Forget-Me-Nots Along The Way

Welcome To My New Blog

This month I turned 40.  It's not something that particularly scares me or that I worry about.  My Grandmother, Holly Mabel Tisdale Hopkins, was a very Godly woman and she had a good attitude about most of life.  She always said she was "80 years young" or however old she was.  She died when she was 95 7/12 year old.  You may hear me refer to her often on this blog because she has been a life mentor to me.  Shortly before she died, I attended a seminar on Biblical mentoring.  The speaker gave two definitions of a mentor. The first was that a mentor was someone who opened their life up as a resource to other people.  That certainly described my Grandmother to a T.  The second was "a person who shares with others how God makes a difference in your life and in so doing helps them reach their God given potential."  That also describes who she was to me.  She laid a foundation.  At her knee I learned of God, of living and creating, and through her influence and providence, I came to the place where I accepted Christ as my Savior in 1977.  My hope is that God can use me too in much the same ways. 

After a fulfilling career as a pediatric Certified Medical Assistant, I entered marriage later in life (32) and with chronic severe migraines.  I also have PCOS and I was not given a high probability of bearing children.  In the last 7.5 years my life has been a whirlwind.  Marriage has been sometimes difficult to adjust to, but has also given me a safety zone to explore myself, to work through difficulties from my childhood, to surrender to God and to my husband and to open up in vulnerability, knowing that I will still be loved. In 1988 I asked God to clean out my heart, to continue cleaning out everything, no matter how difficult, in order to draw me closer to Him and to make me WHOLE in Him.  Praise God that He is faithful.  He has been a perfect gentleman, moving me along at my own pace. 

Since marrying Tim, that pace has increased dramatically and I feel that it is probably because God needs to equip me for the tasks that He has put before me.  This may sound odd, but God confirmed this to me in a dream.  I have never had that happen before.  And in the past I must admit that I have probably looked oddly at people who have told me the same thing!  In my dream I was distressed because I was trying to process through all the things that God was healing in my self.  I was also feeling discouraged and overwhelmed because as a Mother of 3 young children I had very little contact with the outside world.  My life now is so unlike my pre-marriage days!  And my chronic pain and fatigue, which I have no control over and which God has chosen to allow to continue, often make me feel like a failure.  I just cannot do things that many other women, wives, moms can do.  So in my dream I was considering all these things and floundering in my emotions.  I went to Nancy to talk.  Nancy is my stepdad's cousin.  She is a beautiful woman who lost her earthly battle to ovarian cancer in September 2005.  *I want to make it perfectly clear that I do NOT mean to say that Nancy came back from the dead to speak to me or that I was speaking with a spirit or a ghost.  Nancy and I were very much alive in my dream.* Nancy was the kind of person who gave her whole attention to you and made you feel as if you were the only person in the room or the only person in your life.  It would be quite natural to go to her with these type of concerns.  She listened, she hugged and she directed you to the Lord.  And that is what she did.  In my dream she told me to "Complete the task that God has given you."  One line.  That's all she said.  For several months now I have been contemplating this. After praying I do really believe that God wanted me to hear this and whether or not it was the kind of dream the Bible talks about or not, I know God has and continue to use it in my life.

So why have I used all these words to write this to you in cyberspace?  And, how does this all connect?  Well, I have been praying and thinking about this and have come to a couple conclusions.  1.  God has called me to be a wife to Tim and a mother to D, J and A.  2. God has given me a desire to encourage other Christians to be right with Him and to walk in the faith and strength and life that is theirs in our beautiful Savior, Jesus Christ. 

In the journey to understand the task that God has given me, I have been reading a lot about Biblical womanhood, homeschooling and homekeeping. I come from a legalistic background so I have really prayed carefully about all of this.  God has been convicting me about a lot of things and now I am going to my husband and sharing with him.  I am praying for my husband that God will convict him to be the man of God that God has called him to be.  Not that there is anything wrong with my husband, just that he has never had a man in his life and is a fairly new Christian.  Our personalities are such that it is very easy at times for me to be overbearing and take charge.  I spent much of my growing up time with either a single Mom or ineffective male parents.  It taught me to take charge and take care of myself because you can't depend on other people.  I realize now that that is what the enemy would have me believe (I won't even give him credit by saying his name!) and that part of my task that God has given me is to learn how to be a Biblical submissive wife, the emphasis being on Biblical without any mention of the word "doormat"!  I cannot change who my husband is.  Only God can.  But it is important in his spiritual growth for me to learn to be the wife God gave him.  It is also important for me as a Mother to give a good example to my daughters and to my son.

My hope is that I can chronicle my journey here and learn from my own writings and from sharing with other women, as well as encourage others along the same path as I am.  We certainly are not going to learn this in the world.  I need to learn it from Him and the resources He gives us.  If you read this far...thank you!  I look forward to getting to know you here in my new cozy little homestead!

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05:48, Saturday, July 1, 2006 .. Posted by Carol

Hi and welcome to Homestead blogger. I look forward to reading more of your blog.
~carol

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09:02, Saturday, July 1, 2006 .. Posted by KSC

I also have PCOS and my husband and I are trying desperately to have a child. Lots of drugs and lots of patience!