Weights of Worries, Unforgiveness, and Sin

Hefty title, heh? Pun intended!  My husband, Sunday School teacher extraordinaire, came up with a brilliant idea to help our girls understand how worry, unforgiveness and sin can effect our lives and those around us. {We have Sunday School at home with our kiddos here in Portugal.}

First, he had the girls “practice” obeying God by walking to the table and back as if God had given them that instruction. He held their hand as if God was going with them {and He does!}.

He first put a belt around their waist, and bungee-corded “a worry” they might have, then another onto the belt. Then he asked them to do the same obedience exercise, walking to the table with God. This time is was more difficult for the girls to keep up the pace with him and not get hurt! Hmm…how does worry affect our walk with God?

He used the same weight example with sin that we don’t confess to God and receive forgiveness for.  As with worry {it is really a sin in itself: Matthew 6:25-34; Philippians 4:6}, unconfessed sin interferes with our relationship with God, our ability to receive His love and walk in all the good stuff He has for us!

We also talked about unforgiveness—how it is a weight on us to not let the other person off the hook, whether they ask forgiveness or not!

Lastly, we talked about how we can give these weights to other people if we’re not careful—interfering with others’ ability to receive God’s love, and to obey and worship Him. Nothing like a little weight to make a worship time difficult!

My heart in sharing this is more than documenting our own family’s journey with God. We hope YOU can know:

• the LOVE of the Father in such a way that His TRUTH replaces worries
• His plan of forgiveness through His Son, Jesus, for EVERY sin
• how we can FORGIVE OTHERS because we are forgiven
• how we love others by not defiling them with information about others, stirring up fear, and things like this

If you have any questions, I’d love to field them as I can. We’ll be working on not carrying these weights at our house!

The Mint Bed

Last year, we buried two buckets full of dirt and mint in our garden, hoping to let the mint have more space and still be contained. It thrived for the most part, but later we discovered it had hopped out of it’s boundaries! Amazing how such a wonderful plant can take over!

We decided to try something different rather than the mint being bound to pots this year. They don’t seem to do as well for me there—probably my lack of watering! 

My husband dug a small pit under the ladder to the kids’ playhouse, next to our bunny cage.  He lined the pit with weed barrier, filled it back in with dirt, and started putting all our potted mint plants into this new bed. There were several different varieties of mint, but I didn’t mind them growing with one another.

Here is the mint bed about a month later. We collected bigger rocks from various beaches we’ve been to here to edge the bed. It is filling in nicely!

Now we’ve got to attend to the grass problem--the sprinkler hidden in the corner there is not reaching the grass. My husband is such a good sport to continually tackle keeping the yard watered!

Our bunny is not complaining about this new treat next to the cage. Thankfully she cannot reach all of it!

Guest Room Redo

Over a year ago, I wrote about motivation to complete our guest room. I’m glad to report that a few changes in that room make it more of what I hoped it could be in this house. Did you see my lampshade facelift after buying a new duvet cover? Well, this new cover continued to inspire the change from this:

to this:

We decided to not paint the freebie headboard for now. The beige Euro shams and other light-hearted textures and color help off-set its heavy feel. We changed out the rug with a blue one we’d used in our old office too.

I made the center pillow from an old flannel pillow case I found at the flea market. We added one more plate with a little blue to balance the plate wall around the headboard.

  

I did not previously post about my side table paint job since I was kind of disappointed in it. Long story short: Getting the right paint in Portugal has been a challenge for us! However, it works if you don’t look too close! A chair re-do is in order when the funds are available.

A few other blue touches around the room helped pull together what I was going for—a little less stuffy/a little more fun I think! My current guest is enjoying it!

Tissue Box Beauty

I’m on a roll {HA!—especially when I’m talking about tissue!} with seeing what needs to be changed or finished around here. Amazing how a new round of guests coming can motivate me!

Since I moved overseas, I had to start using the long versus tall boxes of Kleenex/tissue because they didn’t sell the tall kind in Germany, much less cute boxes.  So I couldn’t use the tall decorative covers I brought from America. Portugal does offer many nicer looking boxes of tissue, but the price is not worth it. Did I like this look? NO.

But sadly I settled for this look for WAY TOO LONG. This paper maché cover has been waiting for some attention for possibly 4 years!

I had some sweet guests who brought me a swath of new scrapbook paper from America, so I had new inspiration to get moving with.

 Much better, heh? It was really simple to trace around the edges and hole of the box to the back of the paper, cut and then glue on with decoupage glue. I love it!  This inspired me to attack the other blank box in my bedroom.

This tissue box cover is wooden {so German!}, and I had bought some lovely fabric-like paper in Germany to cover it. Thankfully I had not nabbed it for another project! I tried to cover it with one whole piece and layer the seams. It worked out pretty well except that you can see the wood grain through it in certain spots.

I’ve actually seen some pretty amazing homemade tissue box covers in blogland—quilted, embellished, you name it. Yet using paper was doable enough for me that I might have to go find some more blank covers to bring some beauty to an otherwise unattractive necessity in our home.

Linking up to Tatertots and Jello Weekend Wrap-up Party!