Checking In

I was reminded the other day with a trip to Food Lion that I have been a blog slacker.  Again.  My apologies.  But in this season for our family Momma has a lot to say and this is a pretty great place to share some advice for my growing tribe.

Kyle is a senior.  I always thought I would be devastated when we would get to this step, but I am good.  I am so beyond excited to see what God has in store for our first born next year and beyond.  Our time is being spent doing the college prep stuff.  If you have a friend that has a senior in high school.... check on them.  We are not okay.  We are tired.  We are sad/happy/excited/depressed all in the same day thinking about our kids being gone.  The college application process takes a Ph.D and lots of patience to navigate.  We are spending our weekends visiting campuses trying to visualize our children there.  Our knees are sore from the hours we have spent on them praying for God to guide and lead our children down His path.  I have had to learn words like FAFSA, common app, super score, and others that make no sense to this preschool teacher. This process is not for the faint of heart. 

Kyle is blessed and has several tennis offers on the table.  We are thankful and excited for him, but we have lots of coaches to meet, financial aid offices to visit, and his dual credits need to be hashed out so his hard work in high school will be counted.  It. Is. A. Lot.  So much.  I just keep praying the Jeremiah 29:11 prayer over all of this.  It is so overwhelming.  For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord.  They are plans for good to give you a hope and a future.  (Jer 29:11).  As I have prayed this over and over for our first born I just keep telling God to make his plan really clear because we Robinsons can be a stubborn crowd sometimes! Ha! 

David and Kyle are enjoying being at the high school together.  David is a freshman.  Unreal.  My heart has exploded a million times already watching them together and hearing from staff how amazing Kyle is with him.  Except for that Wrestling WWE moment in the church minivan my boys are best friends and for that I am so thankful. 

Hope is in fifth grade and doing awesome.  She and a few of her friends started a praise band this summer and it has been amazing to watch her participate in that. 

I promise my slacker days are over:)  Thanks for checking in with us!

Restoration

We just got back from a week in Louisville with our youth group serving on a mission trip.  Except for a two night hospitalization for Mike (stupid cellulitus) it was an amazing week.  The worship was amazing and the preacher was one of the best I have ever heard.  He preached on Joel chapters 1-2 and the theme for the week was Restoration.

I know that this week was for the kids but this youth leader was certainly blessed beyond words with the message and our service this week.  It has been a tough year for many reasons, and being reminded how God restores hurts, challenges, and disappointments blessed me.  I recently did a study on the life of Hosea and I studied how God redeems what the locust take and then to hear about locusts again in Joel blessed me.  It has been a year full of locusts and I have faith that God will restore the challenges.

My best girl served with these amazing girls at a park in Louisville.  I am thankful for Kim and Victoria who were the other gal chaperones on this trip and for serving our youth all week long.  Seeing these youth have bibles open each night during worship and take notes on the sermon just about made me want to weep.  May their hearts stay devoted to God.

Kyle, David and I got to serve along with some other awesome youth in a refugee community in Louisville.  We literally went door to door interviewing families on behalf of encounter ministries asking lots of questions about where they are from and how long they have been in America before offering services on behalf of the ministries.  Despite our current political climate regarding refugees I was blown away how many homes we were welcomed into. 

We also invited all the children we saw to come to the park each day from 1-3 for fun and VBS type of activities.  It blew my mind how many parents allowed us to take their children with us to the park-the level of trust overwhelmed me.  It was a magical week of learning about different people, different cultures and different religions. 

The evening worship was so good!  David was a big fan!

I took so many notes from this week but I will always remember the preacher challenging us that we cannot witness to the World if we look like the world.  We have to be set apart and look differently. 

I will also remember the phrase " I am not worried about you going to church I am worried about what you are doing to benefit the kingdom of God!" Amen and amen! 

We are not perfect and certainly we all have sins to lay at the cross, but this week I was such a proud youth leader to see our kids step up.  They stepped up when we went one chaperone down, they stepped up at their sites, they stepped up their behavior and were so good, and I am just so proud of them.  Youth ministry is a challenge (especially when someone always ends up in the hospital) but it is such an honor to see these youth outside their comfort zones serving the kingdom of God. 

I will never ever forget this week in the city of Lousiville learning about God's restoration from the locusts and watching our kids step up for the Kingdom of God.  It is always hard to come back to reality after a week serving the Lord but I am thankful for the awesome time we had. 

I am thankful also for the laughs that we have as a group!  If anyone thinks it is boring to follow Christ come hang out with us.  We crack ourselves up so much because there is such joy in serving the Lord.  We may have shushed a few people this week and set off an alarm or two but our joy could not be denied.  A life following Christ is a blast! 

I never will forget the beautiful people of all races and colors who also claim Christ as their savior.  I was humbly reminded this week that Jesus is not white and he welcomes all the little children of the world.  Heaven is going to be a diverse and beautiful place if it resembles Maplewood refugee community. 

Thankful and Joy

 It has been a full and wonderful Thanksgiving break around here.  I love time off together and I love it when our schedule allows for shopping dates with Mike, family night at the movie theatre (boys saw Creed and girls saw Grinch), family time in Radford, and.......


the annual Virgnia Tech and UVA football game!  It was cold, and dramatic and some of us left the game smiling when VT pulled it out in Overtime!! It was such a fun time with extended family:)

Thanksgiving Day was spent in Radford with this strong-willed, hilarious woman and my parents!  She is doing well despite her cancer diagnosis.  She is sweet as pie but can give the nursing home folks a run for their money. :)  She is something else!

It is officially basketball season here in our home!!  Kyle is on varsity and Dave is the middle school team manager.  Hope is also on her Daddy's AAU team and they play in tournaments on Saturday.  This is the time of year when life gets busy but we love every moment of it.  Hope is also swimming one day a week, taking piano one day a week and is learning the basics of volleyball.  I keep reminding myself that one day we will have no one to take to practice anymore and we will miss this. 

Hope recently had her piano recital and did amazing!!!  Piano has taught her so much confidence and we love it.

Recently we had a stock holders dinner at youth where our youth served a dinner for  those who have supported their faith development and they spoke about their experiences in youth.  It overwhelmed me to hear in their own words how God has been working in their lives.  My hearts was so proud and happy that I could have wept tears in gratitude.  GG and Pops came down for the dinner and here are our kiddos with them.  Youth ministry is a family affair in this house and we love every moment of it. 



Speaking of youth, we have launched our big Christmas project through Santa's Elves.  We have adopted 40 kids to shop for for Christmas.  The youth LOVE doing this and it blesses my heart to see how much love and care they put into shopping for our kids.  We will be hosting a party for the kids on pickup day before Christmas.  We are all pretty excited about this.

This month I have been doing a daily bible journaling on gratitude.  Between the bible journaling and spending a weekend at Hearts on Fire with some awesome senior high girls from church it has been a wonderful month.  I have slowly realized that happiness and joy are two different things.  Happiness is dependent upon circumstances and joy is feeling content despite your circumstances.  I am focusing on joy for the rest of 2018:)  Joy is time with family on a break, watching my youth serve so well, watching my kids play a sport they love, and spending time worshipping God.