life. faithful.

  it seems like little girls are slammed with 2 basic pictures of what a woman should be: 1. the supermodel this is the woman with the perfect body and perfect clothes. she is poised and always put together, the woman who is never seen looking less than her best. this is the one who can also be the high powered executive, but only if she is in a "woman's field" like fashion. if she has kids they are equally as beautiful and they travel to exotic places during school breaks. she never has a bad hair day or or a bad idea--every plan she makes comes to fruition. 2. the supermom this is the woman who has the perfect home. she always has freshly baked goodies sitting on a silver tray right next to the fresh coffee. she always looks just right, not too sexy or too frumpy. her kids are perfectly behaved and perfectly dressed. she bakes, roasts, and sautes with ease. she sews, knits, and makes window treatments. her home is always spotless and you could eat off of any s

"a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity" (i have to admit, when i first read this verse you couldn't convince me that this didn't mean that a brother was born for arguments. but i digress...) as the message puts it,  "friends love through all kinds of weather, and families stick together in all kinds of trouble." (proverbs 17:17) a friend loves. not "puts up with" or "likes you most of the time"-- loves. i've been blessed with some amazing friends in my life, friends who, despite the years and miles between us, i love and who i know love me. one of those friends, this redhead over here---> is having a birthday today! we don't get to spend a whole lot of time together (very little, to be honest--we're lucky to see each other every couple of years, something that needs to change...), but when we do get together it's like we haven't been apart.   a friend loves at all time

i've had this topic in my head for quite a while, but it wasn't until just today that it made it's way to my heart. mother's day may seem like quite a while away still, but it's really just two and a half weeks. okay, so maybe that is still quite a while, but my plan right now is to spend the next couple of weeks talking about the proverbs 31 woman. now, those of you who know me (or have read just about any of my posts on here) know that my plans are extremely likely to change... for the time being, though, that's the plan! confession time: i just decided that this would be the topic for the next few posts, so i really don't have anything worth writing right now. you know those books or movies that are incredibly annoying because they exist for no other reason than to set up whatever is coming next? well, this is essentially one of those... so that it's not totally pointless, though, i'm posting the verses i'll be writing about (fo

i read this blog today that made me stop and think. we've all heard the verse, "be still, and know that I am God!" (psalm 46:10a) wouldn't that be great, to be able to just be still for a while? it makes me think of a lazy day spent at the lake, doing nothing but soaking up the sun and listening to the water lapping on the shore... of the times i spent laying on the hay bales in pop's hay shed, my dog teddy right beside me... of curling up on a snowy day with a great book and a cup of coffee (especially with my new addiction, york peppermint patty creamer. yum!)... of the sunset on my parents' farm... the thing is, after reading the verses leading up to verse 10, i'm not sure that was the idea the psalmist had: God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. so we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. let the oceans roar and foam. let the mountains tremble as the wa

"real writers don't write for recognition. they don't do it for fame, accolades, or notoriety. they do it because they cannot not write. by their gifts and under the authority of a higher calling, they are compelled to create . to wonder. to dream. to express." ~"the writer's manifesto" by jeff goins i don't usually read self-made ebooks, but this one intrigued me. i've read a couple of his blog posts that i really liked, and the ebook was free (big plus), so i figured i would give it a shot. it is a 44-page pdf with just a couple of sentences on each page (the quote above takes up 2 pages), and basically it is him challenging writers to return to writing just for the love of writing. i used to love to write. everything. anything. i filled notebooks on a regular basis, and i wasn't worried about what i was writing. anything was a great excuse to write: i got distracted easily if i tried to pray silently and it ju

this morning when i put raiden's clothes out for school, i laid a pair of socks on top. i could only find one tennis shoe, though (a common problem around our house), so i grabbed her sandals. after she got dressed, she started to put her shoes on. i told here she didn't need the socks since she was going to wear sandals. her reaction? bottom lip sticks out. she starts and huffing and pouting, whining that she wants to wear socks. okay--easy solution. i grab a different pair of shoes, a pair she can wear with socks. my easy solution, though, doesn't work for her. she doesn't want those shoes. she wants the little white sandals. looking back, this probably should have been one of those "pick your battles" moments. i probably should have just let her wear socks with the strappy white sandals. she is, after all, only in preschool. in the long run, it wouldn't have mattered. but come on--socks with little white sandals? really? (just as an a

one thing i love is thunderstorms. i love the smell, the sound, the view from the front porch. don't get me wrong, i'm not saying i love huge storms that include lots of hail, massive winds, and damage. but, a spring storm? one with a few flashes of lightning in the sky and big rumbles? those are great, and that's the sort of storm that came through our neck of the woods on sunday. while the kids were napping, nathan and i stepped out onto the front porch to watch the storm (isn't it great that i have a husband who likes all the strange things i do?). we had been standing out there for a little while when conan woke up and came sleepily out of his room. "i want pa!" he whined, so nathan scooped him up and stepped back outside. conan watched the rain, but then there was a flash of lightning. conan didn't mind the flash. it was still light outside, so the lightning really didn't seem that intense. it was pretty close, though, so the rumble th

i have a note saved on my phone. "where is my jerusalem?" i don't remember exactly when i wrote it. i did manage to find the verse i read before i put it in my phone, though: "and now, compelled by the Spirit, i am going to jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there." acts 20:22 i remember reading that verse and feeling like God was talking to me through it. i thought, "aha! that must mean God has some big change in store for me, somewhere He is going to take me where i will be working for Him." at the time, i just knew that meant grad school (which, of course, didn't work out like i had planned). today, while i was trying to figure out what to write on here, the words of that note ran through my head. it took me quite a while to find that verse in acts--for some reason i kept trying to find it somewhere in the old testament (yeah, reading it now it is obviously from paul. for some reason, though, i kept trying to make it a command

*this is the last post in a series i'm writing to introduce myself. if you want to read from the beginning, start here and then make your way forward in time...* fast forward a few months from when our baby boy was born, and i'm a physics major with 2 kids under the age of 3. i thought i had no study time with one toddler at home... ha! with 2 babies at home while i was taking upper level physics courses, i was lucky to get out with my sanity intact (though that may be debatable). i can probably count on one hand the number of times my text books were open at home. i still had no idea what i was going to do with my degree, but i had learned one important fact: a bachelor's degree in physics doesn't really get you anywhere. i had decided against optometry school due in large part to me not wanting to stay in school that long with a family at home. now i was faced with the fact that i would need to go to grad school if i wanted to do anything worthwhile with my

*this is in a series of posts i'm introducing myself through. if you want to read the beginning of the story, start here then go to this one , this one , and this one .* in 2005, nathan joined the coast guard. he went to boot camp that summer and then got stationed in astoria, oregon. though i was definitely glad we were around all my family when we found out michael had been killed, we were ready a year later to have a little space and actually start forming our own family, just the two of us. we were incredibly excited and felt like we were headed the right direction after our plans were thrown of course the year before, and we got to astoria on october 31st. our belongings were about a week behind us for some reason (anybody familiar with the military can understand that one), but even that didn't seem like such a bad thing at the time. we bought a couch, chair, coffee table, buffet, and side table at a second-hand shop for $500, and we slept on the couch until our bed

*this is the 4th in a series of posts, since i realized i had never really introduced myself. if you want to read from the beginning, start here . then this one and this one come next...* i'll warn you in advance, this post is long and raw. you'll be getting a glimpse into my soul that even some of my closest friends and family members haven't seen...so, fair warning. at 19, as newlyweds, you don't think life is getting ready to knock you around. well, a month into our marriage we felt the first blow when nathan started getting pains he couldn't really pinpoint. he missed a bunch of work, so needless to say when he ended up needing surgery to remove his gallbladder it wasn't covered by tyson insurance. so we started out with instant medical debt. debt isn't so unusual for newlyweds these days, but it definitely made us feel like we were getting a rude introduction to the " real world ." it wasn't much later that we were informed th