10 Things I Love PLUS My Hello Mornings Story

I'm so excited to start another session of Hello Mornings in just a few days!  To celebrate, today I'm sharing what's in my Hello Mornings bag, and my Hello Mornings story:

10 Essentials in My Hello Mornings Bag

1. My NASB Study Bible - it's getting to the point of being held together with tape and glue, but I treasure this Bible and I'll use it until it totally falls apart
2. My prayer journal
3. My daily journal
4. Sharpie pens - my new addiction <3
5. Colored pencils
6. Index cards (for Scripture memory)
7. Index card holder
8. My Bible study notebook - I just reorganized it, and I'm loving it!
9. Post-It notes
10. My all-time favorite devotional, Jesus Calling

 

 

   I originally posted this in April of this year, but wanted to share it again: I'm a rule-following kind of girl. Its a great trait to have...sometimes. Sometimes it can really get in the way, though. When it comes to my morning quiet time, it can be downright dangerous.
As a college student and into my early married years in my 20's, it was easy for me to get up early and spend an hour ir more with God every morning. Then we had kids, and everything changed. Suddenly I was a 22 year old stay at home mom who considered taking a shower a major accomplishment. Days went by without me ever even opening my Bible. My prayer time dwindled to, "Lord, how am I going to get this done?"

I'm a voracious reader, so as my kids got older, I started reading again - along with my Bible, I read books on marriage, parenting, and being a Godly woman. I learned a lot from those books - mainly that I was failing. One book said I should spend an hour or more a day in Bible study. Another told me it should be easy to pray for an hour a day. Still others told me I should tithe my time - spend 10% of my time with God and never miss a day. I beat myself up a lot during those early years of marriage and motherhood. I knew there was no way I could live up to what those books suggested. I was breaking all the rules.

Then, a few years ago, I discovered something amazing - grace. Its my morning grace - grace for my times with God. My goal is to get up early every morning and spend time with God. Most days it happens, but if not, there's grace. Some days its long, other days its just a short devotional. One day I might spend more time in Bible study, another day might be focused more on prayer, and still another might focus on journaling or scripture memory. Whatever I'm doing, there's grace.

I believe that God delights in our efforts and our successes to spend time with Him, but I also believe that He's ready to wrap His arms around us and carry us when we're frazzled, frustrated, and struggling to keep up. He made us, He knows us, and He understands our ups and downs. My morning quiet time is again something I look forward to. In fact, its one of my favorite times of the day.

Running Toward My Goal: Week 4

Let the countdown begin: 80 days until I run my first ever 5K with my team, the Dental Divas!  My workouts for this week:

Happy training!



Building Your Prayer Journal: Part Three

Nothing moves this momma's heart like talking about my kids.  When I start talking about praying for my kids, you're probably doing to see tears.  What amazes me is that as much as I love them - God loves them infinitely more.

This week we're going to add prayers for our kids to our prayer journals.  It doesn't matter how old your kids are - pray for them.  Again this week, if you don't have kids, you can skips this one, but if you want kids one day - pray for them now.  You can never pray for them enough!

Again for this element, I used a Stormie Omartian book, The Power of a Praying Parent.  And again this week, Kat at Inspired to Action has a great FREE resource for you: A Mother's Prayer Calendar complete with scriptures to pray over your kids.

This week you'll add a prayer topic and a scripture for your kids to each day of your journal or Word document.  What's great about this week is that there are so many fantastic resources out there for praying moms.  Your journal is just a starting point!

I highly recommend The Power of a Praying Parent.  Brooke McGlothlin also has an amazing book for boy moms, Warrior Prayers, and the MOD Squad (Mothers of Daughters) has a book, 31 Days of Prayer for our Daughters.  All of these are available on Amazon Kindle.  Finally, I recommend Angie Smith's great post on praying 7 times a day for our kids.

THIS WEEK: Add prayers for your kids to your journal.
NEXT WEEK: Praying for our own nees

Boys Moms - Unite!

My oldest son told me not too long ago, “Mom, sometimes you can be manly, and sometimes you can be like a sparkly fairy princess.”  That’s probably not too far from the truth…  I’m Amanda, and there is nothing on earth I love more than being a momma to my boys!  I’m 32 years old and I’ve been married for 12 years to the love of my life, Robby, who is a full-time pastor.  We’re the proud parents of two boys, ages 10 and 7.  In addition to being a pastor’s wife and mom, I work part-time at an insurance agency, I’m a full time student in the dental hygiene program (In May of 2013, I will graduate and officially become an RDH!), I run a home-based business as an independent Miche purse rep, and I lead our church children’s ministry program.  My plate is pretty full, but I love blogging, cooking, running, reading (I love a good mystery/spy story), digital scrapbooking, horseback riding, and going to the gun range.  Strange combination, I know, but I told you my son’s description wasn’t too far off.

 

I chose the name “Grace In Our Moments” for my blog because I know that I need God’s grace in every single moment of my day - as a wife, mom, kids minister, student, employee and more.  I blog about life as a working mom, my faith and what I’m learning (right now I’m doing a series on creating a prayer journal), fitness (I’m a new runner and since leaving my job as the manager of a women’s fitness center a few months ago, I’m creating a whole new workout routine, including running, Pilates, and CrossFit), books and more.  I’m also a contributing blogger for Must Love God (a site created by fellow boy momma Kristi) and an accountability captain for Hello Mornings.

When I was pregnant, I begged God for boys.  I grew up as an only child and the only girl in my neighborhood, so I raced bikes, rode horses and four wheelers, and played with Hot Wheels a lot as a kid.  I love the fun and energy level at our house.  You never know what’s going to happen!  I never thought I would tell my kids “Stop slapping each other with string cheese or I’m not buying it for you anymore,” or yell through the house, “Stop running, put your pants back on, and stop hitting your brother with your underwear!”

One thing I loved as a child (and still love!) is reading.  I’m so glad that my boys have inherited my love of books!  My youngest still loves anything Dr. Seuss and dinosaurs.  He’s also discovering Nate the Great.  My oldest loves the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, the Hank the Cowdog series, and the How to Train Your Dragon series.  (He got the entire boxed set for Christmas and is almost done with the series now.)  To be honest with you, I love the Wimpy Kid and Dragon books myself…they are really fun!

Thanks so much for dropping by my blog today!  I look forward to reading lots of other blogs and "meeting" lots of other boy moms!

Simple Trust

I can't even begin to describe how much this simple line blessed me Tuesday.  On a day when I received news of two tragedies - a close friend who lost her mother-in-law to cancer, and a teenage cousin who lost a friend in a car accident - it was the reminder I needed that my Savior holds it all in His hands.  I am secure in Him.

10 Big Summer Projects That I Can Mark "Done"

It's hard to believe that my summer is drawing to a close.  Yes, it's really early, but I have a summer class to take as part of my final year of college, and it starts Thursday.  I started this summer with a huge list of projects to do, and honestly, I'm surprised that I accomplished so much in the two months I had off.  Here's what I did:

1. Cleaned and purged our youngest son's bedroom, getting rid of three garbage bags of outgrown toys and clothes
2. Cleaned and purged the master bedroom closet
3. Had a yard sale (which was a huge success!)
4. Put together a Child Training Bible to use in children's ministry
5. Updated my prayer journal
6. Cleaned out and organized my coupon binder
7. Created a one-month meal plan for July (which I plan to repeat in August)
8. Put together a home management notebook
9. Worked on my blog, including a new blog button and "follow me" buttons
10. Caught up on my M'Cheyne Bible reading plan

I'm happy with what I got finished - now it's on to some more projects!  There's much more I want to do before Christmas. :)

Building Your Prayer Journal: Part Two

Last week you got your notebook and you personalizedit.  Now it’s time to start filling it up and building your prayer journal!  Ready to start?

The first topic we’re going to cover is praying for your husband.  If you’re single, why not go ahead and list some areas to pray for your future husband?  Or you can skip this week and join in next week.

The resource I used for this part of my journal is Stormie Omartian’s book The Power of a Praying Wife. Don’t have the book?  No problem.  Kat at Inspired to Actionhas an amazing prayer calendar and it’s totally FREE. 

Now, there are a couple of different ways you can do this next step:

1.     Label each page – Day 1, Day 2, etc. and write in a specific prayer request for your husband each day

OR

2.     If you’re OCD and perfectionistic like me, you can start a Word document on your computer to be printed out when you’re finished.

My slight OCD issues aside, I like to type mine for the plain and simple fact that it’s easier to update.  When my prayer journal is full and it’s time to make a new one, or if I just need to update information, its much easier to print it out than to rewrite all the info.

Here’s an example from my prayer journal:

I've also included a scripture to pray along with each day's topic.  Praying scripture is powerful!  Kat has made it easy with her prayer calendar - it includes a verse to pray for each topic.  If you get a chance to buy The Power of a Praying Wife at some point later on, please do - Stormie's teachings on prayer are amazing. She totally revolutionized my prayer life.  She talks often about the benefits of praying scripture - praying God's promises over your family and situations you're facing.

THIS WEEK:
* List a prayer topic and scripture to prayer for your husband each day for 31 days.

NEXT WEEK:
* Praying for our kids - PLUS lots of great resources