Renewal...

Last night I read a portion of "Highly Effective Habits for Teens". Rachel is studying it for her Teen Leadership class. I read the original Highy Effective Habits (for the old) when I was on my mission. How is it that 15 years of marriage and 7 kiddos later, that I find myself without goals? Really? Me? When did I begin to forget? Was it in the sleepless nights of crying babies? Did they happen to get thrown out with the diapers?
The last goal I remember writing down was with Scot in our first year of marriage. We wanted a certain lifestyle and then mapped out our way of how we were going to achieve it. Our last step was PhD, and well, we've stuck to the plan and are still sticking!
This morning I woke up with a sense of how much power I've been given over my own life--'given' is the key word. It is a gift--what will I do with it? An analogy comes to mind. I was just watching the first manned spacelift in the 1960s. Here's a link:
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/when-we-left-earth-mercury/
In the video, it describes all the training the astronaut received before his mission. He was given every scenerio he would encounter...weightlessness, g-forces, etc. He was trained in all the equipment, knowing every control. Is it hard to consider that we went through a similar training before we came to this earth? That we were given every scenerio we would possibly face? And how to overcome them?
This is my renewal--that I've been through all of this before. There is nothing that I face today, that I haven't faced before. It was all based on my faith and belief in Christ then as it is now. He still stands as my Savior and Redemeer--ready to make my escape, to fight the fight and to heal me with His wings. May I love Him today as I did then.

We're Stepping Out

Have you ever been in a place where you're afraid to act? Afraid to step to the right or to the left for fear of what other's might think? I have allowed this to plague me for far too long. So, I hereby decree that a "stepping out" has begun in the Hanson home, beginning with our oldest and youngest kiddos. Here's their work: