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Saturday, August 21, 2010
My sweetheart has the gift of numbers. God created his brain to do things with numbers that is JUST NOT NORMAL!! From a very young age he has loved counting and the way that his mind is able to analyze and calculate is TRULY a gift. (there might as well be some type of hi-tech machine up there going cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching) it is TRULY amazing. He is a financial planner and works with a large company here in Nashville. He walks into the "corporate world" each morning while I am at home juggling our life with our children. The balance of his world and mine sometimes can sometimes be quite daunting. As he pulls out of the driveway each morning I pray that he guard his heart and that the Lord give me strength. Through the years I have had to pray through putting on my hat that reads "financial planners wife in the corporate world" because I'm not a big make-up and fancy clothes kind of girl and usually, that's what I need to do to look appropriate. I have now embraced this role and think of it as a time to be alone with him away from our children and feel quite honored to claim him as "my "sweets." (after all he is BY FAR the most handsome man at every event that we attend!) I had a friend ask me the other day how we were able to separate our life from being SO entrenched in the "worldly focus " that can sometime go hand in hand with the corporate world and I just giggled. First we are doing well to just SURVIVE life (ha), but secondly, Mike leaves it at the office. This is very hard for most men. The Lord has blessed us with the most unbelievable staff that support Mike and our family. The support that he has in his office is truly sent straight from God and it is because of them that we can leave for a trip and relax, catch up, and rejuvenate for what is to come when we return home. Thirdly, our home is our life. His job is provision for our family, but our HOME IS OUR LIFE.
Mike and I live in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation. We are surrounded by materialism on a much greater scale than most. As I look around me, there are so many people that the wife has taken on the husbands job to define what their family is about. How many times a day do I hear "her husband is a...blahblah blah.., he does such and such for a living.., his client is yada yada yada" It is SO easy to get caught up in all of this talk. I pray fervently DAILY for the Lord to hold me so close to his heart that my focus stays close to His. I long for my focus to stay on "how much is he home?, what are his children's names? how much does he wrestle with his children? does he open the car door for you? does he take you on dates?"
IT IS SUCH A BALANCING ACT...actually, not even balanced these days, just keeping our nose above water is an accomplishment.
So, my question to all of the women out there.....Do you find your self worth in your job or how well you are provided for? Have you told your husband lately that you love him just because of who he is and not for his "accomplishments" in the eyes of our world? Have you told him that you would live in a shack as long as you were with him!?!? I think a lot of the problems that we are faced with as women is because we desire these worldly things and our husbands feel the pressure to provide them for us to make us happy...and the cycle goes on and on and on!
Tell those rich in this world's wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage-to do good, to be rich in helping others: to be extravagantly generous. If they do, they'll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life. 1 Timothy 6:17-19
The Lord does not promise to shelter us from all of the brokenness in our lives. He does not promise to shower wealth upon us. He DOES however tell us that He will give us refreshment for our minds and bodies. He also promises us that as we increasingly find fulfillment in HIM that all of the other pleasures become less important. I continue to pray that He will fill my heart with His presence and love so that I will not seek the things of this world that are SO VERY empty!
Ask and you shall receive...
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About Me
- suzanne
- I am a lover of Jesus. I have the most fabulous husband that anyone woman could ask for. The Lord has blessed us with 7 beautiful children. I started this blog so that friends and family could follow our trip to Uganda to visit Katie Davis. I have decided to keep blogging to help bring orphan awareness to the world around me.
13 comments:
Well said! Praying that we'll seek our precious heavenly Father over anything this world has to offer! Thanks for that reminder this morning!
i'm inspired by this post. not because i can relate to my husband being in the corporate world (we are in campus ministry), but because i struggle with thinking that kind of life will make me happy. thank you for the encouragement and inspiration. my prayer is "that as we increasingly find fulfillment in HIM that all of the other pleasures become less important."
love this post and love the pics of your hubby with your children, you can see from the pics just how happy they are with their daddy! I loved your post and agree with it and I do let my hubby know all the time how much I appreciate him and love him and how amazing of a husband and father he is and I think that is one of the reasons why our marriage and love is so strong!
Love this post!! I can 100% relate to it. The first fancy event that I went to I almost passed out I was so nervous and uncomfortable! (And I gotta say that it hasn't got much better since that first time 9 years ago.)
I fell in love with Brad when he mowed lawns for a living and we spent the first year and a half of our marriage in a trailer park. We still call those the good days!
When we worked together our lives were consumed with the business and all that comes along with it. After getting sucked into the bigger house, nicer cars, closet filled with name brand clothes, God opened our eyes to a whole new world, His world. We now try to live as simply as we can and view his business as God's business and like everything else in life, we just have to be good stewards of it.
Mike was the first planner that Brad has met that thought so much like he did. You guys have been such a blessing to us in so many ways!! Thanks for showing us that it is ok to not be "normal!!"
PS~ Does this mean that you guys might go with Mike to Orlando?? :) We will be there unless we are in Africa. Praying he will be home by then though.
I love the people in these pictures so much!! So thankful for each one of them and the role they play in our lives. Love that M and M were kindred hearts as well............happy weekend. xoxo
Men live for respect!
Men should NOT live to only to be our provider of every want or to ever keep up with the Jone's.
Men need to hear how proud of them we are. How we value the hard work they do. How we appreciate them keeping their hearts strong in His truth and the ways they resist temptation of the world they go into every day!
Men need to hear they are doing a great job - even when things are tight or when they are out looking for a job. Men need to know we respect them as they hold the weight of our families on their shoulders.
Being a leader of a home takes great faith and to keep them seeking after God's heart - we must encourage what we want to see in them - NOT tear them down or show them how we want more or different than what they have already provided us.
Hugs and love Suzanne!
You are a blessed woman from the inside out! God is good all of the time!
Love the fact that you have hit is right on the head!!!! I would sooo live in a mud hut as long as I was blessed with my husband! I also love the fact that you pointed out a great truth. Home is what we do- our jobs are what we do to support our Home!!!! We are in ministry, and yet if our Home did not come first....it would not be in sync!
Beautiful pics. You have such a nice looking family. Thanks for the nice post. I find myself struggling with a lot of what you wote about. I am surrounded by friends(newer) that just have no clus on living their lives for the lord and it is so frustrating. I do not likt to be judging but we live in a small town and really it's hard to have friends here with other families in Christ. Thanks so much !
Blessings!
Jill
www.campfunk.blogspot.com
What an inspiring post.
Thank you for sharing.
This was so inspiring! I am very judgemental of people in your financial "arena", I pray to have God's heart every day and every day I let myself (and Him!) down. But slowly, with posts like this one and others I come across my heart is changing. God Bless you for being wise and for giving till it "hurts". With love and prayers for your family.
I feel like this post was written for me. I am looking at houses in Hawaii today, and though I want the most expensive one I have seen, this is a good reminder that I will be fine in even the tiny townhouse if my family is with me and we are healthy and happy. Thanks for sharing your sweet heart.
And as for that lady at the park... I laughed out loud because I could just see your face and thought that she probably knew she was stepping on some toes. I have some "canned" replies that I have made up for people who ask stupid questions. But my favorite is when I get some voyeuristic like her, I always hand them my card (or Gwen's or Katie's) and say, "You should check out this web-site if you are interested in learning more about adoption and how it can change your life. My e-mail is on there and I'll be happy to answer all your questions when I'm not spending time with my kids." Seriously! I get that we need to be ambassadors and be cordial, but dang!
My husband is a pilot in the Army and while right now in our country that's a job that alot of people will stop and thank him for ( which he finds awkward)... I love him so much NOT because of his job, his rank or his accomplishments in the cockpit.... it's the fact that he comes home and loves on his kids, always tells me he loves me and best of all.... is 3,000% on the road to adoption with me. I'm not pulling him along, he's right there beside me. He'd bring home 10 kids in a heartbeat and that is something I just can't put into words.
Love your posts, you just hit it every.single.time.
-Kryste
Wow, Suzanne, while my world, my neighborhood, my county where nearly half of all adults didn't graduate from high school, is very different from yours, I find myself comparing, looking at the material things in life.
Thanks for the reminder to let my husband know how dear he is to us, no matter what.
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