Memory Verse: 1 John 4:16 (NIV)

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoeverlives in love lives in God, and God in him.

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Intro: Sometime "being all you can be" is a challenge. We are
trying to balance being a godly wife, mother, teacher, keeper of the
home, and much more. None of us are perfect and we all struggle in ourown ways with being able to achieve what we feel needs to get done.

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Assignment: This week I thought we could share what great ways we havefound to help with all we have to do. Besides the obvious getting facedown in front of God, what have you found that works? Have you done agreat bible study that deals with this area? Do you have a certain"thing" that really helps you like a planner or gadget? Do you
have a certain bible verse that just speaks to you and you have it
posted so you see it all the time? Is there a website that is really
valuable to you in this area? What do you do that if someone else
found out about it, they could benefit from it?

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The slogans Be All That You Can Be & You Make Them Strong, We Make Them Army Strong, have a new meaning to me now. My second child just returned in December from Iraq. He is in the Arkansas National Guard. I used to joke with my older 2 children, telling them that the best thing they could do was to join the Army, as they only way I could get them up was to walk in their room and yell as loud as possible “GET UP!!!”. If I had had a bugle at that time I probably would have played it for them. In fact when my son Mark would leave for church camp or cub scout outings I would put in special instructions, "Yell loudly to wake child up".  The leader would laugh and say surely not, then upon their return would say by day three they were following my instructions......

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But I digress, I have done several bible studies, watched shows, bought books, you name it I have tried it. Some of it has sunk in, some has fallen by the way side. I am delighted to say that as far as my house keeping goes, I am finally in the “maintain” stage of my life. I have overhauled, flung, cleaned, and cleared until I am finally able to just maintain my house. It is a blessing, and it was also a challenge getting there, but at times I get lazy and like when we get lazy about taking care of our physical body and spiritual self, you start to see things piling up (just like my hips and thighs are doing right now). I just finally started working on me as I worked on the house. There is nothing better to clear the mind or spirit than a good spring cleaning. You can feel that body clutter and spiritual gunk leaving as you clear the cobwebs from the ceiling, and get those corners cleaned out.

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But in all honesty the one thing that keeps me going, doing what I need to do, like keeping up with the cleaning and the laundry, is the fear of the electricity going out. We live in a rural area, and you never know when someone will decide to finally cut down that half dead tree in their yard and knock out everyone’s power for miles for 2-3 days. Now, if you have more than 3 loads waiting on the day the power goes out, you are in trouble. I mean BIG trouble. Let’s not even mention the dishes. Well ok, let’s do mention the dishes, Joyce Meyer once said, “If you can’t even tackle a sink of dishes, how can you expect God to let you tackle something bigger”. Man, that one line spoke to me. I do have bible verses up, some about washing by the washer, some more from Pr 31 to go up in the kitchen soon, but again, the one thing that keeps me going is the fear of no electricity, we are on a well, so no electricity, no water. Speaking of which, they are cutting down a tree in my front yard that the water company killed 3 years ago when they went through, so I better get the breakfast dishes done.

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My picture for today is of my little soldier……