I See YOUR Peanut

The other day I sat with my two girls and had a nice relaxing lunch.  Instead of eating on the go or standing up, I SAT DOWN (yes, Mommy you can sit down to eat from time to time). It was so very nice to sit and chat with my four year old and make annoying sounds to my one year old. I think I forget that Haylee is fully capable to understand me even when I don't talk to her like a little baby! As we sat and enjoyed our lunch I busted out my spicy peanuts that my dad gave me.  I really didn't want to share them because they are soooo yummy but that's when you know you've grown as s person and mommy. When you are willing to give your last bite or share something that you really really like with your children. Or husband or boyfriend or cat? Well nonetheless, as soon as the plastic crackled from my fingers starting to open the bag they KNEW I had something yummy.  Mind you at this point I'm still thinking I can "hide" the bag behind the cereal box and sneak them into my mouth without recognition. But NOPE.  Haylee starts nagging and signing for "more" and Maddy asks me to share with her. . So I share.  ONE peanut with Haylee first and Maddy looks at Haylee-looks at her peanut and then at me and says "momma, where's mine?" Mind you, I had already given her ONE peanut and it was RIGHT in front of her, but she was too busy looking at the sisters peanut and then complaining to me that I hadn't given her one to notice. WOW. What a teachable moment. For ME! 

I love when God disciplines me through me disciplining my children. It's quite hilarious. I understood him telling me that if I am caught up looking at someone else's peanut, I will never notice or enjoy my own. The act of coveting, comparison and complaint toward God are slipery slopes for me.  They trap me in a lie that I have not enough. I get stuck  in a paradigm of scarcity instead of one of plenty. When I am focusing on how God is blessing someone else and wishing I had that, I forget to look at the blessings right here in my life. I forget how BIG and loving God is and that he wants to bless me and has the capability to do so. But my attitude first needs to change. No matter what God gives me, if my attitude is one of ungratefulness and looking at the glass half empty, nothing he ever does for me will ever be enough. I want to re-wire my thinking. I want everyday to be a day of gratitude. I want to keep my eyes focused on my relationship with God and be grateful for what I already have. 

I hope you can focus on your peanuts with me! Together we can ALL eat our peanuts and enjoy that God has plenty for all of us. We serve a POWERFUL AND MIGHTY GOD! 

Go to LIBIERREYNOLDS.com for other ways to connect with me! Facebook, YouTube, Instagram.  

Stay blessed and stay saucy!

Love, Libier

Working Hard Or Hardly Working

I don't know how much you know me but if you do know me at all you know that I have 101 ideas runing through my head daily about cool things I want to do. Projects I want to dig my teeth into, crafts I want to start, classes I want to teach. If you came up to me on any given day and asked me what "ideas" were jogging down my membraine, I could easlily rattle off at least 2-3 (I'm being a little more realistic here, see?).

With that comes a greater chance that the 2-3 ideas perusing in my mind, will never come to fruition. I really don't know why I do that ( I think I was just made a do'er) but sometimes it's exhausting in my brain! Sometimes I wish I could not have any ideas at all. But then again that wouldn't really be me.

Aaaany waaaay! I've been taking a hard look at the makeup of myself and seeing how I tend to like to do a lot of things, however, I'm not AMAZING at any ONE thing. Not that it's a terrible thing, but when I think of why, the answers always comes to me with "well I don't think I'm working hard enough" at the things I really do love. For example. I love to dance, I wasn't classically trained but I do love it. I can pick up choreography and dance like it's the last thing I'll ever do. BUT I can't say that at ANY given point I really worked extremely hard at getting really really good. I've lacked discipline.

WHY? Well I can't tell you easily that it just comes down to being a tad bit lazy and scared of failing. Because when I do something kind of half-assed, I don't run the risk of failure, or embarrassment, or hurting myself in any way. In other words I have to be willing to go all in and be okay with failing dramatically in order to say, I've worked hard at something. I'm not that kind of person. I don't want to "fall". I like to play it safe and stay within my comfort zone because there I can pretend that I'm this cool person that makes no mistakes right? Ha, even saying that sounds so ridiculous. People are always going to have some opinion about me. People are not always going to agree with me or even like me. So why do I get so hung up on not working really hard and falling really hard in order to get really good at something I love, for the sake of looking stupid in front of someone that probably doesn't even think that in the first place. They are probably just having a lot of gas that day and that's why their face looks weird and to ME it looks as if  they are in disapproval of what I'm doing! Ahhh that was a lot to get off my chest. I don't even know if this blog is making ANY sense AT all. So if you're reading this and a million of question marks are filling your brain, I do apologize but I'm feeling really good and vent-Y right now. And that's not even a word, so there!

I guess all in all, I want to work on not trying to "impress" the gassy man next to me and just live my life and work hard at the things I love to do. In the end, it's hard work that gets the results we are all looking for. You reap what you sow, don't cha know? I want to make a pledge to work on my talents in a way that is pleasing to myself. I also want to work on not being scared of falling, because when we fall it means we're going all out at something we really love. Believe it or not, I came to this conclusion by watching my toddler. She doesn't care what people are thinking of her. To her, the world is only a poke away and she is curious about everything. She doesn't stop when she can't get the cap off the stinkin' toothpaste. She continues on; even if it means sliping from the chair she dragged all the way from the kitchen to get a better view of our sink. After she falls off, she climbs back on the chair and by God she finishes unscrewing that cap! What resilience. Did she ever turn to look at my weird face? NOPE!

 Don't be scared to get back on that horse and gallop right into your dreams.

Stay blessed and stay saucy!

-Libier

Let's Do Some Comparing Shall We!

For the better part of my life, I've been a true competitor. I love playing board games, I love being in an environment that allows my competitiveness to move me forward to new heights. Most times, I am in full competition with myself-trying to beat personal bests and all! I know that I was made this way for a reason, most days I can say that my "competitive edge" gives me a lot of benefits. However, there are times when I wish I would just be cool! I've been on a total- let's analyse the crap out of everything in my life lately so that I can become a better person-and in that, I've found that my competitiveness enables my comparison of others feature. Let me explain...

For the most part, I think I'm a pretty nice girl. I do good things and I'm "generally" good. There are sides of me that you don't even want me to tell you about that are pretty nasty. But for the most part, I'm a pretty cool cat (I think??) If I sit here in my competitiveness, comparing myself to other people, I will always be in the middle. I won't ever be as GREAT as Mother Teresa, but I'll always be "better" than someone else... I have decided that this is something I truly need help with because by comparing myself to the uttermost good weighed against the most horrible, I find myself in a mediocre middle state. Placing my judgment butt all over someones face and feeling LESS than someone else. God doesn't see us and say, "Oh Faloula is such a great person, a much better person than chippy-dip over there". He sees us Even-Stevens. We ALL have our good sides and we ALL have our dark sides. We all have a cross to bear, why is it okay for me to think your cross is more awful than mine? It's not!
No matter how we perceive it, NO one on this earth is better than anyone else in God's eyes.

I just want to stop it (tangent: you should hear my toddler saying STOP IT, it's sad but it makes me laugh inside) I want to be able to just work vertically, me and God. Trying to love on all of the people around me and not pretending that I'm either better or less than someone else. You know what I am? Me, just me. I will never measure up to anyone else because I am a unique gal that God loves as equally as the next guy. And that is okay with me.

Stay blessed and stay saucy!

-Libier

The Power of Prayer

Have you ever wondered if your prayers are being answered? Well you are definitely not the only one my amigo! I have struggled so many times wondering what God was telling me in response to many of my prayers. There have been many times I've actually thought that my prayer was being answered, however it was only ME trying to shove a square peg in a round hole. I've tried to make God follow my lead and that is really narcissistic of me since I really have no clue what piece of the puzzle I really am to God's amazing creation. My life, (although most times I think I'm the most important thing in the world) is really not what this "Broadway Show" is about. God is the Producer of this show called "Life" and I am maybe an over achieving splinter of wood on the stage so to speak. I have to remind myself that it is really not ALL about me and that sometimes the prayers I come to God with, might not be in the  BEST interest of our show. I have to rely on the fact that God does promise to have plans to prosper me and not to harm me, plans to give me hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11  

See, God does not work like a genie in a bottle. It's not like I say, "Man, I wish I had three unicorns and a Popsicle wrapped in bacon" and poof all my wishes came true! Sometimes I wish it were like that, but what fun would it be if we were able to have everything we ever wanted in life? Maaaybe a little  fun- but after a while it would get old and we would be wishing for a more "boring" life. See, only He knows what we really need. Only He knows our perfect plan. Even we, when we sit down and really think about it, know what we truly need. God might not give us what we want at the time but He ALWAYS gives us what we need. If I ever have doubts as to God's answer to any of my prayers, I can sit down a couple of weeks later after I've prayed and prayed and I can totally see what God has done in my life. Maybe He didn't answer the way I would have (from time to time I DO suggest many solutions to my problems to Him, I really don't know why He hasn't listened, I come with many great ideas)! But looking back I sit in awe of how gracious He is to me. And when I have a different perspective I SEE why it couldn't of turned out the way I so desperately wanted it to! Our timing is not God's timing. Our solution is often not His. Ultimately if I trust God as much as I can muster, I am always overwhelmed at the amazing ways He answers my prayers.

 Sometimes  God blesses me with what I pray for. Sometimes He tells me, not now but look at what else I've got for you. Sometimes God changes my heart to not want or "need" what is in my prayers.  The more you are in communication with God, (because that's what prayer is friends, just a friendly dialogue with Him) the more attuned we get to God's answers.  Prayer is the most powerful thing you'll ever be able to do in life. You'll find a way to understand so many things about your life and it will transform you heart, I can promise you that! It has happened to me. I've never been more at peace with who I am than when I started sharing my day with God and being in constant communication. Bringing all my problems and concerns to Him. It's like having a top notch- super good -therapist on call 24/7... FOR FREE!

Make a point to praise God and thank him for what He is doing in your life.

Stay blessed and stay saucy!

-Libier

If You've Lost A Parent For Any Reason...

I know how much you've been hurt. Nothing on this earth can ever replace the loss of a father or a mother. Be it whatever circumstance- your mother not being able to be there for you because she battles with depression or your father unable to be there for you because his best friend used to be the bottle of vodka you so desperately poured down the drain to prevent him from taking another drink. Or simply because death came so unexpectedly and took one of your parents or both, or any other horrible circumstances...The bond that one forms with a parent is something that is out of this world. A bond so ferocious that if broken can leave you feeling lost, void, and looking for something in this life, in this world, to fill what you crave the most-guidance to the one and only who can be the ultimate and perfect FATHER.  I can say that God provided me with the perfect parents to make me turn to Him. In many ways both my mother and my father have let me down and I've had to turn to God for fulfillment. In many ways the good in both of my parents has given me hope that one person can not be judged solely on the wrong they've done. I've seen God work in both of my parents now as an adult and can happily say that he has saved my father from a massive alcohol addiction and is currently working on my beautiful mother on her battle with anxiety and depression.


Trying to be positive has helped me in my walk with God. However, it's been through prayer that God has used my brokenness and vulnerability. I've let God get in my soul to show me why I've done some of the dumbest things in my life. Forgiving and letting go of all the anger, sadness and resentment has provided me with so much healing and peace. It has not been easy, but I would not have it any other way, it has provided me with a close and intimate relationship with God that I never would of had otherwise.  The interesting thing is that everything that I think has been a mistake in my life reverts back to wanting my parent's approval and love. It goes back to that bond. God knows who our parents are going to be and he knows what children He is going to entrust onto us. He knows that we are at some point going to be let down or be the ones to let someone down. Even the most wonderful of parents can let their children down from time to time. Or they can be taken away from this life too soon (in this case, don't regret the time you didn't have with them and run through a list of all the things you could'a, would'a, should'a done. Instead, be grateful for the time you DID have and those precious moments that were a gift of God).

The world is going to let us down! I will say it again, the world and the people in it, even the ones we love the most, are going to let us down. That is why God has to be the answer to our search. The void we so eagerly want to fill with sex, shoes and cigarettes will only and forever be satiated with a close relationship with our creator, God Almighty.

I hope that if you are reading this and you find yourself in my shoes you can be able to ask God for your own healing. I pray this super crazy-sauce because I've never felt more full and joyful in my life than at this time. This is where the healing begins...

Stay blessed and stay saucy!

-Libier

How To Deal With A Broken Heart.

My heart was broken last weekend. I'm not at all ready to say why or to write about it. But I am ready to say that if I didn't have God in my life a broken heart could of broke so many other things. I find that the closer I get to God the more amazing the spiritual battles get. The "devil" is ready and charging at me with his best "stuff". But you know what, if God is for me, who can be against me? No one, that's right! I have to learn to allow myself to hurt when crappy circumstances come into my life. I try to be so strong and so positive that I forget sometimes that being vulnerable and broken is where I need to be at that point in my life. So right now I'm broken and vulnerable, however I'm still joyful and trusting that God is mending me better than I was before. Trusting God and believing He has his hand in all of our lives is not easy. And it doesn't mean that you can't feel sad or frustrated. It's just a feeling of peace within the storm that you are being loved and taken care of, and trusting with all your might that a wonderful blessing WILL come from all of your yucky circumstances!

I hope you all are having a beautiful day!

Stay blessed and stay saucy!

-Libby Lu

What's Love Got To Do With It?

One of my first experiences with love, aside from family love, was my first boyfriend Zachary. He and I had this captivating love that started as explosively as a firework and ended just as fast. We had been in our relationship for a week and had already said the “I love you”s. Sadly, he had to move to Oregon because his parents were making him, (of course it wasn’t his idea, he was too in love with me to move) and so our love ended. It was the summer of fourth grade and I just knew my life would never be the same. We couldn’t keep up a long distance relationship, so we said our goodbyes. He left me with a love letter and a rock shaped as a heart- awesome! I cried my little heart out. I really didn’t know if my life would go on. I just recently read some of my journal entries from this very tumultuous time in my life and I couldn’t help but laugh, but in my ten year old me’s defense, what I felt for Zachary was the kind of love that cultivates in a week and you literally have no idea if your heart will ever be able to love again. Obviously, my heart loved again… again and again.

With every relationship I learned something about myself. Sometimes it would be something wonderful and others it would be just terrible. Baggage I wouldn’t want anyone else to know about me.  So I moved on, hoping that the next relationship would not expose the nastiness inside of me. But that’s the funny part about relationships. Someone will always make the little “monsters” in us come out to play when we least expect it. My experience of love without God in my life was conditional and self-seeking. It wasn’t until I got married that I realized that I was meant to love differently. No matter how many times my heart got broken, I was made to love time after time because love is a choice! The fireworks that I felt with Zachary when I was ten were the same fireworks I felt with any new boyfriend and especially my husband. However, the fireworks fizzled and that feeling of butterflies in my stomach was always something of the past. There had to be something else driving that love so it could sustain itself. The choice had to be to remain interested and wanting to make my husband feel respected and loved.  Not wondering what he has or hasn’t done for me lately (For the record I just want to say that what I just described is my ultimate wife persona. She is with me from time to time but other personas enjoy playing as well. Such as the nagging persona, the hormonal persona, the “You-don’t-care-about-my-new-haircut-so-that-means-you-don’t-love-me”persona, so on and so forth. I am not at all a perfect wife. I wish I could be, but this “choice” is ultimately the best version of me). Being married has sure taught me a few things about love.

June 2007- church bells are ringing!  We came home from our honeymoon and normalcy settled in. I felt a sense of uneasiness. I had no idea what I had signed up for. I thought that love and marriage were these perfect little butterflies that would flutter around the house everyday and we would always be smiling and he would always be my knight in shining what-cha-ma-call-it. We courted for only 5 months, got engaged, and in 5 more months we were locked in. So, you can see we didn’t know ALL the icky-ickies about each other yet, yet being the KEY word here. As our first year of marriage pressed on like a supercharged train, we went along for the ride. Finding many joys in the marriage as well as many dark moments in which we needed a higher power to help us! At one point in our marriage, I was having problems with an issue I’ve been battling with for a long time and I remember being so shattered inside that at that moment I thought I was unlovable by anyone. I was scared for my husband to see my brokenness. I thought that if he saw me this weak and sad he wasn’t going to want to be around me anymore. Skeletons of my past kept me captive and unable to move forward with my life. Horrible circumstances not fair for a young girl to have gone through haunted my thoughts. I was working out with God what had to be cut loose in order for the healing process to begin. I wanted to forgive. I wanted to rid myself of all the pain I felt inside. I got closer to God because my life depended on it. It wasn’t easy letting go and letting God’s love cover me like a blanket of hope. It wasn’t easy forgiving. When I made the choice to lift up my problems to the only One who can heal all, my salvation began. It was still very difficult for me. I can vividly remember one night crying in the shower. My husband heard my sorrow, got in and just held me. We didn’t speak one single word for a long time, he just held on to me until I cried out my very last tear. At the beginning, my tears were for how broken I felt inside and then they became tears of joy-joy for the love God had just displayed for me through my husband. That day my husband proved to me that he loves me beyond my looks, he loves me beyond the moments when I’m funny and kind and deserving of love. He loves me whole-heartedly.

Let’s jump ahead three years. It’s a hot August midnight; many contractions have been had. Too many if you ask me. I have been in labor for over thirteen hours and still no sign of this baby! Where is she!?  I was hungry, tired, and plain bored. I thought this show was going to be on the road much faster than it all went down. I was mad at my husband because he had just gotten to eat the most amazing smelling tri-tip barbecue sandwich, and the sweet smell of the barbecue sauce impregnated the room. Did I wish he would have fasted with me through this terrible two day ordeal? YES. Did he? NO. Anyway, I’m not bitter at him anymore, but not any-less either...  After being in pain, exhausted, feeling cheated with food, and bored to death, three o’clock came around. Guess who was ready to make her appearance? Who would have guessed that an hour of pushing a watermelon out of your what-do-you-know would feel like an eternity!  At 4:17AM, my little 8 pound, 21 inch slimy nugget got put on my chest. In that brief moment my heart grew about fifty times over. After having what seemed like hundreds of people in our room we were all of the sudden alone with our baby girl. It felt so bizarre, Mark 10:8 was apparent, “And the two shall become one”, and that we did! Whoa, I was in utter bliss and disbelief. I never, ever, in a bazillion years could have ever been prepared for the love I felt for my daughter.  Even now after a year of being a mommy I have a hard time containing all the love I have for her in my heart. I know that the way I love her is just a little preview of what God’s love is for me!  Dang!

I’ve been feeling love from my family ever since my mother’s first sign of morning sickness.  This incredible love fest has continued throughout my life. I have been so blessed to feel so much love from so many people! However, I will say that the one love that has made me fully understand what it really means to love is God’s love for ME. It is really easy for me to love people, when they are behaving in a way that I perceive as deserving of my love. It’s so easy for me to act loving to my husband when he brings me flowers and he rubs my feet. It’s amazing telling my little baby girl I love her when she smiles at me and hugs me. It is not so easy when they are being rude and mean, but that is what it means to really love, when it’s not conditional upon people’s behavior. God loves me even in the moments when I feel unlovable. He loves me in the moments when I least deserve it. He loves me in the moments when I feel completely broken and shattered. That kind of love is what I am striving for. I have felt love, I have experienced love, but I never fully understood it until I understood how profoundly God loves me.

FAITH

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about what having FAITH means to me. With my father going into surgery next Monday, I’ve been trying to strengthen my faith. In searching for it on a very rainy day, I was brought back to last August when I went on a market trip to Ohio to visit my stations and learned a wonderful lesson about Faith.

It was a wonderful time of traveling some place new and meeting good people! It was 530AM and I had to drive from Cleveland to Dayton in my little rental car, in the mercy of Aunt Jemima (that’s what I named my navigation system). It was an especially foggy morning and I could barely see the road ahead, but I plugged away out of Cleveland and into the un-treaded territory. It was a nice drive until I got 40 minutes away from my destination, unexpectedly the sky literally got dark in a matter of seconds and the most torrential down pour started to hit my windshield. I stiffened every muscle in my body and a wave of panic washed over me. I could not see anything but my wipers going the maximum speed. My hands were moistened as I griped the wheel and I just keep praying for my faith to be restored and to not have this fear of not knowing where I was and being caught in a terrible storm. I turned the radio to get a bit of a distraction and all I got was static, frantically I pushed the scan button to get a better station… nothing ,static. Finally a station with clarity was on and they were singing a song about nothing other than, FAITH! I felt a sudden wave of relief, suddenly I felt a bit stronger. About a minute after I got stronger, I started sweating of nervousness again due to the fact that I could not see anything on the road. I had no idea if I was on track or if I was going to drive off the road. Panic was settled in ,nicely buckled in the passenger’s seat. About a dozen prayers later, a Wonder Bread Semi merged right in front of me! I thought, “Oh Thank God”, I can now follow Him and I’ll be fine, I put all my focus on the wonder of it all, and just stared straight ahead at the red hearts on the back of the semi. I got stronger! I had a little more FAITH that I was going to be alright. I keep praying for the storm to be over , over and over , and over again but my prayers were going unanswered. .. it wasn’t over BUT I knew I must have been praying for the wrong thing because I had faith my prayers would be answered if they were the right ones.

Now that I had a guide through the storm I started thinking what it meant for me to have FAITH. I realized that the “storm” I was going through was similar to when things are going wrong in life. You can’t stop the storm, you have to have FAITH that you will get through it! I was praying for the storm to stop, when I should have been praying for the FAITH to get through it all! Once I realized that, I quit praying for the storm to stop and I thanked God for my FAITH. I kid you not the minute I did that (the following is not writers embellishment, I promise), the storm stopped and it was like out of a movie. the clouds parted and it became the most beautiful day! I could not believe that all I had to do was pray for my FAITH to become greater than my fear. We are all faced with different circumstances in life that are scary. But when we stop to think that we have the ability to exercise our faith in those times to get stronger and stronger, and know we're not in it alone, it provides a peace unlike anything else. And as more and more “storms” come your way you can withstand a lot more. I hope that if you are going through a storm in your life, that you take a moment to thank God for it and let Him bring you closer to Him. Let Him show you the promise of Heaven. This is not our world.

Know that you are taken care of and that when you have God, you don’t need anything else.