Hi, my friends, I wanted to tell you that here the next four or five weeks (till the end of January) this little place on the internet is gonna be quiet. I'm taking a break from social media so I can practice being still and listening to my Shepherd. I want to feel His love more this new coming year. I want to hear Him better. And obey Him. I want to walk closely with Him. I want to be filled up with Him. I think for me, that means I need to be a little more still. And a lot more quiet for now. This is how I will cease striving. And rest. I'm listening to good music. And drinking in the Word. And I'm praying. Did you know that I pray for you? Even though I'm making space for quiet and for God to speak to me, I want you to know that if you need anything, you can reach me her[...]

Over the weekend, Brent and I took a rest. We loaded up the kids and took them to meet their Grandma and Grandpa. Then we gave them smooches and waved good-bye and got back in the van and had so much fun together—just the two of us. We ate good food that we didn’t have to cook and laughed a good deal at each other. In all the daily grind of things, I had forgotten how ridiculously funny Brent can be. Because when he comes home from work, it’s supper time and I can hardly hear him tell me about his day (or vice versa) over all the chaos. Like trying to get Hopey to stay in her chair and eat her food while Gideon explains the difference between steam engines and power trains and Samuel protests loudly that he’s through with his meat and taters and really needs his sippie cup. And I [...]

Dear Believer, I know you want to know your Maker. You’ve got that ache, deep down, to just sit still beside Him and hear what He has to say. And you’re tired of just gathering up a bunch of facts and instructions. You don’t want more knowledge, mere chapters and verses to stuff in your already information-overloaded head. You desperately want relationship. To somehow come to the words of God and meet with the Word Himself. But, you’ve got that check-list and it seems like you should just sit long enough to do your duty and cross it off and go on to the next thing. Your Bible has gotten boring. And it’s not exactly helping much. Before you give up, reach out and grab hold of my hand for a minute. I'd like to help if I can. Now, I grew up mostly Christian. I say mostly b[...]

With pictures from my Daddy's Bible. Dear Jesus-following friend, It’s good to read your Bible.  I assume you’ve got one (or most likely, you’ve got at least five, if you live here in America) and since you follow Jesus, I assume you already believe the Bible is important and you believe that God somehow used imperfect humans to jot down His story and compile it for us so we could get to know Him and learn how to live. I’m not saying you don’t have your doubts, or that there’s some things in there that you just flat out don’t understand, but I do assume that you’ve tasted His words, so to speak, and found them nourishing and life-changing and good. It’s good to sit a spell, just a little bit each day if you can, and take His words in. For one thing, we’ve got all this freedom, you an[...]

Dear Jesus-follower, Remember the King. When you rise from your pillow and draw up the curtains and pour up the coffee and open your computer. Remember Him. Jesus has claim on you. You are not your own. You were bought with a price. You belong to God because He made you. And you belong to Jesus because He purchased you with His blood. So, you are doubly His. This doesn't mean that God will hijack your personality. He made your personality. He made you with a brain that reasons and an imagination that creates and a will that chooses. He will, however, bring you to your full potential and help you become the best version of yourself.  And as you follow Him, keeping company with Him, He'll make you fully alive. So, remember this. Remember the King. When you're setting t[...]

Gideon tells me, as he’s smacking on his fruit snacks at the kitchen table, that God wants us to talk to Him all the time, even when we’re tired.

I sweep up tid bits of paper into piles. The paper Hopey cut up into scraps to stuff into her teacups and heap onto her plastic pink plates to feed her babes.

There is a God of glory, who always ever was. Breather of stars, Maker of moon and Sculptor of the universe. This is He who knit us together when we were in our mama’s tummy, but who has held us in His heart, long before time, as we know it, began.He is the God with the shining face, because His countenance is full of glory, and glory always shines. And this One with the eyes that blaze like fire turns to the people that He’s made, and He looks right into His children’s eyes and seeks to bless us. And though our hearts are jaded and our souls troubled and full of doubts and fears, He cups our cheeks in His nail-scarred hands and speaks words,  tender and clear.And all the cosmos echo it out--this message reverberating through the skies. In wind and rain and shifting storm clouds. Thro[...]

I've come to the conclusion, in my ripe old age of thirty-two, that life is just hard. Even an easy life is hard. Even a life where you married the man of your dreams, and you have two beautiful and hilarious kids and a nice, comfortable house and a great big yard and you live in a free country with more food in the pantry that you could eat in a week. Even with all that, life can be pretty excruciating on the heart. It just is. We all have our own reasons why.And deep down inside, in the middle of all the hard, we're all just looking for joy. We crave it. We just feel like there's gotta be something more than getting up and going to work and coming home and eating some food and watching a show and going to bed and getting up and doing it all over again. There's gotta be something mo[...]