Worship Wednesday:

That movie Aladdin? Who didn't love the Genie????? He was literally the best part of the whole movie.  He was funny and flashy.  And HEY!  He would give Aladdin anything he wanted- except killing someone or making someone fall in love with him or wishing for more wishes. 

So many people look at God like The Genie.  He should give them whatever they want, right? If I pray, and maybe rub my bible, God will grant my wish.  God should be there to save me when I am in trouble and stay in his magic lamp the rest of the time. 

Well, first, God isn't in a lamp.  He won't stay in that lamp or that bible until you call on Him. He won't force Himself on us but He won't stay in a lamp when we have chosen to follow Him.  He is majestic and that means He is the king.  It is for God to decide if and when He comes to our aid or if He lets us sit it out and learn the lesson He has planned out.  Sometimes that is a hard thing to do.  Sometimes it down right sucks!  Remember when you were a kid and you got in trouble? Maybe your parents took tv away, maybe they grounded you, maybe you got a swat on the butt.  Any way it happened- it was painful.  It was difficult.  Sometimes discipline is hard. Sometimes God turns his ear away from us if we are holding on to a sin that He wants gone.  Psalm 66:18 talks about this.  God doesn't want sin to come in between Him and us.  So if we are cherishing sin more than Him (which in and of itself is a sin), then He doesn't hear our prayers.  But sometimes the answer is no, or wait.  If we choose to follow God, we have to be ok with that.  If we choose God, we have to be ok with what God chooses for us.

Genies work for us.  But the fact is we work for God.  We were designed to worship and it is God that we were created to worship. 

The second reason that God is not like that Genie- He is so much better!! He doesn't have restrictions.  God is in charge of life and death (though we don't get to request that He off anyone as much as we want to, that is God's decision) He chooses when life is created, when it ends and everything in between.  Also, Love, He can cause love to happen.  He can soften a heart or harden it.  He is omnipotent and therefore trumps that Genie!!

So He is worthy of worship and deserves our praise no matter what!!!!!

Monday Catching Up

Sorry I missed Friday.  I tried. Man I tried. Blysse was just demanding so much of my time.  On top of that we were trying to go through all of our stuff to sell it, donate it, and downsize our life.


Being that it's January (and we are moving) I challenged myself to get rid of as much as possible. We are probably getting rid of 40% of our stuff. Toys, clothes and shoes.  I mentioned it in a previous post.

I've decided to experiment to see if less stuff= more life.

If love to challenge you to do the same. Are you willing to take a second loom at your "stuff" and unload it???? Try a minimalist life? Join me and tell me all about it in the comments.

Worship Wednesday: The Beauty in the mundane

Sometimes we worship God but it is not what we really want to do.  God is good.  We know this to be true.  Sometimes in the mundane or even worse the valleys we have to choose to worship God. 

In this season of life I have had to fight so much for faith.  After losing my son last December I was hopeful.  The new pregnancy brought new hope but fear.  Then after she was born I experienced so much fear and anxiety.  I have fought and fought for my hope and to trust God.  Worship was a choice during this season. 

I have been able to quiet a lot of my fear but some still lingers.  I now also have to choose to worship when the baby is crying, when my older kids are fighting, when the chaos of the day and the mundaneness of life overtakes me. 

Sometimes I think Satan's biggest weapon is complacency and the ability to get lost in the everyday.  We have to fight for our fist love.  We have to search for the passion and beauty that is God.  Today I choose to see the beauty in the mundane and the chaos.  God has chosen this time in my life to teach me to grow me.  It is strangely similar and different to the other times of having a small baby in the home. 

In some ways it is better- older kids to help, the understanding that there is a light at the end because I have the older kids to show how fast it goes.  In others it is more challenging. I didn't have 3 older children fighting when they were young. I didn't have the mess and disorder that I had to stay on top of.  The messes are so much smaller when children are smaller.  I see the blessing of each season and the beauty that having all these small people in my home is. 

Today I choose to worship God and to see the joy in this season of life.  And to cherish this time because it will all too soon be gone. 

Wonder Weeks

So it has been six years since we have had a new baby in our family.  That is a long time to forget how much babies need Mommy!! This past week Baby Blysse has been going through what I found out is called a "leap" it was discovered by this man Dr Frans Plooij.   He studied the development of babies for 35 years and wrote a book called "The Wonder Weeks".  It describes how all babies develop their milestones along a similar time line and during times of mental growth go through a similar state of being- clingy, trouble sleeping etc.  This made sense to me because, although I didn't have the book with my older kids, I noticed right before they learned a new skill they would have trouble sleeping or be cranky. 

So Blysse is on her second leap.  Her first seemed to be so easy and we barely noticed it except she had a seeming growth spurt during it for a day or two.  So these "leaps" should be no big deal right? No such luck.  She has been so very clingy and she startles easily now.  Her crying has turned to tears and she wants to literally nurse around the clock.  We bed share so that part isn't such a big deal. Minus the part where from 4 am til 6 am she tosses and turns and wants to nurse constantly. She goes back to sleep around 6. Great! right when I need to get up and get the kids up and around.  Needless to say I have been a little tired and crabby the last couple days.  

If you have a young child under 2 I recommend this book and there is even an ap for it.  It explains when the leap will happen, how long it will happen, what to expect during the leap and what to look for after the leap is over.  It has given me a lot of clarity about what I should expect to see when she goes through these leaps and has even helped me to prepare for what will happen. 

Frugal Friday- the very first one

Today is the first day I am starting Frugal Fridays. We just had our fourth child recently and, even though I tried working outside the home for a bit, we decided it was not what was the best for our family.  So we are raising four children on a single income; frugal living is crucial to our life.  We could not live the life God has called us to live if we didn't live frugally.

We are actually moving at the beginning of next month to a smaller home.  Our current home is about 1400 sq ft so downsizing to a 1200 sq ft home that we are living to means that we really have to pair down our lives.  I have started looking at minimalist living in order to do that.  We will- by necessity- have to become minimalists.  If we don't embrace minimalist the lifestyle then we will be overrun with clutter and stress.

You may wonder what minimalism has to do with frugality- well for one, the more stuff you have, the more money you spend maintaining, organizing, and using that stuff.  You have more clothes? You have to wash the clothes, repair the clothes, hang or put the clothes somewhere.  You have more toys? Batteries, toy boxes, and fixing broken pieces.  You have more furniture? Furniture polish and cleaning supplies and repair of that furniture.  Etc, etc.  

Minimalist living is something I have not fully embraced before.   It has been hard to get rid of the things in our life.  I get attached to all the shoes, all the books, all the clothes, sentimental things.  I know now that it's not necessary.  We don't need so much. We don't need everything.  So for now the plan is purge. purge. purge. 

For clothes- the kids will each have 10 shirts (all my kids need to wear a strict dress code at school) and 5 pair of pants.  The girls will each get a dress and a skirt.  They each will get 2 pairs of shoes (one for everyday, one for special occasions but they will be able to keep winter boots to play outside).  Hubby and I will each get have a capsule wardrobe and keep 5 pair of shoes.  I think for me the shoes will be my hardest thing to pair down.  I have 8 pairs of boots alone, then there are the 4 pairs of sandals, the 3 pair of tennis shoes, the 2 pair of clogs, etc.  I will try not to cheat on the shoes!!! 

Toys- we are keeping a rack of each level of book- board books for the baby, picture books for the middle kids and chapter books for the older kids.  We are getting rid of a lot of the adult books too.  We are giving each kid a single toy box for toys (minus the legos and blocks and toy kitchen).  For both toys and clothes our rule is going to be one in, one out.  So if the kids get a new toy or outfit they need to pick one to donate. 

We are getting rid  of several pieces of furniture and we are selling lots of our extras.  That is a Dave Ramsey suggestion- sell what you can!  I have furniture, clothes, purses, and other extras that I can sell.  Most people have a few things that they have extra that they can sell.  If you have bills to pay, that can help or even if you just put that money in the bank for a rainy day (we all know that they come a lot when we are least ready). 

Living simply is definitely not what our culture tells us to do! But how is all that "stuff" bettering your life anyway?  Does the clutter make you feel better? Usually if we really think about it, clutter only makes us stressed and unhappy. 

Do you have a way that you can de-clutter?  Are you living a minimalist life?  Is that something that would appeal to you? I would love to hear what you think.

Worship Wednesday ( The Very First )

Well it is Wednesday.  I am starting Worship Wednesdays.  Since it is the very first one and it is a new year, I thought today I would create a list of  3 blessings and instead of a "resolution" I would create 3 new goals that God has put on my heart. 

My blessings:

1) The gift of a new life in our family.  I gave birth to our sweet Blysse Jaine on November 5 of 2015 and she has been such an amazing gift.  Last December - December 21, 2013- I gave birth to my son, Trin Michael Alan Davis.  It was a tragic day because he unfortunately had passed away.  I was 18 weeks pregnant and he had a true knot in his cord.  It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life. I had prayed for this little boy and God had blessed me with him.  I will never know why God chose to take him home, but He did.  We held him and took pictures and prayed that God would bless us and that this time we would be able to take that child home with us. I became pregnant with Blysse 8 weeks after giving birth to Trin.  It was a difficult pregnancy.  I had  a hemorrhage during the first trimester and on more than one occasion we thought we had lost her, I was anxious and scared through much of the pregnancy.  But she was born absolutely perfect.  I am so incredibly blessed that she is in my life. 

2) My marriage.  In the past few years my husband and I have worked hard to become closer to each other and closer to God.  He becomes my best friend more every day.  I am so thankful that our relationship is close and that we have so much respect and care for each other.  He loves me and he loves his children and honors God in his life.  I am very blessed in this. 

3) My Savior.  I am so blessed that the God of the universe, in His ultimate wisdom, decided to send His son to die for me.  He called me to Him and walks with me everyday. I am so incredibly blessed by the way that He teaches me, helps me and cares about me.  This is a gift that I did not earn.  It has been the most amazing and beautiful gift. There is not a day that goes by that I do not praise God for this amazing blessing.


My goals:

1) I am going to write more.  I will try and go into that more in depth later. 

2)  I am going back to gluten free.  I took a test that I thought showed I was not celiac but later found that it was not accurate.  And my thyroid has gotten really out of whack during the last two pregnancies so in order to heal my body I plan to cut out gluten again 100%

3) I am going to recommit to putting God first in our finances.  We need to be much more prayerful in what we spend money on  and how God wants us to use our resources. 



How about you?  Do you have goals for 2015?   What about the blessings that the last year has brought?  I would love to hear about your blessings and goals from last year and this. 

Sorry It has been so long- life has a funny way of changing

Well I want to start by saying I apologize that it has been so incredibly long since I have come here.  There has been so much happening!  I took a break at first because I started working full time.  Well, that didn't work so well for our family.

 During that time we also decided we were not done having babies after all.  So we had a few pregnancies- I will elaborate on this at a later date.  And a sweet baby girl was born!!!!  Her name is Blysse and she is absolutely perfect.  God has blessed our family again and again.

I am going to commit at least for the next year (minus maybe a couple vacations) to make posts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  For the next few months (or it may go longer, we will see) on Fridays I am doing Frugal Fridays,  On this day I will post on how we are making ends meet with one income and 6 people and a few animals.  I am even hoping to do an organization series on being organized in a small home with so many people ,as soon we will be living with  6 people in a 1200 sq ft home.    Wednesdays will be Worshipful Wednesdays, this is where I will post my thoughts on living a life that is Obedient to Christ and what that means to me.  Mondays will be about parenting and natural living.

I really hope that this blog continues to honor God and that you will be blessed by reading it.  I hope that everyone who reads this blog will be encouraged.  My goal is never to discourage or judge.  I simply plan to share the things that God has laid on my heart and my own journey. 

God Bless
Danica