a little cooper sunshine: bellas

marybeth, the leader of my Christian Scrapbooking Sisters yahoo group challenged us all to come up with a word for the year for ourselves........ this was such an easy challenge for me because i already had something going on in my life that fit the category.... my word is AMAZING!!!! i am going to make some scrapbook pages for myself with this story and my word for the year.... but meanwhile some gals in my stamp club and i have started a circle journal group!!! and the first circle journal i had to complete was one about songs that inspire you!!! so since seal's song amazing was the inspiration for my word of the year.... i made some pages with my story for jeanette's circle journal....

here's what the journaling says

At the end of October I found out my husband was going to be deployed again with the Army… he had only been home for two years since his last deployment… so I wasn’t expecting for him to have to go again… or go again so soon.
We have five kids… and the youngest is only 3 – so right away I started thinking of all the things my husband will be missing out on while he is gone… he will miss a whole soccer season and then a whole football season, he won’t even make it to a single game… he will miss Daniel’s first year of middle school… and Arden’s sophomore year… he will miss Brynn’s last year at home before she has to start kindergarten… he will be gone for an entire summer! So much happens over a summer when the kids are so young…
And then there’s all the work, mowing the lawn, opening and closing the pool for the season, all the gardening and… the list went on and on… I would have to do all of this alone! I started feeling sorry for myself and crying and just feeling hopeless in general. In fact, I started getting upset with God… asking Him ‘why?’ Why was He making me go through this?? Wasn’t I strong enough? Wasn’t I independent enough?? Hadn’t I already shown Him that I could do this two times before?? Why must I go through this again??
And then slowly it started to come to me… the first thing that happened was I heard a new song that came out by my favorite artist SEAL. He sings this song called

Amazing. And the chorus says, “I want you to always feel you’re amazing…” When I

heard it, it caught my attention immediately… and I could not stop thinking about it – almost like God was speaking directly to me… I WANT YOU TO ALWAYS FEEL YOU’RE AMAZING!! Wow!! What does that mean?? I sure don’t ‘feel’ amazing… how do you go about trying to feel amazing… so that song just stuck with me… in fact I ran out and got Seals new CD and started listening to that song all the time… The next thing that happened was I needed to memorize a Bible verse for my Bible study. The verse was, “Now what I am commanding you today, is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.” Deuteronomy 30:11. The more I thought about this verse, the more I realized that it applied directly to my situation today… God isn’t asking me to do something that I can’t do… I was feeling soo overwhelmed and so hopeless – that I just didn’t want to do all of this by myself… I was in complete denial – I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to do this!!! is all I could think of … but once this Bible verse sunk in, I started coming out of this big depression I was in… This is not out of my reach… I started thinking… I want you to always feel you’re amazing… hmmm – what is God trying to tell me here…
Next I started thinking about myself… now THERE is something I hadn’t done in a very very long time!!! My life was all about my husband and my five kids… everything I did was directly connected with helping them out, -doing something for them… somewhere along the road I had lost myself… who am I? What do I even like anymore?? What do I even know about myself? I had completely lost my identity over the past 14 years of raising kids and trying to be a good mom and a good wife…
So then it finally all hit me – What does God want me to learn this time?? He wants me to feel amazing!!! Oh man, now I am excited – feel AMAZING?? – Now who wouldn’t want to feel amazing?? And then I started getting excited!! God wants me to use these 15 months alone to grow even closer to Him… to learn how to be amazing again… to figure out who I am and glorify Him through showing the world what a great work He has done in me!!
So now how do I go about this??… Well first off, it’s time to loose weight!! I have had five kids and five c-sections… so losing weight is all but impossible for me… I have tried and tried and tried… and nothing ever happens… but this time I am going to do it!!! So I started off by saying – ok God, I will give it another try… but God – it’s not going to be easy – and He gave me the verse – “I can do all things in God who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13. So on November 9th, I started exercising again… at least once a day I would put in a workout tape and then at the end I would stretch and then do some sit-ups and push-ups. Then I started looking at my eating habits… right about this time a good friend asked me to join a Bible study she was doing. Through this class I started learning about how to eat right and make healthy choices. I changed what foods I ate AND the times I ate them… I also started drinking 6-8 cups of water a day… Now it is march 4th… and I am down almost 30 pounds… I’m not quite to the point where I’m feeling ‘amazing’ yet – but I can see God’s hand at work here… slowly, slowly He is chipping away at the strongholds in my life – most of them that I didn’t even know where there… HE is my security right now – HE is my rock! And HE wants me to always feel I’m amazing!! I can’t wait to see where this journey takes me!!