Be Still...

My son Carter is an incredibly talented martial artist. (No mom-bias here whatsoever.) He started training when he was 6 years old in a Korean martial art called Kuk Sool Won. I think about his progress over the years, his setbacks, his discouragements, his persistence, and his achievements, and I know exactly why he's come so far and is so great at it. He has competed all over the country, earned several gold medals and countless other medals. He is currently in the testing process to earn his black belt, and he's now teaching other students. There are so many reasons for this. First, it's his determination. He has wanted that black belt since the first time he stepped foot in that school. See, the black belt uniforms are way cooler than the others. The belts themselves are cooler. Black belts are set apart from everyone else. They have achieved what every single student is aiming to achieve. He has had this goal since he was 6 years old, and this coming Spring he will...

I know I'm not the only one who's asked this question. Where is God? Why am I going through what I'm going through? What is the lesson in this, or punishment? What have I done to deserve this? Why is this happening....again? There's really no other way to put this... my husband has been a walking medical nightmare since 2013. Five years. FIVE. It's been one thing after another. In 2013 he had a small tear in his Achilles tendon. He had it repaired, went through a rough recovery, got his cast off and began physical therapy. Less than a week later he rolled his ankle and ruptured the same tendon. This time it was a complete rupture. Another surgery. Another recovery. For nine months of that year, he was on crutches. Plus the physical therapy and recovery time once he began walking on it again. At that time we had a 13 year old daughter who knew everything, hated us, and did her best to make things as difficult as possible (as 13 year old hormonal girls do.) David wa...

Can we just talk about motherhood for a minute? Some days I feel like I'm killing it. I have dinner in the crock pot first thing in the morning, my house is clean, I walk into Carter's bedroom and he's got his Bible open studying, I FaceTime Madison and she tells me about all the awesome things she's doing while away at school... and I just feel like I've got it all together. I'm really nailing this mom thing. These days are few and far between. Most days are more like this: I hit snooze on my alarm so many times that I don't even have time to dry my hair, I go to work, come home and try to figure out what I can feed my family for dinner, which almost always ends up being from a box or something frozen unless I pick up a pizza or a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, I'm moody because I'm stressed out from work so I'm biting everyone's head off. Carter is mad at me because I come home yelling about him not finishing his chores. D...

If you've grown up in the church, or been in church at all really, you know the story of Jonah and the whale. Here it is in a nutshell: God tried to send Jonah to Nineveh to tell the people to repent or God would destroy the city, Jonah runs from God and gets on a boat going in the opposite direction, he gets thrown overboard, God sends a fish to swallow him, he prays to God from the belly of the fish and agrees to go to Nineveh, God causes the fish to spit him out and he goes and preaches to the people of Ninevah.... moral of the story,  you can't run from God. The End. Discaimer: I am blogging what my pastor preached this past Sunday. I wish these were my thoughts, but they were so powerful to me that I really felt like I should share.   So the part of the story that isn't told often is what happened AFTER Jonah obeyed God and went to Nineveh. He went and warned them that if they didn't repent, God was going to destroy their city in 40 days. They believed him, the...

For me, there is no worse feeling than being helpless. I make myself sick worrying about situations that I can't help with. I woke up this morning to bad news from two different people. Two completely different situations. Two people who I love so so deeply. Two situations that I can't control, or help with in any way, or really even come up with the right words to offer comfort. There are just some situations where the last thing people want/need to hear are "God has this" or "Keep praying, don't lose your faith" or "God has a plan" or even "I'm praying for you." Those last four words have become so cliche, haven't they? We hear them so often that I feel like it waters down the power of prayer. Every post on Facebook where something bad happens, you see hundreds of comments of "I'm praying for you." But do we really? Do we actually get on our knees and do it? One of these people told me that she hadn't s...