You never know what a year will bring. But, later, when those 365 revolutions around the sun, spin to a close, you can look back and see what the year was trying to tell you. I thumb through the pages of this last year and put my ear up closely to the pictures, the scribbling down of my days, to see if I can hear what my life is saying. To listen for what my Maker is telling me, through the reverberation of all those light-speeding moments. Just before the new year had birthed out new again, Haven was born. Haven, whose name means, "safe place." And "a refuge." We whispered into her that the One who made her is our safe place. He's our true Home. And that all of us are meant to be safe places for others. We prayed that she would become that sort of human, walking around[...]

I feel a hollowed out lonely feeling today. The kind of feeling that doesn't budge. It just sits, glum, in the corner, scrunched over, like a dead weight. Is it because winter is here in Minnesota, where we sit on this asphalt parking lot next to this church? Is it because the days are shorter and the sun has only peeked out once this week, for a shy minute? Is it because of the shooting at that little country church in Texas? Where those people went to seek God together and they didn't know they wouldn't go out to eat afterwards? I feel the ache of that community. Weeping with those who weep. Is my hollowed out feeling because churches are meant to be safe places? Hospitals for souls? And yet it happens so little. This week, I got to witness this first hand, though. At th[...]

We've only been traveling for a couple weeks, but already we have these rhythms. We were hoping for a new cadence to our days. It's easy to get stuck in old ruts and old ways and patterns of thinking, and it's been nice for us to have this life-change to break those things up a little. A surprising answer to all my begging prayers, really. God, with His sense of humor. "Oh, you're overwhelmed with your house?" I can almost hear Him chuckling. "Let me give you something smaller, more manageable." "Remember how you wanted to read to the kids at night and calm their little hearts down at the end of the wild day?  Well, you can start now." We're almost done reading through Treasure Island. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is next. When we first get to the church parking lot, wher[...]

We've been talking about traveling for over two months. And when we decidedly said, "yes," that we would pack up our things and go live in a pull along trailer, I imagined it, every spare minute. I packed in my head, while I was washing the dishes and while I was laying down at night. I imagined what it would be like to put our belongings in totes and how to velcro pictures on the walls of the RV and where we'd put the toys. I think this was my mind's way of preparing myself. Then we moved in, two weeks before we began traveling, because our friends  said that it's always good to move in, while you're still close to home, just in case you forget things. And while we were living in the trailer, that was parked out at our ministry's family camp, I imagined what it would be like to [...]