I haven't been tagged in a blog in ages...I almost missed it when my friend Denise tagged me on hers. I was reading along and sort of skimmerd her tagged people and noticed a familiar name.

So here goes, 10 honest things about me:

1. I have been married to my husband for nearly half of my life. We met when I was just 17 and were married when I was just 18. Everyone thought we were crazy...truthfully I think we knew we were crazy. We also knew that this was where God was leading us and that it was 100% His plan.

2. On the same subject, there were only a handful of people who expressed a genuine concern for us and seriously questioned our motives and commitment. Those people all were acting out of a real concern for us, and even then, I cherished it. The people who were questioning us helped us clarify and know this was God's plan. I also know those people prayed for us and will reap benefits for all of their commitment to us.

3. I will be 35 years old in just over a month and the idea that I could be 35 is thoroughly amusing to me. I just always thought of 35 as a "real grown-up" and still don't see myself as that age, but I embrace it fully. Every time I catch a few of my grey hairs in the mirror I smile because they mean something to me. I feel like getting older is a gift given from God.

4. One of my big regrets is that I stopped singing. I am, by no means, a "singer" but I can hold a tune decently and I really, really love it. I had one person say something that wasn't even that critical, it was actually meant to be sweet, and I let that just burrow in and make me think I should stop. Even worse than being unfair to myself, it was unfair to the person who said it, to put that on them.

5. I also love to act. As a grown-up who didn't choose that as a career I never find a place to do it. I plan on changing that soon.

6. Every time I watch a national cooking championship or a detailed cooking show I convince myself I could do the same or better. I have aspirations to enter a cooking championship someday.

7. While everyone who knows me knows I love Jesus, very few people know how much I actually love church. I love to study and find out more about the person of Christ, but just as deeply I love being in the physical building of my church. It's not fancy, it's just home. It's deeply tied to who I am and when things feel "off" there, every part of me hurts because it is my family and my home.

8. I'm a firebug. Well, not really but I LOVE fire. I love to light candles and I love to watch a fireplace crackle. There is something almost hypnotic about it and I start to feel peaceful when the flames are flickering.

9. I don't know my right from my left. I just have a mental block on it. About 6 years ago someone taught me the trick where your pointer finger and thumb make an "L" on your left hand and it made my day because it made figuring it all out so much quicker. It's also so much easier to fake knowledge now.

10. I am terrified of open water, yet I love water! I even start to feel like I can't breathe watching movies with open water in them. I have always been kind of freaked out being in the ocean, but it is still worth it enough to swim in it.

So there ya go, 10 honest things.

I am supposed to tag some more people but can't think of anyone to tag...so if you are reading this...consider yourself tagged.

When everyone was posting glorious New Year posts I kept telling myself I'd wait until I really had time to reflect and write...that time never came..until now.

While I find so much comfort and peace, sitting at my desk writing and listening to God speak, I am realizing it get's harder and harder to make the time with so many people and things vying for my attention all the time. If I had a laptop I steal off to Starbucks to write, but alas...no laptop for me, so I steal the moments when they come.

Tonight I am making the moment a priority.

I have been going through a lot of inner changes and growth over the last several months, brought on by a lot of upheaval in the past few years. It took a good many months to get to a place where I was able to find enough of a foothold to finally start standing just a bit more steadily in the midst of it all.

With God as sherherd and good friends by my side, I finally feel righted again. Not perfect. Not fully healed...but ready to stand a little more steady and to keep standing.

Will I still stumble and have bad days? I'm sure. Do I feel far better equiped to face them? you bet.

One of the things I have set out to challenge myself with, and to be honest I think God has put it in my heart and mind, is something called The Day Zero Project. In short a personal (and now very public) challenge to come up with a list of 101 things to achieve in just 1001 days.

The first time I heard about it the idea sounded interesting but I dismissed it out of hand. I'd never accomplish 101 things about me. How sad. The very idea of having 101 dreams and goals felt beyond me.

Wouldn't you know though, the list kept coming up. I kept hearing about it and I kept thinking about it. I casually laughed it off as impossible for myself in discussion with a friend..."I'll never even get around to starting a list" hahaha. She just said "Nope, with that attitude you never will."

It stung.

That was the message God had been trying to get through. This was not the first time I heard it. It was hard to hear every time. I never imagined myself as someone who could dream, turns out I can dream impossible things for everyone else and I can expect God to move on their behalf...but when it comes to my dreams...I can't even figure out what they are most of the time.

In my bible study through the book of Luke these last few months I have been moved to tears several times over the relational person that God is. That when Jesus walked on this earth it was realtional and personal. He took great care in caring for the whole person...dreams and all.

So here I was with a blank page and the idea of 101 seemed so big. It still does really. I also wanted to try to hear God. I didn't want a whole list devoted to getting and doing...but to being more like Jesus and more aware of who He made me to be. I want my list to glorify him first, while fulfilling something in me.

So, I haven't officially started my Day Zero because my list isn't even halfway done. I'm close and just looking at it makes me love God even more, knowing he has put dreams in my heart and given me this amazing chance to find them.

When you make the decision to follow where God leads when it comes to having a full time stay at home parent, thus one income, and three small children the idea that there will be sacrifices is built right in. Knowing that at times money will be tight and there may not be exciting things like laptops and ipods is kind of a given...though when we chose to walk this path ipods and laptops didn't yet exist. The point is still the same.

What you don't really see is that there might not be enough extra for things like little league or ballet.

I'll be honest, this has been a real struggle for me in the last year or so. The ide that, somehow, I was doing a disservice to my kids by raising them in a one income home. I have learned to bake my own bread, clip coupons, and do with out but still find that life keeps moving forward and debts still loom, and that little bit never really materializes.

So my kids are fed, and warm...but still they don't have the classes that it seems "every" other kid has.

My amazing husband reminds me that we are giving them something different, that we are giving them a mom at home. We are giving them examples of a real relationship with God, we are giving them an apreciation of the little things.

Now, Christmas is near and the "I wants" have surfaced and my knoledge of the budget have krept in to make me just a little sad...until today...when I saw my kids, my family, and my life through the eyes of someone else. Through a friend who knows us all in a very special way...

Part of the reason I started this whole blog-a-day thing again was in an effort to put into words some of the deep changes brewing in my spirit.

I figured looking at my many blessings and those things I am blessed to enjoy was the perfect place to find the inspiration...but then the cars, yep cars, started to have major and minor issues. The kids got sick. I have been trying to keep some annoying illness at bay, life squeezed in and I wasn't able to connect the photo the same way I wanted too...in the end the posts felt a little ... flat.

So now I'm going to try to get it right. Bringing this little treasure into the light and not tucked away.

It's precious few times when I can actually pinpoint the start of God doing a major internal change in me ...it usually only shows when I look back at who I was and think "Wait? how did I get here?"

This time is different, and I say is because I know I still don't know the whole magnitude.

What started on a runway in Toronto is still stirring today. I see the steps, I see them small and imperfect, but I see God guiding them.

I am once again awestruck at His deep love for me, and His perfect design and craftsmanship...not just of the human person, but the human soul and spirit.

My heart longs to pour this all out as an offering to God and a testimony of His great love and yet, every time I try words fail me.

I believe God is preparing my heart for, not a battle, but a rebirth of some of my personal passions and joys. That He is bringing me to a place to see that He has my destiny and His blueprint for how I can be used in accordance with His plan...but that He is so loving, kind, and good that it will come with much personal fulfillment as well.

Can you imagine? Just to think of it overwhelms me. To think that the God who created all that is and will be, has on His holy agenda, that which will bring me a little smile and fuel a great, personal, passion. The amazingness of that simple truth is humbling beyond words.

In this past year I have mourned deeply as what I thought should be, didn't match what was. As I laid dreams and desires at God's feet only to walk away with them unmet. I trusted God and His wisdom but I ached at the many prayers answered "No." I wept bitter tears more times than I care to recount or admit as the road map for my life took turns I'd never have drawn in. I have struggled with feelings of being left behind, forgotten, unimportant, unremarkable, and in between, waiting on the "next". I admonished myself to wait on God, to live in the middle, to trust. I have trusted, but perhaps grudgingly. Knowing God's plan was perfect but pouting because I didn't have to like it.

Yet here I sit tonight, with nothing changed, no neon sign pointing to Next... no detours to point directly back to the path I long to be on, and still the whole thing is different because God is molding me in the circumstances I live everyday, with the circumstances I live everyday.

He is reminding me that every passion I have He designed, not for my frustration but for His purpose and my joy. That my greatest joys are found in living His purpose.

In this I am truly and utterly blessed.

I hadn't intended to take weekends off from my blog-a-day thing but I find that, each day, my time for sitting alone and thinking , and sharing gets swallowed up.

When we started school this year I scheduled in an hour block of time for me to just be alone...I've not taken one of those hours in the last three months. Something always presses in and takes hold. I guess without a recharge it's hard to sit and pour out more of me?

Today I didn't get that hour either...but I still found time to recharge. My kids had built this pretty amazing fort in the hallway,tall enough for an adult to stand in even, and I heard them all laughing and calling me. When I peeked my head around and saw the massiveness of the fortress I'll admit my first thought was "that's gonna be a pain to clean up" but I stopped myself from speaking the words. I listened to the laughter, saw the sparkles in their eyes...looked back around at the chores undone, and the school books not yet opened and I decided to do the most important thing and crawl in with them.

I layed there with the youngest alternately pinching my nose or demanding back 'scritches' for about a half hour. I took pictures with my cell phone and let them do the same. I forgot about deadlines and expectation for a minute and found time to unwind, right there in the chaos.

I'd say I learned a lot in school today!

There are many things about childhood that appeal to me now, as an adult, that I wish I'd have appreciated then.

Scheduled and expected play time. Now it takes so much work, and planning, and sometimes a little guilt when you "should" be doing other things, to play. Playing is a lot more complicated than a bucket and the park. There is gas money, and hours of operation. There is driving, and sitters. There is matching schedules...so much work to play. But as a lid...we just played. Everyday. It was expected and encouraged.

Someone to pick out my clothes! Ugh...I wish I had someone to do that now.

Most of all though...naptime! What a beautiful and wonderful thing that I balked at while my pre-school teacher Miss Cathy tried every bribe and disipline she had to get me to lay quiet on my cot. Thinking I was being tortured for what I now know as one of the sweetest splurge.

There are several ingredients that add to a naps magic.

Location is key. A Sunday afternoon nap in my own bed will be delicious and cozy...but they don't hold a candle to a nice long nap on the couch. There is something so special about the stolen time there, right out in the open.

A good blankie. While I have been known to doze without, the sleep is never quite right without my favorite heavy quilt covering me. Even on a warm day the weight is like being snuggled by God, it's that amazing.

Background noise. I know, how can noise be good? It's not the noise so much as the drifting off with the tv on or the kids chatting with each other. It's like hitting pause on the real world and just taking a tiny vacation.

Finally, duration. This is a much contested detail amongst my fellow day sleepers...but I still belive a daytime nap can be too long. Don't misunderstand, I don't subscribe to the 20 minute power nap by any stretch. There is a ballance between having "wasted" the whole day with a nap and the nice hour long break. The trick is to get enough sleep that you have that "What an awesome nap" buzz when you wake up and ander ever so slowly back to your daily grind. Generally with a smile that makes you feel like you've gotten away with something.

I am so sorry I ever missed this blessing in pre-school.

Every year when the weather starts to turn colder and we start to get intermittent rain showers my mind wanders back to a time when too young kids were falling in love and begining the adventure that would change their lives forever.

In the midst of homeschooling the kids, changing diapers, and watching my husband do the job of ten men...I remember what it was to jump in his car on Saturdays and head off to any number of random places...cinnamon flavored 7-11 coffee in hand.

When I look out the kitchen window and can scarcely see the house in front of me, I think of what it was like to wake up to love letters, damp with dew, left on my car's windshield...or flowers strewn in my car after school.

As we busily plan for the holiday season my mind wanders over our first Christmas spent with friends, laughing over silly gifts and rejoicing at the life we hoped to create together.

Each hazy fall day that we hurdle in front of the heater I can still remeber the chill in my bones from rainy walks outdoors.

I am grateful for every fall day I have spent in the last 16 years, sharing the joy with my very best friend and husband, who has been my constant source of God's love and strength here on this earth.