In Preparation for Good Friday

 

Consider the Crucifixion and the passionate bloody path that Christ endured on our behalf.

She Does Justice

One of my new favorite blogs is She Does Justice. It is a site and shop whose mission is to be: 

“an advocate for those who need one. It is a space where organizations who are working for the good of others are recognized. It is a community of people who want to show love to the ‘least of these’. A place where we strive to show those in need that they are known and loved.”

A minimum of 10% of their shop sales are donated to a different cause each month. In February, they donated 10% of their proceeds to a non-profit working to rescue girls from trafficking and in March they donated to an organization working to clean and put shoes on the feet of Ugandan children. She Does Justice also donates to families who are in the process of adoption.

I am so excited and thankful to be an affiliate for She Does Justice! If you’ll notice on the right hand side is their button, you can click on that and it will be sent to our “shop”.  For every item sold using our shop link, 25% of the sale is given to our adoption fund! The founder of this site has a huge heart for adoption as she is also pursuing an adoption in Africa! Her products are quality and they are super fun and cute! Here are a few of my favorites:

My ‘Heart’ Country and State Canvas ($20 each)

She Does Justice T-Shirt ($25)

Bright Aqua Heather Scarf ($20)

Hearts & Dots Scarf ($20)

Ethnic Print Scarf ($20)

Blue, Green, and Orange Swirl Headband ($12)

And those were just a few of my favorites from her site! Check out her shop and find your favorites! When you do purchase an item, make sure to thank Megan for allowing us to partner with them and help us reach our funding goal! (you can also put our names in the note box too, just to double check that it is sent to our “shop fund”)

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Last night on Instagram I posted a picture of some homemade soap that I had made with a friend over a year ago. Yesterday I finally finished the 5 gallon bucket off! I’m planning on making some more today and thought I’d share the recipe with all of you! So many of you asked for the recipe last night and this morning, so here it is!!

Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap

(Front or top load machine-best value)

Ingredients: 

4  Cups – hot tap water
1  Fels-Naptha soap bar*
1 Cup – Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda**
½ Cup BoraxDirections: -Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.
-Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.
-Stir and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and then fill rest of way with water. Shake before each use. (will gel)
-Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled. Ideas: lavender, rosemary, tea tree oil.
-Yield: Liquid soap recipe makes 10 gallons.
-Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)
-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)*Visit the Fels-Naptha website to find a store in your area that carries the product. I found mind at the local Wal-Mart store.
**Arm & Hammer washing soda can be found in most stores. I found it at my local Fry’s grocery store.

(This recipe comes from the Duggar Family blog)

I have a front load washer, so with each load, I used three tablespoons of the detergent. In addition to the detergent, I add Oxy-Clean to keep the whites a little brighter. I also do not use fabric softener anymore because of the toxins it contains. So instead of store-bought fabric softener, I put 3 tablespoons of vinegar in each load!

Some of you may not have room for a 5 gallon bucket near your washer, so I would recommend using a smaller Tupperware container to hold a portion of the bucket and keep the “big guns” out in the garage or in another storage area. I have space for it, so I don’t worry about that. The recipe also says you can add essential oils if you would like, but I didn’t. The scent of the Fels-Naptha bar is a very clean scent and I never noticed that my clothes smelled bad.

I have loved using this as my detergent because it’s cheap and it’s natural! If you have more questions about this detergent or are interested in more of the natural house cleaners I use, just let me know!

5 Reasons I’m Thankful for Social Media

Social Media gets a bad rap these days and rightly so most of the time. It is definitely something that can distract people from the life that surrounds you. BUT today, I am so thankful for social media and the gift that it can be for people! Here are 5 reasons I am thankful for it today:

1. It allows Jason and I to stay connected to our friends and family who live all over the country and the world.

2. Our adoption story has spread to more people than I could have imagined through Facebook & Twitter. It has encouraged and challenged people I don’t even know of to pray for orphans and consider the blessing of adoption for their own family. You can read more about our adoption story here, here, and here.

3. I’ve been able to connect with like-minded ladies via the Influence Network. Which is an online community of women who want to make their online lives mean something for the kingdom of God. The Network has provided me a community of women who know much more about blogging and readership than I do to help me manage my blog more effectively. I’m so excited to continue to learn and allow this little space on the internet be an encouragement to people.

4. I’ve been able to find grants and other means of funding for our adoption through Twitter and blogs. I found the You Caring website that has our online fundraiser through connections on Twitter and that has brought in so much funding for our adoption that I was not anticipating! Click on the link to see how far along we are in our funding for our current need!

5. Similar to #3, I was able to make a connection with a young woman through the Influence Network who has a heart to help families fund their adoption! Today, over on my life (his mission), Kerry is highlighting a few families and encouraging people to check out their stories and help them reach their funding goal! We are one of those families! I have loved the connections we are making via blogging!

For those of you who came here via Kerry’s blog, welcome and thank you for checking out our life on social media!

Now I’m going to get off of social media and enjoy an evening with my husband and some friends! Take advantage of the blessing of social media, but don’t let it rule your days.

Friday Fitness Thoughts

I wasn’t able to sleep last night, so I stayed up pondering life (sounds deep!). I realized that my blog is an offshoot of my thoughts and passions and one of my favorite things is never discussed here..my passion for fitness!

I workout at our neighborhood YMCA now that I am no longer a personal trainer. I wondered if it would be hard to get into the gym 3-4 times a week once I stopped working at the gym, but it wasn’t. I LOVE to sweat and feel like I’m going to die from a workout. It’s strange…I know 🙂

I know that my love for fitness is unique. There aren’t many woman I know who would choose to do a killer crossfit workout just for the fun of it! The other night, my hubs and I stayed up late watching a video of two of the greatest crossfit women competing in the Crossfit Games Open 13.2 and something inside made me WANT to do that. Now, I don’t want to look like Annie Throisdotter, but I’d like to have a little bit of her strength.

I was using a great crossfit resource for women who are wanting to do crossfit, but not do the heavy lifting. I enjoyed it and I saw some results, but last Friday I did the Crossfit Games 13.1 and about DIED. I knew that if I did want to get serious about crossfit, I’d have to start lifting heavier and working harder. I did that this week…I still can’t walk right or extend my arms fully! But I enjoyed it!

Tomorrow I am planning on trying 13.2. I know that I’m not where I want to be right now, but I feel like I now have a goal that I can reach! I’ll be keeping myself accountable through posting my workouts on my blog. Maybe it will encourage you to get back into the gym too?!

The big thing for me lately has been my eating habits. I am a sugar addict and know that it hinders my health in so many ways. Next week Jason and I are planning on starting the Whole30 challenge to help detox our bodies and get us back on track with our Paleo/Primal eating. Check out Whole30 and join us for this challenge! I will be linking up with a few other ladies in the blogger world who are doing it and sharing our journey on Fridays!

What are some ways that you are improving your health? Have any goals I can help encourage you in?

Joy in the Restoration #shereadstruth

(A few months ago I blogged about an online community that’s sole purpose is to help women read the Bible on a daily basis. You can read my thoughts here from that particular study.)

For the past 10 days I have been walking through the Psalms of Ascent with #shereadsruth. For those of you that don’t know where those Psalms are, check out Psalms 120-134 (I didn’t know that until just ten days ago!). These are the songs that the Israelites would sing as they journeyed back to Jerusalem for the Passover, remembering how God lead them in the desert and brought them to their promised land. It has been incredible for me to be journeying with the Israelites over the past few days. As of late, my life has been a slow, steady journey forward to the hope of including more children in our family. Reading these Psalms has opened my eyes to see what God is doing in my heart and it has been painfully beautiful.

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then they said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us;
we are glad.
Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like streams in the Negeb!
Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!
He who goes out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
bringing his sheaves with him.
(Psalm 126 ESV)

By God’s grace, He has sustained me these past few months of paperwork, waiting, more paperwork, and more waiting. He has been so very good to keep my heart at peace. But there are days when I see a glimpse of anxiety or I see my impatience rise up in other areas of my life. It’s in those moments that I know that my heart needs a lot of kneading and sowing over the next 10 months to a year! On the #shereadstruth blog, I posted some of my thoughts from this passage. I’m going to leave you with that today. I know that not many of you are walking the same path I am of adoption. But many of you are waiting. Many of you are sowing those tears of hurt and fear and uncertainty. It’s in those times, that we can look back and see what God has done for us in the past and rejoice that He will do GREAT things for us again! We are in the desert right now, being refined and being restored, and what a glorious gift that is to know that God is working on our hearts! I pray that today as we go about our busy lives filled with so many things, we can take a moment to rest in the truth that God has done great things for us and WE ARE FILLED WITH JOY!

Psalm 126 is becoming my anthem for this season in life! As my husband & I pursue adopting our two little children from Africa, I have wavered in my belief that God can give me joy in the waiting. I’ve read this passage countless times and I have become struck by the idea of being restored. In order for something to be restored, it often goes through a painful process of being taken apart, throwing broken parts away, being ground down, and THEN finally put back together. The final product is beautiful & better than what it was before. The result is joy & thanksgiving! How much greater joy can I have at the end of the restoring process, if I rejoiced during it too! My prayer for this season is that I would rest in the peace of God and rejoice in the truth that He is working on my heart to transform me more and more like Christ so that the world might have a better picture of the awesome power and grace of our God!

Wood Family Online Fundraiser

For the next 6 and a half weeks, Jason and I are working on reaching our goal of raising $5,000 for our next step in completing our adoption. First and foremost, we covet your prayers! If you do have the ability or feel called to give, you have two options: you can donate online by clicking the link below to take you to our online fundraising website or if you would like to give directly to us, email me at sarah.amelia.wood@gmail.com and I will send you our mailing address.

Thanks so much for being a part of our journey! We are all called to care for the orphan and the widow in some way (James 1:27), some may take this calling by adopting children. Others may help by giving to those who are adopting (there are a million other ways to be apart of this call too, these are just two options)

Wood Family Online Adoption Fundraiser

Influence Network Meetup-Get to Know Me

I was blessed to come across the Influence Network about four months ago as I started thinking about taking my blog to another level. What a blessing it has been to find this community of ladies! Just last month I officially became a member and am so excited to learn and be encouraged by this group of bloggers.

What is the Influence Network?

The Influence Network exists to make your online life mean something, to ensure that when you leave your laptop or put down your phone, you’re more inspired and encouraged to do what God has called you to. We are unashamedly motived by the Gospel and it is the common thread that binds us together as a community. Because of the Good News, we are able and excited to share what He has done for us through our stories, our service, and our relationships with one another.

Today we are having a meetup to get to know other members of the network and encourage each other!

Here are some fun facts to get to know me a little bit more!

This is probably one of my favorite pictures, not because of me but because it was taken by the love of my life on the trip of a life time! The background is Queenstown, New Zealand! Take me back…NOW!

Three things about myself:

1. My husband and I are adopting two little kiddos from Africa! We are hoping that they will be home by the end of the year! What a crazy this journey has been and it’s just begun!

2. I was a personal trainer for almost six years before I left that job to stay at home this past year. I LOVE to stay active. Living in Tucson is awesome because we can go hiking, biking, get up to the mountains, and just enjoy the outdoors about 9-10 months out of the year. But the other 2-3 months-you won’t see this pale face outside…ever.

3. I am passionate about the things of God. To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God has become my heartbeat.

Some of the things that didn’t make the top three:

-I love coffee, a good book, with some soft music all wrapped up together.

-I am a sports fanatic. Growing up in a very athletic family re-oriented my brain to have my seasons be characterized by baseball, football, and basketball. There are days that I mourn that we don’t have cable just for ESPN, but I survive 🙂

-I’m an Iowa farm girl who got called out of the rural country and was set in a desert city of a million people. I’m still getting over my culture shock!

-My husband and I eat Paleo and love it…most of the time except for the days I want a bagel from Paradise

One of the things that I love about being apart of the Influence Network is the online forum. It’s a place to meet other women who are wanting to use their blog to encourage women and take a stand for the Lord online. I’ve learned so much just by scrolling the forum discussions about how to blog and how to use different aspects of wordpress. I’m still learning, but I know that I’m in a good place to learn and grow!

We are Moving Forward…Slowly but Surely!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted something directly related to our adoption process. I’ve blogged about my emotions and my prayers during the past few weeks, so I thought I’d write a direct blog post on our process. The month of February was a big blur! It was filled with meetings, a trip to Wisconsin for a death in the family, dinners, a trip to the mountains, more meetings and a lot of paperwork! March is looking to be a little more calm, but I say that with hesitancy because we had no idea February would take the shape that it did!

During the month of February we met every Monday with our home study worker to complete our visits so she could write it up and send it to the Arizona courts. It looks like today she will be finishing her draft! We will then have our adopting agency take a look at it to make sure it would clear all of their standards and then we are sending it to the courts! The court process takes roughly 3-4 weeks, so during that time we wait.

One of the things I’m most looking forward to with being court certified is that we will finally be able to apply for grants! There are many out there and I’m already filling them out in preparation of our certified home study! I’m also looking forward to being done because it’s just looming over my head! I have to fight the doubt that maybe the courts won’t grant us the right to adopt…maybe they won’t see us as fit parents. I know that God is holding all of this in His hands and I do not have to worry, so I daily battle this lie with the truth of God that He is for my good and His glory!

During our waiting time of 3-4 weeks we will be working on fundraising! We are having a rummage sale the first weekend of April in hopes that it will bring in a significant amount of money to cover our second payment.

If you’re interested in some easy ways to help get us over this next hurdle here are some options:

If you look up at the headers, there is a page that says “How You Can Help”. Check out the people & stores who are willing to help us out and make a purchase! Or you can click the pay pal button over on the side and make a donation that way too. Thanks for following our story! We are so thankful for all of you!

So here’s to raising my white flag and trusting that God is in control of every detail! Have a GREAT Monday!

My Monday Morning Prayer

Psalm 27:13-14 I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living!

Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

To choose to see your grace in the days that are long and hard is no easy task, Lord. To see the beauty of the Lord in the land of the living-my every day living…be that my prayer and my heart. Jesus, you are beauty-you make all things new and good for those those that are yours. I am chosen and accepted by you. Lord, you saw it good that I learn the beauty of waiting for your glory to unfold in the life of my family. This waiting and temptation of worry is so very hard when I know where my children are, but they can not be in my arms for months. Jesus, that is hard. Forgive me for the days that I fight against your plan for my life. Turn my eyes, mind, and heart so that I may grow in godliness & holiness & Christ-likness. For you waited for me, even though you chose me before I was born. Give me eyes to see your purposes. Grant me grace to fully live as we wait and pray. Fill our hearts with courage and help us to rest in your strength.