Looking Up

I am not a writer but I can talk... a lot!! So I have come to the conclusion that typing is just the words coming out my fingers instead of my mouth. Both stay pretty busy so I think I will give my mouth a rest!! :)

I woke up not feeling sick Wednesday morning which was new. So I decided to go for a walk. I took my dog Fendi with me and we walked about 1 mile. Don't laugh, that is a big deal considering I haven't walked 10ft without getting sick to my stomach for months now! After the first 1/2 mile I stopped by a pond by my house, sat on a hill and listened to the fountain and my worship music. The day was so nice. The air was not hot, but not cold, and the sun was shining and there was no cloud to be seen. These are the days when it is hard to not worship God just for the beauty He created. Just seeing it and experiencing it makes me have to audibly say, "Praise you Lord for who you are." After my brief rest on the hill I started the trip back home. I forgot that the trip back was going to be worse. That is the up hill part the WHOLE way! Truly. I was listening to the Desperation band and this song came on. It is called "Pleasing to You". The first lines say "Sanctify me, clean out my closet, take away anything that is not pleasing to you." So, I am walking... I have all of these thoughts swirling in my head about life, finances, living, loving and things that I can not remotely wrap my thougths around. I am walking uphill thinking of every hard thing going on. I am looking at the hill I am trying to walk up and I am realizing how incredibly hard it is. I mean really, my 15 pound dog with legs the size of hot dogs was walking faster than me!! I stopped. I looked up. I see the completely cloudless sky, except for one small cloud that in the vastness of the clear blue sky looked like a wisp of hair. On this beautiful PURE day I was basically focusing on this one little cloud that is my reality, my fact. But I had the sudden urge to "clean out my closet." It is almost like God created this perfect lovely day and I was not clean enough to partake of it's beauty. I had to ask for forgiveness right then for everything that I thought may remotely resemble sin in my life. I felt the urgency to become "pleasing to Him." After I took that moment I looked back up in the sky and the little cloud was gone. Now I don't think that God put the cloud in the sky and then took it away but I think God let me see something in the natural movement of the sky. How can I see the good things in my life if I am focusing on my issues. How can I see, and appreciate, the beauty of God's creation if all I see is the one little cloud that is meaningless in the greatness of the clear blue sky. If I worry about that one little cloud I miss what God is trying to show me. His majesty, His power, His love, His creativity... and so much more.
I am in a bible study right now and our leader made a point on Thursday evening that qualified what I was thinking about on Wednesday. She said that if we are looking around us "my hill, my troubles, my life" then all we can see is the problem. I can't see past what I am looking at. Have you ever been focusing on something so hard while you are walking that you run right into something that you didn't see?! It's like that. If we focus on our problems we are going to fall, stumble, or run into something we weren't expecting. If we look up, on the other hand, look to God, we see His Glory. We see the possibilities that God has layed out. We see hope and promise and truth! Jenny, our leader, also said one time there is a difference between fact and truth. Fact is reality but truth is greater than that. Truth is the promises of God. For example, the fact is I have a cyst on my ovary that hurts. It can't be denied, you can see it. BUT, the truth is my God is bigger than my circumstance or my problem and Jesus died so I could be made whole in health. Looking at the fact can become depessing and overwhelming. Looking at the Truth that God has provided brings hope and an expectation for great things. I am expecting great things from God. So I will look up even when what I see in front of me seems bigger.

The Beginning

I guess the most appropriate place to start is the beginning. I do not know who will read this but I don't keep up with people very well or stay in touch. At least I can fill you all in on Life as the Yarters from the past few years.

When Dylan and I graduated we moved to Dallas, TX. I started a job as a teacher in a private school and Dylan got a job as a stock broker for Morgan Stanley. I loved my job and Dylan hated being a broker. In January of 2005 we moved to McKinney, TX, just a few miles north of Dallas, and bought our first home. It is beautiful and I love everything about it! Two weeks after we moved in we found out we were pregnant!! Dylan left Morgan Stanley that May because he didn't enjoy his job at all. Throughout the summer we lived off of savings and my private school teacher salary while he tried to find something he would enjoy that involved finance or economics. All while I was pregnant. I know, you don't have to say it, I am Wonder Woman! :) About the time I left teaching, end of August, Dylan found a job doing something I can't really explain. It is complicated and confusing but he got into a very small niche in a very guarded part of the stock market and has been doing that ever since!! He actually just started doing in on his own and not for another company and he is LOVING IT. We gave birth by c-section to Ethan Vance on September 29th of 2005. He was breech so I could not deliver him naturally. It was a hard thing for me at the time because I found value in having a baby naturally but after the fact realized that God was protecting me and the baby! He was the perfect baby, sleeping well, eating well, and we were just starting to get back to normal life when we found out that I was 9 weeks pregnant. Ethan was 5 months old at the time! This was the shock of a lifetime and scary for a time but we grew in our excitement. Dylan was doing very well in the stock market and I was now a stay at home mom to the most precious child on the face of the earth. 14 months and 1 day later on November 30th, 2006 we had Prestan James. It was a VBAC which basically means a regular birth after a c-section. So here I am with two boys, 3 1/2 and 2, a husband of almost 7 years and a FEMALE dog named Fendi. An expensive dog gets an expensive name! Dylan is still doing the stock market thing but has also started a clothing line and screen printing company. Warrior Worn and 7streetprint. I will post the web sites when they are fully running. The kids go to school three days a week for about 5 hours so I get some time to do stuff like this or clean.
We also found out a few weeks back that we are expecting yet another Yarter! This one is due on September 9th. I feel sick and tired all the time but that is part of the package!!

I am getting there!!

Well, I now have a header, that doesn't fit. But, I have a header!! This is big news for me! Thanks Ash for the links to get this going. I have been thinking about what in the world I am going to blog about. I don't know yet. Life is simple, but complicated. It is the same almost every day and let's not mention that I don't really know who is going to read this! HAHA! Well, even if it just becomes a journal for me I think I will enjoy working on this.