Purpose.

"And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me." Matthew 18:5


Some people spend their entire lives trying to figure out why God put them on this earth, and never find the answer. Or, well, in my opinion, they don't work hard enough to figure it out. God usually puts that kind of stuff right in our faces and it's up to us to pray about it and then recognize the signs. I recognized them several years back while attending a Women of Faith conference. I was a couple of years out of high school, and so naturally I didn't want to go. I thought it was going to be some boring Holy Rolling 2 day sermon that I would barely stay awake through. Pretty sure my dad said I HAD to go..To which I was not happy about, but I went. To my surprise it was a most entertaining event. About midway through the second day, they showed a video on the big screen for a child sponsorship program called World Vision.

That was it. I found my purpose.

Once the video was over I rushed to the WV booth and chose my first sponsored child. A young girl from the Philippines. The next year, I added another girl from Africa. No, no, sponsoring children through Christian programs is not my calling from God. I know for a very specific fact that my purpose in life, the REASON I was born to this Earth, is to love and help children in any way I can.

And so you might ask, "How will I know why God has put me here?"...Listen to your heart! What tugs at you when you see/hear it? If you could choose what you would do, if given the chance to do ONE thing with unlimited resources to help someone. What would it be? For me, it is adoption. Perhaps, it is appropriate then, that I was an adopted child myself.

I had a bit of an epiphany the other day after reading a friend's Blog about her journey through the process of adopting not one, but two children from Africa. It only makes sense. My God given purpose in life to do what I can to help children (most specifically my life-long desire to adopt) and being adopted myself. God must have (duh) designed my life to be so, in order for me to best use this purpose. I mean, who better to be a parent to an adopted child then someone who was herself adopted!!? Not saying that someone who wasn't adopted wouldn't make a good adoptive parent though, so don't misunderstand that. I'm just saying, for myself in my journey that is what I think.

I think the calling to help helpless and orphaned children is something that everyone needs to take an answer to. The bible says:

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.

James 1:27

Take a few minutes to think about that verse and really let it resonate you. God may have not called you to adopt a child but there are other ways to help. Send a box of clothing to an orphanage over seas. Mentor a foster child. Donate money to a family in the midst of raising money to bring a child home.

I prayed the other night...I was feeling a bit guilty that I wasn't sure if I was being selfish wanting to wait until I was done having biological children before we decided on the adoption route. I asked God if I was ignoring something I shouldn't be. If I should be looking deeper into this now. After I while I felt a peace come over the guilt and I knew that it was Him telling me that now isn't the time. Why? I'm not sure. Perhaps the child that has been destined for us hasn't been concieved yet, who knows. But I do know that I am ready when the time comes, and I am listening and waiting, ready to follow the leader...and we all know who THAT is!!

And so, I will leave you with a few things to think about. One is: Find out what your purpose in life is and make the choice to participate. You have NO idea how fulfilling it is to take part in the thing you were born to do.

Second is some global stats on the orphan crisis in this world. I will admit living in my little bubble of the USA (no matter how hard things are here, we have NO true idea how privileged we are) I really had no idea the grand scale of things....
*There are between 143-210 MILLION orphans in the world today (to give you a perspective, the current US population is just over 310 million)
*Every year, 42,000 more children become orphans
*Each night 60 million orphans go to bed hungry, and
*Each year, 400,000 of them die due to malnutrition. (that's every 90 seconds)

"This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
John 15:12

Recipe Thursday - Beef Stew!

So I decided I'm going to dedicate Thursdays to posting some of my Favorite recipes! If you need to find one later you can go to my "Recipes" page at the top of my blog.

Here is the best Beef Stew recipe EVER! This is from a diabetic cookbook so it is healthy.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp flour
1 lb. boneless lean beef stew meat, trimmed of all fat
2 tbsp olive oil
3 large shallots, thinly sliced
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
3 cups beef stock - reduced sodium
1/2 cup red wine
6 carrots cut into one-inch chunks
6 medium red potatoes cut into one-inch chunks
18 small boiling onions, halved OR 1 cup chopped onions
3 large portabello mushrooms, brushed clean and cut into one-inch chunks
1 cup celery cut into one-inch chunks
1/3 cup chopped parsley

step 1: Place flour on a plate. Dredge meat in flour. In a large sauce pan, heat the oil and add the beef. Brown on all sides and then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

step 2: Add shallots to the pan and saute till soft and golden. Add salt, half the pepper, thyme and bay leaf. Saute for one minute. Return the beef to the pan and add the stock and wine. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to low. Simmer covered about 30-40 minutes.

step 3: Add the carrots, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, and celery. Cover and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until veggies are tender (about another 30 minutes). Stir in the parsley and remaining pepper. Remove the bay leaf and serve.

Wordless Wednesday 10/27

A look back at my Chenda's shenanigans! I can't believe this was just over a year ago, she looks like a little baby here! (Of course I'll be saying that in a year about her most recent pics I'm sure!)

Birthday season is beginning!!

So I always say my mom's birthday marks the start of "Birthday Season" in my family. In just about a 6 weeks period we have about 6 birthdays in just my immediate family. It's a fun time!


Chan and I decided to kick of the kids' birtday "season" by taking Chenda out on a VERY special dinner date with Mommy and Daddy. It's a few weeks early but given the amount of dinners and birthday parties that will be happening in the month we figured there's no better time. Plus it was very overdue as I'm pretty sure that she has been feeling a bit like she needed some time with just us without little sister. She does love her very much but sometimes you just need the one on one time. I knew it was time because the day our dinner was planned she just came up and sat on my lap and just started crying. I felt so bad! I try to be the best mom I can be to BOTH my kids equally, but Kali is still quite clingy to me and so I know Chenda can feel left out even when I am giving her attention, because I almost always have the baby on my hip, or attaching herself to my leg haha!





Anyway, our dinner was at Red Robin and she did SO GOOD! She didn't even try to get down from the table once! We ordred her chicken and fries and a very special birthday sprite. Then they came out and sang to her and she was a bit shy but still loved it. She even had to take her balloons to the bath with her when we got home.

I'm so happy that I had the opportunity to make my sweet little Chenda's day!!

Wordless Wednesday 10/20

Today's wordless Wednesday photo is a funny one!




Dont worry the dog cage was clean!! She actually had her locked in there but I couldn't get to my camera before she decided to let her out!

Wordless Wednesday....

So a big thing on Blogs is to do "wordless Wednesday". I will just post a picture and a caption (or no caption), the jist of it is that a picture is worth a thousand words, and therefore there is no big long post required with the photo.
*I am aware that those are words above, but I felt the need to explain**

MOMMY AND BABY

Bedtime Antics...

Ok so, night time has been a bit hairy around here lately. A lot of NON sleeping going on by both me and the kids (and daddy too most nights). Not sure what is going on, but they are each getting up several times a night, leaving me on 3 hours or less a night of sleep for a few weeks now. Needless to say I'm suuuuuuper tired!

So a friend let me borrow her book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child". Aside from being the most boring book I have ever read, it does have some good tips and points. One being that overtired kids have more trouble getting to sleep and staying to sleep at night. I know Chenda is overtired. The poor thing hasn't had an afternoon nap in who knows how long and rarely goes to sleep before 10pm. Not by my choice in that I WANT her up like that, but it's a relentless fight to get her to sleep. On top of all this getting up at night, just GETTING Chenda to sleep is a fight in itself involving a lot of screaming and crying (and not just by me!! HAHA!) causing a lot of stress on everyone and probably just exadurating the issue. I always figured that she just wasn't tired and would fall asleep when she was.

I know now that I was wrong. She can't sleep because she is SO tired and her body is pumping out adrenaline and other hyper hormones in order to fight fatigue. Thus causing hyper alertness, fussiness, and higher levels of agitation (hence constant fits through the day). *This is all according to the book, but fits her like a T"...So in light of being fed up with no sleep and really not wanting to do any permanent damage to her (according to the book, these kinds of sleep habits usually develop into ADHD and insomnia as they grow), I have decided to implement a new sleep schedule.

After dinner, we will begin our night schedule with a bed time (for now for the sake of easing her into it) of 8:30-9, and wake up time of 8am (eventually I will be making bedtime 8pm and get up no sooner then 7am but no later then 8am), nap time at 1 or 2 and on and on. Of course the baby gets one extra nap in the morning around 11am which she pretty much already takes anyway.

And that puts us where we are now. Chenda is currently up in my room hollering because I am making her take a nap. I promised myself I wouldn't go in there till 3pm to check on her. Because then if she is awake she can come downstairs and we will do bed time earlier, or I will let her sleep till 4pm if she is sleeping. We'll see what happens. I'm glad the baby is easy to get down at this point!!