Hello! Sorry I have been silent for a bit. Life has been very busy and most days I feel like I am drowning in my to-do lists and appointments I have to go to. I’ve been playing more with my babies and trying to declutter my house which is also not an easy task with toddlers.
If you’re a Momma like me, you most likely crave some silence here and there throughout the day. You love your babies and their sweet little voices but you still need time to recharge and be refilled! Have some quiet time with God. I’ve learned that you can fill up your kid with an empty cup. I’m horrible about getting up extra early to spend time with God. I need my sleep because a lot of times I don’t get much of it.
Today I woke up early and got a shower before the kids got up. Last night was the first night in their new room. They usually slept in ours. Both woke up a few times and I ended up sleeping for a bit in a toddler bed with my youngest.
I’ve been feeling so alone and so empty. Drained. Overworked, overtired, and overstimulated. So today I decided I’m going to purposefully set some time to read and pray. It sounds so simple and it is, so I don’t know why I lack a lot in this area.
But, now I feel calm and full. I needed God’s word to fill me up. I craved that word and talking with him.
I read Psalms 86:11 “Teach me thy way, O Lord; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear they name.”
I read a devotional from Lysa Terkeurst and it fit right in with my prayer this morning. I asked God to give me the desire and help me to plan out my day around spending time with him. I asked him to guide my footsteps and give me wisdom as I raise my babies.
I like writing my prayers down. But I also like to pray aloud by myself too.
Find what works for you! Fit that time in and be amazed at what God does for you. Even in 5 minutes!
I love moments when memories come flooding back. Things from childhood or happy memories that make you smile or laugh. I especially love when memories of what God has done come back.
My oldest son was born with a lot of health problems. He’s overcome so much! He’s now 3 and we are currently in 4 therapies. One of those is at our local children’s hospital’s main campus. I was there the other day with him and memories came back.
I saw a Dad loading a cart for taking his baby home from the NICU. It brought the memory of taking my Grayson home for the fire time. He was in the CICU and then on the step down unit for 6 months with a few days at home. I thought of how excited and terrified we were to finally bring home such a medically complex baby. A baby that we had prayed to have for almost 6 years before he was born.
I thought of how far he has come because of prayer and the Lord. He’s had little miracles happen for him. Sometimes God performs instant big miracles and sometimes they happen overtime.
I spent a summer at the very same hospital when I was 17. What I thought was a sprained ankle was actually a tumor that initially was diagnosed as cancerous.
I had appointments and surgeries there over a 4 month period. It was scary. We prayed that God would heal me. I didn’t think he was because the first biopsy came back as cancerous. I was okay with it. I felt such a peace about everything. Then a few weeks later the results came back from the cancer hospital in NY they sent it to. No cancer!
God answered my prayers in a big way.
That reminded me of the last surgery I had where the tumor and the bone that the tumor was on was removed. I stayed overnight. The next morning when I was released, I wanted biscuits and gravy from my Mamaw Nickels. She and my Papaw made us breakfast. It was comforting. At the hospital with Grayson we had gravy and eggs and I thought about that and how things had come full circle.
God is the God of possible and He loves us. He loves us so much His banner over us is love!
If you’re going through something and waiting for a miracle, it may come in a big way or a small way. It will be what you prayed for or something better. He can do far above what we ask or think!
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,” Ephesians 3:20 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/eph.3.20.KJV
Let me know how I can pray for you if you are in need of a miracle.
Grayson Jan 2020Grayson February 2023
From being tube fed to eating by mouth. From not being able to roll or move to walking with his walker and crawling all over the place. It took time but we got our miracle! God is so good!!
These past few weeks have been filled with a lot of happiness! My son, who doctors said would never walk – is walking with his walker/gait trainer! He’s been saying more words. He’s doing so much! I fully expect one day for him to walk into the kitchen when I’m cooking. I’m expecting that because God has moved so much!
It made think about a few years back when things seemed very grim. In November of 2015 I had my first miscarriage. Then in October of 2018, I became pregnant again. We never thought that it would end so quickly. I did get to enjoy that happiness of it for a little while but ultimately we lost that baby before the 2nd trimester. Fast forward to 2019 on Easter. I woke up nauseous and realized that I needed to take a test. Sure enough I was pregnant!
I was excited and scared. In May I started having some complications and feared this would end like the rest. I prayed that God would let this baby be ok and be born. Things improved and we made it to 16 weeks. My husband and I decided to get an early gender screening. We found out it was a boy. It was so exciting. I knew in my heart it would be a boy. We did the whole big gender reveal for it too.
At 20 weeks I was working at my family’s bookstore business and a lady came up to me and said the Lord spoke to her about my baby boy. She told me that he would marvel doctors.
I was like okay wow. My eyes were not opened to what that would mean. A few weeks later at our anatomy scan we found out that our baby boy had a big problem with his heart and he had bilateral clubbed feet. The heart issue scared me and of course we were devastated. He would need immediate heart surgery.
Baby’s heart
We prayed that God would heal him. I truly believed He would heal my baby. I didn’t want him to die. My husband and I weren’t prepared for the second half of my pregnancy. Every appointment we were told more bad news about our sweet boy. Doctor’s and geneticists told us we should abort for quality of life. Instead of that snap your fingers miracle from Jesus we got more bad news.
My sweet baby at 16 weeks
I expected Grayson to be born fully healed. However, he was born with more congenital abnormalities than I have time and room to write and his heart was so complex that he had to be swept away to a Children’s hospital an hour away and put in their Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.
It was an ugly time for me. I was heartbroken because there was a good chance that my miracle baby wouldn’t live long. I was utterly devastated because I believed that God was going to heal Grayson and instead things were so much worse. We were looking at a lengthy hospital stay with multiple surgeries and lots of unknowns.
A few days after his heart surgery
Grayson had his first open heart surgery and heart cath December 26 at 21 days old. Since then, he’s had 2 open heart bypass surgeries. Lots of heart caths, and multiple surgeries. We stayed in the CICU until February. We stayed in the step down unit for a few weeks then came home and went back and forth until we were admitted on March 23/24 and didn’t get out until June 17.
The first morning we were home for good!
We’ve been home for good with a few hospital stays since June 2020. Looking back I can see God was there in the ugly. He was there with us in the hospital room as swarms of doctors and nurses surrounded our tiny boy when he coded. He was there when with us in those uncertain moments when doctors didn’t know what to do. He the God of the mountain and the valley. He’s the God who is there in joy and sorrow. He doesn’t leave us even when we are angry with Him or doubt Him.
My sweet Grayson has marveled doctors. He didn’t get one big healing miracle but lots of small miracles.
He was born without a sacrum. It’s a viral aspect to walk but he can walk! He can stand and jump even though his feet are aren’t normal. He grew hip sockets! He is deaf in one ear and has significant loss in the other but he can say some words. They told us he’d be tube reliant for good and liquid but he’s going on 1 year of eating and drinking by mouth!
God is in the ugly. If you look for Him, you will find Him. You will see Him in the good and the miracles too, but those ugly times is where I’ve seen Him the most.
“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Hebrews 13:5 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/heb.13.5.KJV
“But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” Deuteronomy 4:29 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/deu.4.29.KJV
This kid doing all the things he wasn’t ever supposed to do! That’s God ❤️
Have you ever decided to bake something complicated or new and instead of using a recipe you decided to just wing it?
I’m not talking about knowing a recipe by heart or watching your granny make something for years and then making it. I’m talking about going in the kitchen and saying to yourself let’s make a 4 tier wedding cake in the shape of the bride’s dress and not having a clue! Most likely your cake won’t turn out because you’re not the guy from Cake Boss and you will have a disaster. But if you’ve had practice & recipes, you most likely could make an amazing cake.
Reading the bible, practicing & memorizing it are vital to our Christian walk. They help us in our everyday life. You wouldn’t go on a cake baking/decorating competition without ever making a cake. We shouldn’t go through our lives without reading our bibles either. It’s one of the ways God speaks to us.
2 Timothy 3:14-17 “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works.”
As you can see from the verses above, scripture is inspired by God. It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof or conviction, for correction, and for instruction for righteousness. It helps us to live how God wants us to. It helps us to know how to live. The more we practice the easier it becomes. Plus when you ask Jesus into your heart, you get the Holy Spirit to help guide you too. Reading your bible, praying, and listening to the Holy Spirit is a recipe for success.
Please enjoy this cake disaster below. I love the website Cake Wrecks. I have gotten so many good laughs from this site! I am a big cake baking/decorating competition show watching gal too. I love it! I love seeing how people create incredibly delicious and beautiful cakes and pastries. That’s where my inspiration came from today.
Momma’s 5 Minutes 