An Unexpected Journey

 So a few Fridays ago I went with my kindergartener on her school field trip to a farm.  At the end we had a picnic, and I was chatting with some moms while she played for almost 30 minutes with a ginormous, shaggy dog who lived on the farm.  One of the other moms snapped some pics of her and asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.  Since this mom was anticipating veterinarian or something to do with animals, she was completely caught off guard when my sweet baby replied that she was going to work at a gas station!  And so was I!  I have heard dolphin trainer for the aquarium, orthopedic surgeon, but gas station worker was a first!  At her upcoming kindergarten graduation they will ask my little what she hopes to be when she grows up… I think I need to do some coaching before then! Now don’t get offended.  Working at a gas station could be a perfectly respectable job (and owning it is a different thing altogether!), and I suppose t...

Saturdays I am sitting in my living room with the smell of bacon and onions filling up the space.  The whirr of the dryer and the hum of the dishwasher are keeping me company while the kids play outside (hallelujah for a Saturday without rain at last!).  My fireplace is warm and with collard greens, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, crowder peas, and corn bread cooking, I am totally feeling like a south Georgia girl with Alabama roots right about now!   I am all about Saturdays… especially the ones when we have nowhere to be or go!  That doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does happen it’s a breeze of fresh air on a hot day to the busy lives we all live.  Sometimes life is so busy that I forget to be thankful.  I forget that there are many people who would literally give anything to have even half of those comforts that I take for granted so often.   Last week we took the girls to walk through the Compassion International live experience....

I picked my sweet Alena up from her final dance rehearsal yesterday.  The big recital is tonight, and we have lived and breathed her dances at our house for the last few weeks.  When I was helping her buckle in she asked, “Mom, it doesn’t have to be perfect does it?  Nothing on earth can really be perfect, right?”  It’s amazing to me how profound questions can come from the mouths of little children who just finished kindergarten.  And there was such earnest seeking in her eyes.  Sometimes you know your kids probably won’t remember what you say but that you have a chance to plant a weighty seed that will burrow deep into their little hearts and bring fruit later… for the good or the bad.  It was one of those moments. After a quick talk- there were  four of them in the car and Eliana was screaming for Dora while Alena herself was actually crying from a fall- we headed home.  While I was walking this morning and praying about a follow up c...

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...