God's Pursuit of Me
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love. - A.W. Tozer
-
what started as liner notes from a sermon but turned into thoughts on dying well and a tribute to my momma, who, in fact, did just that
Death. It is the absolute only guarantee in our lives. And that sounds morbid to some. But it’s also true. Last Sunday’s sermon centered on dying well. And the idea that the ability to die well is a direct result of having lived well. Immediately I started writing around the margins of my notes. (It’s funny how you can sometimes hear your own sermon while everyone in the room is hearing another one.) When I think of death, there’s just this one person I think of. Of course. My mother. My momma. A woman who suffered so well. Which is a terribly odd and kind of painful statement to make.…
-
Wild in the Hollow: A Book Review
I both began and completed the memoir Wild in the Hollow during the same week. Yeah. That timeline right there probably says plenty already. (I can sense a headline from the mock news at The Onion —- Homeschooling Mother of Six Finishes a Non-Fiction Book in Under Four Days – And It Wasn’t an Audio Version.) Amber Haines was a speaker at, yes – you guessed it – Allume. Her talk was scheduled during one of the lunches and right there on our tables, beside that sweet tea, was one copy of her memoir – Wild in the Hollow – for each of us. Of all the novels (and the stack was high)…
-
numb and the hope of others
I think I’m going to pull my car into the parking lot labeled Numb. I think Ill just camp out here for a while. Just Numb. Recognizing that life is moving on around me, toward me, for me but I’m just not doing the same. I’m not doing the same. I’m just numb. People talk about hope. I don’t know right now. I think Hope is too prickly. It’s too dangerous. It’s too heavy. It’s too hard. When Emily Dickinson wrote her words about hope and its feathers and how it perches and when she wrote that “hope doesn’t ask a thing of me” well, I think maybe she was…
-
abundance, grit, desperate: lessons from the flower patch farm girl
I wish I had taken better notes. There were so many stellar speakers. So many good words. And I was going from zero to eighty because it’s been quite some time since I sat in a conference-style learning environment and paid close attention to grown ups speaking. Shannan Martin, known on her blog as Flower Patch Farm Girl, taught a session I attended. Her words certainly gave me pause. She had my dreamy ideal life. A lovely farmhouse home and a little spot of land to call her own. And then she and her family left all that. To move to a city and live on the other side of…
-
Attending Allume
“How’s it going so far?” That was the text from my friend. It being the Allume conference I was attending this last weekend. I laughed. (Yep. A real laugh that was sort of a hiccup but was very much made out loud.) How’s it going? Well. I knocked over a chair. My chocolate covered almond slid across the floor. I couldn’t get my tongue to agree with my brain when I opened my mouth to speak. I felt intimidated by the myriad of professional looking women laughing and having conversations all around me in the lovely Hyatt hotel lobby. The snacks were cooler than I was. You guys. I have…
-
this is not how the story ends ….
We live in a really hard world. People do wicked acts. Deceit is heavy. Cancer is stealthy. Death shocks our senses even when it is anticipated. We believe our own lies and our self-deception is astounding. (And I use the pronoun we intentionally and collectively.) So often I lie my head on my pillow at night (the portion of “my” pillow allotted to me by my eight year old daughter) and I think And that was another day that justice was not seen. Another day that seems as if evil is winning. Do you know what I mean? (maybe you do. maybe you don’t.) But it seems in itsy bitsy…
-
beautiful & terrible
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. Frederick Buechner I live in a farmhouse that is over one hundred years old. Things fall apart. Ancient dirt rises from the splintery wooden floors. What starts out as white, seldom stays white. But in this dusty home abide five of the most interesting humans I have ever known. There is a six-year-old with his filthy boy feet resting right on top of my clean pillow. He stops me, mid-sentence, all the day long to profess his love for me. Not even an hour usually passes without kisses and hugs and back pats from my Wilde…
-
(hey momma, in case you’ve forgotten …. )
There are days we feel as if we don’t matter. I think, as moms, we really can tap into these negative feelings easily. I was texting with my friend Hilary. And I was reminding her of how I see her – of how much I think she matters – (and I really really do) when I was suddenly reminded of a story with my own mom. I started to text this story right then to Hilary but at the late hour I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the whole thought so I waited and decided to type it this way instead. For Hilary. For all mommas. The summer after…
-
marriage, that old couple
I still believe in marriage. Is that a weird thing to say? I still believe in the picture of Christ’s love for His people that marriage represents. In fact, I believe in it more today than I did last year. If marriage was entirely for our own individual glory or pleasure, if the picture of marriage was to bring honor to ourselves alone, then my story – and countless others’ stories – would be playing out so differently and would matter so much less. Recently I saw an older couple sit down together in church across the aisle from where I sat. He put his arm around her shoulder. Leaned…
-
rolling the dice
It’s practically feeling like autumn here. And that’s a gift that’s right on time. This weekend our family has experienced the gift of generosity and thoughtfulness and care and provision in new and humbling ways. My heart is overwhelmed and trying to keep up. (It tends to drag a few beats behind me lately.) There are a lot of days when I feel as if I am watching my life play out like a movie on someone else’s television screen. (And I desperately want to change the channel.) For all the good and bold and obvious ways that God shouts and showers His love for my family, my heart still…
-
let’s call this one quits already
Today was a lousy day. I mean. I don’t even think I have what it takes to type it out and turn it into a story. I know I’m due a post about the Plexus Pink Drink Experiment. I have a cute article about picking apples with kids to post. I’m sure one of my children said something adorable or funny or embarrassing that I could write about. But instead I think I might just go to bed unreasonably early and let this day die the slow, sad death it deserves. You guys – we just never know what a day holds when our feet reluctantly hit the bedroom floor…
-
wisdom from harper lee
I made myself reread Harper Lee’s famous novel To Kill A Mockingbird this summer before I would allow myself to begin her summer release of Go Set a Watchman. (And no, sadly, I have not finished the new novel yet. I’m just so slow at reading books these days. My nights are busy and my days are busy and my brain cells are busy and well, you get my point.) There is just so much good in that first novel though. So much quote worthy. So much courage and so much strength of character. So much solid classic that is that original story of Scout and Atticus and Jem and Boo.…
-
that time at the park when the wheels came undone
We’ve never really lived in a house with a concrete driveway that leant itself to safe bike riding for children. Therefore, the kids have always been late comers to the biking world. Piper Finnian still needs training wheels. And that’s alright with me. Recently, Bergen outgrew his bike and we realized it was a good fit for Piper. I bought some training wheels. Universal, the bag side. Fits any bike, the instructions read. With the training wheels attached and the bikes painstakingly crammed in the back of the Suburban, we drove to a large parking lot to practice before trying to hit the trail together. Otto is grinning and riding…
