The Christmas Spirit

In August I decided to go on a year commitment to not buy what I don't need. I was doing fantastic until November when my birthday came and I got a few presents. Oh boy the joy of getting gifts was just so nice. I felt like I hadn't had something nice in a really long time, however it had only been two months in reality that I probably hadn't bought any new item of clothing or such. I felt like a shark with blood floating around me. The feeling of "I want THAT, I NEED that, I GOTTA HAVE that." was upon me. It hasn't made things better that Christmas is just around the corner and stores are so aggressive in their amazing deals and marketing. "This store is having a great sale",  I would say. "This arm hair extractor with a built in waffle maker is never going to be on sale, EVER again!  The feeling of a bottomless pit has settled quite nicely in my soul. That is exactly what I was trying to alleviate myself from by doing this year challenge of not buying what I don't need. To be content with what I have. Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with buying something nice for your self. However, if it comes in between you and God, we have a problem. I have struggled with the feeling of never having enough for a long time. Any time I am not in the word of God (the Bible) or giving myself time to pray and meditate on God I get super squirrelly. I get this anxious feeling and I am never satisfied. No matter how much I think either buying stuff will fulfill me, or eating stuff (this is my other struggle in life!) will fulfill me. All these feelings came to a halt when anxiety came upon me when I didn't have "enough" Christmas decorations up at my house. SERIOUSLY?  What is Christmas about anyway?!

The world we live in is so distracting and sneaky at robbing us from true peace and joy. All of the distractions of this life take away from what Christ really wants us to experience this Christmas season AND ALWAYS. His UNFALING love and his indescribable peace. I don't need decorations to have the Christmas spirit in me because Christmas should be about rejoicing that Christ was born. If I want to have that "Christmas Spirit", or just peace through out the year, all I have to do is spend more time with God. Material things are nice, but not when they make me feel the opposite of what living a life free in Christ feels. The few times in my life that I've really devoted myself to truly seeking God more than anything in this world;have been some of the most inexplicably joyful, peaceful and fulfilling moments of my life. To think that everyone that seeks God and his peace can have it is amazing to me. We can have it every single day of our lives if we wanted it! But we are only human, and that's okay.  He understands how difficult it is for us, and that is comforting. It is so difficult because there are a million distractions in this world. 

Consider this passage. 7 "But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. Philippians" 3:7  

When we finally get a taste of God's peace, our souls can't settle on the garbage that is of this world. I keep running back to Him even if I fail him over and over and over again. He will NEVER fail me. Or YOU if you let Him! 

Stay blessed and stay saucy! And a very Merry Christmas to you! 

-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.

Forgiveness

     

  My birthday is in thirty something days, woohooo!!  Every time one of those rolls around I am forced to think about my life and make sure it's on the right track. As I was thinking of everything that I've done in the past ALMOST 28 years of my life, I couldn't help but remember my childhood. There's a specific point in those wee years that always makes me super-dee-duperly confused because on one hand I get sad about it and on the other it makes me proud of my family and myself. But more importantly, it makes me realize the importance of attitude,love and family. So here it is, I'm going to tell you something that most people don't know about me. When I lived in Mexico and was the very mature age of 6, I had to get a job bagging groceries at the local supermarket so my mom and I could make ends meet. There I said it, I had a job when I was 6! See weird, I'm super proud to say that I was a total working machine at that young age. However, in the same token if I think about it for what it REALLY was and put my daughter in place of me... waterworks!!! I get so sad to think that my mom had to tell me, "Mija, it's time to get a job. You can't watch the smurfs when you get home from school anymore. It's time to grow up." (Granted this is not at all what she said, she didn't even speak English then but that's what I'm making up for the sake of the story. Okay? Okay!)

     Whenever I think back about this time in my life, I seriously don't ever remember any sadness from being poor or bleakness from HAVING to have a job at 6 years of age. In place of any negative feeling, there is a sense of pride and joy that I was able to do all those things and triumph in the end. I would NEVER be the person I am today if it had not been for all of the crummy circumstances in my life. I probably would not be as understanding and resilient as I find myself now. So I am thankful for all of those opportunities that made me a stronger person. And the more and more I think about why it was almost "fun" for me to have a job so young, I realize that it was my mothers AMAZING attitude that helped me not be sad as a child. She has an amazing quality about her that makes her a fighter no matter what life throws her way. At that time she probably had such a  heavy-heart to have to make her little girl go to work. She didn't let on to me that we were in dire need. For me it was as though we had been rich all along. It wasn't until I did have that I understood how much we didn't for a long time.

       My mother had a huge impact on me as a young girl, and then in my teenage years she made some poor choices in her life that have affected me in a lot of ways. For a very long time, I felt so resentful towards her for making me feel like she did. And then God told me to knock it off. When I grasped that my mother is JUST a human being that is trying to make it here on earth as much as the next gal, I knew I could not continue to put her on a pedestal that made her unable to make any mistakes. I had a hard time not seeing my mother as perfect because my whole childhood was happy because of her. She protected me from so much ,gave up and sacrificed even more than I can imagine for my well being. She made it so even in the shittiest of circumstances, I was able to live a loving and some what "normal" childhood (pardon the French, I couldn't find a better word!) She helped me believe in myself. She taught me the power of working hard and being a good, kind person. She taught me that you have to be likable  and funny and to not rely on looks to get you places.  She helped me realize that I really WASN'T the center of the universe like I once had believed, go figure! So you can imagine how difficult it was for me to understand that she's only a human being that has the right to her own mistakes in life ( I saw her more like a cross between Phoenix and Storm, the perfect Super-heroine!)

 There is so much of my mother in me that I am extremely proud to say came from her. Her attitude and love made my childhood one that I remember being filled with joy and happiness. It didn't matter that I had to work at such a young age, because I had my mom to come home to and she was the best mom she could have been to me. In spite of the "bad" choices she's made in her life, God has commanded me to honor my father and mother, He doesn't say, "honor them ONLY if they don't do anything wrong...."  So this is me forgiving my mother of anything she ever did that hurt me in any way. I understand that you are not a super-heroine after all mommy, and that's perfectly okay because you are my MOTHER, and in so many ways that is way cooler!

 Are you holding on to something you should let go of today? Is there someone in your life you're building up to be a superhero rather than a real person that has the right to their own mistakes?  I encourage you to think and pray about it and let it go. Let God be the judge not you. There is an indescribable peace that comes along when we let go and just love people regardless of what they do. I hope you all are having beautiful days! 

Stay blessed and stay saucy! 

Thank you mamacita hermosa.

A Year of Madre-hood. Ay-ay-ay!

           So many exciting things are happening in our lives right now! Maddy is turning one, Doug is thriving in his job, and I am finding amazing blessings each day being a wife, mommy, and homemaker. God is blessing us so much, but if you can please say a prayer for my father. He's not doing too hot right now and he needs prayers all arouund the world! He is going to be okay, but his platelet count is down again and he had to go to the hospital again. Any way please pray for him to recover and to have his platelets multiply!
           This year of mommy-hood has had its shares of ups and downs. The ups have been higher than a stoney boloney on spring break and the lows have been lower than a grandfathers ba... I won't finish that. But I will tell you something, I've been weaning Maddy from the boobie juice for two weeks now and we are now down to just two feedings a day. One in the morning and one before bed. I'm not going to lie when I say that yesterday was the day we were supposed to cut out the morning boob. Annnnd guess what? I couldn't do it. I know that Maddy once she's not nursing anymore is still going to love me and know I'm her momma, but to tell you the truth I feel so nostalgic about this bond being on its final stretch. So I didn't cut the morning feeding because I just want to enjoy the last weeks of nursing her, because really soon she's going to be walking and on to a new phase of her life. It's hard for me to believe that we've made it a year (almost). With 17 more days until my baby girls 1st birthday, there is definitely something going on in my soul that I can't explain. I am sad and I am over my head happy for this marks the first of many birthday celebrations, God willing. I can't even begin to describe what motherhood has done for me over this past year. But I can tell you that something so mundane as just sitting at home and watching my baby girl play with her stuffed animals is something that gets me teary-eyed and I feel this wonderful rumble in my stomach that I have never in my life felt before (and no it's not just gas, I checked for that too). I feel so proud of her when she does something as silly as drink her water from a cup. I could just play with her all day. She's a really sweet baby girl and I hope that I'm doing a good job at being her mother so she can grow up being a confident little girl. I guess I'm so head over heels that the other day I was holding her and just wondering, what was I doing before you? I can't remember life with-out you. Thank you Madelyn for providing me with the circumstances for me to become a better person, growing in patience, kindness, patience, love, patience, joy, ohh and have I mentioned patience? Thank you for your warm smile when I need it the most. Thank you for making me laugh so hard I cry and then I feel like a weirdo that's laughing all by herself at home with no one around aside from you. :) Thank you Madelyn for helping mommy and daddy get closer to God and therefore getting closer to each-other to form a better unit and a even more fantastic team. Thank you honey for your tantrums and your sick days that bring out the best of mommy. Thank you for letting me experience all your firsts. It's been an honor and a blessing being able to stay at home with you and witness every part of your development. I love you Madelyn and I thank God you are in my life every single day! Here's to the second year of this shindig. I hear it's quite eventful, well I say.... Bring it ON!!

Stay blessed and stay saucy!