The second day of 2017 is here. There is a bubbling up inside of me, like when you know a surprise is coming, but you don’t exactly know what it is or what it’s going to look like. For each one of us the future will look different, “yet the Lord longs to be gracious
She sat a small orange on my desk with the words, “Here’s a happy for you”, and kept on walking. I stopped working and sat for a moment as I breathed in those words, “Here’s a happy for you”. Did my sweet friend know how much my heart longed for happy? I peeled the orange
I shut my eyes just as my son pulled the car out into oncoming traffic. He took off and there was nothing I could do, short of screaming, which would have been disastrous. So . . . I shut my eyes, clinched the door handle, and prayed. Funny how I think that if I close
Pretzels with sherbet ice cream are the perfect blend of salty and sweet, crunchy and smooth, until you bite down breaking off a temporary cap on a tooth that previously broke. Maybe crunching on chips and salsa earlier in the day did not help to keep my cap in tack. It broke, I break, you
A sad face, toilet paper emoji awaited me. A facial expression made out of toilet paper, placed on a roll of toilet paper, so I could not miss it. My daughter left me this creative gift, with a clear message, in a place she knew I would go. The next day I found another gift.
We had the most successful summer ever and then the fourth quarter hit like a ton of bricks smashing. We broke hard; three and a half years of hard work down to an instant, flat nothing. What do you say when you have to lay off employees? What happens when faith breaks and risk is
Each month more and more homes foreclosed all around us and we lowered the asking price of our house to no avail. Thirteen long, stretched-out, warren-out months passed. The economy crash had sucked the life out of our business and my husband had taken a job out of state. The kids and I stayed behind
Those who know me, know that I love baking. Recently I tried a new recipe and it flopped, literally. As I’m reaching out in new faith, for this next season in life, I find my faith a little shaky. Kind of like the three layer cake I made that started sliding off it’s foundation. There
When the wrestling of our heart grows intense, know that the answer is in the process of being birthed. Keep being faithful. Keep showing up. With each move over the past seven years we have sorted, cleaned out, and packed up in preparation for another life change. Each location represents a move, a transition, an
Stepping on a squishy, gritty surface with bare feet, it took a minute to register the sensation. The stamped concrete floor in the hallway was hard and cold, where I placed my bare foot was strangely cushioned. Looking down I saw that I had stepped on a crack in the cement with sandy colored clay,
When we chose to focus on our issue, we opt out of trusting and we opt into second guessing ourselves and God. We rehearse earth’s language instead of what our Heavenly Father is speaking to our hearts. We find ourselves awake at night; pressure increasing mentally and physically; running in mind circles, we are spent.
The next time a strange male voice says, “you’re brave . . .”, I will think twice before proceeding. Kids waiting in the car, my fourteen year old and his sister, I ran quickly in the store needing two ingredients for soup. You know how that goes; once inside the grocery store you always think
Feeling out of sorts like the snowman art hanging on the wall into the New Year. Remnants of white lights, a shiny candlestick red, and candy cane stripes left behind. Another tub of decorations to pack, can’t quite wrap Christmas up; decorated in stages, now the putting away in stages. Tired. The crush of busy,
Dirty clothes, stinky diapers, and paperwork piling up left me feeling guilty. This was not the vision of “momhood” I had in mind when I was longing to have a family. A tight budget, caring for a newborn, chasing a 4 year old and learning to live with temporary house guest, left me balancing more
Let’s just say I have more-than-a-few secret hiding places and I’m always creating new ones on the fly. Staying one step ahead of my children is a must during certain seasons of parenting. I developed the “never put the prized possession in the same hiding spot” strategy when I take away privileges due to their less
Life can deal out a lot of “no’s”: challenges that stretch us in many ways. In the midst of challenging times will you learn to say, “yes”? Yes, an incredible word with simple, yet profound power: power to change the course of a moment, a day, a week, a year and even a lifetime; to change the direction
I know what it means to search and keep searching for answers. To knock on doors of wisdom to only find answers that do not fit the puzzle piece you’re missing. More searching and finally there is a glimpse of hope and then the truth, or a version of it, begins to unfold piece by
Do you ever just want to give in and give up? Give in to things like glancing at your facebook feed every few minutes in hopes that someone has noticed your post and likes it. Give in to eating the ice cream sandwich and half of the box of Cheez Its just because it taste
If only I had a secret window to glance through and see my daughter on her first day of 4th grade. This was a morning of firsts. The first day of 4th grade; the first morning that my daughter fixed her own hair on the first day of school; the first time she would walk
I love gazing into a crackling, well contained fire. The flames are full of motion, you see light of varying shades and colors dancing, there is warmth and the smell of fire that fills the air. Whether it be in a fire pit outside on a cool, crisp fall evening or near a fireplace snuggled
