life. faithful.

It seems I've been doing this a lot lately--staring at a blank piece of paper (or screen in this case) with no idea what to write. I know I need to write. I can feel something inside me withering because the words haven't been coming lately. Every time I try to, though, I just get...lost. The words seem to be getting stuck somewhere, and I'm not sure if it's the wiring in my head, heart, or hands that keeps getting crossed. Maybe it's a mix of all three. In all honesty, I'm at a bit of a loss right now. A loss for words, but that's not all. I feel a bit lost in general. Does that come as a surprise? It has to me, to be sure. 11 and 1/2 years into my marriage, after 2 kids and 2 degrees, and now after we've moved back "home" to the hills of Arkansas I feel a bit like I'm wandering aimlessly with no idea what direction I should be going. You would think that after writing a devotional all about following the Way when you can't ...

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." ~Michah 6:8 Mercy. In the dictionary and concordance in the back of my Bible, it says mercy is forgiveness or compassion. In another sense, though, we have an opportunity to "love mercy" in a very tangible way. If you've never heard of the Mercy House, you should hop over there and check it out. To give you the short version, the Mercy House is a place for young ladies who are about to become mothers. They move into Rehema House (Rehema=Mercy in Swahili) where they are loved by beautiful servants of God, and where they are shown that their lives and the lives of their beautiful babies are full of promise because of God's love for them. It is the result of one woman (and her family) saying yes to a crazy dream God put in her heart. Now, though, God has opened doors that lead all over the world...

It feels like the world is falling apart. In all honesty, it's been falling apart since the moment sin entered the Garden. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that order tends to chaos, meaning an ordered system will become disordered over time, and that's exactly what has been happening since this earth began. We've been sheltered here in the United States, to be truthful. We've had the chance to live in a country founded on belief in the Creator, started by men who knew that only God's blessings and mercy could sustain such a country. But now, it seems as if our country--and those leading it--has turned its back on God. We've redefined life, marriage, love, right, and wrong, things that were never ours to define to begin with. We've accepted sin--even condoned it--in every facet of life: greed, sexual impurity, envy, deceit, gossip, arrogance, disobedience, and faithlessness are all commonplace (see Romans 1:24-32 ). As we look around at our country an...

Well, it's been a while...I've been pretty well silent this month, haven't I? To those of you who check in with me from time to time, I apologize for my silence. Honestly, there are a lot of big changes happening right now in our family, so things have been crazy! Just as a quick catch up... We're in the process of moving from Ohio back to Arkansas, where Nathan and I will both be jumping in to the world of education. Him in history, me in math.  We're working on figuring out how to make all of our earthly stuff fit into a house roughly half the size of the one we're moving out of. We're teaching our kids what it means to live in a small town where everybody knows everybody else instead of in a big city where people tend to avoid interaction. I'm sitting through 3 weeks of learning how to teach (after getting my MSE in education and physics...and teaching high school for a year...and teaching college labs for 2 years...but I digress). I'...

You know that I'm still mad at you sometimes, right? Mad at you for leaving me behind, despite all the times I insisted you wait for me when we were growing up. I thought it was just some crazy reaction that I was totally by myself with, but I'm not the only one who has said that if her brother walked through the front door today she would hug his neck and then punch him. And since you taught me how to punch, you know that wouldn't be one of those wimpy punches, either. Sometimes, I still let myself believe for a few minutes that you aren't really gone . When it gets too tough and I just don't have the strength to miss you, I let myself picture a "Bourne Identity" situation for a little while. It doesn't work for long, but sometimes it's long enough to let me swallow the lump in my throat and move forward. This week has been full of those moments. Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and I don't know how to react to it. My kids--your niece ...

Songs have always had an impact on me. I have (quite literally) 45 different playlists saved on Spotify, each with its own purpose. I've had different theme songs at different times in my life, and even now when I hear one of those it brings up the memories of whatever was going on in my life at the time. There are songs I sing when I feel on top of the world and songs I sing when my heart is breaking. Whatever the emotion, I probably have a song to go along with it--happy, sad, or anything in between. Sometimes, though, a song comes to mind at a rather odd time. Take yesterday. I was mowing (it seems that something like that makes my brain start working, too ) and two songs kept running through my head on repeat. They were both songs I've most likely known for as long as I've been able to talk, thanks to my mom. They were also both songs I haven't thought of or heard in a long time. "He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be. It took Him...

I was talking to Pop on the phone last night and told him, "I'm not very good at this whole 'patience' thing." To his credit, he didn't laugh me off the phone for stating the obvious. You see, I've felt like life lately--for a few years now--has just had me hurry up and wait. I've never been very good at waiting. Even when I was little I would tell people to "wait real quick," because I've never been a big fan of waiting a long time. As I've seen time and time again, God's timing doesn't really fit with mine. You would think I would have a firm grasp of that concept by now, wouldn't you? The thing is, I still have to be reminded of it from time to time. I've mentioned before a sermon series my parents sent me, from Dr. Tony Evans. In one sermon, he talked about how Joseph's timing and God's timing were quite different. In Genesis 40, Joseph is in prison with Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker. They both ...