An Unexpected Journey

Four small kids.  A house to clean.  Presents to wrap.  Groceries to buy and food to prepare.  And a facebook friend who reminded me of this old post soooo I think I am going to cheat and post a link to This Post from 2013.  I pray the awe and beauty of Christ and Christmas will never leave you!  Merry Christmas!

Two Sundays ago I was having breakfast with my kids before church and Abby announced that she had figured something out.  In her most serious five year old voice, she told me she knew that I had stolen her from her real mother and made up all these stories about when she was a baby.  I almost spit my coffee out!   I am a huge fan of adoption and the picture it paints of God’s love towards all of us, but ya’ll, this kid ain’t adopted!  Pardon my south Georgia slang!  And child snatching??? I mean, what in the world are they showing on Dora these days?!    So that was last week.  This Sunday my baby girl, who is totally two, insisted that she was not going to wear that cute dress with the turkey on it. Now she doesn’t have many outfits that haven’t been worn by at least three other people first, but this is one that I bought brand new for her (I am a sucker for a sale).  There was weeping and gnashing of teeth, but I was determined she was...

Salt water stings.  It also heals.  I dig my toes a little deeper into the sand almost as if trying to get a grip.  To hang on. But the sand slips through.  The waves roll over.  The hold is lost.  So slippery.  Each moment in this life.  Time and moments roll mysteriously by.  I try to feel deeply, to love deeply in that second.  Because in a minute the wave is gone and another comes along. A few weeks ago our late night drive with the kids to Cape Canaveral landed us at a beachside hotel in Daytona way past Cinderella’s curfew.  It just happened to be where we landed when we  couldn’t drive any further.  The next morning we spent a few hours on a beach I thought I would never return to.  Makiah played the last week of her life there on those same sandy shores.  I felt as if I was in her footsteps.  So close. As if I might turn around and catch sight of her sandy blonde hair flying in the wind.  ...

School has started back and so has the flurry of activities.  Long, lazy summer days are gone and the race has begun!  Packing lunches, laying out clothes, doing homework, soccer practice, ballet…  I could go on and on.  It’s exciting and exhausting all at once.  I love new beginnings.  A fresh start.  A chance to be more organized than last year.  More intentional.  More loving.   I think there is something in us that longs for new beginnings and fresh starts on the inside, too.  My mind can get caught in the blizzard of the to do list, but then I stop and remember there is a place of fresh starts available every morning.  The bible says His mercies are new every morning.  He is waiting.  Calling for us to carve out a little time.  Not out of duty but so we can bring the empty coffee cups of our lives and he can fill us up with a morning brew of His love.  And energy.  And focus.   There is n...

The thing about grief is how it surprises you.  I am sitting here in the auditorium laughing and chatting with the other ballet moms as we wait for the dress rehearsal to start.  It's been a breathless morning to get here on time with three well fed ballerinas with perfect buns and makeup.  Suddenly the lights dim, the curtain opens, and a slew of tiny people in sweet outfits start to dance. They aren't even my kids but out of nowhere the hot tears flood my eyes.  I am not even sure why at first.  Then I realize it's because my first ballerina didn't get to have a dress rehearsal.  Or a recital.  She absolutely loved to dance and twirl about the house.  When she finally started ballet, I think I was as excited as she was.  The company refunded our money of course,  and then I learned later that they did a special song for her at the recital where she would have performed.  The headlines lately have been full of devastation....

Sweet Makiah, Mommy remembers when I turned ten.  We had just moved to Cairo (yes, where you lived!) a few weeks before my birthday.  I invited two girls that I had just met at school over for a spend the night party.  I still played with cabbage patches and dress up clothes, but this year we added makeup and pretended to be teenagers.  I started a puff paint business with grand plans of selling t-shirts designed by yours truly.  Your Uncle Will and I practiced limbo tirelessly in the driveway with two yard chairs and a measuring stick in great hopes of being the Saturday afternoon limbo champs at the local skating rink.  Uncle John was only four, and I recall he was a whiz at playing Super Mario Brothers with me already on our nintendo. Tonight the girls and I made brownies together for your 10th birthday.  Abby suggested we put a candle in one, tie balloons to it, and float it up to heaven so you could have a piece.  Maddie Grace sang to you...

Sometimes I rush through bed time with my kids and get in a huff when they call me back ten thousand times for an endless litany of things.  Other days I stay with them longer and stroke their hair and remind myself to savor the moment.  It was one of those nights when Abby popped out with, “Mom, I don’t know how the Holy Spirit helps me.  When there are too many toys and you tell me to clean up, I don’t see Him moving ANY blocks!”  I tried not to giggle out loud.  But really, I think she is onto something.  A deeper question of humanity right from the mouth of a babe.  We often look at things around us and we don’t SEE God doing anything. The truth is it is hard for us to acknowledge what we don’t see with our eyes.  We want God to be like us.  To fit in our box, and well, let’s be honest, it would be great if He would just do our work for us!  Sometimes when He doesn’t “move the blocks” we pout and wonder if He is really helping u...

On good Friday we remember that Jesus gave up His life for us.  Not just that.  He was God.  Infinite. Limitless with all power and knowledge at His fingertips, but He left all of that and choose to clothe Himself in a human body perhaps for all of eternity.  For us.  To reach us.  To bring us into that circle of unbroken fellowship that the Trinity shares among itself.  Love cannot exist in isolation.  A requirement for love is fellowship.  One to give and one to receive and to repeat that over and over or else love is meaningless.  God is perfect and complete.  He exists in three perfect parts.  God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  God never lacked love.  And yet you mean so much to Him that He designed a master plan to extend that love to you. Saturday is the in between day.  Jesus had died.  The resurrection had not yet occurred.  On earth things seemed hopeless and Jesus followers forg...

Five years.  An eternity of days.  And yet it’s passed as quickly as a blowing breeze.  Time is a mystery.  Days that have often felt endless now seem to have fled like the shadows chasing after a setting sun.  It is a strange thing to watch your younger children out grow the oldest.  I have always had memories of Makiah to cling to as my little ones passed each new stage.  We have stepped across a threshold.  It’s like the tape ran out.  I am constantly surprised by the things my twins can do- things like writing words other than their name.  It’s almost as if my mind forgets that I will actually watch these children grow up.  We have been in the same season of parenting for almost 10 years, and the new journey into unknown territory constantly catches me off gaurd.   I am excited.  I feel like I am standing on the edge of something really good that has taken a very long time to get to.  I am sad.  The new ...