How We Survived Hurricane Harvey - Part 2 of 2

This post is a continuation of How We Survived Hurricane Harvey. Read Part 1 here.

Matthew 8:26-27

He said to them, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. The men were amazed, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” 

Sunday, August 27th
11:30 AM
The firefighters dropped us off on the main street in front of our neighborhood. We were greeted by dozens of other people who had also been rescued. Instead of getting out of the rain to the shelter up the road, these people stayed behind to help others, like us, get out of the boats so that the firefighters could move as quickly as possible to keep on rescuing.

How We Survived Hurricane Harvey - Part 1 of 2

Job 37:9-13
Out of the south comes the storm,
And out of the north the cold.
From the breath of God ice is made,
And the expanse of the waters is frozen.
Also with moisture He loads the thick cloud;
He disperses the cloud of His lightning.
It changes direction, turning around by His guidance,
That it may do whatever He commands it
On the face of the inhabited earth.
Whether for correction, or for His world,
Or for lovingkindness, He causes it to happen.

Exactly 8 months ago yesterday, Hurricane Harvey hit our city and forced my family and me to evacuate our home. It was by far one of the most emotional, adrenaline filled days of my life. I've recorded the events of that stormy experience to the best of my knowledge in this post. All of the times are approximate and to be honest, some might be inaccurate because much of that day is blurry in my memory.

Sometimes I Yell At My Kids When I Blog

I'm not proud of it. In fact I'm quite ashamed of it. My mind will be 100% focused on writing a blogpost, building my Pinterest page or watching a webinar about blogging. Then my toddler is whining for something he doesn't need and my baby is crying for attention. I get frustrated at my children for distracting me from work.

God is generally pretty quick to remind me that my children are a major reason why I work, and if anything is a distraction, it's my work distracting me from my kids. So I'm convicted.

But I think the enemy tries to use this conviction to make me think the my work is worthless. Well I got angry at my kid while I was writing that blogpost, so now it would be totally hypocritical of me to publish that post. Gotta throw it all out and wait until the timing is perfect before I write it again.

First - the timing is NEVER going to be perfect. Life is always

I Stink At Styling My Hair

Everyone who sees me is going to think I'm an idiot because I stink at styling my hair. It may sound ridiculous, but for a good 20 minutes this morning, thoughts like this consumed my mind. I didn't have much time to get ready, and I honestly don't have the patience to spend an hour styling my hair.

I had my heart set on pigtails. After about 7 tries, I gave up. I sat there for a long time contemplating how many different people thought so little of me because my hair looks so bad. It sounds kind of funny now, but in that bad moment I truly felt like every woman in my life looked down me because I couldn't even do the basic feminine task of styling my hair. Even my best hair days feel like everyone else's "meh" days. I felt my self-worth plummeting as these thoughts continued to spiral downward.

How to Overcome Sexual Fantasies

I had to completely erase my first draft of this post because I neglected to include my own struggles in it. I tried to use modern day love stories, books and movies alike, to contrast with God's pursuit of us. But then I realized I wasn't really doing justice to the truth God has been illuminating to me recently. To accurately convey how He's been working on my heart, I had to be real and raw. And so, I'm sharing some embarrassing struggles of mine so you can see how I believe God's romance is so much better than any fantasy that the world, or our own minds, try to feed us.

Embarrassing Truth

Ever since I was a preteen, I have struggled with entertaining sexual fantasies. I believe it started with watching kissing and make out scenes in movies and TV shows, and then my mind wandered from there. I was drawn in by the thrill and excitement. To be touched, held and caressed by a strong, handsome man seemed like the dream. Of course, as a female, my fantasies