The House We Built

So here's the thing....

My husband and I have a VERY traditional marriage.
Here's what our day looks like:
Between 7:30 and 8am, I get up and bring the husband his medicine and make breakfast while he sleeps a little longer.
Then he does homework until about 10:30, when he gets ready to be at work at 11:30. I gather his clothes and "pocket stuff" (keys, wallet, phone, etc.) and make his lunch.
Over the day I do cleaning, laundry, cooking (the husband has not cooked since we got married, except for a couple of special occasions,) my own homework, and other household chores.

The house is my job, and it is a job.

The husband comes home at 4-ish to eat and I have dinner made when he gets here. 

We make "get in the kitchen" and "Go make me a sandwich" jokes all the time and for the most part, they're un-ironic, because I will go make him a sandwich if he wants one and the kitchen is quite literally "my room" in the house. 

Some of the people we know have criticized my husband because we have this lifestyle. They think that I didn't choose to be a stay-at-home mom. They think that somehow I don't really want to be doing these things.
I have no doubt that if I wanted to get a job, I would have one and we would split the chores and everything, but I don't. I really don't.

And people need to respect that decision.
I'm not trapped.
I am not oppressed.
I am not under my husband's thumb.
I am independent of my husband.

Being a stay-at-home mom does not make me his appendage. I am just as much of his partner as any woman who works outside of the home. I just get paid differently.

I get paid with his gratitude that he doesn't have to worry about the finances or food being in the house (things that make him anxious,) with his help when I'm honest about not being able to keep up with the chores some days, with the fact that I get to spend every lunch with my husband.

He does so many things for me that have nothing to do with the house.

So, yes, we have a traditional marriage.
And, no, I wouldn't trade it for anything. 

~I'm proud of the house we built. It's stronger than sticks, stones, and steel. It's not a big place sittin' up high on some hill. A lot of things will come and go, but love never will.~

Overcomer

So the husband asked me a question the other day and it's been on my mind ever since. I just haven't gotten it down until now.

He asked me "Have you had your salvation moment?"
And that moment immediately came to my mind.

But that isn't exactly what's been on my mind. What's been on my mind is how I had that moment when I was 18 and I thought I had a really solid testimony before then.

I grew up Southern Baptist Christian. We went to a very large and prominent church every single Sunday and Wednesday. We volunteered to make Wednesday night dinner. I was baptised when I was 8 and I actually had to insist on it before my parents would actually let me.
They wanted to know I knew what I was doing.

I am not a cookie cutter Christian and I actually ended up leaving that church because I found no real common ground with the other kids my age there and they didn't seem to want to help me find it. They also treated me one way in church and then wouldn't speak to me at school. I felt very alone.
Another reason I left was because I did not like that I felt that a majority of the congregation was going there because they were expected to be there and not because they loved God.
In another case, I was told when I was 12 years old that I couldn't come back to a church unless I wore a skirt, at a time when I didn't even own a skirt and couldn't afford a new one.

There is something profound about the feelings you get when you feel like you are not wanted in the one place you should be completely accepted.
I found a wonderful church later in life, but that's a different story.

Outside of church, I spent the better part of my grade school years being bullied. I was sexually abused by a female family friend. At 7 or so, I was diagnosed with clinical depression and at 10, I started having anxiety attacks (although I didn't know that's what they were yet.) I dealt with self harm and mild anorexia throughout high school.

I felt like a real trooper for staying faithful to God and not blaming him for the rejection I felt coming from "normal" Christians and the struggles I had been through.

The thing that has been on my mind is that it seems that every kid who grew up Christian seems to feel this way. That they have a deep relationship with Christ merely because they've grown up with Him always there.

It's different for people who come to Christ. They can point to an exact moment where they were not aware of Christ's presence in their life, but for those of us who grew up Christian, Christ was always there. We are taught from a young age to follow Him.
But there is a difference between knowing your parents and having a relationship with them.

Every single Christian has a salvation moment. A pinpoint moment that turns their relationship with Christ from just going to church and doing what you are told, to really having a close relationship with Him. A moment that brings you to your knees and everything you ever thought about your faith is turned and you wonder where you've been this whole time.
This can be the moment of your actual salvation, when you accept Jesus as your savior and move towards serving him, but for most Christians who grew up knowing Jesus it is the moment when you truly, truly realize what he has done for you and you begin to have a deep, engaged relationship with Him.

My salvation moment came in a little church in Bentonville, Arkansas and Bobby was actually a part of it.

The thing is that I firmly believed that my life was so hard because God was punishing me. I believed that I was sent to Earth to be punished for some thing I had done before I was born and I had to make it right.

Bobby was at a convention and I was babysitting his boys for the weekend. He wanted me to take his boys to church and so I did.
I hadn't been to actual church in about 3 or 4 years, even though that little voice in the back of my mind kept telling me I needed to get off my butt and find a church, and I dropped the boys off in their class and I sat down in the service.
I don't remember what they preached about but somewhere before the alter call I felt this over whelming knowledge that I was wrong.

I had been wrong this whole time about who I was and who God was and I was so overcome with relief and guilt, I started sobbing. I went up to the alter when they called and told God how sorry I was and how I didn't know. I didn't know how wrong I had been about Him and my life so far. I told Him how I realized that my life was a gift and not a punishment. That he wanted to save me, not punish me.

If you can't answer that question "Have you had your salvation moment?," you need to look at your relationship with Christ. Are you engaged? Is God a parent that you've been listening to, but aren't really having conversations with? Does that moment of true acceptance flash past your mind when you hear that question?

John 14:21 says "The person who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father and I, too, will love him and reveal myself to him." (ISV)

~You might be down for a moment, feeling like it's hopeless, that's when He reminds you that you're an overcomer.~ Mandisa.

How Do I

I don't really know how to start this, so I'm just going to plunge in....

What do you do when you become a blended family, but there's no room for you....?
I feel so alone and abandoned when the boys are here and it's really hard to be an adult and not resent them for it....
Because it isn't their fault, its their father's.

I love him to death, but he's so focused on how little time he gets with them that he barely enjoys the time he does get.
He does everything running and so I just kind of get run over.....
He has to cram two weeks worth of time into a weekend with them.....
He can't just enjoy the weekend.
I pick them up and he is gone from me until we drop them off..... When I have to pick up the pieces of them being gone again.

Am I the only one going through this? Or anything like this?

I don't know what to do about it.
I've tried talking to him about bed times, so maybe I can get an hour with him, but he runs right over them and my 9 and 11 year old are up until 10, 11, 12, 1 in the morning because he's so concerned with catching lost time....
And when we have them extendedly, I have to deal with the attitudes and the bad moods and everything that goes with them going to bed at 1 and getting up at 6:30....

But they don't really feel like mine....
I thought that's what happens with a blended family....
You make two parts into one.....
But I just feel like I'm an intruder.....

We don't play games together. I maybe sit and watch them play because he turns into "I have to teach them life skills" dad and that ends up bleeding over to include me, so he talks to me like I'm 12. Which I can't stand.
I'm not invited to go walking with them because it's more "I have to have man on man stuff with my boys."

I don't feel like I really belong. The husband says he doesn't invite me because he doesn't feel like I want to, but how can I want to when I don't feel a part of anything they do? I feel like I'm shoving myself into their happy little family....like I've forced my way in....

I can do things with the husband or I can do things with the boys. There's not really a both, because they're all too busy making up for lost time that there's just no room for me.....

~Baby, I don't know what I would do, I'd be lost if I lost you. ~ Lee Ann Womack

and Into the Fire.

So this is me. I am 21 years old, the youngest of four children, and on October 27th, 2013 I became the wife of a man 18 years my senior and the step-mother of his 9 and 11-year-old sons.

Let me give you a minute.

Yes. My husband is 39 years old. 

Yes. His children are 9 and 11.

No. There is nothing wrong with the guys my age.

No. I don't have daddy issues. (I love that one.) My father is the single most supportive person in my life and when my husband asked my father for my hand in marriage he said 'You have to make sure she gets through college and you have to love her with everything you have.'

No. There is nothing wrong with the women his age.

No. there is no reason he could not get a woman of his age. Believe me.

I have known my entire life what I wanted to be. I have always known that my God-given purpose was to become a mother, and not in the go-to-college-get-a-job-get-married-have-kids type of becoming a mother is these days.

The only reason I started planning on having a job and going to college was that someone told me when I was young that there was no possible way my future husband could support me and my four kids in this country's future. I had it all planned out. I would have two kids and adopt two kids and I would have my little family coffee shop, or God-granting, I would stay at home, and my life would be awesome.

But things don't always go according to plan. 

I never planned to give my heart to and marry this wonderful man who knows instinctively how to handle my anxiety attacks without making them my fault.
I never planned to fall in love with his two little boys.
I never planned to be working conventions with him.
I never planned on starting this kid thing so soon.

But here I am. 
We have a little girl on the way in October and the boys every other weekend and we are approaching our second year of marriage....

And I couldn't ask for anything better.
We have struggled and we fight, but divorce is not an option. 
We work it out because we are committed to making this work and we love each other.
I can't wait for this next phase in our lives.


It's not living if you stand outside the fire.... Life is not tried, it is merely survived if your standing outside the fire. ~ Garth Brooks