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It Is Well
Outside snow is finally beginning to fall. It’s the middle of December but amazingly for most of the week it’s been warm enough to crack windows open and break out short sleeves. Not so today. Today it snows. Today I sit curled up with a hot cup of coffee, a roaring fire, a sleeping little boy and an open Bible. My Bible has not been open much these days. There are all the normal excuses. “Too busy” is my default in December. There is shopping to finish, packages to wrap, food to make, food to eat, places to go and people to see. Outside, along with the snow, there is…
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Rest Should Be More Than a Four-Letter Word
We all wear a lot of hats in any given day. I know I certainly do. Those hats at times can make life feel akin to an endless marathon, with some miles easier to run than others. Some miles feel like you could coast on air and others like the very next step could kill you. At all times there is the awareness of pleasure and pain, mountaintop highs and valley lows. Most of life is lived in the in-between. It is in the running lately that I have had to learn to stop for a bit, to pace myself, to even stop running long enough to process. My hats…
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The Measure of a Moment
So much happens in a moment. In one moment a person is born and in the blink of an eye another is gone. There are moments that build up, others that tear down. Moments of strength, moments of weakness. There are times of plenty and times of known scarcity. Seasons of joy, seasons of pain. Days of sun and days full of rain. There are frigid cold days and others brimming with the sun’s warmth. Moments that just happen and others that don’t, moments of adjustment and moments of appointment. Even seasons of adversity seem to be appointed by God himself. (Hebrews 12:6) There are times to put the peddle…
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When Words Fail
Simply tune into the news and you know words are not lacking in today’s world. There are rising tensions in Gaza, a 6.0 earthquake in Napa Valley, the West Africa Ebola outbreak that is 6 months ongoing, a massive chemical spill in Mexico turned two rivers red, the atrocities and threat of ISIS, and the sobering CDC statistic that every 30 seconds in the United States another baby has been killed by abortion. If this were not enough to sober the heart there was also the recent news of Robin Williams suicide. It seems so contradictory that a man known for his exuberance and talent for humor could succumb to…
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And Then there was PRAYER
“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.” ~ Oswald Chambers I have to be honest. Prayer is tough work. Far too often it’s approached as a last-resort position we, with reluctance, succumb to. Prayer is not our plan A, plan B, plan C or sometimes even our plan D. Instead of viewing prayer as the greater work we live as though it’s nothing more than a default contingency plan. We cry, we research, we seek out friends, family, professionals, anything. It’s our nature to want to fix what’s broken, to have an answer for the hurting, to DO something, anything. When all else…
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This Is All I Have To Give: Letting Go
One of this week’s Bloghop themes for P31 Ministries online Bible Studies, Am I Messing Up My Kids? just hit home in a big way. In last week’s post I shared a bit about how transition currently feels like a long endurance swim through life. It’s been tough to say the least. And then it got even more tough, more complicated, more “messy”. The little bit of security and stability I was grasping for became a tabled option for the time-being as more questions than answers surfaced in the middle of this re-location. The truth is we are resting in a period of great unknown. Our little family desperately desires…
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From “Idealistic” to “Realistic”: Being a Mom is Tough
My post today is deviating a bit from the norm. This post is more for the moms out there navigating the tough waters that is motherhood than really anyone else. It’s meant to be honest. It’s meant to encourage. I’m not quite sure how I painted parenthood to be a Hollywood stroll through the park. My guess is it occurred in the long span of time it took to enter into parenthood in the first place. After 4 long years of infertility and a devastating miscarriage our friends all around us were welcoming kiddos left and right while we came face-to-face with shattered dreams. That large empty dining room table…
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The Game Changer
I’m just going to come right out and say it. I’m tired. Really tired. It’s no secret that our little family has been in transition since the week before Christmas. New job, new town, new faces, a new place of residence. In the spaces between “normal” and “life” days are filled with creatively trying to entertain a 100% little boy in the foreign spaces of a third floor apartment as opposed to a rolling back-yard while many an evening is spent house-hunting. Each time we walk through a new door I pray and hope that maybe it’s the last one, maybe it will be “home”. The bottom-line is that we…
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The “Painful” Truth
My husband often says that I sleep funny. It’s true, I don’t deny it. I take an almost soldier-like stance in my sleep. Flat on my back with hands to my side or sometimes, if that’s not comfortable, the same position except turned to my side. I have one pillow but it’s not your typical pillow. It’s a long, half-oval shaped one constructed of foam as opposed to anything soft or remotely pliable. It’s firm but purposefully so. Years ago I began struggling with intense migraines. Debilitating shots of pain so intense your entire body ached. If functioning were even possible then the accompanying nausea usually did me in. There…
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The Comparison Trap
Honestly, sometimes I feel like this guy. Exhausted. Stretched beyond my limit. Feeling like I’m not measuring-up; that somehow I’ve managed to come-up short yet again. Feeling simply like a failure. Anybody relate? Those feelings are certainly not due to a lack of effort either. Oh, no. You see I’ve strained, grunted, and reached with what has seemed akin to super-human effort only to fall measurably short of the end goal. It’s as if at times every fiber of my being has been stretched, pulled, and utterly taxed by the effort. Yesterday, as I was showing my husband the “re-launch“, which he’s heard me talk and brainstorm through for…
