Not a Blogger...wish I was....

So I am officially not a blogger :( I really want to be but when i get a second of downtime the main thing i do is drag myself to my bed and hit it so hard i could give myself a concussion! So this will be an occasional update thing that we will have going on instead of an everyday here are all the details of my life....So now that we have the expectations clear there are some new details in my life:) I am PREGGO with number two.  And if you read any part of my earlier blog you would know that this is yet another miracle!! Yes i am due any moment now and can't wait to meet our little boy Jacob Cohen Woodward!! 

There are several things that make my life an everyday continuous joy. One would be the ongoing adventure of encountering the Lord's presence in the midst of being 9 months pregnant with a 2 year old, who is the cutest thing you will ever see, but also is in the throws of needing some sort of boundary or discipline in her life! But alas HE MEETS ME!!  He meets me in the moments where I have nearly knocked myself out hitting the bed so hard, when i don't have strength to go on HE gives me all that I need to make it through the day.  When i see my little girl responding without hesitation to an everyday mundane task i do for her, saying "Thank you mommy" or "I love you mommy".  He is so very near there are just many times I need to open my eyes to see it.  

So that is my prayer for us moms who seem to have lost vision on how the Lord meets us in the everyday....that our eyes would be reopened to His nearness.  That He is the God that sees and cares.  About every little detail, whether it is changing a diaper or cooking another meal or doing yet another load of laundry.  That in the midst of the mundane and your discouraged heart He is there to bring you hope through the contagious laugh of your little one or the look on your husband's face that says " you are far better at this than you think you are".  There is a Jason Upton worship song that i love that says "in the silence You are speaking." 

But my new motto is "in the chaos of everyday life of being pregnant with a toddler You are speaking" I just have to make sure i am listening! When we are able to recognize the goodness of the Lord in the everyday and convey that to our kids we cultivate an atmosphere of expectation for the Lord to show up and reveal His goodness, which He loves to do,  all while showing our kids what a grateful heart looks like.  

Well baby Cohen will be here soon and i will hopefully begin to blog a little more on what life looks like with two and the adventure it will be! Until then i pray that you encounter the Lord in the everyday and let HEAVEN INVADE YOUR HOME!
 

Trying to love my kid on "purpose"....

When I found out I was pregnant one of my first purchases was NOT a crib, a baby blanket, or even books on how to get through my labor....it was the DVD's of "Loving your Kids on Purpose" by Danny Silk (from Bethel Church).

I had heard soooo many good things about the dvds and they definitely lived up to their reputation!! I wont spoil it for you because I just highly recommend getting them. period. They are all about the Father heart of God towards us and the need to give your children choices, all while setting boundaries and teaching them how to make good choices.  So I have been teaching Ellie the language of choice, even though I am fully aware that she is only 18months old and has virtually no control over her emotions.

So today I tried something....she was in the middle of a fit and I gave her a choice.....I said "Ellie you can choose to calm down and be fun and stay out here with mommy or you can go to your room?" Well the next thing I know she is up and walking to her room...it was the funniest thing!!!! She stayed in there until I came in to get her....I guess she knew that she needed some time to calm down:)

All this to say I have learned a lesson on parenting...that our kids are smart, when given choices they may not always make the right one that is why as parents we create a safe environment for them to fail and take that opportunity to teach them the right way.  But if we as parents are trying to control them instead of teaching them how to control themselves, when the real world becomes their playground they might not know when it is a good idea to stop hanging upside down on the monkey bars......

Second Wind for Blogging

Sorry All it has been a while.... I realized, never being a blogger before that I was thinking way to hard about each post making it seem more like work that a fun experience.

So here I am again after a 2 month break of bdays, holidays, the awakening at IHOP, the One thing Conference, my husband traveling, working part time and the list could go on! I am excited to be back!! Never finished with part 2 of my last blog but just wanted to share quickly the amazing miracle of having Eliana.

It ended up that Ben met the best endometriosis doctor in the United States at a conference here at Ihop. He is a believer and prayed for me for three days and in the midst of that time he received a vision from the Lord about my womb and saw where exactly the disease was and how much time I had before a creative miracle would have to take place for me to ever consider having children.  He told me we need to have surgery ASAP.

He lived and worked in New York city and luckily my best friend was getting married in a couple of months about an hour from where he was so i decided to kill two birds with one stone (wow writing that out is actually really funny compared to saying it :) So we get everything in order, as far as flights, room and board, and insurance or so I thought.

Then about a week before we are supposed to leave I get a phone call from the Dr.'s office manager explaining that our insurance would not cover him as the physician because he was a specialty doctor.  She then went on to explain that we would need to hand her a check for $7,000.00 for the first part of the surgery. I immediately went into fear mode and my amazing husband decided that he wasn't going to follow me there.  So we pushed the furniture out of the way in our living room and decided to praise and adore the Lord.

Long story short within two days we were given double the amount of money we needed! Our hospital bill which was supposed to be at least $12,000.00 came in at $775.00 - AMAZING we just wrote a check and praised the Lord!! AND then found out later that I only had one functioning ovary and the other ovary only had ten percent left of it and by the time the Dr. had finished stitching up the one that had ten percent left in it, it had grown to be fully complete and whole!!

But the best part is that the first time we were able to try I became pregnant with my little Eliana, the joy and love of my life.  The end!! Well more to come the Lord has been speaking some amazing things about bringing up this little beauty of mine and connecting her heart to God her father, Jesus her savior and the Holy Spirit her best friend!!

The picture on the right is us with the Doctor at a JoCo conference!

New Beginnings

Being a first time mom gave me a whole new perspective at life.  I had always known the love of the Father towards me but it wasn't until I stared at my beautiful baby girl that I began to feel this deep thing in my heart begin to well up.

Emotions that I am not sure I had ever felt before ...emotions that even now as I am writing bring tears to my eyes.  Then something began to click and a link between my head and my heart happened, I got a small glimpse of what the Father felt for us.

I knew at that moment that I wanted more for her, I want the kingdom of Heaven to be her reality. Now obviously I am fully aware that we live on earth but I don't want to just bring her up in the mundane of earthly living. What does it look like to have Heaven invade your home? I am not exactly sure yet but I do know the Lord is speaking and opening my eyes to things that I thought only happened in other countries, that he has made it available to us everyday.  I want her to have eyes to see and ears to hear of what the Father is doing. I want her to know the love of Jesus and everything that he has done for her and the life that he walked out here on earth. I want the Holy Spirit to be her best friend. I want her to live a life of Adoring the Lord.  I literally want the atmosphere in my house to be a place where she can fully know that the Spirit of the Lord is upon her and she can walk in the confidence of that and all that comes with it.  That if one of her friends is hurt or having a hard day she wont hesitate to lay her hands on them and release the power of heaven.  This is my heart for her and as I document this journey more will begin to unfold as Lord is leading all of us moms to bring up this anointed and amazing generation.  Thank you Lord for the honor of raising these children.

My Miracle baby Part 1....

So most of you all know this story of how my sweet Ellie came to be but I feel I need to start from the beginning for those who dont:) Plus this has more details then I have every really shared, it is long so I will break it into 2 parts :)

 Back in 2006 after trying for 2 years to have kids I went to the doctor to find out I had level 4 endometrosis and that I had several cysts one being the size of a baby's head on my left ovary.  I needed surgery and pretty quickly but before i had a chance to have it the large cyst on my left ovary attached itself to other organs and decided to turn while I was driving home one day...oh the pain... probably worse than childbirth. 

Thankfully Ben was in the car with me and when i tried to stand up and get out i immediately fell to the ground and he picked me up and rushed me to the hospital.  We happened to be in Kansas city at the time staying some friends so they admitted me to Overland Park regional.  I was doped up on many of pain medicines so much so that all fear of man went out the window and I felt the need to tell every single person that walked in the room many details of my life including my love for the Lord. 

Of course I wish this had been my natural response to do but thankfully the Lord worked through what would have been my barrier of "fear of man" and i told a nurse of the love the Lord that one year later she found Ben at the House of Prayer and had given her life to Christ...I of course have no real recollection of the experience but Praise God!!

Anyway I had surgery which a doctor performed that I later found out later from a nurse that used to work there, he is known as the "butcher", not the nickname you want for someone performing surgery on you.  But for the most part it was considered successful, though my symptoms didnt seem to be getting better and I kept hearing from people that didn't know me or my God that I wouldn't be able to have kids.  What a curse to just speak that over someone, they don't even realize.... which brings me to Part 2 of my journey....will update soon!