Thankful

Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving. As I write the pumpkin pies are cooking in the oven. The house is filled with sweet smelling spices. The kids are bored. The Christmas music is playing in the background. Outside there is snow on the branches from a light, overnight sprinkling. It's the "perfect" holiday mood, right?

My heart is full because I have so much to be thankful for like always. We all do-ALWAYS! Just some years our perspective becomes more clouded than others and we focus on our heartbreaks, our dissapointments, our loneliness, our brokenness.We turn our eyes inward instead of upward.

I am remembering Thanksgiving 2009. It will always be so special to me. It was nothing fancy that is for sure. There was no holiday music, no cold weather ( if fact we were sweating like crazy), no fat, juicy turkey (only a skinny imported one from Brazil that cost a pretty penny), and no abundance of fancy decorations or elaborate spread of food. But there was thanks giving. We had driven out to our friends farm in the bush in Mozambique. They were still in the process of building there house built out of mud, straw and cow dung-yes, literally. There in the scorching heat with our Thanksgiving spread on a wobbly table under the canopy of a landrover we celebrated being together and being thankful that in the midst of a not so comfortable life we could celebrate the ONE that makes life worth living and life worth giving. Amazing!

So today I am thankful to know what true Thanks-giving feels like. Today I am thankful for all those friends I have that continue to lay down their lives daily for the ONE that makes giving thanks possible.

Grandma Sue

Each time I bend low to scoop up those silver pans that sit beneath my oven I remember her. Although they are worn, scratched and old they are seasoned with love. The tape there on the sides, nearly worn off now, marks her having been here on this earth. I don't want it to go away just like I didn't want her to leave. The pots sit across the kitchen stacked in a cupboard. Each time I feel the weight of them I remember her. How she was strong in her faith and sure of heaven to come.

For years now, I've held them dear. They've traveled the globe with me helping to make new places home. They've reminded when at times I had forgotten that I too will leave this earth and for now my faith is all that truly counts.

Being Emptied

It comes whether we find ourselves ready for it or not.

 It happens slowly but it's as though we don't notice.

Until suddenly, something in us awakens and we see it bursting forth and we find things all different.

Life sprinkles steadily to the ground to be absorbed, all rotten.

There is beauty in even this-the shedding of the old to make way for the new.

 It's shedding means life is full of promise.

It requires a stillness and a time of emptiness but life will come again. 

We are only emptied so new life can come forth in it's due season.

October....Really?

I am finding it hard to believe that it is already October. Although the weather is cooling down and the leaves are changing into beautiful colors and even beginning to fall. Time passes so quickly. In a month my first born baby boy will be turning 14. AHHHHH.....not so fast.

What My Boys are Made of...

Grass stained jeans.
Dirty fingernails.
Constant hunger.
Cardboard guns.
Saturday morning cartoons.
Bruises and scrapes.

Tossing footballs.
Dirty, bare feet.
Lego creations.
Peanut butter and jelly.
Nerf gun wars.
Wrestling.
Bicycles and skateboards.
Newfound acne.
Tree climbing.
Stinky socks.
Adventure books.
And GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL HEARTS!

Spilling Sin

Again. Really, AGAIN?

The ugliness of my own sin makes me cringe to admit that it happens not so often

FAR. TOO. OFTEN.

I watched them, those words of sin,
spilling from my wretched mouth.

Nearly as soon as they came tumbling out
 I longed to shove them back in.

To swallow them hard and to choke on them
if that's what it takes.
Lord, help me be a women of few words.
Help me season them with mercy and grace.

^"Words from the mouth of a wise man are gracious,

while the lips of a fool consume him."

Ecclesiastes 10:12

Romans...The Depth of His Great Love

If you had asked me a couple of weeks ago what my favorite book of the Bible was I would have said James. I don't know why...I am weird I guess. Not that James is so uplifting, really it is disturbingly challenging. BUT lately I have been dwelling and soaking in the book of Romans and I am falling in LOVE. I've read it many times before but isn't it like GOD to put you right where you need to be for a moment or a season.

I need Romans and I find it filling the depths of my heart with HIS great love. We, so undeserving, so sinful, so full of our own selfish, prideful flesh. Yet, He, so full of GRACE and immense love that He purposefully lavishes upon us. I know nothing sweeter and I am in awe of such a wonderful savior.