Good Clean Fun: Living Power

When parenting gets tough, wouldn't it be nice to have your own personal coach to support you, give great advice and reassure you that you will survive?

That's why I absolutely love Laurie Wallen of Living Power! A life coach with special needs children, Laurie understands the demands and complexities of parenting in today's world. And she provides real-life, hard-won tips and advice to help parents meet the challenges we face every day.

Here's a little bit of what Laurie says in her bio:

Are you a mom who's determined to thrive no matter what life brings? Do you have children with special needs or other circumstances that really make that tough? As a mom with 4 kids - 2 with bipolar and developmental delays - I get it. Like you, I've had to find resources to help me do this parenting thing and not fall apart doing it.


In my own journey to thrive, I discovered I love to help others do the same. So I became a life coach who helps women live with purpose and joy in the midst of challenges. I also speak for MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) groups. I'm excited to share this journey with you too!

When you read my blog, you'll find parenting tips, stress-management tips, encouraging stories, and ideas that bring perspective to life as moms and life as caregivers to our special kids. My hope is that each time you stop by and join the conversation, supportive friendships will form with other moms who get it too.

Here's a post Laurie would like to share with you ... I know you'll love her as much as I do!

What’s Your Theme Song?

People can be really creative. That’s usually a great thing!

Except when it’s your four year old pretending to play a CD she made (out of cardboard). In your minivan’s CD player.

Yep.

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of the music I’m not listening to. My favorites, the songs that I resonate with. The kind of music that pulls my soul to the surface and gives me permission to feel things beyond my usual daily experience.

I have a few that you could consider my “theme songs” in life.

More than any other song I’ve heard in my life, Blessed Be Your Name (Matt Redmond, 2002) is the one I want on my epitaph. It captures the longing of my heart to take life by the horns, the good and the bad, and lift it with all my might to heaven, and to thrive. These are the lyrics:

“Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name”

Of course, on a bad day (like, perhaps, today, when my oldest came home with moods off-kilter, asked for something I couldn’t give her, and when I said no, proceeded to bang her head in to the wall until she dented it and broke a light switch). Well, on a day like that, my theme song might be more along the lines of R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” or Alanis Morrisette’s “Ironic.”

Just like in my car (when the CD player is actually functioning...) I can choose what stations I listen to, in my own mind I have that choice too.

I can choose to have a posture of gratitude and desire to bless His name, even on the “road marked with suffering,” or “when I’m found in a desert place.” Or I can choose to freak out and list in dizzying chaoticness all the things that are going wrong like R.E.M. in their song.

For a few minutes today, I chose R.E.M.’s version. And the music in my spirit sapped me of all my strength and joy. Then I changed my mental radio station (and took a short walk outside!) and voila! It’s like being that cute actress in a movie who has her own great theme song whenever she enters the scene.

What music do you choose for your life? If you had a theme song, what would it be?

Go check Laurie's blog out today and leave her some comment love!