I’ve been asked a few times in person and online about when we are planning to have a second child. I decided I would like to address that here since it is not a simple answer and everyone seems curious enough. Why not make it public knowledge? (Nervous laughter.)
First of all, let’s get the facts squared away:

Micah is barely a year old. He is 13 months and 3 weeks to be exact.
I am still nursing him. As a result, and I know this is not the case for every nursing …

In an e-mail I recently received from my good friend Chrystal, the tail end of a quote she shared really stuck out at me: “…embracing any ordinariness that God permits.” (The quote is from the book, Silent Songs of Worship: God’s Tabernacle Within Us by Terri L. Terry. (On a completely random tangent, I just had to laugh at the thought of this author introducing herself… “Hi, I’m Terri Terry.”)

The author was talking about the secret to true humility, which is the secret to true worship.

Just after reading that one …

Today my daily bible verse (I get one in my inbox each morning) was James 3:17. My first thought was, this is exactly how I would like to be. I read it again, but this time I replaced “the wisdom from above” with my own name and I asked myself, is it an accurate description of me? I’m not really a post-it-note type of person, but I do love Photoshop, so I made my own desktop wallpaper to help me memorize this verse and really let it sink in. Then …

We stood at the edge of the water under a clear starlit sky and the dull orange glow of pretty street lamps that surrounded the park. Light flickered across the surface of the lake. There was a warm wind and all of God’s glory seemed to hover like a mist, filling our lungs with heavy awe. He was present (he always is) and we lifted our voices, shaky at first, then more loudly with each breath.
Shout for joy to God, all the earth;
sing the glory of his name;
give to him …

If what we write semi-anonymously behind the veil of our blogs, our twitters, or in the comments of even the least controversial blog posts, is any reflection of what is in the deeper part of our hearts (and I mean “us” in the collective sense – Americans), we are truly lost. I won’t even pollute this page with examples of the cutthroat comments and opinions I’ve read. When I get to the bottom of a popular blog, I click away before reading the comments because reading them makes me sick …

This past week I joined (through e-mail) a quiet time accountability group called “Good Morning Girls” with three other bloggers: Lana, Karmen, and Dawn. It has had such an impact on my life already. For the first time in a long time, I have had some consistency, knowing that I need to send off that e-mail saying, “Today I read…” And that consistency is already producing some much needed fruit in my life. For one, the Lord convicted me of some yucky heart issues that I didn’t even realize were …

Well it “appears” that we are stuck… for quite a while. The brand new construction homes across the street just dropped their prices by nearly 25%, depending on the starting price, and in order to compete with them we would have to come up with approximately $40,000. The builders have abandoned our neighborhood, so here it sits, one row of homes, a little over half of the occupied, a little more than half of them on the market.

-noun

Steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., esp. in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.
Theology. continuance in a state of grace to the end, leading to eternal salvation.
A nine-month-old boy learning…. just about anything.

I watched Micah bounce in his Jump-n-Go for about 30 minutes straight and I realized, if I were to merely copy his actions throughout the day, I really don’t think I could physically make it past day three. It’s no wonder he sleeps 15 hours a day (12 at night plus 3 …

He came for the broken vaccuums. He is coming back to clean up the dirt.

A good friend of mine (who takes amazing pictures – you’ll often see them on here…) is in social work and lost a client this weekend. After reading her post, I began to dwell on pain. No sooner did I begin to ponder the scope and purpose when I realized I was trying to view an entire mountain with my nose pressed to the rock. The questions are overwhelming. My heart threatened to burst in comprehending the intensity of a pain so deep that it would push a woman over …