This was on my Facebook feed posted by someone else this this morning - and I also have a piece of art with this saying in our home hanging above family photos. This couldn't be more true.

Money comes and goes. Sometimes you have a lot of it (or if you are really fortunate, you *always* have a ton of it), sometimes you are at the bottom of the barrel like I was at times growing up in my teens. Regardless of your situation, don't let work or a job rule over you and the time you spend with your spouse and/or kids. Don't let work take all your time away from family dinners, vacations, reading bedtime stories, helping with homework, talking, etc. These moments go all too soon.

In four short years Bradley will be 18 and off to college somewhere. It could be in Florida or it could be across the US for all we know. Jacob is already six years old and is getting out of the stage of wanting to be held and cuddled.

This quote is something very important to me.

We try to do things and communicate with Brad no matter the topic. We hold Jacob and watch kid movies with him. We try to do family dinners as often as we can. We do mini weekend trips. We go to free festivals and farmer's markets. Hans and I still have date nights and time together as a married couple and not just as "parents", whether it is out at a restaurant or at home after the kid are asleep. These are just some ideas and not all have to cost money.

If you take anything away from my little "soapbox" moment - take this: Love your spouse and your children. Spend time with them. Don't put every waking moment into something else and ignore the family you have. Before you know it, children are grown and moved out of the house and those moments you may have had with them young won't come again.

Magic Kingdom with Jacob (when I was a blonde!)

Riding the Peoplemover with Brad

Home Depot building workshops with Jake + Hans

You're never too old to take out Zurg on Buzz Lightyear

Teaching Brad how to make Jambalaya

Date night with Hans at Willow Tree Cafe in Sanford, FL

Jake loving on Mommy for a "selfie"

The Fruit of the Spirit & Spiritual Gifts

Yesterday, I went to my weekly MOPS meeting and this week fell on our Bible study week. Last week, this week, and next week we have a guest speaker who is a Mentor Mom at our location, and her name is Christi Haag. Let me just tell you, she is an amazing, Christ-centered, Spirit-filled, Godly woman. I listen to her speak and I am immediately drawn in. She is married and has two boys, 14 and 15. Her oldest, Ben, recently confessed to her and her husband that he feels he is being led by the Lord to go into missions overseas, and is patiently waiting on God to let him know where. I mean, PRAISE THE LORD! I only hope and pray that my husband and I can be that kind of example to our children. I cannot say enough about how wonderful this lady is, and how much of a true blessing it has been to know her as the previous mentor mom for our table, and as a true teacher of the word. She speaks it with such clarity and conviction, she is just mesmerizing.

Last meeting, she spoke on "The Fruit of the Spirit" and the Spiritual Gifts that God gives to us. She let us know that without the Fruit and filtering each of our gifts through the Fruit, that our gifts are just like a loud noise to God and won't matter. Just think of that: How good would it be to have the gift of discertion without kindness? Or the gift of serving without love? Music without joy? It all makes sense and I have never seen it that way before.

She explained that the Bible teaches that each of us has at least one gift, and the Lord calls us to use that gift in our lives and in the church. She spoke on several passages, including Galatians 5:22, I Peter 4:10-11, I Corinthians 12, I Corinthians 13, and Ephesians 4:11-16, and Romans 12:1-8. If you have never studied these, I encourage you to do so, as I felt like I learned so much from these.

She then passed out four pages to us, where we took a quiz to find out what our main spiritual gifts were. It was 78 questions long and took about 20 minutes to complete, but when I was done - WOW! - I was surprised about a couple of the results. I knew that I would probably hold a gift for hospitality and giving, but exhortation and knowledge was an amazing discovery about myself, but it makes perfect sense. I scored lower on prophecy and teaching, but that's OK - God gave me the gifts that he did for a reason, and I can use THOSE to lift people up in my own way, and he will send those with the other gifts that he gave uniquely to them to help in their own way that someone like me may not excel at.

If you would also like to take this quiz, it was very neat and I even brought one home for my husband. The link is posted below (I uploaded it to Google Docs, if it doesn't work, post a comment with your email address and I would be more than happy to email it to you). Although he hasn't taken it yet, it will be neat to see what God has blessed him with and how we each compliment eachother in God's perfect plan! :)

Discover Your Spiritual Gifts