Monday Musings

Hi, friends!!

I hope y’all had an amazing weekend. Ours was busy, but good!

Friday night we went out with friends, Saturday we watched Mackenzie and Jojo in their last basketball games of the season. Yesterday we went to church, did loads of laundry and had everyone clean their rooms to get ready for the week.

Joseph and I left around 4:00 PM to head down to Hilton Head for a couple of days to work on the beach house.

Y’all, I can’t wait to see it. We came in late last night so we didn’t go by. But let me just show you a quick before and after of one of the bathrooms. You ready???

This is one of the smaller bathrooms off the living room.

And here’s a sneak peek!

Ahhh…isn’t it beautiful?!!

We still have to install the pedestal sink, glass door and mirror, but it’s still gorgeous!

I’m going to try and share more on my stories on Instagram so make sure you are following me there for more sneak peeks!

So you all know how I’ve been reading through the Bible this year. I’ve really enjoyed it. We finished Job and came back to Genesis.

God has been showing me so much through stories that’s I’ve read all of my life. But one of the biggest things is that all of these people we read about in the Bible. They are just like you and I.

They are all human. They fail, mess up, do the very thing God tells them not to do. Hello Adam and Eve. Yet God still fulfills His purpose through them. God doesn’t turn His back on them. He’s patient and still sees them as worthy.

And y’all, He feels the same way about us. The same way. He loves us more than we can even imagine. He forgives us before we even mess up. He sees us as worthy.

So many times, we get stuck in our past. We keep looking back when God has already forgiven us. We allow mistakes and failures to weigh us down and keep us from moving forward.

We are so stuck in our past. We walk around with our heads down, ashamed and embarrassed. When God says this in Psalm 103:6-12

The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

Did you read how great his steadfast love is for you??? Did you read how far He removes our transgressions from us?

Yes, there are sins and mistakes that we make where we will experience consequences. But you know what, those experiences, those lessons we learn will only help us. They will propel us forward.

These mistakes will be used by God. Isn’t that amazing? Even our sins, our failures and mistakes will be used by God. Goodness will come from those bad things.

This just fires me up! And if you follow me on Instagram, you can go to my highlights under musings and hear me talk more about this.

Y’all. If you are living in your past. Move on. I’ll say it again. Move. On. Girlfriend.

Ask for forgiveness and receive that forgiveness and don’t look back.

God wants to use your past to not only help you but to help others. Quit walking around with your head down and walk upright in God’s promise to you.

If you’ve never confessed your sin, do it now. Proverbs 28:14 says,

Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

And Psalm 32:5 says,

Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

And 1 John 1:9,

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Acknowledge, confess, repent. He is faithful and just.

And once you do that, move on. Walk forward with your head high because you are forgiven. You are a new creation. Nothing you can do will separate you from His love. Walk in that freedom, today.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

2 Corinthians 5:17

I love y’all! I hope you have a GREAT day!

xoxo

Monday Musings

Happy Monday, babes! I hope you’re week is starting off great. We were up bright and early this morning and headed to Hilton Head for the day. I shared last week how we decided to test the market and put our condo up for sale and it sold within 30 minutes! You can read the full post here.

So we are headed down to look at a property that we put under contract without seeing in person (eeeek!!). Thankfully, we put in the contract that if it’s not something we definitely want, we can back out today. Y’all this property has huge potential!! I can’t wait to share it with you. Follow me on Instagram for some live updates today!

On Friday morning, I shared a little bit of my heart on my Instagram stories. I had so many of you message and text me about how you are going through similar situations. It definitely made me thankful that I shared! Sometimes when I share I feel silly and a little scared to be so real and raw with my followers because of fear of what they may think. But when God presses on my heart to share and I am obedient, He always confirms it. And He did that this weekend through so many of your messages and texts.

Joseph and I have been talking about sharing more of our story and what we did to move forward after suffering through years of financial crisis. We’ve gone through foreclosure, we’ve lost our cars, we’ve lived paycheck to paycheck and eventually had to file bankruptcy just to be able to move forward. We’ve never shared our whole story and honestly it’s a little scary. But if it can help one person move forward then it’s worth sharing. As our pastor says, when you share your story…it helps somebody!

Our story begins 16 years ago when anxiety, depression and severe panic attacks took over my life. I shared some of my story on the You’re Not Alone Podcast a little while back, but I wanted to share it here for those of you who don’t know me or haven’t heard my story before. It’ll give you a little background on me and hopefully encourage you today. You can listen to it here.

Joseph and I will work on some upcoming posts with the rest of our story. But until then, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate in reaching out. We are an open book. We’ve learned that when you keep your story hidden it gives the enemy power to torture you. Believe me, we experienced so much shame, embarrassment and fear of people knowing for years. Telling our story equals freedom. And like I said, if it helps one person move forward then it’s totally worth it.

Thank you for visiting my blog today! I hope you have an amazing Monday.

XO

Weekend Recap with Some Monday Musings

Mornin’!

It has poured all morning long.  I’m not going to lie.  The couch is calling my name and all I want to do is take a nap as I listen to the rain fall.  But.  Laundry.

If you follow me on social media, you saw my post about my laundry.  I have laundry coming out of everywhere.  I am so bad about getting behind.  I can stay on top of it for a couple of weeks and then an out-of-town trip comes up and I get behind.  When I get behind it takes me weeks to catch up.  Am I the only one that this happens to?

I did choose though, to not stress about it.  A clean house and caught up laundry doesn’t define who I am.  Life is busy and crazy and sometimes the laundry piles up and the dirty dishes stay in the sink for a couple of days.

So today, I am planning on finishing it all up.  We just got a text letting us know that softball games are cancelled and this is our first week without football practice.  So that means a night in for the Eternos.  We will be working on laundry if you need us!

Speaking of football.  We finished up our season this Saturday.  It’s always bittersweet to see it end, but we are ready for some basketball around here.  Jojo has been taking lessons during the off-season and this year we are playing with our tournament team in a local league.  It’s our first year that we won’t play with the rec dept.  I’m going to miss watching all of our local boys play this year, but I’m excited to see Jojo continue to grow on the court.  He improved so much last tournament season and I can’t wait to see how he does this year.

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Our CrossFit gym celebrated our ONE year anniversary with an awesome scavenger hunt.  I think we ended up running five miles total after it was over.  My team came in first woohoo!  We are so thankful for our community.  They have made this an amazing first year.  I am also thankful for our friends Rob and Staci.  Going into business with friends can be a bit scary, but we’ve said it from the beginning that our friendship is number one.  We’ve had a great time and have grown closer.  We love you guys!

Saturday night we finally spent some time with our friends who we have missed so much this year.  The boys had a blast and even the girls got in on the fun by coming to “boo” the boys.  I am so thankful for this group of boys and their parents.  I didn’t have this growing up and I am so blessed that my kids do.  I love that their friends’ parents are our friends.  I can’t wait to see them grow up and go through all of the milestones together.  Before we know it, we will be watching them play high school ball, going to homecoming and prom….ahhh I better just stop talking now because I’m going to have a breakdown if I don’t.

On Sunday we went to church.  We started a new series called Unlearning Religion.  So so good.  I also wore my new shirt I bought from one of our local clothing boutiques, Polished Chic.  The material is soft and you can dress it up or down.  I wore it with my jeans and new leopard shoes from Old Navy.  Isn’t it so fun!?  #ilovefall

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After lunch we went to the gym to make up workouts because it’s competition month and we need those points ha!

We ended our night with all of us sitting at the table eating dinner.  This doesn’t happen very often because we are so busy.

We started our Virtual Bible Study yesterday.  Make sure to go to my Facebook page to see the video and join in on the discussion.  You can also read my post from yesterday here.  Y’all it’s so good.  You don’t want to miss out.

This album has been on repeat this weekend.  The worship team sang the song Grateful from it and it spoke such truth to my heart.  Since dad passed, worship has been hard.  For a long time I couldn’t sing along during worship.  I couldn’t even mouth the words because everything inside me was trying not to lose it.  Each week it gets better.  This Sunday I really did feel like I was finally able to worship in a way that I had not since dad passed.  I just keep thinking to myself that as I stand and worship, that is what my dad is doing at that moment.  He is worshipping too!  Face to face with Jesus.  Ahhh….chills!!!

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And last but not least, today 17 years ago, my hubby asked me to be his girlfriend.  I can’t believe we’ve spent that many years together.  I am so thankful that God chose Joseph for me.  He is my best friend.  He is my person.  My constant in this crazy life.  We’ve had highs and gosh we’ve had some lows, but through it all we have stayed together.  He has taught me how to love selflessly.  He makes me brave and encourages me to shoot for the stars.  Thank you babe for loving me and all of my crazy.

 

And that wraps up this Monday blog post.  It was a little bit of everything.  I hope you have a wonderful rainy Monday.

 

-Maggie