Happy Fall, Family Portrait Time, and Trusting the Father's Heart

  

  Hello Everyone,  I hope you are enjoying the fall season.  The weather here in Texas has been so strange.  It seemed we went from summer to a cold blast that felt like winter.  We had cold weather and rain that has now warmed up to feel like summer without the scorching temperatures.  I think it should cool off again and feel more like fall, but we will see.  

  Last week I had a surprise when I opened the mailbox and found this cute pumpkin inside.  Did you know that you can send a pumpkin through the mail?  I had no idea!  It had a label with our address and there it sat inside the box waiting for me to retrieve it.  This was such a fun surprise, and we appreciate our sweet relative who sent it to us.  :)  Little things like this mean so much!  

  I realize that we have several more weeks of fall, and then we will be thrust into the Christmas season.  I have some Christmas books prepared to read to my children during circle time and am getting excited over decorating for Christmas as well.  

  Tomorrow we take family photos, and preparing for the photo shoot has taken a lot of my time the last couple of weeks.  It does not seem like it should take so much time to prepare, but family photos for us usually involve trying to keep everyone well before the session, preparing nine full outfits including accessories, etc. and trimming hair as well.  It is just staggering how many little details go into all of it.  Here is a sneak peek; the three year old will be wearing this.  :) 

  

  Whenever we are going to do a photo shoot the first step for me is to come up with a color scheme.  Sometimes I have something in mind, but oftentimes it will be a particular outfit that I want to build our family wardrobe around.  This particular time it all started when I saw an outfit in a store that I thought was cute.  The store just happened to have it in the sizes my three middle girls wear.  So, I ended up buying matching outfits for the three middle girls and then worked from there.  As I add more outfits to the overall scheme of things I lay things out across my bed and see how all the colors work together.  One thing I am looking for is a balance of colors.  Our colors for this shoot will be navy, cream and a cranberry color.  What I wanted was not to have too much of one color but a nice balance.  

  After I have all the outfits worked out I move on to focusing on accessories.  This is a bracelet my oldest daughter will be wearing.  Then after everything is planned out I try to put together individual piles for each member of the family so that we can find what we need on picture day.  Currently I have piles covering my dresser.  In the individual piles are things like each person's shoes, accessories, hair things, socks, etc.  The outfits are hanging in my closet so as to avoid wrinkles.  All this preparation helps reduce the chaos as we are trying to all get ready to have the pictures taken.  Here is a picture from last year's photo session.  

When picture day finally arrives it is a full day event for us.  I have to make sure that everyone is bathed, dressed, hair fixed, nails clean, faces wiped, shoes on, etc. My oldest is good with fixing hair, so she is a big help to me in the hair department; I am really thankful for the help she provides, because we have a lot of hair to fix!  

  This time we are going to be incorporating some graduation photos of our oldest into our family session.  She should be graduating next year, so we are going to go ahead and take photos at this time.  I cannot believe we are already here; how has this happened so quickly?  She and I have had fun coming up with some fun ideas for her photos that include books, glitter, and sheet music.  It will be fun to see how these turn out.  

  In other news, the weeks seem to be flying by so rapidly and we seem to be in a season of waiting.  There are quite a number of things we have been praying about and the answers are just not coming yet.  I don't think that is every a comfortable place to be, but doesn't it seem that much of life is about waiting and trusting?  It is easy for me to grow discontent and anxious about things, but by the grace of God, I am better at trusting than I used to be.  Through experience I KNOW the past faithfulness of God,  and I know that the God Who has been faithful in the past will be faithful in the future! Sometimes He simply asks us to be still, wait and trust Him.  He also wants us to surrender our wills in the waiting.  Here is what Andrew Murray said about absolute surrender:

  

  Sometimes in the waiting we are reminded that there is nothing that we can do in and of ourselves.  As John fifteen tells us, we can do nothing apart from abiding in the vine. 

Just recently I found myself praying, "Lord, there is nothing I can do about such and such; please work this out according to your will."  Being in a place of complete inability to move circumstances  doesn't always feel good, but it is the place where Christ can show His power the strongest.  "In our weakness He is strong."  

  Right now I find myself praying over many things that I truly want answers to; in fact I wanted answers like yesterday, but God is working in me through the waiting.  It is part of His refining work in my life to have me wait upon Him and trust Him.  

  This morning the children and I sang that old hymn that says, "Trust and obey."  One thing that stuck out to me was the verse that says, "But we never can prove the delights of His love until all on the alter we lay."  Those are some powerful words; our Lord is asking us to lay our wills, our desires, and our plans on the alter and commit everything to Him.  

  Truly there is no safer more secure place to be than resting in our Father God's good and perfect will for us even if He is leading us blindfolded for the time being.  We can trust His heart towards us whether we see where the way is leading or whether we can't see clearly for the time being.  In His good and perfect timing He will take off the blindfolds, and we will see clearly where He has been leading all along.  I hope this is encouraging to you, as I am sure there are many of us waiting on this or that.  We can encourage one another that our Lord is faithful and is working even when we don't see what He is doing.  His heart towards us is always good, loving and kind.  May you be encouraged today!