judi free!

I thought having a baby would…

• end my career
• ruin my marriage
• be full of tedious work
• end of many friendships
• end my social life
• make me boring

Instead, having a baby has…

• given me a new passion for my work
• increased the joy in my marriage
• shown me that tedious work for your own baby is actually fun
• started and bloomed many new friendships
• started a whole new social world
• made me more alive with energy with new perspectives

We hear so many negative reasons why people don’t want to have kids. I’m here to tell you that if you have a good foundation and joy in your life, a baby will enhance everything you already have.  Now…get to baby making!

Last night, Mark and I had the opportunity to be inspired again. Inspiration is breath for your dreams. It’s the lifeblood of your hopes.  The funny thing about inspiration though is that you must act upon it immediately for it to have any effect on your dreams or else it becomes a cold wind of despair and dried up bones…just a hope that cannot possibly become a reality. Inspiration can even become bitterness – “how can they be so successful at it and not me?”.

So, what am I going to do with this beautiful thing called inspiration? I’m going to hide it in my heart and make 3 changes today:

1. Pray more
2. Practice more
3. Love more

It sounds simple, but really, these are the things that I neglect everyday. I know that if I’m faithful to do these things, the Lord will direct my steps and my works to align with His will. Be inspired today and make a change now.

As my due date quickly approaches (JULY 24), I am realizing that my life will never be the same. It is a new life in every sense of the phrase – a new life in my baby girl, a new life for me, a new life for Mark.

Besides the most obvious of having a baby this summer, here’s what’s also changing and brewing:

• We are leaving our beloved church family at ORCC to following God’s calling to help start a church plant – Life Song Worship Center. Kick off day is Sept. 13th.
• Mark will be leaving his job that he loves in order for us to plant this church. Appliance repair anyone?
• I have started to fervently pursue my Wedding Hair and Makeup business. I’m booked almost every weekend through the end of September (except for 6 weeks where I’ll be home with baby June.) Check out my humble beginnings: Wedding Hair and Makeup
• Every room in our house has been reorganized and flooded with baby stuff. June already has more belongings than Mark and I combined. It’s like we are living in a new house.

That’s really all for now. We desperately need your prayers. The things listed above are requiring a huge amount of sacrifice, tears, and commitment from us. We won’t give up, we won’t back down, we won’t relent.

However, I consider my life worth nothing to me if only I can finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me…the task of testifying to the gospel of  God’s grace. -Acts 20:24 (I have this verse tattooed on my wrist…it has never meant more to me than right now).

I had the very rare opportunity to sit in a room with 150 brilliant CEOs – incredibly accomplished individuals to say the least. They had all gathered to hear the CEO of my company give a presentation about “The Politics of International Business”…sounds so boring…right? What they got instead was a sincere message from an incredible man about his family, faith and business.

He spoke about the explosive growth our company experienced in the past 10 years, and he also detailed the anguish of watching the company stock go from $70 to $2 within 6 weeks. I was completely captivated by his personal story and journey of the past six months. Above all, I was completely shocked and inspiried with his transparency about his faith. He didn’t hold back in this very initimidating room. He let everyone know that “with God, all things are possible” and when he was asked how he managed his way through it all, he simply said, “I have to be honest…I pray alot. And through prayer, I gain the wisdom and strengh I need to do my job.”

He described his job as CEO of a Fortune 500 company as a ministry.

Maybe you’ll never be in “full time church ministry”, but you can inspire and change people right where you are. My CEO changed my life…and he’s not even a pastor.

My mind and emotions have been swimming in the deep end lately. I can’t believe I haven’t posted in 2 weeks. That’s the longest I’ve ever gone without spilling my guts for the world to read.

I think it’s time for some spillage, but I can’t seem to get my thoughts in order. Tomorrow, I will have a good post. I promise. I’m not a dead link. And I’m not a mom blog (even though I can hardly keep my mind of my precious little baby girl, June). Here’s what happened in the past 2 weeks:

1. We felt June kick on the outside of my tummy for the first time – magical.
2. We had house guests from Missouri.
3. We are welcoming Joshua White into our home tonight. This will be our first “face-to-face” with anyone from the internets.
4. My face has gotten fatter – I’m fairly sure of this even though my friends swear it’s not true.
5. French fries make my feet swell up, but I can’t seem to stay away from them.
6. I started watching the HBO series, Big Love. It’s just wrong.
7. We had a snow storm and 2 snow days.
8. God taught me some lessons.
9. I miss my blog friends.

The economy sucks…and I can’t do anything about it.

BUT –

I have a knack for writing, editing and formatting resumes for my friends, family, and even former co-workers. If you need some help with your resume, I really want to help you. Here’s some quick tips, but feel free to leave a comment and I’ll email you if you need additional help:

• Customize your email for the job you are applying for. Each job requirement is different – so should your resume!
• Keep it to one page if at all possible.
• Keep it clean and SPELL CHECK!!!!
• Focus on your skills and strengths – not your daily tasks and duties.
• You are marketing yourself so be creative and make your experience jump off of the page.
• Reach out to placement agencies and head hunters. They have trusted relationships with tons of companies. Many companies won’t hire anyone unless it’s through a placement agency or head hunter.
• Convert your resume to PDF before sending. MS Word formatting doesn’t always “keep”.
• For examples, templates and more tips, visit Resume Resource.

In addition to helping with your resume, I’ll pray that you find a job – a GREAT job!

Start Writing!

Since I’m so forgetful lately, I’ve made a list of things I continually try to remind myself of…unfortunately, my reminder usually comes too late:

1. Going to work in yesterday’s makeup is NEVER a good idea.
2. You like peas now that you’re pregnant.
3. You don’t like onions now.
4. When you have to pee in the middle of the night, it’s not as easy to “roll” out of bed.
5. You put your keys in your jacket pocket last night instead of in your purse.
6. Go ahead and get the size Medium in maternity clothes instead of the XXL in regular clothes, you’ll feel better about yourself.
7. When you feel tired on Wednesday and you call Mark to tell him you’re not coming to church, you will regret it.

Mark hinted to me that I might be a tad bit hormonal lately. Of course, I completely denied it until these things happened last week:

• I sat down in my bosses office to let him know I wasn’t satisfied with my review. Before I could say two words, I was sobbing like a baby and couldn’t catch my breath. The poor man didn’t know what to do. I’m pretty sure I didn’t make any sense and made a complete fool out of myself. I haven’t cried at work in the 4 years I’ve been here. It was humiliating.
• During our lovely Valentine’s date, I yelled at the sweet movie attendant about the parking situation before bursting into tears and demanding our money back. Again, humiliated. Good thing Mark saved the night by getting me calm and taking me home for a movie.
• I have been craving doughnut holes for weeks. This morning, I finally went to the quaint, local doughnut shop by our house to indulge myself only to be sold STORE BOUGHT, STALE doughnut holes – Winchell’s, I will cut you.  As soon as I got in my car, I cried.

I admit…I think I would have cried about the doughnuts – hormones or not!

I’m so swamped with work that don’t have time to check blogs, twitter, or write a post. I NEED A VACATION!!!

The best vacation I ever went on was to Cancun with Markie on our honeymoon. Margaritas and french fries on the beach are delightful combination. We wanna go back before the baby comes (sans the margaritas).

What’s the best vacation you’ve ever had??? OR Where’s your dream vacation???

Since we have had so many layoffs and budget cuts, my job has completely transformed from shopping and planning parties to editing HTML all day. It’s definitely a change of pace. I’m dreaming in code and ready for my old job back (even though that may never happen).

I’m completely stressed out about maternity leave and if they won’t need me again when I actually return. So, I’ll take any job they give me…here’s to HTML!!!!!

<head>

<b>Ode to Job</b>

</head>

<body>

<p style=text align: left>I still love my job, but…</p>

<p style=text align: left><b>I still dream of the day when I can be a stay at home mom.</b></p>

<p style=text align: left>I guess it’s better than not having a job at all…RIGHT?!?!</p>

<p style=text align: left>I’ve said my peace, now back to work.</p>

</body>

DO YOU LIKE YOUR JOB???

Mark and I share an incredible ministry together. Every Wednesday night, we lead a young generation to the throne room where we join in with the angels and worship our everlasting God. It is incredibly satisfying, challenging and overwhelming all at once.

However, what Mark and I do on Wednesday nights is just a small part of what Mark does at the church. You see, Mark works at our church…and I don’t. He gets to plan, write music, and cast vision all day long while I’m sitting in my 6′x8′ cubicle blogging, preparing reports, and writing emails.

I’m still trying to find where I fit into the whole ministry since I don’t actually work there. And the hard truth that I am coming to terms with is – I don’t fit in all of it.

There is a portion of the ministry that Mark and I do together and there is a portion that Mark will do with other people. I am learning to share the load and share my husband with a team…but it’s proving to be quite a hard lesson for me.

At work, I really think about everything I’m going to say or email. I take a breath and think, “How will this impact the situation/person/problem?” I’m very diligent and respectful about this and I usually do not say anything out of pure emotion.

However, I don’t do the same thing at home. Instead of thinking about my response to Mark or my parents, I usually blurt out my first emotionall and irrational response. It usually takes a 5 or 10 minute conversation for me to back out of my “blurt” and tell the person that I love what I really meant to say.

When it comes to the people we love, why is it so hard to treat them with the same respect we do our co-workers or boss?

I just found this picture of me from last summer. I’ve never seen it before and it’s HILARIOUS! I just lost a water balloon throwing contest (Mark won the contest – see picture below). I looks like I’m going to shout obscenities at the sky! I love finding funny pictures of myself…It makes me miss summer time already:

Caption Please!

Mark - FTW!

The older we get, the more we learn that bad things happen to good, Godly people. We don’t always get what we deserve. And we aren’t entitled to anything.

I feel like I grew up this week. I saw some really great people with families lose their jobs. Some I knew were faithful Christian people and some who have been faithful to this company for many, many years.

I do not believe my faith would have been shaken if I had lost my job. In fact, it would have challenged me to dig deeper, live in faith and give my whole world over to God. I can still do those things, but I’m much better under pressure.

Can we perfect our faith if everything always goes our way?

I’m safe. I still have my job. God is good (and he still would have been good if I lost my job today).