The Adventures of Team Epie: Busy Being Busy

I’ve been so busy that I’ve hardly had any time for myself in a while. With being 32ish weeks pregnant, having at least 2 doctors appointments a week, building a house, having a toddler, and company just about every week, I’ve kind of lost track of time. I’ve missed being able to write my thoughts down, and I’ve missed all the free time that I once had. Isn’t it funny that we always want what we don’t have? When I was less busy, I longed to be more, and now that I’m more busy, I long to be less. This morning, I find myself waking up at 6:30 AM with a million thoughts running through my brain. I wanted to take a moment to catch up on life and reflect on what I see, feel, and love.

Reflection 1: Sometimes business causes my spiritual life to suffer. I put other things in front of Christ, and I forget that it takes me cultivating a relationship with Him to be in a good spot in my spiritual walk. If I were to pour nothing into my relationship with my husband, daughter, or those close to me, those relationships would suffer as well. It’s no different with Christ. We must earnestly seek after Him with an open heart in order to have a healthy relationship. I forget this often, and I put Him in the backseat of my life, when in reality He should be the one to come first. It’s fitting that I would go to church last Sunday, and that the sermon would be about being caught in the business of life. What’s even more interesting is that I recently opened my bible to 1 Kings and found myself drowning in a sea or words without being able to decipher one from another. I quickly got overwhelmed and closed it only to move on to my next task. Funny that my pastor would choose to preach out of 1 Kings last week and what’s even more peculiar is when I logged online to listen to a sermon, that preacher also preached out of 1 Kings. I’ve decided to go back and read it again with a less cluttered mind and open heart to see what Christ has to say to me. There is obviously something I need to learn out of 1 Kings. I will be delighted to share whatever that is with any of you who are interested.

Reflection 2: Time is being stolen from me right before my very eyes. Olivia is 2 ½ already! When did this happen and where is my baby girl? With each passing day that goes, I find myself trying to freeze time in my head as best as possible. I don’t want to forget what a lovely toddler she is, and how enjoyably bubbly she is to be around. She is such a delight, and I can’t seem to get enough of her. She makes me laugh a whole lot (purposefully), and she amazes me with her heart. I know we all go through different stages during the course of our lives, but I am currently drowning in amazement with the daughter that God has given me because the stage that Olivia is in, is so completely heart melting. She’s the type of kid who is concerned with others. She will drop whatever toy she has to go give another child a hug and kiss in hopes of making them feel better when they are crying. She sings and dances with no inhibition whenever and wherever. She is constantly teaching me and growing me in ways I never thought. A most recent example is how she has already started to share God’s word with others with no reservations. She has been on this, “Jesus is coming back” kick, and she has made sure to share it with many people in the last couple weeks. It makes me look at my life and ask, if my two year old already knows how to share parts of the gospel, then why I am not doing the same? How many times does God put things in our hearts to share, and yet we refuse? How is it that my two year old has become better at reaching out to others in His name? In today’s society it is easy to become more concerned with teaching our children educational jargon rather then teaching them what’s most important, Christ. We get more concerned with which school our child attends rather then what church. We work with our children on memorizing the ABC’s before we ever work with them on memorizing any one scripture. Yet most of us believe that the gospel is the word of life or we claim we do, but we don’t act like it is. I am no different. I am guilty of doing all of the above. It is only recently that my eyes and heart have felt a heavy conviction to teach Olivia even more about Christ than what we have been doing already.

Reflection 3: I am blessed beyond measure. I get caught up on the things that I don’t have rather than the things that I do have (recently, none of which are material processions), and I forget how blessed I am. I will leave this reflection at that because the rest is too personal to share.

I think I mentioned a while ago that Makia and I finally found some land here and have purchased it. Since then, we have started designing our future home, and I am proud to announce that we are finished with the design of the floor plan. We are in the middle of picking out things such as flooring, stones, light fixtures, windows, and whatever else makes up the house. We went completely custom with this build, and I have enjoyed the processes immensely. My only complaint is that when we decided to do this, I had no intentions on getting pregnant. I’m a little nervous knowing that the same week I am due, is the same week we will start to pour foundation. We will see how it all goes into play, but I am so excited about the house, and especially excited about our little baby girl we will get to meet shortly. Olivia is super excited about becoming a big sister.