Steve and Jenny Valentine

*Disclaimer* I (Jenny here) have a hard time sharing things personally (especially on a blog) but I like to write and it helps me process and it keeps our family and friends back in the States "in the loop"...so I make myself write about what God is doing in my life, even in the hard pieces. With that being said, if any of what I write seems slanted, confusing or jaded...it might be... (I also don't like being misunderstood, haha!) but also, I'm finding I just don't have the proper words (yet) to really explain all of how I have processed this whole move so far. I get words/thoughts in spurts...and so when I do, I will write. Steve and I want to be better at writing this coming year. Last year on the blog we spent a great deal of time telling stories and sharing pictures about what we experience here...this year, though, we want to be more wordy and give you a deeper level of our thoughts through the things we experience everyday. Some days will be funny and some...

After I took this picture and saw it on the computer, I was reminded that sometimes I want too much. Many times, it's things that don't really even matter. When I took this picture, I just wanted one where all three kids are smiling, but we all know that can be a tall order. However, as you see, success...all it took was Steve doing a silly dance and there you have it! So you may be wondering what the problem is then, why did I find myself wanting "too much" when I looked at this picture later on. If you look closer, you will notice that we don't have a tree skirt (as evidenced by all the wires sticking everywhere) and barely any ornaments on our tree (maybe soon we will have our things from the States). Then I glance at their sweet faces and think, we have three of the cutest little humans alive, what is wrong with me to think about tree skirts and ornaments!? I get frustrated with myself for swinging from one side to the next of want vs. contentment. I can ...

“We’re going on a bear hunt.  We’re going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day. We’re not scared!”   As Isaac and I sat on the couch together chanting these words from one of his favorite books, I was struck with a great truth that was found in this classic children’s story. As the story goes the family encounters obstacle after obstacle on their bear hunting journey. Each time they come to a new obstacle they chant: “we can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We’ve got to go through it!”   As we read these words together Isaac likes to scream the last line and point forward with his hand as though he were the captain of a ship. Every time he does I pray that God will make this the disposition of his heart. As we journey in this life of faith that he would with bold confidence set his face toward the trials ahead and be willing to go through them. That as he grows as a man that he would lead his future family in this way, trusting that as...

Who ever said “stop and take time to smell the roses” has never been shoved in a minivan with almost all their belongings, 3 small children and told to drive over 1,500 miles through 16 different states in an effort to raise financial support for the ministry you feel called to do. Who even cares about stinkin “roses” when you have 400 miles left in your drive but cannot manage to be on the road for more than 30 minutes before someone has to use the bathroom yet again? This has been my heart condition of late. A heart that is more concerned with arriving at our final destination than the journey we are on. But what if the saying was “ stop and take time to become more like Jesus ” or even “ stop and take time to deeply treasure Jesu s”. Oh how this changes the long days in the car on this sanctification journey called a family road trip. Lord forgive me when I have been more concerned with “getting there” then who we are when we arrive. -Steve More  about our move to...

Let's just start this post off by saying, I'm not a morning person.  At all.  I try to be.  But it's useless.  I have a child that wakes up early, this has been a challenge for me for the past two years, but I'm learning to manage and be civil to everyone in my household at these early morning hours!  However, since it takes me a little bit to "wake up", I find myself often getting easily frustrated and losing my patience with my daughter (not to mention others in my household).  Thus pointing out many sinful areas in my own life.  So it's a good thing, but it's not always easy.  {Flashback to a few days ago} Karis is independent. She has reached the age where she insists on doing everything on her own.  This one particular morning, it was driving me more crazy than it normally does.  And as I mentioned before, being early in the morning as it so happened, I didn't have much patience in my tank to begin ...

I have found since becoming a stay at home mom I struggle more with comparisons than I ever remember before having kids.  There's something about being home and raising my children that has brought out this need to compare myself to others {more} than ever before.  I find looking on facebook, other people's blogs and even chatting with my fellow mommy friends, that I don't measure up as a mom.  I don't have all the creative ideas for teaching my child how to learn her ABC's/counting/etc, I'm not sure what sensory play is really is good for, I can't say I even know how to potty train a child since mine doesn't seem to go consistently in the toilet, I lack a sense of what my child(ren) should be learning at each new phase they enter and I certainly don't have time to read the books that are recommended and piling up on my night stand about parenting and discipline.  It's a good day when I have 20 minutes in the Word of God, which I view as much hig...

Being a stay at home mom (SAHM) brings me many days full of joy and is an extremely rewarding role.  But...there are days that are also very lonely and where I feel I will lose my mind if I have to tell my child to "stop doing that" one more time! I find great encouragement when I read thoughts from other moms who have been there or are currently in the trenches of motherhood themselves...it's a salve to my soul to know that the things and thoughts I deal with day in and day out are normal daily happenings!  The following post is one such encouragment. I trust that you moms will find some encouragement with her words too. I also hope that you husbands and dads reading this find it encouraging as well.  I am very thankful for my husband and appreciate the many moments he cares for me with his words. Enjoy! http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/what-every-husband-should-know-about-stay-at-home-moms#.T9IFsA18VAg.twitter

Karis always seems to "teach" me something about life, myself, my imperfections, etc.  She has brought out the best and worst in me at times.  I really do thank God for this little girl and that by His Grace he teaches me through moments with her each day.  This morning was one of those moments.  She was flipping through her Bible while I was feeding Isaac.  As I began reading a story to her, she started flipping through the pages.  Normally I try to get her to focus on one story at a time, but I figured it wasn't worth a fight.  She started saying "Jesus" in her cute little way.  She was looking for Jesus in the Bible.  So we found baby Jesus and she said, "Baby Jesus, night night"! (yea pretty much adorable I know!)  She continues flipping pages and starts saying, "more Jesus, more Jesus"!  I laughed and said yea, we all need more Jesus.  So we flipped through pages to find more pictures of Jesus while she continued...

We were out for a walk this morning when we came upon a mama birdy and her 4 or 5 little baby birdies.  Karis enjoyed seeing this and quite honestly, so did I!  There's just something about little fuzzy baby birds hopping around with their mama that makes me smile :) As I watched the little birdies run around, their mama trying to get them all together, I had to laugh because she looked how I often feel with only two kiddos to round up! I wanted to help the little mama bird round up her little birds (especially the one running into the street!) and make sure they were all safe.  I seem to get a bit frazzled on most days for example when trying to get out of the house if I have errands to run or somewhere to be.  I can also get easily frustrated with Karis who seems to choose those very moments to have a meltdown.  I hate that I lose my patience and get easily frustrated some days.  But I'm being refined...ref...

Before I even became pregnant with Karis, I knew I would want to stay home eventually with our children.  It wasn't until I had our little girl, where that feeling only intensified.  Steve and I feel blessed that we have been able to make that transition of me leaving a job outside the home to stay at home with Karis...and now soon to be Isaac too!  I dealt with a lot of mixed emotions and negative thoughts at the time of leaving my job: sense of worth in doing a job outside the home, will people judge me or think I'm lazy, will I get bored, etc.  I realized that most of these thoughts were attacks from the enemy on my personal self worth that should only be found in Christ.  My worth doesn't come from how much money I make, where I work, how well I do my job, but my worth comes from Christ.  It's because of Him, I am motivated to do a good job at whatever my role is...for now it's being a stay at home mommy.  I came across this b...

I am a needy person.  Most people don't want to admit that about themselves, in fact, I don't really like admitting that about myself, but I am.  Even worse, some people fool themselves and say they are not needy, so therefore wouldn't need to own up to that fact about themselves.  Of course we do this...we live in a culture where we do not "need" anything from anyone.  We can literally provide for ourselves (given that we have the proper resources)... We have stores very close to our homes, where we can buy all the food, clothes and anything we need and/or want.  Or we could just stay in our home and order what we need off the Internet and have it delivered to our home, how about that for service! We have restaurants to serve us Entertainment at our fingertips Theme parks (especially for us Orlando folks) Cell phones (most with Internet access these days) Social media (where we burn up hours of time looking at peopl...

I will not lie, my heart was beating a little faster than normal as the tires of our large nine passenger van came ever so close to the edge of the shear cliff. The long narrow road and the blind corners of the switchbacks made for an uneasy muscle tensing trip up towards the summit of the mountain. As we got higher, soft patches of snow began to line the side of the road and an occasional mountain goat would watch us as though we were the wildlife.  As I watched out the window, it appeared as though we were getting so close to the clouds that I might be able to reach out and touch one.  As that thought made its way through my senses I forgot about how high we were and how close we were to death at every turn.  N oticing my childlike gaze up at the clouds, the driver leaned over and jokingly said, “I wonder if God hears our voice louder from here?”  Even though the driver, whom I would call a good friend after that trip, was joking it provoked my mind to thought for...

While sitting in class the other day with the 'after lunch heavy set eyes' taking over me, My mind was captured by an argument posed by my Old Testament professor. He was discussing the fall and the role of Adam and Eve. Through a series of connections with Hebrew verbs he presented the argument that Adam was to be a soldier-priest. One who would protect the garden while living in communion with God. To close the argument the professor made the claim that Adam's true failure was not that he followed his wife by eating of the tree, but his true failure was allowing the serpent in the garden to get to his wife. It will still take me some time to processes this theologically, but there is a pearl of great truth in the idea of Adam protecting the garden and his wife. Walking outside the other day to go to church I heard a commotion from the downstairs apartments. 3 young ladies and one guy were standing on the sidewalk pointing back at the door of their apartment. I asked th...

What defines us dictates our life. What defines us becomes our master. What defines us can enslave us. What defines us becomes our god. Some would claim that they are defined by a multitude of things. While others cling tightly to one specific thing that defines everything they are. Some of us have yet to take an introspective look into our lives to see what defines us. Some of us know all too well what things define us. For some, our definition can even change depending on the people we are around. Some of us like our definition and some of us wish we could change it. I would like to argue that truth can be found in saying that everyone has at least one thing that personally defines who they are. Even one who would say that “nothing defines me” in turn is defined by that very statement. My relatively short lived, fairly experience filled life of twenty-five years, whether I was conscious of it at the time or not, has revolved greatly around this sometimes daunting and echoing quest...

God has been softening my heart to start teaching me some things about myself two weeks ago...He has been showing me that I am all to often reliant on my own efforts, my own abilities and my own decisions. That I don't rely on Christ for His Strength , understand that He gives me the ability to work through things and His Ways are better than my ways. I think a lot of this may stem from the way I grew up, being thrown into a world of independence and self-reliance. Although it's good to be a healthy, well rounded individual, as a Christian, I'm not supposed to be autonomous in the way the world would define it (Dictionary.com would define this as: self-governing; independent; subject to it's own laws only). As a believer in Christ I am to rely and depend on Him and His provision and direction of my life. However, the influence of the world can fog my mind sometimes. I especially realize that I'm falling prey to the way of the world when I keep trying at something...

I will be as straight forward as I can from the beginning of this post, my intent in this blog is to provoke thought on something that caught me off guard recently. Not too long ago, I was reading "The Call" by Os Guinness. It's a great book that breaks down what it means to be "called" by God Biblicly. In the book Guinness attempts to destroy some long held ideologies about ministry and works to develop a new framework in which to think about Biblical calling. Early on in the book in a chapter titled "Let God be God", a statement is made about how God needs to hold His right place in our lives for us to understand our calling. As we search the scriptures, we find this idea about God holding His right position in our lives many times. Guinness begins to devolop his point by sharing a part of George Steiner's novel, "The Portage to San Christobal of A.H". In this classic novel by Steiner, the fictional story of Hitler plays out with Hit...

A few days ago a friend of mine asked me if I would help him change the oil on his car. Its been a while since I have done much work on a car but I figured that a simple oil change wouldn't be to hard. I was all in and a bit excited to be able to work on a car again.  It might sound strange, but working on a car can be quiet relaxing for me. After a rough week at school, the idea of relaxing and working on a car was sounding great. I met up with my friend Will at his place and found out that we would be headed over to one his friend's apartment so we could use his set of car ramps. As we pulled out of our apartment complex (Will and I live in the same complex) and headed north, I quickly noticed the change in scenery.  Our apartment complex is tucked in a nice little area just north of Downtown Dallas. We are actually less than 5 minutes from a very upscale mall and many fine dinings, such as the Cheesecake Factory and Magiannos. We truly live down the street from million...

There are many things in life that can be "out of place" without causing a much of a problem. For instance, In my classroom at my school there is a great chance during the day, with 56 kids in the room, for some stuff to be misplaced. Sometimes papers are placed in the wrong pile, supplies not returned, or books not put where they belong. When this happens it puts a small inconvience in the day. Now if I were to misplace one of my students this would be a different conversation. When things are not in their place in the classroom, though, I have not only myself to blame but also those 56 little ones that blur in and out of my room. My first tendency is usually to blame them. Funny though, many times it was me who misplaced something. Yet day by day my first response is to turn to the kids when something goes missing or is not in its place. What about in my own llife? My spiritual life (I say this loosley believing that my life in Christ has everything to do with everythin...

5:50 and I spring to my feet. Knowing I should have been up 20 min ago to have enough time to grab breakfast and hit my knees to pray before the day, I hurry along to the bathroom. I get dressed and ready for the day in record time. I then proceed on my morning routine and head to the bedroom to give my wife a kiss and tell her to have a good day. I leave the apartment, race down the stairs and jump into the car just to find myself sitting to let the car warm up. In that moment of sitting I realize two things: one, that I had not gotten nearly enough sleep and I am very tired; and two, I am almost out of gas in my car. I think to myself, I can't stop I need to get to work because I have a meeting starting at 7:00 and stopping for gas would make me late. I leave the parking lot, pull out on the street, pass the gas station on the right and get on the highway with hope that I made the right decision on not filling up. Cruising along and doing quite well, I think to myself I knew I c...