A challenge

ANY READERS UNDER THE CARE OF THEIR PARENTS (UNDER 18) PLEASE DO NOT READ! PLEASE HAVE YOUR PARENTS READ THIS FIRST BEFORE CONTINUING!!


No, I don't have BAD things to say or share, but I do have a lot of my crazy thoughts to share and I am not comfortable with sharing them with a younger crowd if their parents are not OK with what I am about to share :-) So if you are a young one and you are still reading....then GET OFF :-) You can come back another day and enjoy our crazy life in pictures when I finally get them off my camera!












OK, if you ever thought that my posts were unorganized and a bit scattered well you haven't seen anything yet :-) I just feel this big ball of thoughts/emotions/and what not building and I want to get them all out. After all this is a journal, and one mainly for my family. But I know, only from my favorite sister in the whole world who tells me how things are truthfully, that I seem to come across as if I have my life together. I have to tell you I really thought I would laugh out loud (oh wait, I did) after hearing that. And so this post is to show you that I do NOT have my life all together. And I would like to record my crazy thoughts for posterity's sake (ha, ha, ha). This will be a crazy ride as I don't even know where to start as these thoughts have been building for some time.

A few things happened the past couple of days that kind of popped a bubble. They were small, and to anyone else may seem quite odd to have had such an effect. I guess I will start with these things and work my way back. My sister put up a post about deodorant. Ok, it was more than that, but she used that to make a point. You see, anti-perspirant has aluminum in it. Your skin, being your largest organ, absorbs the aluminum. And said aluminum can/will effect your kidneys. I am not sure if there are hard and fast studies done on this but there are writings out there that talk on the dangers of this aluminum from antiperspirants. Your kidneys will function just fine until they have been destroyed to only 10% working capacity. What this means is that you will have no clue that you have a kidney problem until it is too late. However your body will show signs, in seemingly non related ways, but it WILL be affected. Now what does this have to do with me? Well you see I read all that some 17 YEARS AGO! Yes, you heard right, I've known this for 17 years. Now, let me say this first, if you are family and you had anything to do with what I am about to say, let it be known I don't hold anything against you :-) Ok, so lets take a little time trip back 17 years and see what this looked like when I said the same thing.........[imagine a swirl of colors, clouds, a sense of falling through space....we are in NY now] I have read the info on this health concern and decide to take action. I went and bought what was known and maybe still known as a deodorant rock (or crystal). I was reading a lot about health stuff and saw that things were not as rose colored as the advertisers want you to believe it is. However I was alone at the time in this journey, and what I was met with is what I will call "the stare". The one where I am sure once the person turned their back to me were rolling their eyes. Come on, admit it....you rolled your eyes at me. Like I said, I don't hold it against anyone, after all it does seem odd. But if you think it is still out there and that the FDA has only our good in mind then please stand up and go to your antiperspirant bottle and read the back. About half way down you will see something that reads like this: Consult with your physician before using this product if you have kidney problems. I kid you not....go read it yourself. You may still be asking, OK Kerri this is a nice little story but what is the point? The point is after a lot of "grief" about my strange ways I started putting them by the wayside. A little here and a little there and I now find myself wondering where did *I* go. Yeah, all from some deodorant, who would have thought? Ok, obviously there is sooooooooo much more to it than that, but still it is a part of it all. But this ties in with soooooo many other areas in my life and I will try to share some of it with you. As the years went along I have found myself trying to follow a lot of rules. Now, hear me now, rules are good for us, ones in particular....the ones God made. However I was trying to make my life safe with those rules. I was always a bit......well I guess I would describe myself as always being "one beat off". For those of you who knew me some 17-18 years ago you know exactly what I am talking about. I enjoyed following the beat to a different drummer. I liked looking at things in a different light than the masses. Now granted there were still a lot of people like me, but I didn't follow the crowd. I was ok being different. But at some point I didn't. I felt like I needed to change for the sake of being more normal (whatever that might be!). Add a couple of children and I felt like I needed to do things right. And being a bit odd, well that just didn't seem like the 'right' thing to do. And so I continued to fill my life with rules. Lots of them. And the result of that is: A very joyless home and life. No, really, you can step into my home and just feel it. Or I should say the lack of it. And here is where another thing that came my way hit home. I was sent a link to a blog that had another link on it that I visited. And I can give a big thank you to my good friend, M, for that....although I am not sure if she is on my side or my hubbies :-) She knows what I am talking about :-) Anyways this is what I saw.....a young girl (21 or 22) she dresses in jeans and a tank top (rule number 24 being broken right there....the sad thing is and this is VERY VERY sad to me,my children will look at her and say, she must not be a Christian because she is wearing jeans....and no I am not joking, and no that is NOT what I wanted them to learn!! but again, I am sharing with you how my life is NOT put together right), not only that she is an unwed mother (rule number 41 being broken), she doesn't homeschool (rule number 5 broken), and she is not living at home (rule number something or other being broken) BUT, BUT, BUT you want to know what she has that is totally , COMPLETELY right?....the LOVE of CHRIST. This young lady is mom to 14, yes 14 orphans that she adopted, she lives in Uganda as a missionary and feeds the hungry and schools children who can't afford an education (education in Uganda is not run by the government and so all schools are private and you need to pay). She takes orphans home to clean them up, as some have NEVER had a bath in their 5, 6, 7 years of living on the earth. She holds them, cares for them and prays for them. Now, just to say a little to some people who are discontent with the way things are in the US, this young woman wouldn't be able to school or feed the hungry or be in Uganda if it wasn't for the financial support of people in the US. The Lord does have us work in different ways, as not all of us can be the hand or all of us be the foot...we each have different works to do. And even though there are a gazzilion things wrong with the US the Lord is still using some of us to accomplish His work :-) Ok back to my main thought (if there is a main thought). I have tried to build this fence to make my life work 'right'. But instead, since it indeed was by my own hands, I have made things go terribly wrong. I have children who are judgmental, who hate ( I do mean hate) work of any kind---school or housework, who even at times hate each other, who do things only if it will benefit them and so on. Now I am not pointing out my childrens' sins/weaknesses to point the finger at them....but to point it to ME. We do a lot of 'right' things around here. Please note that the word, right, is in quotes. We dress modestly, we homeschool, we go to church and I am sure the list goes on, but we don't have the love of Christ. I may not be a Bible scholar but I am pretty darn sure that that is what Jesus intended when he walked the earth and died for us. I mean how many times does he point to the Pharisees and condemn their ways? I'm a really, really great Pharisee. I am sure I could walk with the best of them. They did a lot of 'right' things, but they lacked in the most important THING.....love.

I am sure you are wondering how deodorant and a blog about the life of a missionay in Uganda have anything in common. In my crazy world they do :-) And this brings us to the reason I titled my post, "A challenge". As I was pondering my loss of 'one beat off-ness' I came across a site for some dresses and aprons. I know you are really wondering how that ties into things :-) But oh, they were so lovely, so neat, so different, but not different in a big way. Go here to see what I mean. Check out the Verity Hope dress and this apron, I love them, they are *me*. However if anyone knows me in the real world I am sure your eyes are a little wide right now with wondering, "what?" that is not Kerri. It is me in my mind and heart. But many things, including my rules and things like financials make me present in a different light. When I think of a garden I do not think of a few boxes of dirt with veggies in them. Or rows of veggies. I think of different shaped boxes put into a lovely pattern with little trinkets hung up to ring in the breeze, color here and there to liven up the place, a little fence and a colorful chair.....I know I've had pictures of my garden up here and you know mine looks like the former! But alas, how does one reckon these things in light of other pressing desires? I long to make a cozy wonderful nest right here. But there are things that the Lord has put on my hubby's and my hearts that don't exactly fit this mold. For the time being our hearts are set on helping a certain people, but just not in the same way :-) And so I have started to pray that either his or my heart would change so that we would be on the same page. I have mentioned before of my desire to adopt. I may have also mentioned that Jeremiah has a desire to be a missionary in Africa. We want to help the same people, but I want to do so by adopting, and he wants to do so by moving there and starting an orphanage and teach. I assure you this brings a great divide in our house over this :-) Jeremiah says we can move there and do both. Um, that brings us to a very big and real problem.....or I should say problemssssss. The Lord would have to move in a big way for me to get over the bug thing. Then there is the very real danger of disease. People would automatically say...vaccinations....but that is a problem all of its own. Now I do think it is rather an odd coincidence (NOT) that I prayed about this for the first time this week and the day after my friend sends me the link to the African blogs. (she does know my dilemma on the whole African thing, so this wasn't totally unexpected that she would send me something like that...but still). So I am reading with my heart yearning mostly to have a heart filled with love like this young woman does. Right now I would settle for having that same heart for my own children. Don't get me wrong I LOVE my children, but unless you have read her blog I am not sure if I could adequately explain. I pray that my heart changes in such a way, first towards my own family and then that it would overflow outwards to others. But here in lies the challenge...how do I reconcile my desire to make things beautiful and orderly herein the US when there is a young missionary woman with 14 adopted children who are cutting back (yeah, imagine 'cutting' back in Africa!) so that they will have more money to feed the hungry children. So I am leaving it to the Lord to work out, where it should have been all along....even 17 years ago ;-)

So where does this leave me? Will you be seeing me in jeans and a tank top? Will I pierce my nose next? You can laugh, but that was a desire of mine for many years! You can all breath a sigh of relief....the answer is no :-) But I do want my heart to be totally abandoned to the Lord, I want a love for my husband and children like I never have. I want a desire for the lost and abandoned of the world. I want to know that I can do great things for the Lord, right here and right now. I want to know that those little desires I have, like living healthy, are not kooky. Of course there are a lot of people now, who because their bodies are experiencing breakdown from a life of packaged non food, are now seeing that changes need to be made. I just happened to be trying to make them years ago. I need to stay the course, even if I am walking the path alone. But that does get hard to do after awhile. I can be thankful I am not alone now :-) I need to realize that although rules are good, and serve a purpose, I need to live by the most important rule of all.....love. And that will not happen without the Lords help! So there you go....a long, drawn out post about my crazy thought life! See, I am not put together! If only I had pictures of my house to prove it! Trust me, it's not pretty :-)

And if anyone is interested in reading this young missionary's blog you can visit her here. Go and be inspired. We all can't go to Africa, but we can all do great works, through the Lord, when we pursue Him.

And I apologize if you are a grammar nut and have hair on the back of your neck standing on end due to my lack of grammar and organization :-)

And one more thing....this is only half of my thoughts, hey I didn't want you all to keel over on me! Maybe I'll write more later. I'll be back to share some pictures of our "normal" life ;-)