To blog or not to blog...that is the question

It has been a quite while since my last post. I've been kind of wrapped up in homeschool planning, homeschool and becoming more organized. I often think about what I could post, mainly so I won't forget what the Holy Spirit has shown to me, but the day goes by and the post doesn't happen.

The perfectionist in me wants to blog a book long post or nothing at all. Just can't do that these days. So I think I will post just a tidbit here and there, short or long, when I can.

One thing I have been thinking about is that I have a heavy influence on and in my family and that I set the tone in my home. Don't know if I like the responsibility of that and have struggled with that for years. But I have come to believe that it is true. I know that I am not the head of the household and Jesus is Head over all. But I have seen that if I wake up on the wrong side of the bed and have an unpleasant attitude, it will somehow permeate everyone else in the house.

If my husband comes home and I greet him with a smile things go one way, but if I greet him with all the things that have been going wrong in the home that day, things go another way.

Recently after a pleasant day shopping trip to Gettysburg, we returned to see that my neighbor had chopped off a significant part of our tree. I was the first to see it and I am ashamed to admit I went had a "flesh fit". Well don't you know that everyone followed me to the window and became agitated. My sweet husband who is usually pretty laid back became very angry (following my lead).
I guess he felt he had to defend my honor and confronted the neighbor who authorized the tree hacking. He was so upset after the confrontation that he went to bed with a terrible stomach ache and skipped dinner. I later found out that it wasn't the fact that the tree had been hacked off had upset him, but that they didn't clean up the mess and he woudn't have been angry enough with the neighbor to confront him.
OUCH!!!!

I felt awful about everything but the damage had been done. Weeks later my husband went to the man and straightened things out. The neighbor knew that it wasn't in my husband's nature to act that way and said something like, "I know, you felt like you had to step up for your wife." OUCH!!!
That was a terrible day of recognizing things about myself. I repented and the Lord graciously forgave me and showed me some things.

Like it or not, like Eve, I have an influence and I need to accept it and use it in a godly way.

Proverbs 14 says, "every wise woman builds her house, but the foolish one tears hers down with her own hands"
Someplace in the letters from Paul it says that "love builds up and knowledge puffs up..." Ephesians says that "let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit the listener.."

Like it or not, I am a builder... of my family and my home. Thanks be to God that as He builds me, I can do better with my building :-)