life. faithful.

"A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure." ~Ecclesiastes 7: 1-4 I'm just a couple days away from making one of the hardest trips of my life, traveling back home to quite possibly say goodbye to both my grandfathers. Papaw has had a hard fight for a long time now, battling COPD and emphysema for every breath. Grandpa's fight has been more recent and less obvious, but he now fights against the cancer in his esophagus just to be able to swallow his liquid diet. They have both always been amazing, strong men, and it makes my heart hurt to see their bodies turning on them. I'm broken

This week has been VBS, and to be honest I went into it pretty negatively. It was only 3 days for 2 hours each day; I'm used to 5 days of VBS, all morning each day. Set-up was done in just a couple of hours; I'm used to spending most of the week before VBS at the church building doing set-up and decorations. I was going to be walking around from station to station with a group of kids; I'm used to classroom teaching and time to get to know the kids. Basically, things weren't going to be done the way I expected, and I got negative. Then I was talking about school with Nathan. I was upset about how things are progressing-- or not progressing, to be honest. I was frustrated about being looked down on and judged. I was tired of doing things the right way only to be knocked down-- over and over again. So again, things weren't going the way I expected. And when my own kids started talking back to me and being mean to each other and just plain not listening, I fel

The last time I wrote , it was about how God sometimes speaks in the quiet, the passage in I Kings 19 where God chose to speak to Elijah in a whisper instead of in the power of the storm or earthquake. Have you read the chapter before that recently? It's the one where Elijah challenged all the prophets of Baal and Ashera to a duel. Really--an old-fashioned duel! Only instead of guns blazing it was a duel of fire. Well, it would have been a duel of fire, only the prophets of Baal and Ashera didn't have any fire to duel with. Elijah, on the other hand, had flames that God sent down, fire hot enough to burn up a bull, the firewood, all the water that had been poured over the altar, the 12 stones used to build the altar, and the soil the altar was built on. Then, Elijah watched as all the people of Israel turned back to God. After that, he killed all 850 false prophets. And even after that, he told the king that rain was coming--even though there had been a drought for 3

"The LORD said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.' Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire was a gentle whisper. "  ~I Kings 19 : 11 & 12 "Be still, and know that I am God" ~Psalm 46:10b Life is busy. Sometimes, it's just plain hard to get away from everything--assuming we even want to. These days, the thing people seem to be the most concerned about is being connected. You very rarely see somebody without a cell phone somewhere in sight, and facebook and twitter are even at the center of advertising campaigns. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I admit to spending way too much time on facebook, pretty much just

I want you to know, my parenting this last week or so has been the best it's been probably since my sweet baby girl was born 7.5 years ago. I haven't yelled at either kid, lost my temper over the little stuff, been impatient, zoned out when they told another long story, or pretended to listen. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that my kids aren't here right now. They're spending this part of the summer in Arkansas, going back and forth between grandparents' houses and having a blast spending a month on the farms. I miss them and I can't wait for them to get back--my house is entirely too quiet--but I know one thing for sure: it won't take long for me to lose my temper, no matter how hard I try not to. This parenting thing is hard. Why isn't that something they talk about in those "what to expect" books? It's filled with stress and anxiety and messes and endless loads of laundry and sinks full of dirty dishes and te

So I have to admit, I'm at a bit of a loss right now. Believe it or not, I have no idea what to write. Usually, words come pretty easily to me when I'm writing (speaking is a completely different story...). I start writing and the words just seem to flow. I've spent the last few days trying to come up with something to write on here, though, and I just haven't found any words. Not all words are hard for me to find right now, though. I've started writing a new story and so far to words for that have been coming out pretty well. To tell you the truth, though, I'm a bit terrified about this one. It's fiction and in some ways pretty similar to the fantasy type stuff I've put out there . The thing is, though, I'm trying something different. I'm attempting to connect both sides of my writing by doing something crazy (for me, anyways). I'm trying my hand at a Christian supernatural thriller. I know, right? Craziness, and I'm not real