Us as elves lol

So Toogood elfed his whole family and it made me laugh a lot lol. So just had to do it and disgrace the Boydos as well.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1583668197

Happy Christmas to all!

What are these people doing?

I cannot for the life of me believe that these people did this. Surely they know that people are totally making fun of them. Seriously...... come on. Do they not having any friends or family who love them enough to stop them doing the most humiliating thing of their lives. lol

I am totally scundered watching it!

No Fear, No Envy, No Meaness

Cannot for the life of me get this phrase out of my head.

A very wise old man (joking about the old) shared it a few nights back and I'm convinced it is the key to living a great and happy life.

If we fear someones talent, gift or anointing, we ultimately become envious and then start acting mean. It's a natural progression!

What a challenge to try and avoid this from happening. All too important in ministry - that we don't have a fear of those who may be bigger and better than us. Its all for the kingdom anyway and the glory goes up - or does it??

No Fear! No Envy! No Meaness!

Bad Googling.....

I went online last night with the intentions of ordering some Christmas Cards from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Every little helps in the fight to find a cure!
I think I may have made the fatal error of having a wee nosey round their site. Something I haven't done in the 2 years of Lily being here and being diagnosed with that condition believe it or not. And it has totally freaked me out.

There's everything on there - including a 'star in the sky' memorial page, for families to assign a star to the person they've lost to CF. It's hard to close the page - so I found myself clicking on several stars just to see the faces of people who have lost their lives to this condition. The positive thing was that most of recent additions where adults - but all around 30. It does show that the survival age/rate has increased, but on the down side there still is no cure.

So instead of closing the page I went on another search to see what I could find. And I found blogs, bebo pages all dedicated to spreading the awareness of the condition.

Like it or not, this condition affects us. I don't want to outlive my daughter - who does? That's not the way it should be.
If anything it's made even more anxious about her healing. I believe God is protecting her, but to see her healing manifest itself is really what I long for.

I guess when I look at Lily I don't see someone who is sick - anything but. Facts tell me though that as she gets older the disease in theory should present itself more clearly. She'll be admitted to hospital for most of her life - till she eventually might struggle breathing.

So what do we do in moments like this?

Do I choose to believe the facts - expecting this chain of events to occur in Lilys life? Do I accept that, because someone or a website tells me that it's going to happen?

How easy it is to believe doctors. But as intelligent as they are - they don't have the last word. There's a name bigger than cystic fibrosis, in fact bigger than any disease or illness. It's not as in your face believable as the so-called 'facts' so it's not as easy to accept the chain of events that can take place through faith in this name.

But the truth is as a Christian - I should have more trouble believing the facts and the natural than believing the spiritual because the spiritual should be the reality in my life. The spiritual declares health, healing and wholeness - and that needs to be reality. That needs to be fact.

I guess this is what is known as living by faith and not by sight.

So I'm choosing faith - and refuse to accept this so called chain of events for Lily.

Josie Rafya Boyd

5 days over but she finally got here and made her glorious arrival on Thursday 25th October.
I had all the girlies from my cell group pray for me a week or so before the birth and shared with them all the things running through my mind like the pain, the speed, the timing and the health of me and baby.
I can honestly say that every single prayer was answered and I don't think I could've asked for a more perfect birth. It was brilliant.
Missed rush hour traffic, was seen straight away, got all the pain relief I needed - and even had a moment this time round to pray in the middle of it all lol.

Aaron and I played Dave Crowders Remedy album over and over again. It's amazing how random things can sound when you're on the old gas and air. Love that stuff - as does Aaron who managed to have some himself in between my usage. He really has to be every midwifes worst nightmare.

So the perfect birth, topped off with the results that Josie doesn't have Cystic Fibrosis. So Rafya (meaning God heals) is her middle name. A truth for her and a prophetic statement for Lily. God does heal.

The Boydos have extended to 4 - apparently we're having 5 kids, but we'll see. lol

Rage v Grace

So on Saturday night past, we had the joys of someone walking into our house in the middle of the night and helping themselves to our beautiful macbook, Aaron's new mobile, our house phone, my purse and camera.
Yeah you got me - they just walked in!!

In the hype of contractions (that didn't come to anything in the end) we ended up forgetting to lock our front door. And so made it very accessible for someonw to just come on in.
Obviously we've had lots of comments "oh you should always lock your door". Duh - bit of an obvious one really, and a lesson/mistake that we've learned from.

It seems in moments like this that people tend to pass blame onto us for not locking our door and almost come at us with this attitude of "it serves you right".

Yes we made a fatal mistake - but surely the issue is about people thinking they have the right to walk into our house and help themselves to our property without our permission.

Yeah we're raging our stuff was stolen - who wouldn't be. We're even hearing rumours that people know who did it and where this person lives. We've even driven past the said house.

I've been reading Shane Claibournes book 'An irristable Revolution' and it's stirred my thinking of how ordinary people in ordinary moments can be radicals in their response to things.
We dedided the other day to give some money away after our walk in (cos I can't call it a break in).
Well to be honest - Aaron gave it away to someone before we confirmed who we'd give it to. But I had thoughts of dropping it through the door of this house where apparently our little theif lives. He's obviously in need of something if he feels the need to steal. How different - instead of blessing nice people who deserve it, we bless the people who annoy us and in a way don't deserve it. What a true example of extended Grace!
Being an ordinary Radical! Well we've no money left to give, cos we went down the nice people route - but I'm regretting not giving it our little friend the theif.
Who knows what Acts of Random Kindness (stolen from Evan Almighty) can do to a persons soul.
It's funny cos there's nothing but christian music on the itunes on the laptop, accompanied by sermon notes and videos. Maybe he'll read something, maybe he'll change, or maybe he won't. Who knows?

But Grace wins everytime.

He might get some grace yet!

3 years

So it's been a whole 3 years of marriage for me and the lovely Aaron as of Tuesday 9th October. Friday marked another milestone of being together for 8 years and I can't believe it at all.
We seemed to have come so far.
I'm still totally in love with the love of my life - and it really has been an amazing 3 years of marriage.

People always seem so negative when you start saying that you're getting married. I can remember when we got engaged - and hearing lots of comments "oh that's you now". Then you have the good old insights of people who struggled when they got married - "oh the first year's the worst". And then when you announce you're pregnant - "oh that's really you now, sleepless nights, social life is no more."

And guess what - number 2 is nearly here and "having 2 is a whole new league, it really ties you down."

It seems as though everyone is really keen to place their own experiences automatically onto you. Aaron and I got really annoyed at this when the first round of comments came flying in when we got engaged. We rebuked every negative word that was spoken over us time and time again.

And here we are - either we're still living in that honeymoon period (though I'm pretty sure we're not), or we're just simply living our life our own way - blessed by God.
Life with Lily is truly amazing. And guess what - she is like the most amazing sleeper ever, and if anything we are still as busy if not busier. She comes too.
And apparently "you never get 2 the same". Well we've rebuked that as well..... so we'll see.

Rant officially over lol!

Greater Things....

I finally got my hands on Bluetrees' Greater Things album today. Even though it's been out for a week, I only managed to physically get one today - looks like being married to a band member counts for nothing these days!!

If you read this you'll automatically think I'm bias towards the boys, which I probably am - but this album is truly amazing. I can't believe that after the journey we've all been on together - that this album is finally here, and it really is up there.

God has moved so much through the most random people to get this produced and into physical existence. It's fresh, exciting and is really easy listening. I've heard all the songs a million times over anyway, but this really does send shivers down my spine at how quality it is.

Greater things have yet to come....... if this is the only the start of the Bluetree journey, I can't even imagine what the end will be.

The boys have made me proud!

How do you pray?

Over the last month or so I've been looking into the whole topic of prayer. When you're praying for something continuously and not really seeing it answered - you have to start wondering if you're approaching it wrong.
So I started reading every verse in the bible about prayer and just thinking about what God's word says about it.
There's a dolly mixture of verses in there that say really different things - from being persistent, to simply asking at it yours... so I did end up getting a bit consused to be honsest.

I'm a big fan of Andrew Wommack and didn't realise that he has written a book called A Better Way to Pray - the audio teaching is online as well. I don't know about anyone else, but I totallly don't get to read as much as I used to, so Amen to listening to sermons. It's great!

In the last week I've been simply listening to this teaching and delving into the book now and then to remind myself what I've heard, and I've been totally blessed simply hearing and understanding what prayer is all about.

I've found a great freedom, understanding that I don't have to spend an hour a day (or whatever length of time) in prayer to God. Sometimes we can spend all day thinking we haven't spent anytime with God at all - but the truth is we have. He can be in everything we do. Andrew Wommack talks about spending time with your partner. You can be in their presence all day long, yet not have any intimate time with them and it doen's mean you love them any less or they love you any less. It's about just enjoying the company of each other. But intimate times are still important for any relationship. You still need to have alone time - you still need to do something as couple.
And we need to apply this is our relationship with God. We need to learn to enjoy His company - whether that's playing with the kids, meeting friends or work. God is still there and we can involve Him is everything. It's about keeping short accounts throughout the day. But intimate times alone with Him is still required at some point.

I seriously recommend reading this book or listening to the teaching.

Seriously....

So I'm here, ready to join the blogging world. Totally surprised at how easy it is to do - so now there's no excuse really.
I'm totally bewildered at the fact I have no recent/decent photos of me in the last year, so the pic is a from a few years ago, so I must get clicking to get a more recent one.

So I've 7 weeks or so to go before the grand (and by that I mean painful) arrival of baby number 2. I still can't believe it sometimes that I'm a mum already let alone nearly a mum of 2.
I'm excited, way more scared this time cos I know what it involves, but totally waiting in expectation to see what appears at the end of October.

I guess the big thing for us is the anticipation and hope that this baby won't have cystic fibrosis. I'm not exactly sure what I honestly feel about this yet - haven't thought about it too much to be perfectly honest, because I know that it's out of my control.
In my heart of hearts though, deep down, my instinct (or spirit) is telling me that it's completely healthy.
2 days before finding out that I was pregnant, I was getting ready and felt God prompting me to pray for our next baby - and to pray specifically for chromosome number 7.

To be perfectly honest I felt a bit stupid as I sat there with my hand on my tummy and spoke health and perfection into something that I thought wasn't there. Little did I know - God was already knitting this new baby together and 2 days later we found out we where pregnant.

I haven't really shared this with anyone - I guess part of me doesn't want my instinct to be wrong. There's something scary about being bold enough to make such statements in fear that the outcome will be different.

I was reading the book of Daniel recently - where Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego where placed into the fiery furnace. Before the door is closed they say - "our God will save us, but even if he doesn't we want you to know that we will never serve you."
God's sovereignty is never in question!! God is always good no matter what. God will heal, but even if He doesn't He'll still be Lord.

So that's my thoughts for the day lol - and it's heart on my sleeve where I'm at.