life. faithful.

I have big news--I'm an aunt! I am beyond excited to introduce you to Avery, my baby sister's new precious little girl. Today's post is for her... ***** My sweet girl, Welcome to the world, little one! You have been prayed for and loved from the moment you were first knit together, and you should know that you have a ton of people who will never stop praying for you! You've been born into two families that will probably drive you crazy at times, but they are two families who will love you unconditionally until the end of time. Sweet Avery, this world you've been born into is a bizarre one. It is full of mysteries and miracles, but it is also full of heartaches and fears. Life has the ability to lift you high above the clouds one minute and then knock you into the dirt the next. I know your momma, though, and I know what sort of stuff you're made of--so I know you'll be able to face whatever is thrown your way. And things will be thrown at you, b...

I love stories. I always have, from the early days of stories about Little Bear and ones by Judy Blume to the stories in middle school by Mary Higgins Clark and about Dawn Rochelle to the books that line my shelves today-- I have what's possibly one of the most eclectic bookshelves around, with Dean Koontz, Gilly Graham, Gone with the Wind, C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Einstein, Dracula, Harry Dresden, the Kingkiller Chronicle... --the list goes on, but I'll stop there! Stories do amazing things. They teach lessons without preaching sermons, take you to different worlds or times, open eyes and soften hearts. I write stories, here on this blog and in more notebooks than I can count that are scattered all over my house.I wrote a fantasy novel that I poured my heart into, a devotional that opened my eyes to aspects of God's character I hadn't paid much attention to before, and most recently a story that's still a secret because the person it's meant...

Always do your best. You don't have to be the best as long as you are your best. That's how I was raised, based partially on Paul's letter to the church at Colosse: "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." Colossians 3:23 & 24 Growing up, the most trouble that caused me was an occasional annoyance, a nudge when I just wasn't working as hard as I could at something. I would roll my eyes when my parents asked me if I had done my best, but then it would cause a slight twinge of conscience and I would buckle down and focus and pretty soon my grades would be back to the A's I was used to having. Lately, though, it's been a hard verse for me. There's a saying, "too many irons in the fire." That's where I am now, partly by choice and partly by necessity. As a ...

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...

Quick, name the most aggressive breeds of dogs. Don't think about it too much--just name the first breeds that come to your mind when somebody says "aggressive dog." My guess is, one of these breeds came to mind: Pitbull   Rottweiler Certain breeds have definitely been vilified lately, named "vicious" by merit of their genes alone. According to a study done by the University of Pennsylvania a few years ago (and then published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science ), if those are the dogs that come to mind, you're off a bit... ...by around 100 pounds, give or take a few. According to their survey of roughly 6,000 dog owners, here's the top 3 most aggressive breeds: From the AKC Also from the AKC From dogbreedinfo   Surprised? Why don't those little dogs--the dachshund, chihuahua, and jack russell--have the bad reputation instead of the big dogs? Why don't people pull their children away when they see so...