Glimpses from God

I had to witness something that no mother should ever go through.

I had to watch a mommy lose her sweet baby that was born at twenty-seven weeks. It is one of those things that there are no words for.  You spend all your time thinking about why this happened. What was the purpose? Why do babies have to die?  It is something I will never understand.  During the funeral the pastor said something very powerful. He said

"God doesn't forget. He will give you glimpses"

Most of you know that we lost our 5th baby at just 12 weeks.  It was difficult. I struggled a lot! I wrote this post to share how I dealt with my loss. Well at the funeral all of the pain and hurt came flooding back to me and Evanny, who is the sweetest child and had to go to the funeral to support the mom because she cares so much about her).  We shed many tears that day.  but I got to thinking about what the pastor said.

Glimpses?? 

Does God give me glimpses?  Then I remembered something. I always saw it has hurtful because someone was missing.  And to be honest I always feel like someone is missing and that is because they are. I really have six kids. It is just that we haven't met him yet. we haven't met sweet Gabriel but we will one day.  The glimpses are subtle.  Something you wont notice until I tell you. Just a message for me from God letting me know he hasn't forgotten my pain and he hasn't forgotten my baby. 

Here is my glimpse. I could only find a few pictures but there are more. See that gap?  in between Malachi and Jericho?  This is my glimpse. There should be a 2 1/2 year old baby there.  From now on I am choosing to see the glimpse from God in the natural gap they create instead of  hurt and sadness.  If you have ever lost one of your precious babies be sure you are looking for glimpses from God. 

A Month of Peace

As a mom of kids who love video games and movies, well anything with a screen I have to come up with a balance for our life.  If I let them they would be on a screen ALL DAY!!

I had come to realize that screens were becoming an addiction to our children. They were forgetting that there was more to life than video games and movies. They would sit and watch the clock until screen time!

So on December 31 I made the announcement at dinner time.

 We are taking a month off of screens.

 My announcement was met with a little crying, a little joy, and little wondering what they were going to do for the whole month!

A friend asked What I meant by screens.

What I mean is anything with a screen!
NO TV
NO Tablet
NO Computer
NO DS
NO XBOX

Next question I was met with was All of you?

Well no not really.

 My husband must use his computer for work and school.  I have to have access to my business page Crawley Creations.  Also we don't throw tantrums when we aren't allowed on a screen.  But we decided to limit ours also.  We decided that instead of watching a movie in the evening we would play games. Card games, board games, sometimes we just sat and talked.


We have exactly one week left of our no screen policy, and it has been a great month!  I was amazed at how much they found to do.  They played Lego's, they read books, they played with trains, they colored, and they listened to audio books. and they didn't complain about not having screens.  In fact I asked them to tell me if they were going to write a story about our experience what they would call it and they said A month of Peace (no prompting on my side) hence the name of this post.

We were definitely not perfect. they watched one movie at a friends house while the dads were babysitting, David may have spend a lot of time playing a game on his friends phone once, and Malachi may have played a friends tablet until it died while waiting for Martial arts.  But our normal rule was an hour a day. so that was pretty minor!

oh yeah and one day David and I broke down and watched a movie, but one movie in a month is not to bad! And we have binge watched Arrow until 1 am on the first so we could finish it up before we gave up screens. Hey! I said we weren't perfect!


So what next?

Well we decided to not allow screens on a daily basis.  The kids are much more focused on school with out them and it just overall made out house more peaceful.

Our plan is to allow 30 minutes of educational screen time on Fridays if  there school has been completed for the week.  They also will be allowed one hour of game/movie time on Saturdays as long as they have completed their school and chores for the week.

We will be flexible and occasionally we will sit down in the middle of the week and watch a show but, over all we are better off with out so much screen time.

Be sure to let me know your opinions on limiting or not limiting screen time.