Carrying the Weight of the Wool

This is not an easy week for me. Yet it has been an amazing week. Does that make sense. Life happens every single day and even when my heart is full of joy, real joy, unspeakable kind of joy, those issues of life can just zap it away.

I struggled all summer long, prayed over and over for guidance as to where to send my kids to school. A school that I have loved and been a part of for the better part of 14 years and consistent with. I don't like change and when you find a school you love you try to just stick with it. This past year with two in college, and two in a private school we just did not know how to swing the expense of another in a private school and decided on options.

Home school, public school, what to do kind of school choices everywhere. We landed on a school that seemed to match our needs and our budget. Only to realize a couple of weeks into it, the teaching style was not right for Ethan. Eric loved it which surprised us all. Ethan loves school, has always been the one to remind me to get home so he can get his homework done. Ethan is the one who wants to read two books instead of the required one. Ethan the deaf child who did not even hear the statistics of deaf children and educational set backs. In two weeks I saw the love and passion for school drop out of his spirit. Crushing my heart as to "did I make the right decision?" I don't start and stop things. I press on and work through as best as I can. Ethan demonstrated the very same behaviors at home that Elliot did almost 17 years ago. His teachers would say he was a nice boy, just needed extra help on this, low test scores and once home this little boy named Elliot was angry, mad, wanted nothing to do with anything school. My heart has been so heavy on this matter as Ethan demonstrated all the same once familiar behaviors.

I was baffled over such a dramatic change in Ethan. A decision was made and midweek we put the boys back into the old school. By Thursday evening Ethan was doing his homework, reading his books and happy with life. It's a teaching style that has nothing to do with a fabulous teacher. Ethan and Elliot both always had teachers that I loved. I personally wish I did not love them so much, as these kinds of decisions would be so much easier if the teacher was lousy, but that is not the case.

This whole thing made for a rough spot in my heart and in my week in the struggle to deliver the news to the school and then hoping there was room in the old school of years past.

A few other issues this week, none to go into now and I am feeling spent. No change left not one penny. I went downstairs to read "From a Shepherd's Heart Psalm 23" and began to think of myself as this woolly four legged creature just wandering. Not so smart, not so quick on my feet, and carry the weight of the wool.

"The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want". But that is not true I do want. I want things to go well, I want things to work out always, I want other to be happy, I want to be a good decision maker, wife, mother and then as I sat thinking of the weight of the wool on my shoulders I realized that is exactly what the passage stands for...dog gone it Elizabeth let the Shepherd carry you. Isn't that what His job is, so that we don't have to want. Free myself of this weighty wool.

Life happens and we are not in control of everything. Thank you Shepherd. As I look at this week I find such comfort in knowing, owning, believing and once again coming to Him to carry me. It took a good shearing on my part, but less of the wool in on my shoulders.

Just the Beginning......

This is my first time to ever study the book of Esther. Beth Moore has come alongside to guide me, along with a great number of women in my study. I do not like studies with a day to day book to follow and study. It cuts into my own time with God, and often I show up to a study unprepared, and my blanks not filled in.

I give myself no pressure to ever fill in the blanks, and take what time I can each day asking God to open my heart to new understandings. The next several weeks it's going to be an amazing journey. I could sense yesterday the enemy trying to distract my heart and spirit. I am also leading a book club with a host of some very amazing woman. So this season is going to be so enriching and full.

In the study book for Esther, Beth Moore has layed out an easy format to follow and learn. I love it. I am on day three of week one. Yet I keep going back to day one and something she has printed on the margin.

"There on the sacred pages of Esther God overtook a human hand and scripted a young woman's story into His own."

The first time I read that it was a passing through moment of reading. Each time I have gone to my study I have paused over this, and have reread it. Now as I finish up today's study I ask myself this simple question. How God, have you scripted my story into your own?" "Do I believe that you are not just overtaking my hand, but holding it all the way.

I am not going to begin to answer those questions today. I have lots of deep heartfelt thoughts on this one, but to ask myself that question and for God to use this book as a spring board for digging deeper into what my life looks like as a woman has me filling in all the blanks.

Esther and the study of Psalm 23 will truly be a journey I am looking forward to every day as God steps in, as He always does and allows me to grow up some more in Him.