The Emojis of life

I'm delighted about summer vacation.  Truly. It's been a long year.

Not in a bad way!  Our school year has been fantastic!  For sure ups and downs, fear and confidence. Homeschool can stir up all the emojis. 😄

Speaking of Emoticons, if I could share my top 5, this is what they'd be:

😴😍😭🙌😡

so, let me explain these

1. 😴  pretty self explanatory! Lots going on this year, including packing which tired me out the most.  Grading papers and helping the kids study for tests equally tired me out!   Detoxing, cleaning & organizing VERY much tired me out.   And not sleeping.  That really tired me out too.

2. 😍  this one's obvious too. How can you not have heart eyes?   We traveled twice,  designed and built a house,  and live here now!  Spring has come, summer will eventually,  and i have energy for walks.

3. 😭   this happened a lot.  stress of course, well, stress stress stress.  And i am not one to handle stress well!  However, through out this year, I've learned to take my thoughts a little more captive and understand just how toxic stress is to physical health.  This alone has helped me through many days of stress!   Grief has also plagued me as I think back to the yesteryears of life.  I'm learning how to work through this.  I read a book recently that asked these important questions:  

"what time is it?"  NOW
"where are you?"  HERE

"We spend too much time thinking about anger, worry, fear, etc,  and because of it we miss out on the present"

4. 🙌   Living out in the country has really brought out the praise in me.   Praise you God for peaceful walks. Praise you god for a warm cozy fireplace.  Praise you God that we can afford organic food.  Praise you God for energy.   Praise you God for monthly trips to the cities.   Praise you God for such good sales on desires we had for the house.   Praise you God for seasons.

5.  😡  I maybe shouldn't have ended with this emoji 😂   It certainly is not the most important one, and is not the most dominant!  But it is a part of life.  There are many times of madness in this home, but the trick is letting it go.   Wow, that is hard!   hard hard hard.   There have been many sticky situations that I have had to convince myself to just LET. IT. GO.   Force it out of the being of my mind.   The truth is, all thoughts take up space. They have to go somewhere. And where do they go?  They settle in your body.   This my friends, is one contribution of poor health.

"If any man desires long health, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking lies"

"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to God. 

Thank you Lord, for teaching me!