Tim has been working on a new blog for a few weeks now, and I get to be a co-author! I’m not sure when Tim is officially launching it, but a few people have found it already and started leaving comments and interacting. It’s focus is for people who serve in ministry. There are so many blogs we can go to get advice about how to do ministry, but we wanted to make a place that will serve people who serve.

I’m really excited about the blog for a couple reasons.

1. I haven’t been very good at keeping up with this blog with taking care of 2 babies now. When I just logged in to type this up I noticed a blog post I wrote a while ago and just saved to publish, and didn’t even get around to doing that. Now I can write posts and Tim will get them published. Maybe sometime when the kids are a little older I will “re-launch” a personal blog to keep family and friends informed.

2. I have always dreamed about writing a book about life experiences of what I have learned going up as a PK and then becoming a Pastor’s wife. The blog isn’t a book, but it’s a start for me to share my experiences and hopefully help others.

If you want to keep up with our family personally, there is a variety of places to do that…

twitter.com/danadelynn

http://www.facebook.com/danaschmoyer

www.youtube.com/danaschmoyer - I’ve mainly been doing my weight loss updates. I’ve been trying to get them up every Monday, so tune in soon for the newest update! I’ve lost almost 30lbs in the last 3 months! I want to start doing a second update each week about what God is doing in my life, which has been a LOT lately, and it’s been great! I have really enjoyed making the youtube videos because it’s about as lazy and quick as it can get when I just use the camera on my computer and record right into youtube.

www.youtube.com/godrox - Almost daily vlogs of our family. Just a sneak peak into what we do each day.

www.ministryfamily.com  – And of course, our newest blog. I am really excited to see how God uses it!

Go check out MinistryFamily.com and please pass it on to those you think it could bless.

I almost constantly think of blogs that I can write, I just don’t take the time to sit down and write. I love to write, but usually Tim, the kids, laundry, dishes, and pretty much everything else comes first. So right now Hannah is napping, Zeke is feeding himself lunch, and the laundry is staying put.

This past weekend we had a few different graduation parties to go to. It was really fun to see people that we haven’t seen since last November and catch up on life. Probably the most common comment we got was about how big the kids have grown over the last 7 months. And the most common question I got was, “How are you doing?” and “What are you doing?”

I am very excited that my response to those questions is finally positive and life is looking up.

At the beginning of May I made the decision to attack every part of my life. From the physical to the spiritual. I started weight watchers, and began Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred, and also started attending our church’s women’s Bible study on forgiveness.

When everything started I was still dragging my heels, fighting with God, feeling like I had a right to be down in the dumps like I had been the previous 6 months. And now I am so thankful that those 6 months are over, and I am allowing God to work in my life again.

I am still doing weight watchers, for at least two more months. I completed 30 days straight of Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred, making it all the way to doing the last 10 days on level 3 difficulty. I have switched to working out three times a week with the 30 Day Shred, doing a different level of intensity each work out day, and going on a jog afterwards anywhere from 15-30 minutes. And the Bible study on forgiveness is still going strong.

As of today I have lost 18lbs with the combination of strength training with Jillian Michaels, jogging and weight watchers. I have also opened up to listening to God and what He wants to do with me. For six months I tried to figure out what happened at our last church. What were the motives behind the pastor? Why such a harsh exit? But through studying about Joseph and the way his brothers treated him, God showed me that it doesn’t matter why and how things happened. What matters is that I hand the situation over to God and trust God in what He is going to do, because God allowed everything to happen.

Probably one of the best things that has happened lately is that Tim and I became members at our church last week! I’ll have to write a separate blog about this good news.

Life is so much better now with so many changes going on. I feel good about myself for the first time in a long time. Too long of a time. I have energy to work with the kids and keep our house cleaner. And I’m learning to deal with life issues as they come and hand them over to God instead of holding on to a grudge like it’s my right.

Well, today was the 2nd day in a row and ever that Hannah hasn’t had an accident during the day in her big girl undies. I went cold turkey two Mondays ago and gave up diapers with Hannah. She’s known how to potty for a while now, it’s just training myself to stop what I’m doing to help her out. And this week she totally shocked me when we were out grocery shopping and Hannah said she needed to go, and I wasn’t in any position to figure out how to juggle our stuff and Zeke and take her, so I assumed she went in her pull-up…and she waited until we were home! Bless her heart, she is growing up so fast, only 21 months old!

And Mr. Zeke. Not much older than 7 months, has been crawling on all fours like a champ since we got home from Easter. And today I caught him pulling himself up to standing twice. Seriously kid? Slow down! I thought about pulling him down and making him sit, but figured that would just give him more practice to go and stand up again. At least, I’m hoping this means before we know it he’ll be strong enough to defend himself from Hannah.

Tim has been the best husband ever. I have grown to admire him even more over the past year with everything we’ve been through, good and bad. He’s chasing after a dream right now, and I’m glad he has the opportunity. So many men go through life never taking the risk to pursue what they are passionate about, and I don’t want Tim to look back and regret taking advantage of this time. It has taken me a little bit to finally get to this point of being supportive and not stressed about how we’re going to make it financially. But, God has been blessing us through providing for our needs. We don’t have much extra, but we’re getting by and growing.

And then there’s me…

Every day I am forcing myself to work out. I’m doing Jillian Michael’s 30 day shred. It’s only a 20 minute workout dvd, but she is tough! And Weight Watchers is going well. I still have things to figure out so I’ll be eating healthier. Hopefully in a couple more weeks I’ll have a better handle on it. And juggling the kids in with all of this. On top of getting healthy physically, I’m doing a women’s Bible study on forgiveness with our church. This is a very timely study for me, and I’ll have to write more about it later.

Last Wednesday I vlogged a little bit about what is going on in my life on a very personal level. I’m excited to see the outcome over the next 3 months. You can watch it here…

The only motivation I have right now to get healthy is that I want to feel better about myself. That motivation doesn’t get me excited to work out and eat healthy, but it’s enough to force myself to make better decisions.

Last Monday I started counting calories and on Wednesday I joined Weight Watchers. Last Monday I also started Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. I did day 8 today, moving up to level 2 for the first time. Both have taken lots of self discipline to do, and so far it’s paying off.

So after living this new way for a week I’ve lost…*drum roll please…* 8 lbs!

With being a fan of The Biggest Loser, I’m expecting a low number next week, which is probably healthy. Although I do believe on the Weight Watcher’s site it said the average to loose “after the first 3 weeks” is 1-2lbs. I’d be pretty pumped if I can loose quite a bit more in the next 2 weeks. It didn’t seem too hard to loose these first 8lbs while my body is just in shock from doing something healthy for the first time in a LONG time. Most of my struggle is how long it takes me to figure out what I can eat, and what to cook for dinner. I was about to eat some cheesy noodles with the rest of the family and put myself 3 points over my daily allowance, but I opted out and got more salad which made me hit my daily allowance perfectly.

I’m signed up with Weight Watchers for 3 months, and I’m praying I can stick with it. We’ll see what happens. I’m not sure how much I’ll blog about it, but I’m planning on making weekly videos on my youtube channel.

I was talking to my sister-in-law last week about how my faith in God has really grown over the last 9 months. One of the biggest areas I have grown in is my trust that God will provide the needs of my family. Its one thing to know in your head that God keeps his promises and will take care of us, but when you live through a situation when all you can do is trust, a whole new aspect of your beliefs come in to play.

My nervousness about how our family will make it financially surprised me. God totally blessed Tim and I while getting out of debt. And over the last few years I would’ve said my security is not in money. But when Tim lost his job I quickly learned that I had a tight grip on our money, trying to find security in it. I immediately worried about how we would pay for bills and groceries. And God immediately started providing for us.

Luckily we had our finances set up to where the money Tim made in the current month would pay for the next, the denomination we were in helped us out some, and God worked through people in the church to send us anonymous gift cards to walmart and target. Every time we got a gift card in the mail I cried thankful tears and was amazed with how amazing God is to provide just when we need it. And he provided again this morning at church from someone I don’t know.

I am thankful for this time of trials, and know we aren’t near the end. God has humbled me many times in the last several months and is teaching me a lot about myself.

We enjoyed this morning hunting Easter eggs at my parent’s church. They set it up so different age groups were in different areas so the babies wouldn’t get ran over by the big kids.
I loved being in the toddler group where the kids shared eggs with each other and then got tired of cleaning up someone else’s mess on the playground and decided to swing or slide instead.
That was a much more relaxing egg hunt than I remember having in elementary.

Don’t forget to vote each day through Friday for Tim in the YouTube Next Up contest.

Go here to vote.

If you see this Wednesday night make sure to put a vote in for Wednesday. And then you have 2 more days to vote. Tim needs all the votes he can get in order to make it to the next round, and then it’s out of our hands. And after Friday we’ll stop bugging everyone several times a day, and go back to our normal lives.

Does anyone else feel like Sunday mornings are a battle? After about a week of not sleeping well and thinking it couldn’t get any worse, on Saturday I probably got a solid 2 hours of sleep between Zeke fussing all night (turns out he is going through a growth spurt) and Hannah waking up at 5am.

While getting around on Sunday with my almost 2 year old, who just discovered the terrible twos, throwing tantrum after tantrum and a mom (me) who pretty much didn’t have a fuse at all, things did not go well. I was thinking yesterday morning of how much spiritual warfare we battle on Sunday mornings. No wonder we grow up learning to put on our best faces when you walk in the doors of the church. We pushed through and went to the early service (for nap time schedule, and we were already up), and things luckily got better at church. When asked how our family was doing, my response was, “We probably just had our worst morning yet.” We weren’t good, or fine, or great. We already had a meltdown and forced ourselves to continue.

Going to church yesterday was an act of worship in itself. An act of sacrifice of not giving in to the battle of a changed schedule. And I have Tim to thank for being the level headed one yesterday making it work. All I was looking forward to was going back home and taking a nap.

Hannah did give me a little comic relief in the midst of her fits. She pushed Zeke down, therefore had to go sit in timeout. When she was done with timeout, she wanted Zeke to have to sit for a minute. Oh I can just imagine what these two will get in to when Zeke can fend for himself.

I have no doubt that God is going to do amazing things through Ezekiel. Right now he just has to survive the parenting that Tim and I put him through. We pray every day for wisdom in raising Hannah and Zeke to grow up as believers in Jesus Christ, living out a personal faith.

When we were pregnant with Hannah we had Ezekiel picked out for a boy name, and when we got pregnant with Zeke and found out he was a boy, there was no doubt what his name would be. We knew that picking a name as strong as Ezekiel was bold in our expectations for our son and how God will use him. If you haven’t read the book of Ezekiel, I highly recommend it. It was the middle name that took us until the lady who needed his name for the birth certificate came in asking. And luckily he got a good one .

I can look back through my life and see God working in special ways to touch my heart. My first memory of this was when I was five. And God continues to do little things to keep me in awe of his wonder and love. So how do I know he is going to use Ezekiel? …

Before we got pregnant with Zeke I was struggling with God, wanting to control how many kids we will have an when. As if I knew the best timing, more so than God. So I had to give that control issue over to God. And what do you know, it didn’t take any time at all to be carrying my second child.

While in my first trimester Tim went to Haiti and came back knowing that he needed to return. I saw an incredible change in Tim from his time in Haiti. God really worked in him. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but now I know that Tim grew in his understanding of God, being able to discern God’s voice and listen and be obedient. I have loved watching Tim grow over the last year, and leading others to do the same.

So Tim decided to go back to Haiti, and take whoever wanted to go along. I joined a team of adults and youth, some from our church, and some friends and family of ours from out of town. I was just in my second trimester while in Haiti and had no problems at all.

Later that summer, we went to Mexico with another team of adults and youth from our church for a missions trip. I was 30 weeks along in my pregnancy then, but again did well throughout our trip.

Soon after we got back from Mexico things started changing at our church and it soon became clear that our time there was coming to an end. I had my most difficult week of my pregnancy with how stressful things got. Luckily my doctor assured me that my level of stress wouldn’t effect Zeke, it just made me incredibly uncomfortable being pregnant. Then after Zeke was born I was blessed to have my mom around since Tim didn’t have time off.

In the midst of everything I thought that my pregnancy with Zeke was the worst timing ever. At one point close to delivery not only were we dealing with things at church, but also the question of Tim’s grandfather surviving some difficult health issues. (He’s still around and doing great!) I was so stressed, but gave it all over to God, because there was nothing I could do but trust.

I have come to find that Zeke and Hannah both have been a source of great joy during this season of life. We have been so blessed by our two adorable children, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. Zeke has a special place in my heart with everything he has gone through with me before he was even born. And now we look forward to what God is going to do with what he is teaching us and taking us through. I’m not surprised to see this time of trial after how much Tim’s faith has grown last year, and us together as a married couple by sharing in the amazing experiences that drew us closer to God at the same time. I’m not exactly thrilled to be going through this time, but I do look forward to the fruit that will come from it.