It was a Wednes­day after­noon. Noah and I were going about our day as nor­mal. He was fight­ing his nap, and I was try­ing to work and play with him at the same time (a skill I have yet to master).

James called and said words I wasn’t expecting:

“We just had an all-staff meet­ing. They are cut­ting 30% of our church’s min­istries, sup­port staff, and pas­toral staff.”

Wow.

As deci­sions were made by the senior staff, the next few weeks were high stress. Of course, every­one was tense at church with the poten­tial of their uncer­tain future.

But we tried to pro­tect our home from becom­ing the same envi­ron­ment. Of course, we talked about it some, but we tried for the “unknown” not to con­sume our house­hold. After all, Noah’s birth­day was com­ing up. My par­ents were com­ing in town to visit. We had a perk trip to the Bahamas with Beach­body in a few weeks. Grat­i­tude seemed to make more sense than anxiety.

About a week before the final deci­sions were made, I was pray­ing for James when God brought our son, Noah, to my mind.

Michelle, how has Noah behaved dif­fer­ently the last few weeks?

Dif­fer­ently? Hmmm. Well, he’s played. He’s smiled and laughed. He’s gone for walks in his stroller and played at the park. He’s yelled at Bauer and tried to throw every­thing he can in the toi­let. He’s hid my cell phone…and my keys…and the TV remote. I guess he hasn’t behaved any differently.

Exactly.

Umm, God? No offense…but I’m not fol­low­ing where You’re going with this.

Noah’s not behav­ing any dif­fer­ently because He’s not fear­ful for his future. You’ve always cared for him and pro­vided for him. What rea­son have you given him to think that would change?

That’s when it clicked.

If Noah doesn’t doubt his imper­fect par­ents, why would James and I doubt our per­fect God?

After all, we can’t for­get where we were this time last year. We were begin­ning our 3rd week in the NICU with Noah after he was born 8 weeks pre­ma­ture. At the time, we’d never gone through any­thing so dif­fi­cult… but God used that sit­u­a­tion to bring Him­self so much glory. Weekly, peo­ple still com­ment on Noah’s pic­tures and tell me how see­ing his face reminds them of God’s faithfulness.

After that, my anx­i­ety stopped. God gave me a peace in my heart that I can’t explain.

Let’s be real here. How does it make sense to real­ize my hus­band is going to lose his job and be okay with it?

Even more…how can I actu­ally be excited about it because I can’t wait to see how cre­atively God provides?

Two weeks ago, James did end up being one of 12 full-time staff mem­bers let go.

Instead of ask­ing a lot ques­tions, our hearts are full as we wait in antic­i­pa­tion for God to reveal Him­self and His plan. I know we’ll tell this story some­day, and the hand of God will be so evi­dent, we won’t even remem­ber the inse­cure moments.

God has already spo­ken and taught us sev­eral lessons over the last week. I’ll be shar­ing them on the blog so stay tuned.

It’s good. Trust me.

For my prayer war­riors, here’s how you can pray for us:

1) Please be pray­ing for the church we just left. Being down 12 staff mem­bers, every­one who remains has new roles and a heav­ier workload.

2) Please pray for our next place of min­istry. Pray that God will bring the next place we should serve to us quickly and that He will be shap­ing our hearts to best serve Him where He places us.

3) Pray for our house in Austin to sell & that we will find a great place to live in our TBD city.

4) Pray God will con­tinue to bless my Beach­body busi­ness and pro­vide for us finan­cially dur­ing this time of transition.

5) Pray for Noah to stay healthy and stay flex­i­ble as the next few weeks/months will prob­a­bly mean trav­els, pack­ing a house, unpack­ing a house, and get­ting adjusted to a new envi­ron­ment. He is resilient…but at the age of one, he is already a crea­ture of habit!

6) Pray for God to con­tinue to send us sources of encour­age­ment and reminders of His provision.

“Is not your fear of God your con­fi­dence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?” — Job 4:6

In honor of my Texan son, I had to do the tra­di­tional spring pic­tures in a field of blue­bon­nets. The light­ing was per­fect… but Noah was ready for a nap. I didn’t get a big grin out of him, but he’s still pretty precious.

We didn’t want to do a big party, but we also wanted to cel­e­brate get­ting through our first year. Espe­cially with Noah’s scary start, we knew we had a lot to be thank­ful for. This party was our way of shar­ing our grat­i­tude for those who have been by our side as we nav­i­gate parenting.

For the recipe, check out one of my favorite sites: Dash­ing Dish.

Next year, we’ll prob­a­bly have another Mickey theme. Oh TWO-dles!

I can’t believe in less than three weeks, my baby will turn 1! I try not to think about it…but I keep see­ing that Dreft com­mer­cial that reminds me:

“You have a child for­ever, but you only have a baby for a year.”

Enter Mommy sobfest.

I began reflect­ing on sev­eral tools that have been excep­tion­ally help­ful to us, so I wanted to share them with you.

In ran­dom order…

Bub­ble Oodles

This bub­ble dis­penser has 5 ports, which helps to cre­ate lots of bub­bles with one quick puff of air. Noah has enjoyed play­ing with bub­bles since he was about 4 months old. They were great for eye track­ing when he was younger. Now, he likes to chase them and pop the ones that land on the ground. It’s so fun to watch him. Not only is the dis­penser a great tool, but these bub­bles are also non-toxic, which is impor­tant at this age, because they can’t under­stand they aren’t sup­posed to eat them.

Side note: Because they are non-toxic, they are pretty sticky. I highly rec­om­mend using these out­side only. But on rainy days in a pinch, we have used them in the bath­tub too — quick clean up!

Home­dics Soundspa Lullaby

Noah def­i­nitely got used to our sleep machine while we were co-sleeping. This par­tic­u­lar one has been a great addi­tion to his nurs­ery. Not only does he love the ocean & rain set­tings, but it also has a pro­jec­tor option for the ceil­ing. It projects a color image of stars, the moon, and a sheep. The pro­jec­tion serves as a night­light and some­thing sooth­ing to watch while he drifts off to sleep.

Happy Baby Food

99% of the time, I make Noah’s baby food. (Click here for more info on how I do it.) But for the remain­ing times that we are trav­el­ing or out and about when Noah needs to eat, these baby foods are great. Noah has had Stage 1, Stage 2 & Stage 3 meals. He also had the yogurt melts for the first time today, and they were a huge hit. These prod­ucts are 100% organic with­out any addi­tives or preser­v­a­tives. It’s the clos­est you can buy to homemade.

Dr. Sear’s The Portable Pediatrician

It’s no secret I love Dr. Sears. I agree with his par­ent­ing style, and I love read­ing his books. This is by far one of the most use­ful tools I’ve had over the last year. It’s easy to look up symp­toms, learn home reme­dies and know when it’s time to go to the doctor.

Just a few weeks ago, I was able to read in this book & sched­ule an appoint­ment because I knew by Noah’s symp­toms that he had an ear infec­tion. When we arrived at the doctor’s office, she said his ears looked fine. We came back the next day because his symp­toms per­sisted, and sure enough, he had an ear infec­tion. The descrip­tions in this book were so good that I was able to know what was wrong with him before phys­i­cal symp­toms began. No mom should be with­out a copy of this!

Boon’s Flo Water Deflec­tor & Faucet Cover

As Noah gets older, bath time keeps get­ting longer. He has so much fun splash­ing, play­ing with his water squeeze toys & of course, get­ting his hair washed. Now that he is super mobile, you can’t be too care­ful by get­ting a cover for the faucet. We love this one because it makes the water into a water­fall, which fas­ci­nates Noah. AND it dou­bles as a bub­ble bath dis­penser, so Noah won’t out­grow it for a while. I’m will­ing to pay a few more dol­lars when I know he’ll use it longer.

What are some of your favorite things to use dur­ing your baby’s first year?

Can you imag­ine a Valen­tine sweeter than this guy?

We sur­prised Katie, who is a 3rd grade teacher at a Chris­t­ian school here in Austin, with some roses for Valentine’s Day. Noah loves her, and I think the feel­ing is mutual.

As for Mommy? I’ll share my lit­tle man with Katie.

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” — Proverbs 22:6

I remem­ber recit­ing this verse to myself over and over again while hold­ing Noah in the NICU. Noah was hooked up to so many mon­i­tors. But when James and I would play wor­ship songs on our iPhones or sing softly as we rocked him, we got to wit­ness mini mir­a­cles as his vitals would instantly improve.

God does love lit­tle children.

So when I saw this prayer jar my friend Mea­gan made for her lit­tle boy, I instantly wanted one. After all, Noah can’t talk yet, so I saw this as an oppor­tu­nity to get him involved in our daily prayer time.

A few weeks later, Mea­gan blessed us with our own prayer jar for Noah. (She’s unbe­liev­ably tal­ented, so check out her blog where she details a lot of her crafts, fam­ily activ­i­ties & lessons God is teach­ing her.)

Accord­ing to Mea­gan, mak­ing your own prayer jar is “sim­ple.” Well, that may be…but it sure is a lot pret­tier than the one I could have made!

She begins with a mason jar, dec­o­rates it accord­ing to the theme of the nurs­ery. As you can see, she went along with our “brain­wash Noah into being an ath­lete” theme.

Then, she painted tongue depres­sors with acrylic paint. Boom — you have a prayer stick! I’ll admit, it does sound simple…but I doubt I would have been able to make tongue depres­sors look like foot­balls, bas­ket­balls and baseballs!

I took a Sharpie and wrote the names of our imme­di­ate fam­ily mem­bers and clos­est friends on each of the prayer sticks. We even added sticks for Noah’s future sibling(s) and his future wife.

Since Noah gets extra fussy at night, we do our prayer time before his after­noon nap. I sim­ply let him pick out one of the sticks from the jar, and we pray for whoever’s name he pulls.

I love my own prayer time, but pray­ing with my lit­tle boy is becom­ing one of my favorite times of the day.

“At that time the dis­ci­ples came to Jesus, say­ing, “Who is the great­est in the king­dom of heaven?” And call­ing to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like chil­dren, you will never enter the king­dom of heaven. Who­ever hum­bles him­self like this child is the great­est in the king­dom of heaven.” — Matthew 18:1–4

I’ve read this pas­sage dozens of time. But now that I’m a mom, not only do I see the world dif­fer­ently, but I read Scrip­ture with a new under­stand­ing too.

Noah is mak­ing new dis­cov­er­ies every day. He’s pulling up, grab­bing at any­thing he sees us hold (cell phone, TV remote, water bot­tles), bab­bling MaMa, DaDa and Baba (for Bauer, of course!)

And it finally hap­pened.…Check out my crawler!

Now that he’s mov­ing around pretty well, it’s inevitable that he will bump his head, get his foot stuck, or scratch his hand. Despite my best efforts, he’s too quick for me to res­cue him every time.

He doesn’t cry right away. After he gets hurt, he imme­di­ately looks up at me to see my reaction.

If I rush to him say­ing, “Oh, baby! Are you okay?” I can expect a melt­down. He sees my con­cern, and he mir­rors my reaction.

But if I gig­gle and say, “Silly boy! You are too big to fit under the couch! I’m sorry you got your hand stuck, but it’s okay. You’re such a big boy!” He snug­gles with me for a minute, dries his tears and goes back to playing.

Read­ing this pas­sage today made me wonder…

What if our first response to life’s hurts was to look up and mir­ror God’s reaction?

Isa­iah 55:8–9 says God’s thoughts and ways are higher than ours.

God is not star­tled by the unex­pected (1 John 3:20).

God is not per­plexed when things don’t work out as we planned (Proverbs 16:9).

God doesn’t fear for our future (Jere­miah 29:11–12).

Today, I’m pray­ing to raise Noah in such a way that he never stops look­ing up when he gets hurt.

But instead of copy­ing the reac­tion of his imper­fect Mommy, he’ll be mir­ror­ing the response of his per­fect God.

When I was preg­nant, other moms would tell me over and over again, “Write every­thing down. You think you’ll remem­ber, but you’ll forget.”

Of course, I had great inten­tions. But once Noah arrived, I began to wonder…

WHEN am I sup­posed to find time to write every­thing down?!

Thank­fully, I came across two things on Pin­ter­est that I’ve com­bined to help me jour­nal Noah’s devel­op­ment in a way that’s quick and will make a fan­tas­tic keep­sake for him (or his future wife if he’s not sentimental.)

First, I found this sweet mem­ory boxes made by Deb­bie on Etsy. (If you’re like me and you’re not very crafty, but you wish you were, Etsy is a great resource to get cus­tomized items made by incred­i­bly tal­ented crafters.)

As you can see from the pic­ture above, Deb­bie did an incred­i­ble job mak­ing Noah a box that I guess we can call “Tebow-themed” because of the foot­ball draw­ings and Bible verses.

Next, I saw an idea for a one-sentence jour­nal. The con­cept was to take a jour­nal with at least 365 pages and assign a date to each page. The instruc­tions were to have a page reserved for each day of the year and write one sen­tence to sum up what you did that day.

To make it fit in the box, I changed it up a bit:

I bought stick-on tabs and index cards. I sim­ply made a tab for each month of the year, then put an index card behind each tab for each day of that month.

For exam­ple:

So next year on Jan­u­ary 1, I’ll sim­ply write 2013 on the next line and keep going through the cards again every year.

Of course, it’s not always a mile­stone. Some­times, it’s as sim­ple as say­ing “Snug­gled with Dad on the coach watch­ing foot­ball” or “Had a play date with my friend Ben and his mom Meagan.”

Now that I’m two weeks into it, I’ve set a goal to keep this jour­nal­ing up until the day Noah grad­u­ates from high school. Judg­ing by how quickly time is fly­ing by with our lit­tle man, I feel like I’ll be writ­ing some­thing about that grad­u­a­tion cap all too soon…

Tip: Find a good spot where you will see it and write the day’s entry at the same time each day. It will become habit in no time! I keep Noah’s box right by our monitor’s charger. Each night after I put Noah down to bed, I write the day’s entry when I turn his mon­i­tor on.

What are some mem­ory keep­sakes you are mak­ing for your children?

Just look at that face.

Can any­one guess why one of my 2012 goals is to become a bet­ter photographer?

If you’re jump­ing up and down, rais­ing your hand shout­ing, “I know! I know! NOAH!”

You’d be correct.

(Oh, and if you actu­ally did that, please leave me a com­ment so I can give you a vir­tual high five for your excitement.)

James got me a 2-hour pho­tog­ra­phy class for Christ­mas. I’m SO excited! But it’s not until March…

So until then, I’ll just keep going paparazzi on Noah.

Here are a few of my favorite shots:

I’d love to know your feed­back on these shots. Tips from pho­togs appre­ci­ated too!

The most won­der­ful time of the year cer­tainly stirs up mem­o­ries in my heart from my child­hood. Here are a few favorites…

My dad would strate­gi­cally hide jin­gle bells around the house and jin­gle them with­out us see­ing it was him to get my sis­ter, Melody, and me excited. Though he’s never admit­ted to it, I’m also con­vinced that he braved the cold Ten­nessee weather on Christ­mas Eve to stomp on the roof after we went to sleep.

The Christ­mas Eve ser­vice at church was always spe­cial. My favorite part was singing “Silent Night” by can­dle­light. I would always close my eyes and pre­tend I was in Beth­le­hem singing over baby Jesus.

“Santa” would call us over my dad’s ham radio every year on Christ­mas Eve live from his sleigh. Of course, we would ask what snacks we could leave for him and the rein­deer, give last minute reminders of our most desired gift, and of course, be as polite as pos­si­ble to prove our place on the nice list.

I would always sleep in Melody’s room on Christ­mas Eve. Melody is NOT what you would call a “morn­ing per­son.” But the magic of Christ­mas some­how woke her up every year at exactly 5:50am. Since we weren’t allowed to wake our par­ents up until 6am, she would excit­edly wake me up, and we promptly made her bed. That way when we busted in my par­ents’ room a few min­utes early, they couldn’t send us back to bed. Sneaky, sneaky.

Christ­mas morn­ing took FOREVER. And my dad recorded the whole thing. Every­thing is dig­i­tal now, but when we were grow­ing up, it always took 2 VHS tapes to record our fam­ily Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tion. Why did it take so long? I know some fam­i­lies open presents all together. Not mine. We take turns, one at a time, even with stock­ings. Each year, I get as much joy from watch­ing other peo­ple get presents they want or need as I do from get­ting new things myself.

Speak­ing of those home videos, that’s also a fam­ily tra­di­tion. Each year, we have a few favorite videos from past Christ­mases we have to watch…like when Melody opened socks on Christ­mas Eve (she was NOT happy), and when I called my mom by her first name because I couldn’t get her atten­tion (I was 2.)

We watch ran­dom Christ­mas movies. Seri­ously. My favorite Christ­mas movies are ones no one has seen. Your It’s A Won­der­ful Life and White Christ­mas are my All I Want for Christ­mas and Meet Me In St. Louis.

Now, it’s time for my niece, Kate­lyn, and Noah to carry on these tra­di­tions and cre­ate some new ones too.

A favorite already from this year: Melody has started the “Elf on the Shelf” with Kate­lyn. Kate­lyn named it “Shawty” because that’s who Justin Bieber is wait­ing for “Under the Mistle­toe.” I won­der how she’ll feel about that when she gets a lit­tle older…

What’s your favorite fam­ily Christ­mas tradition?

Merry Christ­mas from James, Michelle & Noah!