Moments in Grace

They say that what ever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That when you go through hardship, suffering, trial and fire, you can come out bitter or better, that the fire, it purifies. That gold, when it is put into the furnace, put under fire, it gives up its impurities, these other things inside of it, they rise to the surface to be skimmed off, leaving behind only the gold. In the Christian life, the heat of battle can purify us. In the midst of the hardest battles we are tested.  We are seen for what we are, all the impurity rising like so much waste coming from hidden places. The battle tests our hearts.  The battle reveals what we are made of.  And when we see it, it provides the opportunity to be purged of what is hindering, to shed our dead weight and become all that we need to be to fight the good fight of faith. We studied American history this year in our homeschool, and sometime in the thaw of winter into spring we studied the Winter of Valley F...

Every December it happens.     This monumental, earth shattering strain that is the Christmas season in America.   The activities multiply, the rushing intensifies, the pressure of gifts to buy and events to attend, decorations to put up and food to cook, family to visit, and houses to clean, and as a woman, as a mother, the person who has to plan and orchrestrate the Christmas chaos for a family (in my case, a family with seven children) it can almost put you over the edge.   But as Christians somehow we know that this is wrong.   We know that Christmas is intended to be something other than this stress-inducing, materialistic, month long period of psychosis. This season that was meant to bring us the deepest peace, often brings us the most stress. This time that was meant to shine so much love in our hearts often makes us the most angry. These days that were meant to fill us with so much joy so often bring us pain. Ask me how I kno...

It happened the day before Thanksgiving.     The day my world spun me a little farther off course, sent my faith flying like some planet hurling into the cosmos, sheathed in blackness. I should have been thankful.   I wasn’t very.   I was rocked, spinning, without a compass. Maybe you’ve been there? It was the day the pregnancy test came back positive, announcing the impending arrival of baby number seven into our family and all I could see ahead was suffering. I don’t have easy pregnancies.   They come with pain, months of vomiting and nausea, sometimes heart problems, sometimes high blood pressure, exhaustion, and the last time, I almost died. With my fourth baby I had to wear a heart monitor because my heart just wouldn’t keep up on me.   It raced out of control.   I couldn’t breathe and eat at the same time without difficulty.   I was in a constant state of exhaustion.   Baby number five ...

Standing at the sink, soap suds filling my hands I hear a voice behind me.   “Mom, I feel like I don’t have a purpose.   I mean, I can’t do anything well.   I’m not really good at anything, I don’t have any talents or whatever.   Why am I even here?” I know this question all too well, precious child.   In a world that manufactures idols out of ordinary people every day, where people make idols out of themselves, where movies, t.v. and social media continually tempt us to self-aggrandize and self-publicize, and where all it takes is one glance at another person’s facebook page to make you feel that all of life is a competition to be won and you are clearly the biggest loser that there ever was, yes, my child it can be hard to feel like you matter. But I need to tell you something. You matter to God. You are important to God. Because God, the eternal Creator of all things, does not make trash.   He does no...

So maybe the winter that never ends is really starting to get to you.   And after four solid months, now becoming five, of snow on the ground and biting wind and temperatures below freezing, you are longing for sun and trips to the park and just some warmth again.   It can be easy to start to complain.   It can be easy to start to whine a little. It can be easy to think of all the things you wish were different. And in these March days, maybe like me, you are reading through the Bible in a year and once again you come across this story in Numbers, this story of a people who found themselves complaining. And maybe you read these words and see yourself for a moment.   You look into the mirror of the Word and you see the ugly and the true and you realize that these words are an alarm for maybe…you. Because right there in the book of Numbers, is the story of the Israelites and their trip into the wilderness and how they got deliv...

When I met her for the first time, she looked ordinary to me, unassuming, like any grandmother, anywhere, with salt and pepper hair and a soft, generous smile.   How could I have known that I had met a hero?   On that very first mission trip, into the high Mexican desert, up the winding dirt roads to land of cactus and cattle and smiling children living in structures made of sticks tied together with twine, how could I have known that there was a gem buried in those desert mountains?   That there was a gem of a woman tucked away in the sparsely dotted folds of those mountains, a hero of a woman with a name like a gemstone.   Her name was Garnet. And this gem of a grandmother, she led our team up these winding mountain roads and we bounced and jarred over rocks and packed dirt in a white twelve-passenger van, she told us her stories. The stories of a life lived full out for Jesus. She told us that she had come to this desert land when she w...

So maybe your days have been hard lately. Maybe just breathing seems hard.  Like your lungs can't seem to fill fully. Maybe you wake up every day and just...try...to...survive. Yeah, I know you. I've been there. Lately.  I've been there. Stressed out, crushed by life, drowning. Because last school year I thought I just might have a nervous breakdown.  And my only hope was that something, somewhere would change.  And one day into this school year I was a crying mess.  After one day.  Because everything bad about last year had followed me here.  Maybe you've been there? And the thing that you hoped in seems crushed?  The hope of easier is abandoned? Maybe you're not a homeschooling mother of six like me.  Maybe you don't have kids with learning struggles, processing problems and attention deficit. A toddler that screams nonstop and two other small boys that think wrestling is actually a school subjec...

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....

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...