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discernment

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All Our Words Belong To Him

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I felt Him whisper it to me back in December. A word that slipped in and out of my thoughts. I tucked it away until January, the time I set aside each year to fast and pray for the coming months. As my hunger set in, I asked the Lord to confirm the word I couldn’t seem to shrug off. To be honest, the word scares me a little bit. Not in the way “surrender” did a few years ago. Whew, that one really pressed in hard. With hands stretch out, I gave over to the Lord areas of my life […]

You Can Always Come Home

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Over the past several months I’ve looked back longingly on those exhausting nights of waking children and all those witching hours when one boy would be hanging at my ankles whining, and the littlest would be needing a diaper change, and the oldest was clearly responding out of low blood sugar craziness. Without me even realizing it, those days were in my past. I put a sweet toddler down for a nap one day not realizing it would be the last daytime tuck in. And somewhere along the line, I took my final middle of the night groggy walk up […]

Yes Also Means No {a truth my husband speaks}

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Here’s the thing about learning yes. You must also learn no. For saying yes to something inevitably means saying no to something else. Yes to a truth, no to a lie. Yes to God’s will, no to self-fulfilled dreams. Yes to intentional living, no to busyness and a rigid calendar. Yes to your children, no to selfish intentions. Yes to healthier eating, no to cheap groceries. In everything, there is a choice, a deciding between what you desire {or need}, and what you’re willing to do without in order to have the time, money, energy or attention to weave what […]

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Praying Yes! Today

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A prayer by Walter Brueggemann You are the God who is simple, direct, clear with us and for us. You have committed yourself to us.You have said yes to us in creation,yes to us in our birth,yes to us in our baptism,yes to us in our awakening this day. But we are of another kind,more accustomed to “perhaps, maybe, we’ll see,’left in wonderment and ambiguity. We live our lives not back to your yes,but out of our endless “perhaps.” So we pray for your mercy this day that we may live yes back to you,yes with our time,yes with our money,yes […]

Everything is Permissible

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….but not everything is beneficial. I experienced a convergence of situations and truths this week. And the more I meditate on it, the more I realize just how central this teaching is to how we shape and guide our children according to the purposes of God. I was talking deep with a friend about the thorn in his flesh and how it has him wrestling with heart issues, and feeling judged by those who claim the name of Jesus. The question he asked was do you think it’s wrong? It’s a familiar question to most of us.  We can’t help […]

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Fear {the contraceptive of the soul}

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I sat there in the movie theater proud to be Fun Mom after a long month of being Distracted Mom. 5 kids sipping on frozen cokes and stuffing their faces with popcorn drizzled with fake butter. I am SO fun…sometimes! As it turns out, the Croods are a cave family who live in the dark to stay alive, fearing all things — particularly anything new, and especially the light. Interesting, I thought. My weary soul from this month’s events had me wondering if it was coincidence or divine intervention that I was watching this particular animated story. Fear keeps us […]

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an act of vulnerability

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Surrender is the word I’m praying through this year. To live more committed to this arms raised, palms out posture to life, there’s a searching of my soul and a seeking of my Father. I want to know what it is I need to surrender, what I might need to die to or give up in order to live more faithful to His purposes. I’m good at clinging tight to what I like. I actually think I have really good ideas, so what’s the harm in living them out, right? Well, let me tell you something….Africa was not my good idea. […]

Awaken Your Spirit

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Eight years ago I started fasting regularly as a way to make myself available to God. These fasting days and weeks have changed my life and relationship with the Lord as we’ve listened to each other, really listened. I am always humbled by God’s faithfulness to meet me in my hunger. For so long I thought the point of fasting was to replace eating with prayer. I had done one, two and three day fasts with this objective and didn’t experience anything that compelled me to pursue this as a spiritual discipline. It wasn’t until I endured my first week […]

somewhere in between

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That’s where change happens. In between what you think and what I think. In between what she said and what he said. In between that opinion and this opinion. When national tragedies happen, we hear a variety of both knee jerk and thoughtful responses that open up dialogue. This can be frustrating…and good. It’s frustrating to hear extreme opinions and defenses in a time like this. It’s frustrating that most of the dialogue happens on Facebook where we can’t see expressions and genuine spirits. It’s frustrating that we spout opinions without taking the time to seek the Lord and discern […]

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Days of our Lives

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The harvest is plentiful. The air is changing. The dark is setting in earlier each week. The heat is slower to come and quicker to leave. And with these cues, our calendars transform. Where camps, barbecues and pool parties filled our days, we now look ahead to a weekly program that will govern our next few months. There’s something refreshing about this. In the same way I was antsy for the frolicking of summer after the rigidity of the school year, I now welcome the predictable rhythm that will hold our days together. But may these things that hold our […]

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