A Merry Heart – Friday Funnies
Charis and I were doing school a school project about the lifecycle of ladybugs. You know, the eggs, the larva, the pupa, the adult? And as Charis was coloring the little eggs on a leaf she asked me: “Mom, do ladybugs have babe-n-sitters (her word for babysitters)?” I laughed and said, “No, why?” “Well who keeps her babies when she has to leave?  Poor Mama Ladybug, she must be so tired.”

God Story: Ponder This Before Black Friday
Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you get a big win, a new purchase, a grand gift, that there is often a loss that follows shortly after? I am thinking of Salem’s birthday gifts.  She got an unexpected amount of Legos, new and used.  She was naturally delighted and overwhelmed. But a couple of days later, she was nearly distraught because she had lost one of her old favorite sets, a small motorcycle. I saw myself in this real life parable. God gives me so much, new and wondrous, that I didn’t even know I was getting, and the glow of that quickly fades as I lament over a much smaller, insignificant “treasure” from the past.  And as I was tr

Real Question #5: What About Boredom?
May I be candid?  Boredom is often a lack of vision and gratitude.  Hear me out.  When you lack vision and purpose, then you can easily feel like what you are doing is beneath you or insignificant.  But when you know the greater good or goal, then the mundane (which is still mundane) becomes part of a bigger puzzle rather than the end result. For example, laundry wears me out.  It is tiresome, boring and never-ending.  But it is not the sum total of me as a woman, wife or mother.  It is a piece of the mundane that simply gets done.  Here is where the gratitude kicks in.  The other day, I literally said out loud as  I was changing the clothes over, “Thank you, Lord,

Okay, okay, I am un-American…
Or am I?  We decided to break away from our traditional family gathering and head to the beach instead.  No problem, right? Wrong. Traditions and perceptions of traditions are very, very weighty issues. Let me try to explain.  If you are born in the South, and you have a big family, and you cook, and you have birthed “grandchildren,”  then you go home for the holidays. If you don’t, this is almost grounds for stoning or disowning. Or both. No one told me this. It is just what I have always perceived as truth. It is after all, the point of traditions. You do it the same way every year. From Hallmark to relatives’ comments and expectations, there i

Living the Gospel
As we continue to talk about Rest and the life of God in us, I want to share an excerpt about the power of the gospel.  The author’s definition of “gospel” is not just praying the prayer, but the death-to-life transformation that God has begun and will complete according to the promise through His Resurrected Son. “In much of the popular writing on spiritual formation there is a tendency to convey a very stunted view of the gospel.  We get the idea that what unbelievers need is the gospel, and then, once they accept Christ as Savior, they move on to “needing  discipleship,” which consists of learning about Christ,  developing the fruit of th