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Friday, February 17, 2012
It's the Last Day!!!
Thursday, February 16, 2012
For My Readers...
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Sunday, February 12, 2012
The {Brilliant, Amazing, Can't-Live-Without} Child Training Bible {A Giveaway!!}
You guys, I'm SO stinking excited about what I'm about to share with you today.
In fact I'm so excited that this is a review {and giveaway!!!} that I sought out. Like, I emailed them and begged to be able to review this and give one away. Cause I knew you all would love it too.
Ok, here it is... The Child Training Bible!!!!
It's a Christian, Type-A, Color-Code Obsessed, Albeit Slightly Frazzled Mom's Dream. Seriously. I mean, just look at it!
But the color coding is not the best part {although I'll admit it makes my heart happy}. The best part is how functional this is in every day life.
I should back up.
So, The Child Training Bible is a tool for parents to use when disciplining, encouraging, and teaching their kids. You know, like, every second of our days. It was created by Mindy Dunn, a homeschooling mom of 4 {aka my hero}. After using charts, notecards, and a variety of other methods to speak Scripture into the lives of her kids, she realized something. She needed to give her kids a physical experience with the Word of God. Something tangible, bringing them right to the Bible and beginning the habit of turning to Scriptures before anything else.
Can I get an AMEN??
So, Mindy set out to turn her regular old ESV Bible into an easy-to-use, practical tool that she could use with her kids every day.
And it's brilliant. I guarantee that God's doing the happy dance, because He knows what an awesome thing this is, and how easy it makes it for parents to speak Scripture into the lives of their children.
Here's how it works:
...although mine only looks like this.
In order to make your own Child Training Bible, you need some supplies: A 9x6 inch Bible, 8 colors of post-it tabs, and 8 colors of Sharpie highlighters {these do NOT bleed through the Bible pages! LOVE.}, and Mindy's CTB Tabbers!
And guess what? Mindy is giving away one set of CTB Tabbers to one of my lucky readers!! EEK! {You will need to purchase the highlighters, post-its, and Bible on your own.}
To enter, follow the Rafflecopter instructions below. The first two entries are mandatory, and will then unlock the rest of the entries. You can enter multiple times for more chances to win! And read carefully - some entries can be completed every day! Giveaway will run through Friday, February 17 at midnight EST.
In the meantime, go check out the Child Training Bible, and watch the videos, read the reviews, and get excited!
Happy Winning!! :)
On the front inside cover of your Bible, sits the CTB Key. It covers a wide variety of behaviors and emotions that our kids will need addressed. It's also color coded {!!!}.
In addition to the key, there is a "tabber" for each side of the Bible {top, side, bottom}. Each tabber has 7 topics on it, and each corresponds to a color. Each topic has a list of verses that relate {ex: 8 verses about Anger}. When you set up the Bible, you find each verse, highlight it in the corresponding color, and tab the page with a post-it flag, also in the same color. So later on, when your kiddo is angry, and you want to talk with them about what Scripture says about anger, you just turn to any yellow tab on the top of your Bible, open it up to that page, and read the yellow highlighted verse.
Like I said, brilliant!
Then, on the back of each tabber, there are sections for discussion. Each topic has some "Get At The Heart Questions", "Glory In The Gospel Questions", and Scripture Prayer.
Please tell me you love this as much as I do. What a huge blessing this is! I wish I had had this in my classroom when I taught 3rd grade. It would have been so wonderful. I can't wait to use it with Emily!
A completed Child Training Bible looks like this...
I sat down to work on it tonight, thinking I could get everything highlighted and tabbed quickly, but, um, I got caught up reading Scripture. :) Already this has been such a blessing to me! And, by the way, I don't think it's just for kids. I need this stuff too!!
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Weekly Wrap Up AND Weekend Planning, All Rolled Into One!
Would you please vote today?? We're slipping!
If you like what you see here at Finding Hope, would you mind sparing a couple of clicks below?
If you like what you see here at Finding Hope, would you mind sparing a couple of clicks below?
Your vote helps us so much! Thanks, friends!
Friday, February 10, 2012
Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies for anyone who gets through this post...
I think I start too many posts with the phrase "I've been in a funk lately."
Sorry about that.
So I'll start this post with phrasing that a different way...
In the recent past-to-present, I have experienced an oddness of life that has made me feel as if things aren't exactly perfect, and maybe my free time would be best spent in bed. Or watching TV.
Better? Yeah, I didn't think so either.
I hope you understand that this blog is a little more than a space to share my heart. It's also a place to process my thoughts. Writing helps me do just that. So I hope you'll bear with me while I try to sort out the jumble that's been swirling around inside of me as of late. Maybe you'll even be able to relate. But you can feel free to skip this post too. My feelings won't be hurt. :)
I feel off. Irritable. Exhausted. Overwhelmed. I had a total meltdown on Sunday during Emily's naptime, full of tears and wails and all other sorts of nastiness. Poor Jon.
I have been such a basket case emotionally that I thought maybe I was pregnant.
I'm not.
It would have been nice to blame hormones for the last couple of weeks though.
Sigh... I'm not even sure how to explain it. Maybe I don't need to. Let's just say I'm feeling off and leave it at that.
The thing is, my to-do list is always longer than hours in the day. I plan my meals every Monday but probably only stick to it 3-4 times a week. Work takes up a lot of time, which means I leave some other things unattended. We got an unexpected bill this week, which meant we had to give up some things. My house is not clean. My husband is not perfect. Neither is my kid.
Neither am I.
That's what really bothers me, I think. I'm not perfect. I cannot accomplish everything. It is too much. And I only have one kid, for goodness sake! How do I ever expect to be able to handle life with 2? Or 3? I cannot keep the house clean to save my life. My Bible has sat unopened for a week or two. The office might never get organized. We might be living out of laundry baskets forever. I might not get to be the Star Teacher of the Month at work. Chipotle might name us their greatest customers.
And I feel like a failure. A fraud. Especially when I come on here and write about meal planning and household organization while I sit and look at the mess on the floor in front of me, and think about whether or not I can count Pizza Hut as a well-balanced meal tonight. {Veggie toppings make it better, right??}
Failure makes me want to just throw in the towel. I can't do it perfectly, so I'm not going to do it at all. And don't you dare offer suggestions or advice because you just don't understand and the fact of the matter is that everyone's {my?} expectations are too high and I can't do it all and I just want to sleep, so please get off my back and let me be.
When the introvert and the perfectionist in me get together and throw a pity party, it's not pretty. It looks a lot like defensiveness and withdrawal and TV watching so I don't have to think about anything.
I don't have a point with this post. I should really get to a point. I should also include a picture of some kind because that's what all the blog advice says you should do. Fail #394 for today, thankyouverymuch.
My focus is off. I know that. I am focusing too much on myself and my to-do list and all of my own expectations and plans are squeezing out my quiet times with the Lord in the morning.
But see, then I feel guilty that my focus is off. And I feel like that's just another way I'm a big, fat failure. And I don't like feeling like a failure. So I add Bible Study to the TOP of my to-do list {because that makes me holy, right?} and put a box next to it so that I will feel accomplished when it's done. And I will start tomorrow.
Ugh. Sometimes I feel like I just need to get away for a day. Get away and straighten this all out in my head and on paper and come back with a plan for how I will be successful and able to manage all the life stuff that is on my plate. Somehow, magically, a day away will fix everything.
Here's the thing though. In all my trying and all my planning and all of my checking off boxes on my to-do list, my goal is to prove to everyone, God and myself included, that I'm good enough.
Good enough.
For what, I don't know. Good enough to be loved? Good enough to be appreciated? Good enough to be admired? Good enough to be accepted?
And my struggle between proving that I'm good enough and knowing that I'm not comes together in one big messy heap of tears. Because when overwhelmed is all that you are, crying is all you can do. And I have no choice but to bring it all to the foot of the cross, because honestly, where else can I go?
{And why does it take so much to bring me to Him? Chalk it up to failure #a-zillion and let's move on.}
I must refocus. Not because my to-do list isn't in the right order, or because refocusing will help me accomplish more things in a day, but because my very life depends on it. I cannot spend my days believing the lies that Satan throws at me, because I didn't have time to spend with the Lord to load up with ammo that morning. I cannot snap at my husband because I am dissatisfied with the way I've handled my day.
I honestly don't know how to do it. And that makes me feel like a total fraud, but hey, at least I'm honest. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to make my quiet times into learning and relationship instead of a box on a to-do list. I don't know how to give up control and roll with the punches. I don't know how to have all the verses memorized so I can respond to situations with grace and wisdom. I don't know how to be the person that I'd like to be.
But I do know how to ask. I can ask for wisdom, for perspective, for the Lord to meet me here and teach me. I can ask Him to give me a teachable heart. I can ask Him to show me what it looks like to meet with Him in the mornings because I love our relationship and want to grow closer to Him.
Asking requires more humility than I have. Asking means admitting that I'm not able to figure it out on my own. Asking means that I need help. Asking is what He's calling me to do.
The thing is, God already knows that I need help. So really, it's just admitting it to myself. I have a harder time with that one.
But I will ask. For all those things. And I'll let you know how it's going.
If you like what you see here at Finding Hope, would you mind sparing a couple of clicks below?
Your vote helps us so much! Thanks, friends!
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Tasty Thursday: Pasta Bake!
My recipe from last week is being featured on today's Tasty Thursday link up over at The How To Mommy! Yippee!!
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