Happy Mother's Day Book Review: The Invisible Woman: When Only God Sees by Nicole Johnson

I hope everyone had an awesome Mother's Day!!

Yesterday I got an incredible book from my Dad and I finished it yesterday too!

This book is about a woman named Charlotte. A wife and mother of two boys. She begins to notice that she has become invisible. That she is simply the hands that fold laundry, the driving force that takes them too school. To her husband she always looks "fine" when she asks. It's as if her family thinks that dinner magically appears in front of them each night. She begins to give into the thanklessness of her invisibility when she confides to a friend. Two weeks later this friend returns from a trip to Europe. Her friend hands her a book she found that would later change Charlotte's perception of her whole life.

The book is on the Cathedrals of Europe. I won't spoil it for you by listing the amazing parallels she is able to draw from it. But they are beautiful!

I can't say that I feel invisible ALL the time (Thank you Daniel Tiger for the "Thank You" song!) But do I feel invisible sometimes? You bet I do! When I'm on the phone and someone comes in begging for a snack, it's like I'm not even there. But motherhood is a service. And we shouldn't be doing our day to day with hope of recognition (We should still get it but that shouldn't be our motivation.). Our motivation should be to more like Jesus Christ and we need to use our faith and know that God sees our good works and our thankless service.

Well I need to wrap this up, Caden can't see that I'm trying to write a blog post and is asking for a story right now :) Please read this book! I am more than willing to lend my copy to anyone in my area who wants to read it, so long as I get it back!

Crazy week plus a marriage retreat:

This week has been CRAZY! Monday night Clayton got hit with a very sudden flu bug. He was throwing up every fifteen minutes till I decided he was going to the ER. Nine hours of waiting and three liters of IV's later he was finally released. Little Man and Baby Boy were both throwing up as well though as we discovered and the doctor confirmed, what we have affects adults worse than children. 

Seeing as no one had thrown up for a few days we decided to still on a marriage retreat sponsored by the military that we had signed up for. Daycare was provided while the parents got to attend marriage classes put on by our local chaplain. It was so much fun! 

Day one we watched part one of Mark Gungor's and his "Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage." 

It is hilarious! And as far as relationship advice goes, he has it spot on. 

If this is something you want to get (I recommend it!), be aware that there are some doctrinal things that you might not agree with but his advice is sound in my opinion.

Day two we watched part two of "Laugh Your Way..." and the rest of the day was left to us to spend time with our families. We went to the Museum of Flight and had a great time!

(Clay and Little Man checking out the flight simulator!)

(Will has decided he wants to be an astronaut when he grows up!)

(After the Museum of Flight we hit up the Crab Pot!)

(Little did I know I would be fighting the urge to throw this up later on! Thankfully it was excellent going down!)

After we got back to the hotel we hit up the pool and hot tub! Our boys hate being cold so we spent the most time in the hot tub. Which was nice!

We got back to our room and put our boys to bed while we stayed up and watched Animal Planet!

Day three was also Clayton's birthday! I woke up at one in the morning feeling very nauseous. Turns out I didn't escape the bug after all... So unfortunately we had to leave before we could finish watching the video during the third class or do any of the fun stuff we had planned for Clayton's first birthday home... But we will celebrate next weekend assuming we all feel well.