life. faithful.

"I still remember the way you clung to Me in your youth; in the early days of our union. Like a young bride, you loved the vows you made." ~Jeremiah 2:2b Newlyweds. Everything they find out about each other is exciting and new. They can even be annoying with all the crazy things they point out about each other, the things that would drive any sane person up the wall but that are somehow "so cute" in the early days. They want nothing more than being together--the rest of the world could fade away and they wouldn't mind. In fact, they would just about prefer it if that would happen. All they need is their love for each other. And then they start spending less time focusing on that love. Life starts getting in the way--the kids, the jobs, the money issues, the dreams they wanted to pursue but aren't realistic now--and, though it happens without conscious thought, they drift apart. It's not that the relationship becomes unimportant--it's j...

I don't post twice in one day. Pretty sure I've never done it before, and there's a pretty good chance I'll never do it again. Today, though, I had to make an exception. There is evil in this world. Most of the time here in the U.S. we see it from a distance, a faceless terror affecting the lives of other people. It seldom affects us, so though we know it is there we don't feel it's effects. This morning, evil reached out and touched my family. I sent Nathan off to school this morning, because he's going to be spending the next year dividing his weekdays between the college campus and a high school campus while he works towards a Master's in education. After fixing breakfast for the kids at around 7 a.m., I saw multiple missed calls from Nathan. When I got him on the phone, he told me that a wheel had come off of the Bronco as he drove into Toledo. A little while later, after being towed to a service station, he told me that the mechanics were e...

Home. That word has meant a lot of different places for me through the years, and it's pretty likely that it will mean a few more before we settle down. I'm in a place right now where I'm ready for "Home" to become something permanent; I'll be 30 this summer (I'm not sure when that happened...) and I'm more than anxious to get to a point where Nathan and I can put down roots and stop moving our kids around all over the place. So to get my mind off of the future, I thought I might take a trip down memory lane...would you like to join me? Home was first a little house in Bentonville before Bentonville became what it is today. Just to show how small this word really is, my first home was 2 houses down from where my sister-in-law lives right now. That first home was a place with next door neighbors who became my third set of grandparents. It was the place where Ralph would take me to get candycorn at the grocery store less than half a mile from the ...

I was at McDonalds, of all places, grabbing lunch between classes. Usually if I'm eating somewhere by myself I have a notebook with me. I guess I'm not really alone then, because I get lost in the lives of my characters. Today, though, I hadn't planned on a lunch break that would keep me in the city. We only had class scheduled for the morning, so I didn't have my notebook with me. So today I got to people watch. Do you ever do that? Just sit back and look at the people around you and wonder if you can get a glimpse of their lives? I don't know, maybe the fact that I do that just makes me nosy. For now, though, I'll just say that it's writing research, a way to make the relationships in my stories seem more like real life. I was perched on a tall stool by the window and soon the tables beside me started to fill up. The first to sit down was an older man wearing a "Toledo Federation of Teachers" lanyard. When I first walked in he had already be...

It's easy for me to control my actions. I'm not one who's prone to get into fist fights or to get into trouble for acting out impulses. I may have to clench my fists from time to time, but my temper doesn't flare that way. I don't throw things or punch things--although every once in a while the tendency to slam a door carries over from my teenage days. But what I do have a problem with is controlling my tongue. It's not "bad words," per se. I've never been one to have that habit and I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've said a cuss word in my life. But too often, my words cut people down. And not just any people--the most important people, my family-people. We are told in James that the tongue is like the rudder of a ship or the bit in a horse's mouth. It's this tiny little thing, but it's capable of steering everything else. It's also said to be the most difficult thing to control (to which I can ...

Look at us--we thought we knew what we were doing, that we knew what love was. I know nobody could've told me then, but a 19 year old really doesn't know anything!  ...not that I know anything now, mind you. But then, maybe that's the difference between then and now. Now, 10 years in, I realize how little I really know. So instead of a post on how much I've learned in 10 years of marriage, how about something different? I present: What I don't know I don't know how... ...one person can so quickly learn to push your every button--and sometimes delight in doing so. ...you can know so much about one person and yet at times feel like you know nothing. ...you can feel like another person is part of you--inside your head and under your skin and in your blood. ....something as abstract as love can be strong and concrete enough to stand against anything. ...one person believing in you can make you try to accomplish what would otherwise seem impossible...

Sometimes life gets to be too much. Maybe I'm the only one to ever feel this way, but some days it is all too easy to get overwhelmed. Surely I'm not alone in this, right? I'm not talking about the big, important, life-changing events here. No, I mean the incredibly unimportant, miniscule things that shouldn't have any sort of real impact on your day. Yesterday was one of those days for me. Well, I guess technically it started the night before. Nathan and I watched a movie after the kids went to bed and I fell asleep part way through. That's a pretty common occurrence in our house...and by "pretty common" I actually mean "pretty much every night." So for some reason, I woke up at 11 pm cranky. No real reason, just plain not happy. I was ready to go to bed, but Conan had spilled something on my phone yesterday morning (again) and so my phone was in pieces drying out (again). That left me without an alarm. Yes, there was probably an ac...

I want to tell you a story... It seems Nathan and I have a thing for unexpected adventures, and I was reminded of one that I thought you might enjoy. When Raiden was born, Nathan was still in the Coast Guard and we were living in Astoria, Oregon (if you've never been there, you should visit. I would love to go back some day!). We had gone back to Arkansas so she would be born there, though, so when she was about 2 or 3 weeks old we headed back across country in the Santa Fe--two brand new parents who had no idea what they were doing, one tiny baby girl who didn't know to be scared, and two giant dogs, one of whom was not cut out for travel. My mom thinks you can never be too prepared, so before we headed out she made sure we had about a million baby blankets in the car with us. She wanted to send a candle because she had seen a show that talked about a family getting stuck in their car in a blizzard and apparently a single candle is enough to keep you warm in that situ...

Psalm 124 "If the LORD had not been on our side-- let Israel say-- if the LORD had not been on our side when men attacked us, when their anger flared against us, they would have swallowed us alive; the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away. Praise be to the LORD, who has not let us be torn by their teeth. We have escaped like a bird out of the fowler's snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth." When things go wrong, it's easy to look around and ask, "Where is God?" I know that I've had lots of those moments in my life, times when everything was going wrong (or at least, not according to my plans) and I felt abandoned. In the middle of the bad stuff, it's hard to get a different perspective--kind of like only seeing the waves when you're in the middle of ...

Yesterday was one of those days. You know, one that had me questioning what I'm doing trying to survive in this insanely rational and analytical world of physics... a world so different from any I would have ever pictured myself in... a world light-years away from where I thought I would be... and most of all, a world not really conducive to this dream of writing that still tugs at my heart on a daily basis. It started when I sat down to write out my Quantum homework problems--and didn't get any further than copying them out of the book because then I just stared at them with no idea how to get started. It went on with Electrodynamics and talk of dielectrics and electric fields, and how when you are trying to find the electric field you need epsilon to be the same in both regions, but the permittivity of a dielectric is definitely not the same as the permittivity of empty space but that's okay because we can simply "imagine" the substitution of a new die...

I had every intention of getting back into the swing of things here on the blog in 2013 after letting it drift almost into oblivion towards the end of 2012... Best laid plans of mice and men, i suppose... Well, that aside, I've done some thinking about my word, follow. It seems rules/plans/goals fit nicely into groups of 3 for some reason, so I've come up with the 3 ways I need to focus on following this year. 1) Follow my Savior "When Jesus spoke again to the people, He said, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'" (John 8:12) ~We are told many times to follow Christ. That needs to be my number one focus this year, because even though I know to the very core of my being that that should be my first priority and that everything else will fall into place so much easier if I put that goal first              so many times it falls by the wayside      ...

So many times, I get the feeling that I'm trying to split myself into too many pieces. I'm trying to divide myself into different parts: The Mom --this side of me is supposed to be entirely focused on my kids. This is the part that is supposed to kiss hurts and listen to fears and correct wrong behaviors and ensure order at home. This is the part that is responsible for making sure my kids are bathed and fed and rested and growing and happy. The Wife --this part is supposed to be supporting and encouraging my husband. This side is supposed to make sure he gets what he needs to be the leader, father, and man God wants him to be. This is the part that is supposed to make sure the house he comes home to at the end of the day is truly a home--safe, comfortable, loving, and a place of refuge. The Student --this is the side that is supposed to be studying in every spare minute, the part that is expected to hold intelligent conversations with PhDs. This side is supposed to unde...

One of the blogs I follow is written by a guy named Jeff Goins (yes, for those of you who know me, I did originally read his blog because of his last name--but I keep reading for the writing). His latest post in which he writes a letter to his teenage self inspired my own, so here goes...   Dear teenage me, I know how stubborn you are and how you are convinced that you need to figure everything out for yourself, but I'm going to give you some advice anyways. See? That stubbornness thing doesn't go away any time soon... First off, it's okay that you don't always fit in. You have a great group of girls you do fit with, though, and you need to keep them close. Trust me, you'll regret it if you let those friendships slip away. Take the time to enjoy high school. I know you want to grow up and head off to college and just stop all this "kid stuff," but you need to realize that these days are good. You have been blessed in so many ways that...

I had a meltdown last night. When I picked the kids up from daycare yesterday I let them know that I had some homework I had to do and that I would need them to help me out by playing together and letting me have some time to work. Actually, I told them I had some really yucky homework to do. That prompted a discussion with Raiden on how no, homework isn't really yucky, but the work I had to do was really hard so I just used that word to describe it. Not the best way to talk about homework to your child who is just about to start school, I know. oops. So, when we got home what did the kids do? Basically, anything besides what I had asked them to do. They had dinner at daycare, but they asked for popcorn when we got home. Thinking that would keep them occupied for a bit, I made some. We don't do microwave popcorn anymore. No, I don't have anything against it. It's just that I can buy a bag of kernels for $1.50 that will last a lot longer than the b...