Who am I?

I am Jen Crum, wife of Randy.  We have been married for 5 years (in October) and have had amazing adventures together.  Life with Randy is a joy and and pleasure.  We love to spend time in nature.  Randy and I are teaching our boys to love God's world as we explore together as a family.  I'm honored to be married to a loving man that wants our boys to know God and who cherishes me as I am.  (He even lets me color on the walls ... see?)

I am also the mother of 3 amazingly fun little boys.  In our quick 5 years as a family we have actually had the honor of being "parents" to 5 boys of various ages.  We miss our foster sons and hold them dear to our hearts. 

Our junior adventurers are 4, 2.5, and 10 months old.  They are learning to experience life at it's fullest.  These guys are amazing at being flexible and eager to learn.  They make us laugh every day as they remind us about what it means to have pure love.  Each of our boys has a special story about how God is at work in their lives to keep them healthy and whole.  They already have some amazing testimonies!  I love being a mother of these boys.

Okay, so that's my family - I'm a wife and a mother... but who am I?

I am a child of God.  Set apart for declaring his goodness.  I have a calling to minister with children.  This call has taken us on a new adventure recently as I picked up a full-time-live-at-work-summer job.  Whew.  What a journey it was to live for 3 months in a different city while Randy continued to work (and partly live) at home.  God is weird sometimes.  He is always good and we have seen good things in our family through this unexpected call.  We will continue to be working with the camp through the year.  

I am also a woman with type 2 diabetes.  Yep.  I have a disease.  I fight my disease daily.  You know what else?  I'm uninsured.  We can't afford health insurance in our current life situation.  I hate that.  I want to be well for my husband and boys.  I want to be healthy for a very long me so that I can watch my boys grow and be an active part of my family.  I could give you a list of symptoms that come along with diabetes, but you've likely heard many of them.  The bottom line is that I'm tired.  I'm overweight, and those things feed into each other.  Life wears me out because I'm living at full speed as a wife and mother fighting this disease.

I'm a lot more than these things, but this is where I will stop this evening.  Why?  I want to tell you about our next 7 week adventure - I don't want you to miss out.  I need to share about it because I need encouragement.

Last night I was excited to discover that I was chosen as a contestant for Season 8 of "Win, Lose, or Blog".  I get to take part in a weight loss journey with 7 others and share about it online while we battle to shed some pounds together.  I'm going to be transparent about my personal challenges when it comes to weight loss.  I'll be sharing here, on my personal blog as well as on the Win, Lose, or Blog page.  I am working on my action steps this weekend.  The contest officially begins on Monday, August 27 and continues for 7 full weeks!  If you know me and see me in person, please check in and see how I'm doing.  Invite me to run, or dance, or work out with you.  If you don't know me in person, email me with ideas for food (remember we are working toward a whole foods plant based diet).  Send me videos to help with exercises, share a story about your own journey.  Read along and leave comments on my posts.  I greatly appreciate comments.

Who are you?  Are you on a journey?  How can Life With My Boys support your journey?