Thanks

Time to Step it Up

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

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Ladies, this one is for you. I have something on my mind, and have for a little while, it’s time to share it: We have got to do better!!!

Let me explain.

I want to flash back to junior high and high school for a minute. I remember back in those days so often preferring to hang out with “the guys” simply because girls can be so cruel. One minute we were best friends, and the next there was drama for one reason or another. I have already started seeing this happen with my second grade daughter. It’s heartbreaking when she comes home from school telling me that someone was mean to her and she was left out of a game on the playground.

I’m not sure what it is about females that causes us to be insecure, competitive, and sometimes downright mean. This shouldn’t be! After all, we are the nurturers. We should naturally be protective and encouraging of each other. We should believe the best about each other, unfortunately it is often just the opposite.

I absolutely love the story of Jonathan and David in 1 Samuel. Their friendship was unrivaled. It says in 1 Samuel 18:3 “Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.” Wow! Sign me up for that kind of friendship. I was re-reading the story of David and Jonathan the other night and I just couldn’t get over the selfless love they had for each other. They built each other up and encouraged each other, even though for Jonathan, it meant risking everything.

I have to admit, I am slightly jealous of my husband. He has never had a shortage of good friends. The thing about men, especially confident guys like my husband and most of the men he calls good friends, is they can just be relaxed and be themselves without comparison, judgement, or feeling like they have to portray themselves a certain way. I have some great female friends, but I can honestly say it has been years since I have had anything close to a “Jonathan/David” type of friendship. It seems like the older I get, the longer it takes us girls to tear down the walls between each other.

So what’s a girl to do? I want to issue a challenge that I myself have been try to do. I want to challenge every single woman who is reading this to go out of your way to encourage another woman. Whether that means speaking an encouraging word to someone, supporting a startup business, or even taking a younger woman under your wing, just do it! Be the friend that you want others to be to you! Use the idea of the golden rule: treat other women the way you want to be treated. Give the women you work with and do life with the benefit of the doubt.

When my husband and I first moved into the town where we live, 13 years ago, we had several couples in our church who took us in. We had no family in town, and really didn’t know anyone, but the people who poured into us then made so much of a difference. Be that person. Be the friend you wish others would be to you. Be the person to welcome someone new. Be the one to believe the best. Be the person to spread good news, and not rumors. Be the one to encourage another woman when she is trying something new. Be the one to build another woman up!!!

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11

Every Rose Has It’s Thorns

/ bekoepke / 1 Comment

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If you have read very much of my writing, you will likely know that one of my biggest pet peeves is ungratefulness. It drives me absolutely insane when people don’t say thank you when someone does something for them, goes out of their way to help them, or perhaps when they have been given a gift. Although it is a challenge a lot of the time, I am trying very hard to teach my girls to always say thank you (not always successfully, I might add), and I think that adults should do the same. That being said, my own hypocrisy kicks in sometimes and I don’t always thank people when I should. Toward the end of last year I made a goal of trying to be more thankful. I thought I would give a little update on how that has been going.

Rejoice always, pray continually,  give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.  I Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIV

That verse has always been a little convicting to me. Always, continually, and in all circumstances. That’s a lot. Especially the part about giving thanks in all circumstances. I want so badly to edit that one word and change it to give thanks in good circumstances. This has been a tough school year so far in my household. I have a group of students that seem to struggle a little more than most years with being able to pass tests, which is creating a little extra stress in my world trying to find creative ways to get through to them. My girls are getting older and have more going on as far as homework and school activities, which is keeping us a little busier. My husband is a principal, and he has dealt with some challenging situations of his own throughout the year. When we are deep in the trenches of everyday life, that whole concept of give thanks in all circumstances can be pretty tough. It’s tough to say thanks when things are going wrong.

However, in the same way I get irritated when people are ungrateful, how much more must God get frustrated when we aren’t thankful. King David probably didn’t feel much like thanking God for the lion or the bear attacking his sheep, but those battles are exactly what prepared him for the battle against Goliath. What if these frustrating moments are the exact things we should be giving thanks for?

I have tried to make a point to thank the people in my life that I really felt compelled to thank. Over the last 2 months I have written several thank you notes that were probably way overdue. As I write this, I remembered one other person who really needs to be thanked for their hard work (I will make sure that happens this week). As I think about how to carry this challenge forward, I can’t help but think about how easy it is for me to say thank you when something is benefitting me, but when it is flipped and things are not going as planned, I have such a hard time being grateful. So that is where I am going to try and focus going forward. I want to be better at giving thanks in all circumstances.

George Matheson once said in one of his more well-know sermons, “My God, I have never thanked Thee for my thorn. I have thanked Thee a thousand times for my roses, but not once for my thorn.” I have that same problem. I can be so thankful for the blessings, but have a hard time being thankful during life’s frustrations. Lord, help me to thank thee for my thorn!

When I started writing my book Finding God in the Wilderness, I was able to look back and see how those thorny situations that felt like a wilderness, were really leading me to the next phase of promised land. Looking back, it is often easier to see the blessings in the challenges. I don’t want to have to wait though. I want to learn how to be more thankful during the challenge. I want to walk into my classroom and thank God for giving me the students that He did. I want to wake up every morning thanking God for strong willed girls. I want to know that anything I go though is growing me into the person God is calling me to be.

Let’s all start this new year learning more every day how to “thank Thee for the thorns”.

 

 

As A Gentle Whisper

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

As a teacher of mostly 9th graders, I see every single day how much the creativity of people can be harmed by this instant gratitude, always entertained world we live in. Let’s just be honest, we are all guilty of this from time to time. Almost everyone has an entertainment system that they carry in their pocket, purse, or backpack at all times; the cell phone. Take a look around at practically any waiting room, restaurant, or even stoplight, and you will see grown humans grabbing for that phone and constantly having to be entertained. I am not innocent, and likely you aren’t either.

I have always tried to be careful to not allow too much technology into my girls’ world too soon, but I also don’t want to shelter them so that they don’t know how to use it. As a momma, this can be a very difficult thing to balance. I have never been the mom to just hand off my phone to keep my kids quiet. As a matter of fact, I never have, don’t even have kid’s games loaded on it. On the other hand, my eldest daughter does know how to turn on her cartoons and find movies on our television. It is such a hard balance. We have given in recently to the benefits of apps and websites for reading and math remediation for our girls, and do appreciate the things they are learning. However, when I see kids in my classes texting on smart watches and staring down at the phone “hidden” in their laps, or, like one creative student, in their pencil bag that they can see through to text or snapchat, I want to make sure my kids aren’t addicted to it. I want them to find meaningful real-life relationships. I also want them to find their value in knowing who they are in Christ, not because of social media likes.

I love seeing the imaginations of my girls when I force them to entertain themselves. I honestly think that it is becoming a lost art. We as a society are so afraid of, or maybe just opposed to, being bored. Boredom brings out such a creative part in kids (and adults) though, that I think they need to experience it.

Today is a perfect example of the benefits of boredom. We are at the tail end of Thanksgiving break and the wind was insane today. So, we decided to take our girls to go see a movie and a late lunch. When we returned home they wanted to turn on cartoons and we told them that they had just watched a movie so they needed to go play. I sat down to work on some school work that I have been putting off all week, and all 3 of them sat down at the table with me and with notebook paper, tape, and colored pencils, they created “books” telling the story of their day. When they finished that, they ran off to their rooms and started an epic princess saga that is still going even 2 hours after they have been told to go to bed. It is amazing what they come up with when they are left to their own devices.

I think that we are the same way. If we could just turn off the noise, imagine what we might come up with! Sabbath rest has been a theme for me lately. Thanksgiving break has been an amazing time of refreshing and recharging for me this year. I know that when I do turn off all the noise, that I can hear from God in a much more real way. I also know that when I take the time to take a break from constantly having to be entertained, I am so much more creative and better able to function during those busy times. As we inch our way to the new year, I want to slow down and quit allowing myself to get so distracted on what my goals and passions are. We need to remember that the presence of God comes as a whisper. You can’t hear a whisper when you are surrounded by noise.”

“The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.” 1 King 19:11-13 NIV emphasis added

A Dozen Years Later…

/ bekoepke

I am going to take a moment and brag on my husband for a little while. I blog a lot about my kiddos, motherhood, and faith, but I don’t blog a whole lot about my husband. He really is an amazing man, so I thought it was about time to share a little about him as well as a bit of our backstory.

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Just as a little background, we grew up 19 miles apart. Our lives were intertwined in so many ways, but we never actually met until we were 3 hours and a state away from home in college at the University of Wyoming (Go Pokes!!!). We met for the first time briefly during my Junior year of college. I didn’t cross paths with him again until the next school year when we were reintroduced on the university shotgun team (oh yeah, I don’t know if I ever mentioned how much I love to shoot). I looked forward to each week when we would go shoot, because he often had to buy me a meal afterward when he lost a bet thinking he could out shoot me.

We loved shooting on our university shotgun team!

Fast forward a few months and I awkwardly asked him if he would take me to my sorority formal over email, because I had no other way of contacting him. I wasn’t even sure if he actually checked his emails because at that time email was something you might look at once a week. Much to my surprise, he called me within the hour and said he would go. Being a good guy, he asked me if he could take me out to dinner the night before the formal. I found out much later that he had been half-heartedly dating another girl in my sorority, and when he got my email he immediately broke off that relationship (that may, or may not have caused a bit of drama within the sorority over the next few months).

All dressed up for my sorority formal

From that first date on, we were absolutely inseparable and the best of friends. The thing that I appreciated and respected so much about him was how honest he was, he was never fake with me. He didn’t try to act like someone he wasn’t. He is still that way. Love him or hate him, people cannot argue with the fact that he is one of the most honest people you will ever meet. Six months after we graduated we were engaged, five months after that we were married. We have now been married for about 12 1/2 years. I have learned so much in that time, I thought I would share some of what I have learned so far.

Something that is vital and that has not ever changed, is the foundation of our relationship. Before we even started dating, we had a very long conversation about our faith and our end goals. I made it very clear to him that I was not like most girls, and that at the stage of life we were both in, I wasn’t interested in just dating to date, after all, I was just about to enter my final semester of my senior year of college. We made a priority of our faith and that has been such a blessing over the years. It has been especially important during the difficult times.

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Our Engagement Photo

When the newlywed stage wears off and real life hits, that foundation is paramount. Faith is all you really have when you hit hard times like job layoffs, tight finances, or just simple exhaustion during the throws of raising children. I can’t imagine trying to raise our children together, if our faith was not the same. I also can’t imagine getting through some of the tough times we have been through without our faith. There have been so many times that all we could do was press in and pray together that God would guide our path. I thank God that we are able to do that together. I am also so thankful that finding someone who shared my faith was always a non-negotiable for me, even as a teenager. As I think back, it took a lot of nerve for me, on our first real date, to lay it all out there and tell him exactly where I was in my faith and that I was not willing to date someone I couldn’t share that with. However, I am so glad I did. I never had to be fake with him. I could be, and still can be, exactly who God made me to be without fear of him not appreciating me following my God-given dreams. I pray all three of my girls will find that same kind of foundation in the young men that they choose to marry someday.

Secondary to being on the same page in our faith, flexibility is extremely important. I remember when we first got married and all the “plans” we made. The 1 year, 5 year, and 10 year plans. None of it has happened exactly like we planned, however, we keep dreaming together. Every decision or investment that we have made has been a group effort, but we have had to learn that it is okay for plans to change. Jobs, have changed, living situations have changed, our family has grown, and we have gotten older. One thing that has never changed, regardless of the season of life we are in is that we make flexible goals together.

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My dear husband is now the Principal of a K-12 school, so we still get to go to prom!

As we have gotten older, we have really been able to have fun with that. We no longer make hard goals with strict deadlines that will likely never happen like we planned. Instead, we changed our plans and goals into dreams. We dream together of what can be. We talk about what steps we can take to make those dreams come true. Now, don’t get me wrong, all of our dreams are not exactly the same. He and I both have separate dreams that have yet to come true. But we are able, through the process, to try our best to support each other in the pursuit of our dreams, in hopes that one day soon, those dreams will actually come to fruition.

Humor is the final piece of the puzzle I want to address. I honestly don’t know how anyone can stay married without it. There is something so valuable about being able to laugh together. My husband has always been the funny guy, and I love that. Even when I am fuming mad, he is always able to bring a little humor in to defuse the situation. In his current job as Principal, he has to be able to laugh, or he might just cry when he has to deal with some of the things that comes across his desk. When life gets hard and you are in the middle of the stinking dirty here and now, that isn’t always rainbows and sunshine, you must be able to smile together.

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Always the funny guy, we had a blast representing our team at the national shooting competition!

I don’t want you to think that every moment of every day is a perfect cinderella story. We have our fair share of frustrations, exhausting moments, and struggles. We fight and gripe at each other. We come to points in our more heated discussions ,where we have to just agree to disagree. We are both stubborn, and strong willed. There are definitely clashes of the titans from time to time. Through it all though, those tough times have made us stronger as a couple.

Although it was fun, I would not want to go back to those newlywed days. I love where we are today. I am more comfortable in my own skin that I ever was when I first got married. The scars we have earned through the ups and downs in the last 12 1/2 years of marriage, and 14 years of relationship, have made us who we are today. I use to try so hard to please everyone, only succeeding in making myself miserable and pleasing no one along the way. Now, I realize that if I have to work hard to please people, those people probably don’t really have my best interests at heart. If I have to convince someone to love, appreciate, or be proud of me, their opinion of me really shouldn’t impact how I live my life. Instead, I need to spend more of my energy pleasing God and following his plans for my future, not simply doing what I feel like others expect me to do.

I leave you with the verse we chose for our wedding. I still love this verse today, and think that we could all benefit from living this way.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

Our family sure has grown over the years!

Paradigm Shift: A Challenge Update

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

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A few days ago, I shared a gratitude challenge (see my blog post Take the Challenge).  I thought I would give a little update on how it is going for me so far.

Soooo, you know the saying “easier said than done”? Yeah, that’s me. It is so easy to talk about putting gratitude into practice on a regular basis. Actually doing it is a completely different thing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have put some of the things into practice. For example, I did write a few thank you notes, and made a point to thank others for things they had done to help me.

Then Saturday hit.

It’s a funny thing, Saturdays. As a young 20-something newlywed with no kids, I looked forward to my Saturdays. Saturday meant I could sleep in, watch a movie, go on a date, and pretty much do whatever I wanted. Then we had three kids. Sleeping in is a thing of the past because I have kids who like to rise early. Saturdays now mean massive amounts of laundry, dishes, and catching up on housework all while trying to keep kids from making more of a mess or massively slowing me down with all their needs. The gratitude train got a bit derailed on Saturday. Actually, in the spirit of being completely honest, that train hit a cliff and burned completely to the ground. I allowed myself to enter into a pretty negative space mentally. I started internally (and to get real honest, externally too) grumbling and complaining about all that needed to be done. By the end of the day, I was a complete grump and ungrateful to the core. I ended up going to bed pretty early just because I was exhausted. Truth be told, that’s what I really needed anyways, because for about the last 2 weeks, my 3 year old has come in during the middle of the night pretty much every night and I had been a bit sleep deprived because of it.

Now, I didn’t really realize how ungrateful I was being until Sunday morning rolled around. My church participates each year in Operation Christmas Child and my family always packs 3 girl boxes (because I have 3 girls). When I was getting the boxes ready to bring to church, my girls were looking at everything and wanting all of it. My middle child started to really complain and pitched a fit about wanting what was in those boxes. This momma lost her cool. I was appalled at how my kids were acting. I explained to them that these boxes were going to little kids who didn’t get Christmas gifts. I told them that a lot of the kids that receive the boxes are extremely poor and may not even have enough food. I felt like such a failure as a mom because of the entitled way my kids were acting.

That’s when it hit me. I had the conviction come down on me like a flood. I am the one who has taught them to not appreciate what they have. It is little wonder that they grumble when they have to clean up all their toys, when I have been their model. There is little wonder why they don’t appreciate all they have, when I don’t always show that appreciation myself. I have to have a paradigm shift to see that even though I do have lots of laundry and dishes to do, I am blessed to live in a place where I have machines to do the hard work for me. I have to realize that even though my kids make lots of messes, I have healthy, active kids who love to play. I also have to remember that even though I do have a lot of housework to do on the weekends, I have a home and don’t have to worry about where I will sleep each night.

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Learning how to see the pile of laundry as a blessing!

So, I am adding to my challenge after this weekend. I want to model gratitude for my girls. I want to show them what it is like to be thankful. I’m really not sure how I will do it, but I do know that it is so important to me that my girls learn from a young age to be thankful for what they have been given I think I will start by being more thankful to them when they do things to help each other and me.

So my question to you is how do you train up your children to be grateful? I would love some ideas from people who, like me, are in the trenches, as well as those of you who have made it through parenthood and are on the other side.

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17 NIV

 

Take the Challenge

/ bekoepke / 1 Comment

November is often the time of year that people start gearing up for the holidays. Social media often blows up with daily posts of things you are thankful for or countdowns to Thanksgiving or Christmas. It is the time of year that often gets pretty busy. Between school programs, church activities, and family get togethers, we can find ourselves overwhelmed and exhausted. It is also the time of year that things that should bring us joy, often bog us down, cause frustration, or even depression. You find that you can’t please everyone, so your attitude may not be great toward the very people you love enough to try to please.

Maybe this blog post is just for me, however, I have a sneaking suspicion that there are many of you that deal with the same thing I do. There are several of us who find that the magic and joy of the holiday season can sometimes be snuffed out when there are too many things demanded of us. Sure, we love the joy of the holidays and the smiles on our kids’ faces, but we also think about the amount of energy required to clean up that house, shop for the groceries, cook all the needed food, and travel to all the destinations. We also think about the mess after all the fun happens. It can be overwhelming for a busy mom. It can steal our gratitude and joy.

I absolutely don’t have the answers today. Instead, I have a challenge. One of the recurring themes in my current life has been Sabbath rest. I wrote a blog a little while ago dealing with what that means (you can read it here). I have been challenging myself to be better about taking true Sabbath rest. However, I want to add a little bit to that challenge for all of us from now until the New year. Let’s make a goal of focusing on what we are grateful for during that Sabbath time. Maybe that means writing things down, or maybe sending a note to someone. Possibly being grateful could just be making a conscience decision to not complain. Whatever it is, commit to doing that thing for the next month and a half.

There are so many scientific studies that have proven the health benefits of gratitude and positivity. Some of these include better sleep, lower anxiety, increased mood, less feeling of burnout, just to name of few (here is a great article about health benefits). There is also a lot of brain research that shows that when we are grateful, our brain gets a flood of dopamine, that feel good hormone that so many of us nursing moms would experience when we had newborns.

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So, what’s your plan? How are you going to attack this gratitude thing? I think I am going to do a combination of writing down things I am grateful for, along with maybe writing a few well overdue thank you notes. If you have other amazing ideas I would love to hear them! Maybe I will try those out too!

Thank you to everyone who reads these blogs! I pray that the message will be received on fertile soil and that we can all grow in this area together! Let me know what you plan on doing to increase your gratitude.

In every situation [no matter what the circumstances] be thankful and continually give thanks to God; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 Amplified Bible (AMP)