Don't Miss Your Life

This is a great song with a great message.

Bedtime Prayers

Ever since Mercedes was a baby she has had a terrible time sleeping. When she was little she would be up almost all night crying. This would happen almost every night. When she was about ten months old it was about 3 a.m. and she had been crying for several hours, (she was in bed with us because we don't let the girls cry it out). I felt the urge to get up and just start praying. I didn't know what to pray but I just started talking to God. I asked him to help Mercedes and to tell me what to pray to help her. God told me to pray against unrest. I prayed against Satan and the spirit of unrest and immediately Mercedes was sound asleep and she slept the rest of the night only waking up to eat a few times. From that night on I have prayed with her every night before bed. We made it a part of her bedtime routine and she has not had that kind of sleeping trouble since. We have still had rough nights with her because she is a very high strung, high needs girl but there is a difference between the normal hyper nights and the spiritual attack nights. I have learned to tell the difference and when I am not sure I just pray anyway.

She will be two years old the end of July and she is now sleeping through the night and she falls asleep to me rubbing her back after we have read stories and prayed. Prayer is a crucial part of our bedtime routine and I will continue it with her and the rest of the kids for many years to come.

If you are wondering why it took me ten months to start praying about it, that is because I had a lot to learn and I am still learning every day. In the first almost three years of our marriage I have come a long way in learning to be a leader and a father and the head of my family and I still have a lot of learning ahead of me. That is why I started this blog, so hopefully I can share some insight and some ideas so some of you won't have to go through ten months of sleepless nights before you try a little prayer.

Time Vs. Money

Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!  Ecclesiastes 5:10 NLT

Several times a week I am presented with a choice: stay an hour or two late at work and make forty or fifty extra dollars, or leave on time and be home for dinner and have a couple hours with my girls before bed time. Now forty dollars, three or four times a week, adds up fast. That's a lot of money, and as it is we are on a very tight budget. As much help as that money would be I just can't trade that time with my daughters. When it comes to work I have always said family comes first. If my job is demanding too much time and I can't be there for my girls then maybe I need to find something else. 

When I come home from work Mercedes runs to the door yelling daddy daddy daddy, and gives me a big hug and tells me what she is doing as best she can. She always want to cuddle me and tells me she misses me. I wouldn't want to trade that relationship with my daughter for a few extra dollars. I have worked with too many guys that have ended up getting divorced or have no relationship with their kids because they worked all the time. I refuse to let that happen to my family.

It isn't easy to do. It takes sacrifice. It is all about priorities. We only have one car. We don't have cable or a high def TV. I don't have a PS3 or an Xbox 360. We don't have the newest smart phones and iPads. But what I do have is a wife and two daughters who love me, who want to spend every minute they can with me, who miss me when I'm gone and can't wait for me to get home. That is what I do have and no amount of money would ever be worth giving that up for.

Welcome!

Becoming a man after God's heart is a pretty heavy statement! This blog is meant to be a window into my personal journey towards what God wants for my life. I will be blogging about questions (and hopefully some answers) that I am thinking about and dealing with in my life. God has put the desire to be a man of God deep inside of me. There is a lot of questions that I am seeking answers to and my goal is to share some incites and things that I learn with whoever cares to read them in hopes that my journey might inspire others to set out on their own journeys to find what God has put inside their hearts.

I will be trying to deal with and discuss things like: How do I be a true man of God? What will that look like in my marriage, to my kids, and at my job? How do I balance working, spending time with my kids, keeping the relationship with my wife alive, and finding a balance in the midst of all those things while still maintaining my sanity? How can I show my children the love of God and make it real in their lives?

There is so much to learn about being a real man and so much that I need to learn. If my ramblings and thoughts can help some of you to find a closer relationship with God, with your kids, or with your spouse, then this blog has served its purpose. I hope to post something about once a week. I welcome your comments and thoughts. If some of what I write brings up questions for you then feel free to ask me whatever and I will do my best to answer or it might open up a whole new box of thoughts and ideas. If nothing else we can grow together and share in this journey towards God.