I wanted to share with you guys a story.  I’m choosing to be a little vulnerable here, so, please be nice. 

As you may know, I have a biracial family.  We look like this (except this was taken last summer so we all look older):

I have friends who look completely different from me.  I go to a relatively diverse church.  One of my husband’s closest friends is from Cameroon.  I have very few issues with skin color (I am not going to say I have things figured out, but we are working hard at it).  If you had asked me if I struggled with prejudice about the way people look I would have said that THAT is one area of life that is not a consistent struggle for me.

Some people at my church wear traditional African dress to Sunday services.  I love it.  I don’t give it a second thought.   Some people wear jeans and some people go all out.  Clothing at my church is not something I really even think about.  Until last Sunday.

I was at church and there was a young lady there, maybe 20ish, who was dressed in what I thought to be Amish clothing.  It surprised me.  We typically don’t have Amish people show up at church, and the Twin Cities does not have a thriving Amish community like other parts of the country.  So anyway, this young woman stood out to me.

This past Sunday I happened to be helping out with some stuff during the services with some friends, and I saw this girl kind of wandering around.  There weren’t really any other people around besides myself and my friends that I was helping.  As I looked at the girl, I said to my friend Marnie, “so, what is her story?”  Marnie answered, “she is Mennonite.  She is visiting here.  You should go introduce yourself, she is thinking about coming to the women’s retreat.”

I thought about going to talk to her, but I decided against it.  My friends already met her, so I didn’t need to.  Later, as I was leaving church, I saw this Mennonite girl talking with a different friend of mine, Elisabeth, and I very briefly introduced myself and said hi.  The end, off I went.

Monday evening Marnie and Elisabeth were over to hang out.  We got to talking about this young girl at church.  Elisabeth grew up Mennonite and was telling us about how neat it was to be able to connect with her.  And then Elisabeth said something that I KNOW God wanted me to hear.  She said, “I’ve been texting her over the past day and soon I need to tell her that she needs to change into some different clothes.  It is hard for people to look past the clothes and see the person.”

It was like I got smacked in the head.  A lightbulb came on.  I was that person.

The reason I didn’t go talk to this girl was because of the way she was dressed.  I told myself I didn’t know how to relate to her.  I told myself I didn’t know what I would say to her.  I told myself she had already met others and didn’t need to meet anybody else.  But none of that was true.  I was intimated by her clothes and thus chose to not interact with her.

I pride myself on being able to look past skin color, but apparently I can’t look past clothing choices.  What does that say about my heart?!

I am so very very thankful for God revealing this to me.  I learned a lesson.  One I intend to not forget.  I told Marnie and Elisabeth my thoughts and told them that I had not talked to her because of her clothes….so I have made my confession to friends, and now to you all.  I know that I am a work in progress, and that God is not finished with me yet…and He chose to reveal a place in my heart that I had not even realized that I had not surrendered to Him.  I am thankful he revealed it gently.

I hope to see this young lady again.  From now on, it’ll be different.

Hey everyone!

Happy Monday!  We’re sorry we were slackers last week.  Life caught up with us and we fell off the blogging bandwagon.  Well, life and that time of month which caused me to spend an hour in Matea’s school’s bathroom where I felt like I was dying.

For the record, spending an hour in a public bathroom is not normal for me.  We fondly refer to these moments as my “episodes”. Luckily it has passed and we are back and ready to write!

Last week I never told you all my goals.  I was basically going to write “me too” on Katie’s post but I’m glad I didn’t.  I had a week of late nights and did not pick out ONE outfit for the week.  Fail.  This week I’m going to work on those two things and add on getting back on track with my morning prayer.  I was getting up a half hour earlier than normal and praying for a half hour each morning before I started my day.  The late nights I had last week were not conducive to early mornings so my prayer life has been hurting.  See how healthy habits all go hand in hand?

Katie says…
So, I am not drinking a whole nalgene bottle of water a day.  BUT, I am drinking a lot more water than I normally do, so I shall carry on.  Going to bed by 10 is TOUGH.  My main motivation for doing that was to get up at 6:30 to have 30 minutes of coffee drinking/Bible reading by myself before Matea gets up.  So, maybe instead of trying to go to bed early I should just get up “early.”  I don’t know.  I guess my goal for this week will be to carve out a chunk of time each day to read my Bible and have some prayer time.  So if I don’t get up early enough, I’ll have to use nap time or post-bedtime to read.

Like we said before, healthy habits include physical, emotional, AND spiritual health!  I’m excited to work on making reading my Bible more of a priority this week!

What about you?  Any healthy habit you are working on with us? We’d love to hear it!

PS! We have some REALLY REALLY exciting news to share with you tomorrow!!!!

Jen and I had an idea.

A marvelous, wonderful, amazing idea. (at least we think so.)

Here’s the thing.  You know how January 1 rolls around, and everybody gets all “I’M GOING TO GET HEALTHY!” and “I’M GOING TO LOSE WEIGHT!” and “I’M GOING TO QUIT SMOKING!” Well Jen and I had a thought: What if we started 2013 out already doing those things.  What if we already had healthy habits started? Wouldn’t it be awesome to start 2013 CELEBRATING our healthy selves rather than saying, “ok, now here we go”?

And just a clarification: when we say healthy we are DEFINITELY not saying skinny.  We all know you can be skinny and not healthy.  We are talking about being healthy physically, spiritually, and emotionally. For example:

Jen and I are challenging you to 9 weeks of Healthy Habits.  (I don’t know, maybe we’ll come up with a better name.) There are 9 Mondays between now and Christmas (not counting Christmas Eve which is on a Monday).  Each Monday you pick a healthy habit to work on for that week.  For example, maybe you want to start eating breakfast.  Or maybe you want to watch less TV.  Or start reading more books to your kids.  Whatever it is, it needs to be measurable - I will eat something for breakfast Monday-Friday, I will stop watching Letterman on Mondays, I will read at least 2 books to my kids each day.  It can be big or small, it doesn’t matter, it just needs to be some positive, healthy thing that you would like to change – and that you actually have the ability to do so.  For example, I will memorize 3 Bible verses is a lot more attainable than I will memorize the entire book of Genesis.  You get my drift.

Jen and I will be blogging about our Healthy Habits each Monday -  you can if you want!  But you don’t have to.  The idea is that on Mondays you work on a different habit or you continue on the same one.  For example, it might be pretty easy to, say, drink 4 glasses of water every day.  In a week you might have that down.  But it might take 2 or 3 weeks of work to really get in a good habit of going to bed on time.  Or maybe you cut out one TV show this week, and you want to cut out additional TV the next.  Whatever.  There are really no rules and nothing is right or wrong.

So….is anybody with us?  If you aren’t, its totally fine.    We are looking forward to January 1 and looking back at the healthy changes we have made in our lives!  That toast at midnight will be one of celebration for sure!

You know what we love?  We love it when our bloggie friends post about really cool people doing really cool things and we get to be apart of it.  Take our friend Kelly from View Along the Way for example.

Our friend Kelly has a friend Meagan.

Everyone say hi to Meagan!

Meagan is going to mine and Katie’s favorite place continent, Africa.

More specifically Zambia.

As Kelly tells us, “Meagan spent a summer in college doing mission work in Africa, when God implanted a yearning in her heart for orphans. After college and a few years into her teaching job, Meagan committed to a two-year stint at Namwianga Mission in Zambia, but stayed for four years.

Now, Meagan feels God calling her back to Africa. She’ll be returning to Zambia for five years to serve the babies and young children at Namwianga – a place where kiddos at their most vulnerable state (ages 0-3 years old, or medically vulnerable) are finding haven.”

Source: Uploaded by user via Jamie on Pinterest

Now as you can imagine, leaving America, your family, your comforts of home and any sort of “normal” job isn’t easy.  It isn’t always glamorous.  It isn’t always fun.  But it is always rewarding.  And beautiful.  And when God is telling you to do something and you follow His lead, you can bet you will find blessing along the way.  And you, my friends, can be a blessing to our new friend Meagan.

You see, you and I can’t always be that person to fly over to Africa and care for these kids that desperately need some love and care but you CAN give a few dollars to Meagan to help her be those hands and feet….the hands and feet of Christ.

Kelly is challenging her readers to give just $10.  Give up 2 morning coffees or bring a lunch from home and there you have it.  Katie and I are committed to $10.  Will you be too?

If you are, swing on over to Kelly’s blog here and follow her instructions to donate.  We’d love it if you could help not only Meagan and all the orphans who need her.

 

Source: paisleyprintshoes.com via Jennifer Flavin on Pinterest

Yesterday the weather called for “flash floods” all day.  Funny though because it didn’t rain until 9:00pm.  For about 15 minutes.  And then it stopped.  Either we got a record amount of rain in a short period of time or the weather people are crazy.  I think it’s the latter.

All day I was watching the sky because I had to get a run in.  Our dad is speaking at graduation tonight so I wasn’t going to get one in today and I’m trying to keep up with my marathon training.  Of course as I was leaving work was when it got dark….the darn flash floods were on their way!!

I decided to risk getting soaked and headed out when I got home.  Mostly because of this pin.

I mean, seriously.  Have you ever regretted a workout?  I figured as long as I didn’t get struck by lightning I would be fine.  I actually really enjoy running in the rain on hot days.  It’s so peaceful!  Everyone stays inside so it’s just you, the trail, the rain and God.  Perfect.

Well sadly it didn’t rain.  But I’m extra glad I didn’t let the gloomy clouds scare me away from a run!  I would have totally regretted not running since it didn’t start raining until I was in my pjs. 

Speaking of working out…how is everyone doing with their pushups?  I hung out with Katie on Tuesday and holy moley is she getting some definition in her arms!!  I was totally impressed.  Clearly those pushups are doing her well.

If you’re new to PPS and don’t know about our pushup challenge you can check out this post.  Or check out the benefits here or all the muscles you burn while doing pushups here.  I’ve sort of been slacking but I’m trying to keep up with the physical therapy for my butt/hip/sacrum…which is helping my lower abs just nicely I must say.  I guess there’s perks to being forced to do exercises. 

Anyone else noticing some definition or are you able to do more “manly” vs “womanly” pushups?

Sometimes life gets crazy.

And nerve wrecking.

And scary.

And we don’t know what God is thinking.

But then we remember that God’s got your back.

And His plan for our life is WAY better than our plan for our life.