Live Out Loud - Adventures of a mom

I continue to learn so much as I immerse into every opportunity I have in becoming part of my kids' public school experience.  I am blessed to be part of a school that has an awesome school, great staff, and caring parents.  Of course, there are challenges, too.  One of them being that the drop off and pick up traffic is often, for a lack of words, quite hectic, chaotic and even dangerous. I don't know what caused me to care about this to the point of putting words into action but on a random day, I just decided to write an email to our city councillor.  Note:  I had never even met this guy but on this random day, I had gotten a random email newsletter from him reporting on changes to traffic signs in an adjacent school.  So I clicked 'reply' and wrote him about my concerns about the school.  I shared with him these were concerns that had been voiced by parents in our school council but that I was writing him for advice as a concerned parent. To...

So a few weeks ago I caught a facebook post by a friend asking what makes people say that things change when you turn 40.  It was interesting how many people chimed in and shared their views on what made their 40s better, same or worse....and that caused me to think back to the last 40 decades of my life...yes, I will turn 40 this year...WAIT....not till end of the year. Do I eagerly expect great things to happen in my 40's?  Yes.  I believe greater things are still yet to come because God isn't done showing me what life is all about. But as I look back to my 30's, 20's, teens and childhood....I realized several things: 1)  Each decade brought me joy in different ways 2)  Each decade brought me tears and heartache in different ways 3)  Each decade was lived to its fullest and to the best of my abilities 4)  Each decade had God's footprints all over, carrying me through, His fingerprints testifying His involvement in sharing experiences with me,...

For the last few days I've been feeling this weird uneasiness around my kids' school.  I volunteer there quite often but something didn't seem 'right' for the last few days.  I tried to ignore this because I thought it is probably nothing. Then today I felt compelled I needed to call other Christian moms I know in the community and pray for the school.  Again, I brushed it off, thinking everyone already knows we ought to pray and maybe I was making much about nothing. Then as I chow down my morning snack I turned on the TV and saw on CNN that there had been another stabbing in the US - in a High School - with about 20 kids hurt many of them with life threatening wounds. I usually would pour into the TV to find out more.  I love news. Today, strangely, I turned off the TV and proceeded to write an email to those mommies.  I had to. Because I knew this was God telling me - WOULD you just listen, Sandy? Ok, Lord, I'm listening now.  What's happen...