Musings of the Monroe Family: The Lord is doing a work in my heart

Fun pictures of J the other day when he wanted his shades on as we were going to play outside.

This should be an interesting week, I'll be without a car for 4 or 5 days. We brought it in to the shop since at 120,000 miles there were several things we knew were due. Plus we were having problems with the driver's side window and the side mirror broke. Since we can probably get another 100,000 miles from it, we're investing the time and money. Yet it'll be strange not being able to jump in a car and go. I'll have to arrange rides for groceries and mom's group and things.

We spent some time in Baraboo at the end of last week. L's good friend Mike came into town from Atlanta and we went out to lunch and then spent some time at Devil's Lake. It was exciting to learn that Mike was recently baptized and is really growing in his faith. We enjoyed catching up since we hadn't seen him in over a year. Mike's mom gave J a huge tin of crayons and I found some fun coloring books from the dollar store so he's been really into coloring lately. Now it's one of the first things he does in the morning and often the last thing he's doing before bed. We spent a good part of the morning today coloring as he loves it when we color together.

L has been setting the stage for us to do a full-house clean out going room to room getting rid of things someone else could use more than we do. There are plenty of things like that yet the task has seemed a bit daunting so I've put it off. Something happened today though where all of a sudden I was really motivated so I started with the garage. I spent a couple hours cleaning it out, reorganizing things and making more room in there to move around. It was so fulfilling to see it newly clean and all arranged. I think this will be a good project and it's helping me to spend less time on the computer and do something productive.

I'm seeing more victory in my battle of wasting time (on the computer mainly) and seeing how interesting it is getting in the extra free play time with J. Like today, he wanted to take out his "fall box" which is a bin filled with all kinds of fall goodies like colored marbles and stones, wooden beads, plastic acorns, pumpkins and cranberries, fabric leaves in fall colors. He pulled out a bead and since we have an activity where we lace beads together he wanted to get some string and we put on bead on the string. I was swinging the bead back and forth and he started pretending it was a park swing.

He held his marbles on the string saying "we're all friends and we're swinging". It's so fun to see what his imagination is coming up with. So I'm trying to take more time in what I'm calling "free play" where I'll get something out and just let him see how he wants to play with it and then I join in.

I feel like I've had a real breakthrough in my ongoing struggle with healthy eating and losing weight. It came on the heels of more failure and wondering what would really help me to make strides in this area. I happened to remember a website I found maybe 6 months ago called Setting Captives Free. They have a free online course called The Lord's Table which I've started and really feel is an answer to prayer. It consists of two phases of bible study and you are assigned a mentor who will walk with you through it. As you answer questions each day in the study, the mentor will respond with encouragement and prayer.

To back up a bit, I was finding that in my reading of Uncommon Vessels (developing godly eating habits) that it really is meant to be done in a small group where you can get more specific. The book itself just wasn't specific enough in creating a new discipline for my life. As I read the course prep materials of the Lord's Table and did the first day's study, I found so many of the ideas and the teaching to be mirroring the convictions the Lord has brought to my heart; mainly about eating for pleasure versus eating in a way that's honoring to God. What's at the heart of it is that the motivation for the Christian must be to honor the Lord in everything, including how we feed our bodies. It is so different from anything I've ever done in the process of overcoming my weight struggles. Nothing I've seen in our culture espouses eating in a way that honors God. Nothing in all the weight loss programs I've come across has that focus. It was even a bit strange to me at first that God was laying this on my heart over a long period of time yet now I'm really convicted of it. That I am finally addressing the heart, which is where my struggle lies. It'll be wonderful to share more as I engage with this study and benefit from the mentoring I'll receive.

Finally, our little caterpillar-turned chrysalis is in the last stage of becoming a butterfly! I checked him today and noticed the cocoon was getting darker and then by the end of the day I could start to see the outline of his wings! So very cool. I just hope he doesn't emerge while we're sleeping tonight! I may have to set my alarm to check on him. In reflecting on how the Lord has been doing so much in my heart lately, I was thinking about how our internal transformations are just as miraculous as the caterpillar transforming into the butterfly. Yet I don't often see them that way. It really is miraculous when the Lord changes our heart in a way we truly could not do ourselves.