Terribly Interesting

I often find myself thinking of that verse that says that we should put others ahead of ourselves. For many years, I thought of it mostly in how we respond to others behaving badly. You know, to react in a way that helps them to heal or change or be better at whatever might be causing the issue. Of late, I have been thinking about this quite a bit. How can I truly put others before myself? I heard one person use modesty as a way to put others ahead of ourselves. We don't dress to get attention. We dress so that others are comfortable around you or not stumbling over you. That made so much sense to me. What a simple way to honor others. Another way we can do this is through manners. We can act in such a way as to bring dignity and honor to all of the hearers. Let your speech be seasoned with salt and all. One big way we can put others before ourselves is by not being offended when they don't meet our needs the way we want them met. I had a real desire to have an ...

There are always hundreds of things to be done here. You really can't fathom the lists of things that need to be accomplished around here. It's intense. Add in three children five and under, church, friends, and work. It is intense. I hardly ever hit my target of things I would like to accomplish today list. Sometimes, in the midst of all of the necessities of what is going on here, we can lose sight of our true purpose. We forget that we are here to serve and simply love The Lord Jesus. It's those days that I remind myself or my husband of why we are here that I will hear this sweet inner voice tell me that we did the real work that day or in that moment. I love journaling and I very rarely get to finish what I would like to pour out to The Lord before I am bombarded with tiny people. It's easy to get frustrated and want that time for myself. Each day I start out by writing "thank you for my children." Many days, that is all I get written down. As I to...

Out of the health and fitness books I have read, this has been one I got quite a bit out of. Most things make outlandish claims or take you down some treacherous paths. Of course, there are things that I don't totally agree with or that I am not sure about. The Dr tells the difference between soy and frankensoy, but I'm not totally sold on the idea of soy. The hormonal factor there scares me a bit. Basically, this is a comm on sense lifestyle. Ea t how people ate before they ate junk. Get rid of the junk. Fat doesn't make you fat. Cholesterol doesn't give you high cholesterol. There is even evidence that its good for you. With the complex chemical reactions in the human body, you can see how something wouldn't be able to go in and stay the same. The problem most of us are facing, as outlined in the book is inflammation. This is caused by food that isn't really food. It should say "unsafe for consumption." Sugar is a huge problem. Refined ...

I told you about how Gomer refuses to be tidy. The place just can't bring herself to commensurate with my desires. I try to keep this 5,500 sq foot tidy with three girls. The hardest part is attempting to maintain a routine when we are on the road five to six months out of the year. I found Flylady many moons ago. She has a website that helps get your house in order. Let me tell you, I do not do her routines flawlessly, but her daily emails encourage me to try every day. There are several things I have learned from Flylady that translate into all areas of life. FLY stands for Finally Loving Yourself. Now, I know all about all the things that we should know about being beautiful and made in the image of Creator God, but for some reason, one day as I read that phrase on the Flylady site, it hit me that I had never really done that. I kind of did the bare minimum of care for myself and I let ugly comments from others keep me from pursuing my dreams and the discouragement kept m...

I've been blogging about losing my brother Mike this week. I thought I'd also let you in on what came out of it. I've lost two of my brothers and God really used that pain to get me to heal in every other area of my life. I truly came out of my shy shell as God applied His healing balm to my wounds. Just know that healing is often quite painful and the journey to health is riddled with personal deaths of all sorts. God gave me a knowing that my brother was going to pass away and that it was going to be okay. He was going to redeem and use it. At the time Mike passed away, I felt God assure my spirit that it was okay. I was driving in the car when I felt that He was with Jesus. At this same season of the year, we felt directed to sell our first home in the cute white picket neighborhood we lived in. We didn't know exactly where we were going, and, in fact, we ended up being homeless for nine months. Just long enough to give birth to something. God was direct...

Like I said before, grief is a funny thing. When my brother, Mike, died, I watched all of these quirky movies he loved. They brought this comfort to me. I also came across the movie Elizabethtown. The movie is about a man who is on a journey to the place where his father had died to prepare for his burial. Of course, he had lost his job and his woman left him all at the same time. All this losing that is remnant of a country song reminded me of one of my favorite verses in scripture. "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord." It is such a powerful reminder that pain, if we let it, very often induces intimacy with Jesus. This movie is sad and silly. One of the things that took the edge off of the deep grief was that in the hotel where this man was staying there was a wedding party. There were posters of "Chuck and Cindy: the Wedding" all over the place. Chuck was always hugging him and hi jinks ensued. Now, I probably watched this movie once a month...

Grief sneaks up on you. I was out celebrating some friends' (who are sisters) birthdays on Friday and all of a sudden the weight of this thing just bore down on me. I struggled to maintain my composure. My brother's birthday is today. I'm never going to celebrate his day with him again. For some reason, these last few weeks have been full of memories. I think part of the reason I am having them surface is because I am in a safe place to grieve. Honestly, after my fun girl's night out, I came home, sat in a hot bath, and wept. I wept and grieved for several unspoken reasons. When grief is so heavy, I find that words become superfluous. I recalled in James where it tells me that if I draw near to the Lord, He will draw near to me. In that moment, I handed my grief to Jesus. A picture flooded my mind. It was of John, the beloved disciple, laying his head on Jesus' chest at a meal they shared. My soul rested in that peace. On Sunday morning, I was list...

I was not immediately attracted to this book, but I was asked to review it and as I read the context, I was immediately drawn to it. God called them to leave a high profile career and go to help rebuild homes in Southeast Asia after the tsunami there. I wanted to know what God had done and how He led them on this journey. I wanted to know what He had shown them there. This is Hilary's first book. It can be choppy in places. I imagine she was trying to condense the most powerful story of her life for this book. The story told itself however. It is gripping and convicting and challenging. This family slowly walked out of their lives to embrace the Muslim culture and serve them.   I have never seen the inside of this kind of story before. The length of time and all that was involved to even get over there was a little shocking to me. First the man prepared to leave his job. Then they went to classes, sold their home and belongings, and then entered into a period of preparin...

People keep asking me what I have been doing nutritionally and I thought I would share. You know, nutrition is one of those things that people are very opinionated about. It's right up there with worship music and politics. We watch a documentary or read a few articles and think we are experts. One says eat no meat and the next says we must eat liver if we want to be healthy. For every study that "absolutely proves" we should be Vegan, there are 5 more that "prove" we shouldn't. One study blamed cancer in a particular region on animal products while another linked it to the salt that was introduced as a preservative in the region. I spent 2 hours a day over the past year reading about nutrition. That's 700 hours of reading and I still don't have the answers. Only Jesus knows. We could all do The Maker's Diet, but then some guy tells us to definitely not eat fish because of the Mercury. We are told to eat 6 meals a day and then we hear that tha...

Sometimes I find myself shocked and overwhelmed by the behavior of those I love. Honestly, I find that I can be shocked at my on behavior. The anger, hurt, bitterness, and guilt that can ensue from those things can be a tidal wave that we feel like we need to panic in response to. I'll hear this whisper deep within that resonates a need to wait. Don't respond. I should sit in the mercy I have been given and ruminate on it. Sometimes I hear scripture pour into my head, but just as often, when the pain is too acute, there is silence. All I can say is Your grace is enough. YOUR grace is there when everyone else refuses to extend it. Your grace is rampant when I cannot even grant grace to myself. Jesus reminds me that we are not here to be in the business of doing things right. Our humility reveals the greatness of our God. There is mercy to cover every sin we walk into on our journey. Sit in silence until you sense God's grace. Let us then approach  God’s throne of gr...

Living in the constant chaos of a restoration is quite the emotional roller coaster for a woman who craves tidy and warm. I want to nest something fierce. I grow tired of not being able to just sit down among a finished room and enjoy the company of others. It really hit me at Christmas as I was sitting next to the fire in my dad's house. I miss normal.  Through all of this, I have had my entitlement stripped from me. Each step has been so celebrated because Jesus did it all on His own. We didn't hire some contractor. We asked God and waited. He has personally paid for every single item in our kitchen. At Christmas, we were given some money and I thought that I would rush out and buy a dishwasher. I felt like the Lord was telling me to wait because He was going to pay for it. A few weeks later, I received a love offering for the amount we needed. Glory be. The good Lord had done it again. He paid for the cabinets and brought the cabinet maker. He bought the floor. He bo...

I think I have become addicted to this radio theatre. This is my second drama to review. I put it in on a trip home from my parents house and before I knew it, I was home. It was entertaining and engaging that I lost myself in the story. The story was recorded by talented actors in the city of London.  The story of redemption and laying ones life down for another person is such a poignant tale for our day in time. As our culture tells us to meet our own needs and blatantly encourages our selfishness, we see this timely reminder to put others ahead of ourselves.   It is easy to embrace Jean Valjean after he has been changed from an embittered convict by one single act of kindness. It begs us to question what we could do to change the course of the life of someone around us. How can we be kind and welcoming to someone who is less than desirable? What could we sacrifice today? Everyone I know is flocking to see the movie right now. Take a look at this as well. It w...

I was reading Tim Challies' review of Jesus Calling the other day and I am just not sure how I felt about it. He was basically calling this woman a misguided mystic. He went on and on about her capitalizing the word presence as though she was adding to the Bible by listening for the Lord. As I read through her devotional, almost everything I read brought a verse of scripture to my mind. I sometimes have a hard time reading his reviews because there is no grace. I guess people enjoy reading him because he is opinionated. I like him for the most part as well. His review of Ann Voskamp's book took me aback. He dwelled on certain words which I don't think she meant in the way he took them at all. All of that to say, as I write this each week and dialogue with the Lord, He isn't telling me anything He hasn't told me before. His salve to our wounds and His hope to our grief are all catalogued in Scripture. I find that when I sit and journal, I feel Jesus sing these...

We never thought there was a winter in Texas until we moved into this house with no insulation. Since then, we check the weather every day. It became our joke to see what the groundhog said each year since. I actually have no idea if we have actually ever seen any difference due to what he says because I forget by the next day. It's fun to celebrate and to make light of ourselves. Thank God for the insulation we have and the more to come. 

I thought I would share some more of the things I have discovered over the last few years of desperately seeking out nutrition. If you remember my post about Dirty Salt , you can see why I called this dirty sugar. Here is something I learned. People who make food for profit lie. They lie alot. They come up with flowery ways to make you think things about their products that simply are not true. We must be informed if we want to reclaim our health. One of the biggest things we can do is to ditch High Fructose Corn Syrup and processed sugar. Dump the stuff that tells you it's raw. It's really just a little bit less processed sugar. When you consume regular sugar, you might as well be shooting up. They say it is more addictive than cocaine and America has the waistline to prove it. We don't have to wear their lies around though. There are alternatives to sugar and there are choices to be made. Regular sugar surges into the bloodstream because it has no nutrient t...