Month: September 2019

5 am, I hear my oldest come into my room. “Mommy we are going to be late for school.” They had to be there early this particular morning. At 6:50 instead of 8. “Buddy come lay with mommy we don’t have to be there for a long time and my alarm hasn’t even gone off yet.” I roll over and try to get a few more minutes of sleep. He and my other three boys were very excited to get to school. They were going on a field trip that day.

I roll out of bed when my second son comes in at 5:15 and asks mommy aren’t you getting up. Thankfully we don’t have to bring lunches this morning or worry about having homework finished. The night before I was up a little too late just trying to relax from a normal day in my life. I like the quiet after the kids go to sleep and sometimes get too caught up in it. I stay up too late too often just trying to avoid the next day with my early risers. At 5:30 my 4 year old daughter comes in and I say to her “your up to my sweetie?” I had hoped that I could just roll her out of bed at the last minute and put her in the car half asleep. There was way too much excitement that morning. The night before we had the conversation “Mommy you need to make sure we are on time tomorrow” “Oh really buddy? Who helps to make sure we are on time? It all depends on you guys doing as your told, when your told”

We get into the car and I pull out of the garage, 6:11 the clock says. “Oh good we are going to be early” I think. When our oldest was in kindergarten I started homeschooling him. He did pretty well but after 2 years of that, along with many other trials we were facing I couldn’t do it anymore so we sent them to our local public school. My second son was in kindergarten at that point. We had a pretty terrible year at the school. It seemed the bullies liked to pick on my kids and it was hard to get through each day. Many nights were spent with my kids crying before bed. During that year we decided we wanted to send them to our local Christian school, but that would mean me driving the kids to and from school every day. It was 25 minutes one way to the town the school was in. We decided to let our kids have a Christian education with a one room school house feel. We started attending their school last year and fell in love with it and the teachers. The kids learn tons of scripture, they are loved on by the teachers and they are thriving in their academics. This year my 3rd son started kindergarten. So each morning I drive 25 minutes to drop them off and 25 minutes back to pick them up. It is totally worth it for how much we love this school.

Being a single mom for a year is challenging by itself. I am so thankful that this isn’t a permanent situation. Though there may be more finality to something permanent. But I am definitely not facing life without my husband. You girls out there facing a life time of single parenting are very strong. I am so thankful that I know this won’t last forever. With children waking me up early and some nights they wake up through the nights it takes a toll on me. Sometimes I am surrounded by many people and much activity but loneliness overwhelms me. Last night was one of those nights. I had two days of kids waking up early. I thought since they had been up at 5 the day before they might take the day off of school and sleep a lot later. That was not happening. They were all up by 6:30 again.

So last night, I sit on my bed and just start missing my companion. I miss talking to another adult. I miss having someone to sleep next to me. I miss having someone to share the happenings of the day. So the tears flow, and the hurt and anger comes back. As I travel this journey, there will be many days that the hurt and anger comes back and I will have to deal with it again. So I write. I write in my journal and tell God. This sucks. While on one hand God has done and is doing a great work in my life and I totally trust him with this trial and through this trial. This trial is hard. I am surrounded by chaos most of the time. Screaming children. Children throwing there needs at me. Mommy I need a snack, mommy my head hurts, mommy my leg hurts, mommy I have this homework, mommy I need this or that. But I feel empty at times.

Satan likes to take those moments and make us feel isolated and sorry for ourselves. He thrives on us being lonely so he can attack us and make us have feelings of inadequacy, jealousy and self-pity. So what do I do in those moments? I have an arsenal of truth ready to fire at Satan. Am I still counting it Joy? Not really joyful at this moment. So where does my help come from? It comes from the Lord. I turn on my playlist, I pick up my bible and start reading the psalms. I take out my journal and start writing. I pour out my hurt and my heart. Then I climb into bed and turn on my prayer meditation. It tells me who is in control, That I don’t have to worry and I fall asleep with my greatest companion next to me, holding me close. I fall asleep with my God!

If you feel alone, lonely, isolated, inadequate, or jealous, this is exactly where Satan wants you. I want you to know you are not alone. Life can totally get you down. It can get you down and stomp on you until you can’t breath anymore and your so beat down from life you don’t feel like you can go on. You are not alone. Can you imagine the isolation Christ felt on the cross? Abandoned by his best friends, murdered by followers and turned away from by his own father. He hung there because of love, because we are worth more than his life. WOW!!! If it feels like all humans have turned their backs on you, Jesus hasn’t, he never will. And in fact I know there is someone out there that just doesn’t know how to help. I think most people just don’t know what to do to help someone in need and if we just reach out and say “Hey I need this” they will step up and totally fulfill those needs. Please if you need anything please, leave me a comment and I will help you. I never want someone to feel invisible. I have definitely had many times that I have felt that way and no one should feel that way. Please take the step to reach out to me. You are loved and you are seen by God!

Jenny Wren

I took an art class a few years ago. It was an abstract class. Those artists use all kinds of things to paint with and their work turns out to be beautiful. I imagine ashes have been used before by famous abstract artist. It was fun to express myself and not have rules or limits too it, yet there were great ways to enhance art work even abstract art. It was such an interesting and fun experience. During that time the art school had an art opening of famous abstract artists. My DH (a huge cowboy) took me, out of an act of love. He stood out among those people for sure 🙂 HAHA!

I’m guessing the picture God is painting with my life is pretty abstract to me. I don’t see the beauty beneath it. I don’t see the purpose of heaping ashes onto me to create some artwork. My DH definitely didn’t see the purpose behind a lot of those art pieces. With the untrained eye you can’t see the beauty behind the work going on. The bible says in James 1:2-4 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,  because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” He has a plan and purpose for your trial you are facing. It produces patience and perseverance.

How can you consider trials pure joy? Oh man that is so hard. Over the time I was away from my DH I learned to consider my trials joy. It was a work that God did on my heart. I went through a book called 1000 blessing. The author goes through and starts naming little things she is thankful for. The sun shining onto the soap suds in the sink, The giggles of my daughter. These small things. This totally transformed my mindset.

I lived in a 5th wheel camper for 2 1/2 months with 4 children ages 10-4. I could have a lot to grumble about. I did grumble to begin with. As I wrote in my last post God transformed my heart. I had an attitude of why me. I continued to question why God made this happen to me. But He worked on my heart. He told me “Jenny Wren, you are chosen. I selected you to walk through this trial for a specific reason and purpose” God doesn’t do random things. I was hand chosen, for this man, for this family, for these children, for this trial. Wow, that is a message of purpose .

He sent me to a camp I went to as a college student. They gave me a place to stay free of charge and fed me and my 4 children every day with nothing in return. He opened the door for a friends son to go there to be a counselor. Because of my trial, my heap of ashes, this boys life was changed and he found his passion and purpose for his life. Now that is definitely beauty that came from my ashes.

Not only did he transform my life, and my friends sons life, He also transformed my oldest sons life. At the beginning of the summer his grumbling was out of control. As time went on I was naming things I was grateful for and I continued to tell him the little things. like the place we have to stay and the horses running to the pasture behind our camper nightly. I told him I could look at all the bad things and complain. Like the fact that we have to walk to our food and I have to take a shower in a public bath house. But I look at the blessings like we have a place to live and food everyday. But I saw a change in his heart. He went from being angry to saying that he could see that God was answering prayers.

We are all works of art in progress. We are making imperfect progress. We all face various trials to test our faith to bring us patience and perseverance. He has chosen you specifically to walk the trial you are facing. For a specific reason we can’t see. We only see the ashes. Like my DH in the art gallery, We don’t see the beauty underneath the masterpiece. You should get that book 1000 blessings. It changed my perspective on things. I should start reading it again.

Jenny Wren

Hurt goes deep. Sometimes we don’t even know why we are hurting. Sometimes hurt comes out and hurts others. But we can’t put a finger on why we are hurting so many people and why we hurt the ones we love the most. I often hear the saying “hurting people, hurt people.” I think this is very true. My hurt from my past I thought had been healed, I thought I worked through my “issues”. But often God keeps teaching you the same things because you keep needing to learn them, again, and again.

Sometimes you have a relationship with someone that you have no idea what their hurt is or that they even have hurt. I never knew my dear husband (DH) had deep past hurts. I had hurts I didn’t know about too, they would heap mounds of hurt onto him. I am not here to talk about his hurts, but to write about how God has brought me on the journey as I deal with my own hurts.

About 5 years into our marriage these things started to come out. The hurt started to come out. The feelings of not being acceptable to my husband (though he never said it). The feelings of not being good enough. These were lies from the pit of hell. So I tried to be better, to do better. I tried to be a better wife, to respect him better, to do the good wife thing and meet all his needs. I tried to encourage him more and when he didn’t feel encouraged I thought I must not be doing a good enough job. I was also having babies. I had 3 boys at the time and I was meeting their needs too. I tried to do everything for everyone in our house. Trying to live up to these feelings of being unacceptable.

DH did plenty for me. We both did what we thought would be best. We thought life was working. But it was a very dysfunctional life that would come to head eventually. The hurts were piling up, unsaid needs not being met, hidden expectations ruled our marriage. I had many expectations on him that he definitely couldn’t meet. Only God could meet those. Through the next 7 years our hurts piled up. Feelings of despair started to come over me. I knew my marriage shouldn’t be like this, but I didn’t know how to change it. I tried to change it myself and failed miserably. Adding to the hurt I was heaping onto him and myself already. I tried to change him, tell him where he could do better. This only made those wounds grow deeper. My feelings of despair grew into depression. I was lonely in my own marriage. I felt empty and needed filled. I thought I needed filled by my DH, but I needed fill by my Savior.

Things got to be bad, I knew it was so destructive to our children I had to leave to take a time away so we could find what truly was gong to bring us joy. We were just arguing about everything and it was no longer an emotionally safe place for any of us. With a lot of prayer, I packed up the kids and took a step to set a boundary in our marriage that has been the hardest decision I ever made. I didn’t leave my DH to get a divorce. I left him in the hopes that we could both focus on making ourselves better and going to God in the pain and healing our hurt. With the hopes of reconciliation.

While I was gone I went through a journey. I went through a journey from loneliness to complete surrender to finding joy in my journey. God walked me through a time where I felt the most utter despair I have ever felt in my life. But he met me their. He walked me through it. I really thought I would go to my family and be taken care of through this hard time in my life. They all wanted to, but God did the caring (though many of them spent loads of time caring for me my physical needs). My parents are both in heaven and I know God knew that. I didn’t have my mom to swoop in and meet all my needs and that was definitely a blessing in disguise. It forced me to totally, utterly rely on God to meet my emotional needs. I never would have thought I would be blessed because my mom was in heaven, but I certainly was. I spent many nights in tears, crying out to God. I filled an entire journal with my prayers, my anger, my hurt. He was there holding me, leading me, guiding me. He eventually led me home.

During the summer away God kept reminding me of the verse, Love endures through ALL circumstance. Its not some, its not the ones that are easy or the ones that make us feel good. Its through all of them and this is still my verse that keeps me going. I could have taken the easy way out and I was tempted to do so, in many weak times, or times of great hurt. But this verse kept coming to my mind. I didn’t choose to love my DH when its easy. I didn’t say I would love him only when he doesn’t hurt me. I made a commitment to God to love him when its the hardest. I hope that love shines through to him and he can see that. I hope it shines through to others and they can see the only way I can love him in the hurt is through Jesus Christ and because of what he did for me with his love on the cross.

While our journey is far from over I just want to yell from the roof tops what God is doing for us. DH is healing from his hurts. I am healing from my hurts. And eventually when God sees fit we can come together and hopefully stop hurting and start loving. I know we will still hurt each other but my hearts desire is to come back together and put God at the center so that when hurt does come we can see each other as God sees us and love through it, and look past it.

Please if you are struggling in your marriage, don’t loose hope. Remember to cry out to God and pour your soul out to him and it may be you who does the changing even when we “know it should be the other person”. He meets us where we are at and carries us as we go through the journey. We need to cry out to him in the hardest times on the hardest days and he will meet us. Please feel free to email me or send me a message and I can just listen. sometimes that is all I needed, someone to listen to me while I worked things out in my own head while talking them through with someone else. I would also love to pray for you or encourage you in any way I can. My journey is not over and sometimes I feel like giving up, but I fall to my knees and cry out to God again and he brings peace and joy to my heart when I have feelings of fear and anxiety.

I am certainly not healed by any means. I was having a discussion with God this morning about some things I am feeling anxious about, but he brought peace right away. I knew that crying out to him and telling him “hey I am scarred about this”, would allow him to talk to me and tell me I’ve got you dear child. I imagine his hand resting on my shoulder as I face these fears and trust in him. I go to counseling weekly, I have meetings with a mentor, and I have some amazing friends who help me when I am in the worst moments but really the truth is the only way for me to get out of the low pit of despair is to cry to Jesus and rely solely on him. I read psalms daily, write in my journal every night and I listen to a prayer meditation each night before I go to bed. I hope this will be helpful to you if you are facing hardships in your life. This prayer meditation helped me refocus on who is in control of everything and brings me back to peace in my heart. Sometimes I cried it out along with the prayer saying it myself and sometimes I just listen to the voice and it puts me to sleep but I can’t sleep without it so it must be something that is helping me get through this time.

Here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3O22mqcnPI

Jenny Wren

Sometimes you just don’t know what to say. You don’t know how to express the hurt you are feeling without making the people or person who hurt you out to be bad. Sometimes you say too much and you already have made that person look bad. Silence is often talked about in the bible referred too as bridling the tongue because no one can control the tongue. Its referred to as wicked. The tongue is a powerful tool. It can often tear down relationships, it tears people apart. When you’ve said something and as soon as it leaves your mouth you realize those words were destructive. So As Jenny Wren I have been silent. I didn’t know what to write, how to say it and how to season my words with grace. But let the words of your mouth and the meditations of your heart be seasoned with grace. So as I meditate on grace in my heart I ask God to season my words with grace. As I speak up about my journey, my trails, my personal life, I want all the words I write to be seasoned with grace.

Often words are what destroy a relationship. But words can bring joy, grace, peace and love. Words can be what makes someone succeed or makes them come crashing down. The teacher who was overly critical in grade school can damage that child for life. The mom who is constantly critical and has a hard time finding the good in her children makes those children feel that pain for the rest of their lives. God is the transformer. So when I am overly critical of my children I go to God to ask him to teach me how to be a mom seasoned with Grace and love. To speak with respect and grace to my husband. But on the other hand, there are many teachers who make those children into thriving adults because their words were seasoned with love and grace. There are plenty of mothers (mine included) who launch their children into the world as confident adults because their words were seasoned with love and grace.

Recently I started selling cinnamon rolls. last night I was thinking and hoping the last batch I made didn’t have salt instead of sugar (It doesn’t I tried some of my end pieces). It would be a huge mistake especially since I sell them. At least i am not making them for a competition. Watching the Great British Baking show, one of the guys coated the pans for some cakes with salt instead of sugar. Paul Hollywood didn’t have words SEASONED with grace for that guy HAHA. If you are constantly putting salt onto someone who needs a little sugar to grow it will be “rubbish” As Paul Hollywood puts it. No one wants to be putting rubbish onto their family.

This is a lesson I am slowly learning. I pray for my words to be seasoned with sugar instead of salt and that they would be words of grace and not anger and nonacceptance. Pray for me with this and I will pray for you. Words are what forms you.

We can go to Gods word for words of acceptance. If you are the child who has now grown into an adult that feels unacceptable because someone spoke rubbish to you, there is hope. Hope in the Words of the Bible. He speaks truth and grace to the hurting

As moms we often rely on other people to be our barometer of how we are measuring up. But if we are talking negative self talk to ourselves how can we pour positive talk into our families. I believe our self talk is what comes out to others. what we put in comes out. Like my mom always made me do when I had very poor self esteem, look in the mirror and tell yourself ten things you like about yourself. In my preteen, hormonal sobs, I yelled I look like a rat. Now I don’t believe that, but I don’t like gloating over myself in the mirror. So maybe I need to practice that again. 5 things each morning I like about myself and then tell my kids 5 things I like about them. Between Gods word and positive self talk can you imagine how that might transform us? So there is the challenge guys. Tell yourself 5 things you like about yourself each day and then do the same for your family and lets see where it will take us. I hope that my words will start transforming and changing my kids and myself into confident people who are filled with love and peace because of Jesus but also because of words in our family being seasoned with Grace.

Lets add a little extra seasoning this week to our families and see where we will go!

Jenny Wren

Making imperfect progress is the title of this blog and over the last year I have been in the battle of my life, making imperfect progress all the way. God is fighting my battles for me (There is a song like that) But I too am fighting daily an enemy I can not see. He is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. I am his number one prey, my family, my husband, my children. Actually we are all his prey. Some he has a hold on and he turns them in the direction he desires and some are Gods children and he can influence their choices only if they let him in. The last year has been influenced by him and I have been walking a journey I never thought I would have to walk.

I choose love, I choose joy, I choose Jesus everyday. People tell me you need to choose the easy way out and I continued to choose love. I know that marriage is the hardest journey I will ever walk and my marriage has been through the hardest time of my life. God is making me stronger, He is making me realize that I can’t do this life without him. He is forming me into the masterpiece he sees the end of, but I see all the mumbled colors that just look like a big blob of brown nastiness.

He has said Jenny Wren I choose you to walk along side this man, I choose you to mother these precious children alone (but I am not actually alone) for a year, I choose you to take the responsibility of a household all on yourself. Not because he thinks I am strong but because he knows he is strong and that in my weakness He is made stronger. I can choose to rely on him and walk this road that is the hardest road I have been down, in his arms with him carrying me and other times He is walking beside me leading the way or I can choose the hard way and do it because I AM STRONG – actually I am not- and do it in my own strength. I choose to be carried. I am weary, I need you to carry me Lord.

Love endures through ALL circumstances has been my verse that I continue to go to and rely on. God didn’t ask me to love when its comfortable for me, he asks me to love through it all. I am so excited to see what God will teach me through this year. Do you want to walk this journey with me? I am going to try to use my writing again as an outlet, because lets face it being a single mom is really tough, and I would love to bring you on this journey I am going on and yell from the roof tops what God is doing for me! Come join me and follow my blog.

Jenny Wren