Moments in Grace

So, there we were.     My six olive shoots and I around the table, trying to have morning devotions. It had started out bad and was filtering into ugly. Child one had woken up cranky and annoyed and everyone who opened their mouth in this child’s presence was feeling the irritation. Child four and five were bickering over Legos in an argument that was coming to blows. Child two was enjoying irritating child one. Child three was complaining in a tone nearing temper tantrum force, about breakfast not suiting their preferences. Child six was just screaming at the top of their lungs about nothing in particular. And I am still trying to read Hebrews 4:12-13 over the swell and crash of noise but no one can hear me. And I read for the fifth time, “For the word of God is living and active.   Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart....

To all those who serve and who have served our country, Thank You. We remember. We remember your sacrifice.   We remember your risk.   We remember your gift. Your self-less giving for us all, that we might taste the freedom so many others long to. We take it for granted.   Can we really appreciate your gift for us?   Freedom isn’t free. And the cost is often the very lives of those who seek to give freedom to others.   And for all of you who have counted the cost of laying down your life for others, We say,   Thank you.   May you not be forgotten. God sees.   He knows.   And whatever you have given for the sake of Christ, to serve Him in your calling as a soldier, it is a sacrifice worthy, because Christ is worthy.   And if those who have gone before us had not considered their very lives to be worth the cost of taking the gospel to this America, then freedom would not ring throughout the earth t...

Safe is a place I've clung to all too often. Avoiding conflict, avoiding difficulty, avoiding pain. But safe is just a mirage in this life.  We run to it only to find it evaporate through our fingers. There is only one safe place in all this sin-stained world, and that is in the arms of Jesus.  Today my blog is posted over on Incourage, an inspirational site for women.  A place for women to gather and tell their God stories; to share encouragement and faith.  To tell the story of His grace.  I'm so thankful and blessed for this opportunity to lend my voice to chorus of amazing women at Incourage who are boldly telling His story through the everyday moments of their lives.  To read my story at Incourage click here. "For God works all things together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purposes." Romans 8:28

The fog hangs heavy this morning like a veil obscuring the sight, of all that is home.   Home, this place where we have lived for the last six years, has become all too often a place I want to run away from.   Not my own home mind you, but my neighborhood, this corner of the earth that feels like daily I watch it deteriorate before my very eyes, pieces of it crumbling into oblivion.   Oh, I’ve wished I could get out of here.   Run away from all this mess to a place that is quiet and tidy and safe.   But the neighborhood’s falling faster than our money can pay down this mortgage, and we get a notice that the house has dropped twenty or thirty thousand in value in the last two years.   We read it like an obituary.     There’s no getting out of here. So many of our neighbors are trying to move, trying to break free before it’s too late, but It’s already too late. I watch the kid selling drugs down the street. I wat...

I am the mother that almost wasn’t. I know, you find that hard to believe looking at my twelve passenger van and the herd of kids I wrangle but, yes, I am that. The mother that almost wasn’t,   except for …   grace. Yes, there almost wasn't piles of smelly dishes, and mountains of laundry,  shoes up the wazoo, and Legos gone wild, but there also almost wasn't tiny blonde tots with eyes like the ocean, and chubby hands that grab your face to pull you in close for a bubbling kiss.  Because if I wasn't a mother, I wouldn't have messes, my bamboo would gleam, but my arms would be ache-empty and I used to think I wanted it that way. Before I knew grace and God.   I was the kid who, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, would have said, photo journalist, poet maybe.   Kids?   They weren’t on the radar.   It’s hard to imagine how kids fit when you’re planning on traveling the world, telling stories with pictu...