An Unexpected Journey

I could wrap my heart up in Christmas carols this time of year.  They are like a warm cup of coffee to my soul.  We were singing O Come Let Us Adore Him one Sunday and my imagination began to wander.  No.  It began to wonder.  And I stumbled into wonder. Imagine with me.  For a minute.  What Christmas in heaven could entail.  This is not what heaven is like.  Heaven is better!!!  The Word says… “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9 So go with me for a minute down the rabbit hole, if you will.  And know that nothing we can imagine can even come close to the glorious reality that is… The backdrop is breathtaking- a bit like the terrain from Lord of the Rings.  A sky with strokes of brilliantly mesmerizing color spreads out as a canopy across the heavens.  The vibrant hues are not flat but almost ha...

The air is crisp and cool.   Brightly colored leaves crunch underfoot while a handful still cling to their homes overhead.  It was almost time to pack for the trip home for Thanksgiving.  Warm hugs.  The sound of little running feet and giggly cousin laughter.  Muffled laughs after the littles have been tucked in.  Too many cups of piping hot coffee.  I love the fall.  I love family.   I couldn't wait.   Then I got the call at work last week that the baby was throwing up.  I almost cried right there in my little office.  We have so generously shared the stomach bug with our family the last three years at the holidays.  I just couldn't believe it was happening again.  Sure enough, the kids began to fall like dominoes, and I knew we couldn't bring this gift home again.  What are the chances of this timing!? And then I remember... In the words of John Eldridge, We have an enemy who is hunting us.  And as P...

1 Peter 1:3-9 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls....

The past month has been nuts.  Four tiny kids... three of them starting back to preschool, and we have had every germ under the sun this month!  I think our pediatricians' office loves us because we are paying their light bill single-handedly for September! Sitting on my porch this morning, sipping hot coffee, feeling the cool breeze blowing and hearing the pitter patter of rain as it falls lightly.... Draping my porch with a misty curtain of tears it seems.  I have been chatting via messenger with a friend of mine who is on the other side of the world about emotions.  If you would like to read about (or support ;) this lovely, young couple who is giving a  year of their life to serve and minister to children in the West Bank, Click here . Through the miracle of technology we can have a Saturday morning, or well, Saturday night for her, chat free of cost about what God is doing in our hearts.  That blows my mind in itself! Whether we have kids or don't ...

My fingers run gently along the top.   Feeling the smoothness of the wood grain.   The smell of sawdust fills the dimly lit garage.   Back and forth the sand paper rubs across the old dresser.   Sweat beads form on my forehead, but I love the work.   I see potential in this old, ugly dresser that was practically worthless.   I picked it up from a consignment store for $20, but it is solid wood and the right size.   Good bones.   It just needs a little TLC.  Well, maybe alot of TLC! And I am almost giddy with excitement.  I want to finish it tonight!  But I know that’s impossible. Transformation takes time.  I remove the back so no dirt can hide away from my careful cleaning.  Now for the sanding.  I am struck by a thought…  Jesus invested a considerable amount of his life doing this very thing!  God could have sent Jesus to be the son of anyone, but he choose to send him to a carpenter.  In those d...

“Mama, watch meeee!”  Muddy water splashes every where as little bodies slide down the glistening piece of bright orange plastic that drapes over the grassy hill in my back yard.  Squeals of delight drift across the yard and a warm breeze seems to blow them right up into the sky maybe through the clouds and into the heavens.  My heart is smiling.  The girls and I are all off for the summer, and we are having Fun!   FIve summers ago I called it the “Summer of Makiah.”  I felt in my heart that our family would be expanding soon even though we had battled secondary infertility since Makiah was a baby… so I determined that this summer would be all about her.  It was 2010, and it was just me and my little buddy all day every day.  We played barbies and mermaids and swam and visited grandparents and played with friends.  The news that I was pregnant came in June and a few weeks later we had the ultrasound with the fantastic surprise that it wa...

Every time I have a baby, which seems to be a pretty regular event around here, my whole schedule seems to be dumped upside down and in some ways my life is turned on its head. I have read a ton of books on making your baby sleep all night and live on a perfect schedule, but it seems the problem is my baby hasn't read a single one of those books!   So it is easy to feel that my time alone with God and my spiritual life regresses with every child! I feel such a struggle here. Even when I get up early it seems the little people wake up even earlier,  and I am often frustrated because I can't get much time alone with the Lord.   Doesn't it to seem like there should be a bargain here? That if I get up early to spend time with God surely he would make all those little people sleep just a little while longer? But it doesn't work that way! At least not on this earth…  I'm sitting on my porch this morning watch the pink ribbon of sunrise ripple across the clouds in the sk...

Sweet Makiah, It’s your birthday, Baby.  I hope you are still four up there in heaven, but you would have been nine here today.  Alena wanted to make you a chocolate cake, and I happened to have a Dora butterfly topper so it just seemed all perfect.  I can still see your blonde hair sticking up around that headband, your little legs in purple striped leggings, standing in the kitchen chair and licking your first beater. You would have loved the mess of chocolate mustaches your sisters made today!   Mommy and Makiah baking While your cake was baking, we sat on the  back porch and painted our toes pink for you... even little Eliana Bree!              Abby traced her feet with chalk and drew you a butterfly.  Mommy turned on the sprinkler and told the girls how much you loved to laugh and have fun.  It didn’t take two seconds for the littles to strip down to, well, not much and fill the yard...

Sometimes it's hidden away in a children's book.  The truth I mean.   We hunt for it like the littles hunt for eggs.  And sometimes it's right there underneath our noses.  Staring at us from the colorful pages as our fingers skim across. The picture shows that hill where Jesus died.  Three shadowy crosses are silhouetted against a dark sky.  And I read about the exchange between the three dying men; the one in the middle is the God-man.  How odd, I thought, that Jesus would share his crucifixion with these strangers.  That God would orchestrate the other men's crosses being forever remembered in books about the resurrection even 2000 years later. What a curious conversation as they hung there with life ebbing away.  The final breaths struggling in and out while voices cracked and blood dripped. One spending the last of himself to ridicule the God-man hanging between them.  The other asking for mercy even as the sun was setting on him...

I have been dreading this day for weeks.  Not just because it's my birthday. Not because of the getting older thing.  No.  It's one of those things that only a mother would think of.  Who else counts the days in their subconscious?  Well, God.  And me.  A few weeks ago I looked at the ticker on the top of my blog, and I knew it was getting close.  This year is full of landmarks again.  Then I did a quick guess at the time and had a terrible thought.  It was impossible.  No, too horrible.  It was late at night and I was up alone so I scrambled for a calendar and frantically started counting.  I counted how many days she was alive... again.  Yes, it was four years, four months, and four weeks.  Makiah lived in my house and snuggled in my bed and stole all of my kisses and my heart for four years, four months, and 28 days exactly.  Then she went home.  October 8th, 2010.   I started calculating how lo...