single time we take more than a ten minute drive down the road. So I already don’t have high hopes for an enjoyable drive, but that’s ok, God will be by our side and we will get through it. If your reading this right now I ask that you please take just a second and pray for me and my family, that we have a safe drive up and back. That God will protect our family from harm. Thank you so much if you did.
Well I knew it would happen. She has spoken and I must go….for now…..I will be updating more frequently I promise. I want to. I love blogging and I love seeing that people are actually reading my memories. That’s the main reason why I wanna start blogging more frequently, to have the memories. I am a big journal person and I just think it would be nice to have the memories online to share with anyone who would like to read them. Ok loves, gotta go. Talk soon!
Vee
P.S. Before I forget, here are the pics of the kitchen.
45 Life Lessons
When I found this on Pinterest I thought this was too good not to post here on my blog. If anything just for me to refer back to at a later time and reread. Maybe one of you, my readers will also enjoy reading through these as well. This is going to be a fairly short post because I am in the middle of finally getting to move. It has been very stressful and hectic but slowly it’s coming along and we are getting things finished. Once I get my new place completely set up I will start making more in depth/detailed posts about life updates and some other things. In the meantime I do want to do an update on my fiancé because the last time I posted I did tell you guys that he was sick and in the hospital. He actually got to come home a couple days after I posted that and he is now doing well. His hives that he was having was directly related to a medicinal allergy. They put him on a few different prescriptions one being for itchiness and he also had an anabiotic for infection. All in all he is doing well now everything seems to be back to normal. Thank you so much to anyone who said prayers for him I definitely appreciate it. But here is the post that I was talking about I hope you guys enjoy and I will speak to you guys again very soon. I hope you all have a very blessed and safe July 4 holiday!
He’s really sick…
So as I sit here writing this post I honestly can’t keep my mind focused enough to make this blog post sound eloquent and fascinating. It’s just not about that right now. My fiancé is sick. Long story short, he developed one of the worst cases of hives all over his body that I’ve ever seen. He became lethargic, was throwing up and experiencing dizziness. He broke out into cold sweats and could barely walk at times. Finally yesterday morning he decided to go to the ER. They admitted him. This would be the first time he has ever been in the hospital and he was pretty terrified. He has an infection that was caused by a staph or strep bacteria, they aren’t sure which one. They are saying that his hives is unrelated to the infection and they still aren’t sure what’s causing those. However they expect its from him taking Advil PM. They think he could have been allergic to it. The rash did start to go away yesterday after he had been in the hospital awhile but they decided to give him Bactrim, which is an additional antibiotic besides the Clydamycin they were already giving him through his IV for the infection. He was allergic to the Bactrim and the rash came back in full force. They stopped the Bactrim yesterday afternoon but so far this morning the rash is still bad. Last night he was having chest pains so they gave him an X-ray and would later come and give him a second CAT scan to check for blood clots. They gave him a blood thinner last night as well as something for nausea. He ended up throwing up quite a bit last night. This morning they told him that his results showed no sign of blood clots in his chest or lungs. We were relieved.
I’m not sure when he gets to come home. It’s weird not having him here. It’s cold and empty. When a piece of the puzzle is missing nothing really seems to work completely right. I’m praying a lot. I know it’s in God’s hands. I just can’t wait until the day comes when we can look back at this moment and know that it was something we got through not something that broke us.
On top of that we are trying to move. It’s been very stressful to say the least the past couple weeks. I’m having to box up our apartment myself since he works a lot. Baby Gracie is not patient. I think one day I was able to get a whole three boxes packed. She’s going through her 6th leap right now and she wants to be held constantly. If you don’t hold her she screams and cries until you do. Not only is it frustrating but it’s exhausting for me. I’m trying to get through it because I know it will pass and she will only be a baby for so long.
I’ll just be so glad when we get moved into the bigger place. I’m thinking of exactly how I’m going to decorate everything and that’s what is helping the most. I know we will get through it.
Anyway that’s just a quick update. I’ll post more later. I have so many things I wanna write about. It will all come soon. I promise. 💋
A quick update on life
So I’ve been gone for quite a while and if some of you follow me on my YouTube channel or my other social media accounts then you know the reason for that. I recently had a baby girl, she was born one day before my birthday, September 14, 2017. She is now seven months old and just a complete blessing to my life. It’s amazing how God can bless you with something you never knew you wanted and it be the best thing that has ever happened to you or in my case because I have twins already, one of the best things that ever happened to me.
I wanted to basically get on here quickly to update you guys, my readers, on what’s been going on in my life and to let you guys know that I am back! Yes, I know I have said that before but this time it’s really true. I hope to be putting up at least two blog posts a week if not more. They will be random, a lot of them at first will be to kind of explain some previous blog posts and why my beliefs on some things have changed. Others will be beauty related, just lifestyle related posts, family oriented type things, update on my baby girl, maybe even a few paranormal things thrown in there.
My latest passion is my new job. I am an independent consultant for paparazzi accessories. So that being said I will leave my website in this blog post if you guys would like to place an order anytime from my website you can feel free to do so. There are new releases that go up every single day! For those that are not familiar with paparazzi, it is nickel and lead free jewelry that cost only five dollars! It is gorgeous pieces and very inexpensive and honestly I’m obsessed! If you would like to see the jewelry in person I will also leave the link to my Facebook page where you can go and friend request me and get to tune in to my weekly live Facebook shows where you can see the jewelry in person and actually purchase jewelry from me directly from the show.
We will be moving in about a month to month and a half and I really hope to do some blog posts on that as well. Kind of like a before and after of the apartment decorated. I live a pretty simple life. I don’t have a lot of money. We are a one income family so I take pride in the fact that I can make things that are very inexpensive look like they are worth more than what I paid for it. I love being able to share that with you guys so there will be a lot of that in the future as well. I do a lot of budgeting as far as bills and I do budgeting with our grocery lists and I also meal plan so that’s also something that you will see blog posts about.
I guess I’m going to let you guys go with all of that I will be back at a later time to do a more in-depth blog post about some things. I will also post some photos of my baby girl and any other photos that I think you guys might want to see. I want to take the time to say thank you so much to all of my new followers I appreciate it so much! To all of my old followers thank you so much for sticking around while I have been basically on a long hiatus. You guys are amazing! I love you all and I will be in touch very soon!
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Reality Check
Today is Mother’s Day. I will be spending my day at work. Sometimes life is just not fair but I’m not going to whine about it. In the world we live in today, I’m grateful to have a job. At least I know my bills are paid, I have a pretty nice roof over my head, I’ve plenty of food for my table every day, and I know that my kids are well taken care of. Those things are the most important things in life, at least in my world.
I was watching a documentary a couple days ago and the name of it was called “Poor Kids”. It was basically a viewpoint of what it was like for four different families who lived in the UK. The children in the movie broke my heart. It was definitely a movie that I will not forget and it put so many things into perspective for me. People can be so self-centered sometimes. Myself included. We always want more.
God blesses us with an apartment, we are happy there for year maybe two, the next thing you know we want something bigger because it just doesn’t fit our needs anymore. We are blessed with a decent car to get from point A to point B every day and we are happy with that for a while. After a year or two we start coming up with different reasons why we need to go trade for a new one even though the one we have is still perfectly capable of getting us where we need to go just fine. It’s always more, more, more. Satisfaction never seems to be something that we obtain, at least not for very long. And that is very unfortunate. Why can’t we just be happy with what we have been so graciously blessed with? It’s fine if something breaks and needs replaced, but why do we always seem to want to keep up with someone else and compare our life with the lives of those around us?
Our life was not meant to be like their life. Everyone in this world is different. Whether we have a different lifestyle, whether we look different, whether or belief system is different, whatever the case maybe we are all different. It was meant to be like that. We are unique. Each made unique. God made us all very special. We need to start appreciating what we have in front of us and stop trying to obtain more than our means. Be grateful for the little things in life because in the end that’s the things that you’re going to remember the most. Those are the things that’s going to mean the most to you.
Driving a sports car to work every day is not what life is about. Having a wardrobe worth thousands of dollars is not what life is about. Having a home with five bedrooms and three bathrooms and a two car garage with a swimming pool is not what life is about. Life is about love. Love for yourself, love for your friends and family, love for people in general.
When we all leave this world there is no material possession that we have obtained on this earth that we will be leaving with. The only thing that we can take with us is the love and the memories that we have made while we are here. I for one am going to spend a lot more of my energy and time and effort on building those relationships, making those memories and expressing my love for just anyone that I come in contact with instead of worrying about the material things that shouldn’t matter at all.
Thinking this way and living life this way sure makes it a whole lot easier. Until next time….
A Country Woman Serving the Lord 