All Because of Jesus

It is Holy Week 2017 and my emotions are all over the place today.  I am looking at all these pictures from a super busy yet amazing weekend smiling but then my heart is heavy over family tragedies and major medical crisis thaat some folks in our community are dealing with.  As I met with one of our youth last week I reminded him that some things like suicide, childhood cancer, and health crisis, make no sense to us mere mortals on this side of heaven.  We cannot understand why bad things happen but we can know that God is near and loves us, and that because of Jesus we can have hope in the storm.

Holy week is the time of year where we can thank God that despite the darkness of the crucifixion and the sad days after Jesus' death the resurrection happened that gave all of us hope and life.  Because of Jesus and the hope we have in Him sad and hard times are going to happen but we can rejoice that He is always near and that we know that because of Him we have life. It is makes hard times easier to bear knowing the closeness of God and knowing that he is always close to the brokenhearted. Psalm 34:18 reminds us that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.  I love that verse.

Cancer taught us to live life to the fullest everyday and to be a blessing to others.  I started Challenger baseball to bless those kids that otherwise would not have a chance to play ball, but of course it was just the opposite.  Those kids bless me and everyone else every.single.day.

My heart is also blessed with these amazing volunteers that come out each week to help these players.  It makes me so excited for the next generation when I see the beautiful hearts that some of these youth have.  They get it and they know they are part of something bigger than themselves.  This blesses me.

The number of folks that would come out on a chilly Opening day to make sure these kids had a great first challenger game overwhelmed me.

Because of Jesus our cancer warrior was suited up in all the baseball gear we could find at our house and had a great game in between three basketball games.  I was watching David suiting up in his baseball gear and saw all the scars on his chest and belly from his cancer and I got such a lump in my throat.  Because of Jesus he is here with us, healthy and strong.  To God be the Glory!

Because of Jesus my other kiddos get it that life is better because of the amazing people God has  put in our lives with designer chromosomes.  Yesterday at the Down Syndrome Easter egg hunt, I was so blessed watching all of our kiddos with Down Syndrome have a great time playing and hunting eggs.  We know that all children are a gift from the Lord (Psalm 127:3) and that we can praise God that all of our children are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).

Because of Jesus my husband has been able to throw his leadership skills and love for kids into Marion Little League this year.  With the job change he was able to step up and take over the presidency of the league which is no small task.  At the opening ceremony on opening day on Saturday I was so overwhelmed.  Mike has done an amazing job revitalizing little league and seeing ALL those boys and girls out in uniform ready to play Saturday blessed my heart.  God be the glory for blessing us with new opportunities and new jobs.

So this Holy Week I am sad and praying hard for many that are hurting, but I am also trying to remind myself that Jesus is bigger than all of our hurts.  Yes life is hard and we may hurt a lot, but because of Jesus we can have immeasurable hope in the storm!

Tall Boys and Big Gardens

This past weekend we took a little road trip to Maryville College to watch Kyle's basketball team play against some amazing competition.  It was a great experience for him to play against such talent-the game is definitely more physical and fast-paced than anything he has or ever will experience in school ball.  Basketball is his passion and his love.

Notice how tall this opposing player is?!  The teammate of Kyle's beside him is a tall 6'4 ish.... yeah.... number 13 is a tall drink of water.

Kyle has now seen first hand the competition that is out there and that he must work even harder to improve his game.  I preach to Kyle all the time (and to all my kiddos and to our youth kids as well) that God must be at the top of our totem pole.  Yes basketball is great, but it should have its proper place on the totem pole of importance.  Never should we worship basketball (or anything really) over our Creator.  I hope as he pursues his dreams he always remembers that lesson. We are thankful  that we got to head out of town for a change of scenry as a family and watch some incredible basketball.  

The downside too all of this basketball is sweaty dirty clothes with no hotel laundry.  This momma had to get creative and had to use some Woolite in the bathroom sink!

I pray that God uses basketball to teach Kyle life lessons such as hard work, determination, persistance, gratefulness, and being a good teammate.  I am thankful for the all of the coaches that Kyle has been blessed with as well as all these new teammates that love this game as much as he does.

Hope and David love a good hotel overnight and they not only enjoyed the hotel pool, but we all enjoyed a little Cheesecake Factory cheesecake.  I love when we can get out of town together and just enjoy the together time.  Between Little League, challenger baseball, our jobs, youth ministry, and our kids' schedules life has been busy.  Time away together was nice.

We made it back for worship Sunday morning and I love that Dave is front and center on the front pew until a pretty girl comes to church and then he makes his move!  Ha!  I am thankful my boys understand that Jesus girls always are the prettiest girls:)

Sunday afternoon was gorgeous and while Kyle played even more basketball Hope and Dave enjoyed time in a park.  I watched these two running together and my heart almost exploded.  Our family is far from perfect but having David has blessed us all.  Kyle appreciates his time on the court more because he knows his brother will likely never get to play at that level.  Hope knows her brother needs a translator and milk pourer and she often does more for him than she really should.  Dave has taught us so many valuable lessons and Sunday watching these two together reminded me how blessed we are.  

Speaking of blessings, I am a tired and worn out teacher and Momma ready for spring break.  We still have another week of school to get there, but we are getting close.  This morning as I was making our bed I realized the view and I had to stop and say thank you to God.  When we are weary he is always there. When we are feeling the stress of life, he is always there. When we feel out of control (especially when it comes to our kiddos) we know He is always there.  This morning I felt God's presence remindng me he is always present with us.  How can you not see a beautiful sky like this and not stop in awe at who created it!

Another exciting opportunity coming to our family very soon is a 400 square foot garden in our yard!!!!!!  Mike and I are pretty clueless gardeners, but we have been blessed with the opportunity to take part in a Homegrown garden through our local communtity garden called Sprouting Hope.  We are part of the Homegrown program which teaches clueless gardeners like ourselves how to grow food for our family!  Our family goal is to share our crops with the food pantry shelves at First United Methodist Church.  Our other goal is learn how to garden successfully so that our children will learn how to be gardeners and to share our harvest with those less fortunate than ourselves.  We are SO excited to be in this program which is funded through Grow Applachia grant.

Our clan is staying busy but we hope that our "busyness" will never distract us from keeping God front and center of our lives.  We are so thankful for the blessings he has sent our way and we will update the blog as our garden grows!

New opportunities and princesses

Spring is blooming here in beautiful southwest Virginia, and we are enjoying the warmer days and new opportunities in front of us.  Mike is staying incredibly busy as our little league president.  It has been a ton of work for him but we believe in volunteering in our community and we are believers in little league due to Challenger baseball for David and the opportunity for softball and baseball here locally in our community.  He has been almost as busy with Little League as he was in his old superintendent job!


Jackie Wilson at church captured this precious picture of our three at church,  Kyle has been running the projector at church for several years now and he is trying to teach his siblings:) This picture melts my heart.
 
Kyle played a crazy amount of basketball this past weekend.  He played in a local tournament with his old JV team, had pratice with two different travel teams, and then had a cool opportunity to scrimmage King College.  He was amazed how fast and physical those college boys played!  Ha!  He was definitely sore and tired after all that basketball.

 
We have had to divide and conquer a lot to help Kyle get to all of his basketball practices.  Basketball is teaching him hard work and discipline.

Another cool and new opportunity for Kyle is to be on the boys tennis team.  He is playing #2 and so far is undefeated.  He still has a lot of work to do on his serve and backhand but he is loving every minute of it and loves his teammates.  Thanks to Sarah Martin for this awesome picture!

Tennis is a great, laid back sport and he is really enjoying it.  Here he is with his Coach strategizing how to overcome a broken string during warmups.  The last shot before the match began he heard a funny noise and realized his string broke on his racquet.  Blessedly it is already restrung due to a good friend.  Right now we are working with Kyle on how to balance his life with his busy schedule, I preach to him and actually our entire youth group on putting God at the top of their totem pole and then aligning their priorities from there.  Kyle still has a lot of work to do in time management with his passion for sports, but he is a work in progress, I guess we all are :)


Hope had a wonderful Saturday having a royal day with some princeses for a special birthday party for a friend.  They started the day with chocolate chip pancakes and hot chocolate at IHOP then watched Beauty and the Beast movie.  It is soooo amazing!!!
 

Last weekend we spent the day in Radford catching up with the patients! Ha!  My grandmother is out of rehab and is at home on a trial basis at her apartment.  My Mom is still in physical therapy and is able to get out for short bursts at a time.  We did drag her into Belk to help us pick out a dress for Hope to wear.  She is slowly on the mend.  It has been a rough 2017 thus far for GG.

We are so thankful for new opportunities that God has put in our path.  I really do not like baseball at all, so I find it ironic that we are knee deep into Little League at this house!  Mike has given it his all so far and of course Challenger season is about to begin.  It is hard to believe spring is here but we are thankful for all the experiences God has put in our path.