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In My Bag & On My Table | My Favorite Journaling & Study Tools
My husband and I fondly refer to our first date as The Inquisition. Neither of us were casual daters, he had only one prior girlfriend before me and I had zero before him. We were friends for almost a year before he asked me out – so we had a good idea about each other but we still didn’t know each other in that are we compatible for marriage way. Since we were friends, I remember telling my mom that if I was home by 9ish, it probably didn’t go so well. I didn’t get home until well after mid-night. From the get-go we started asking the hard questions. As…
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Slime Slinging and a Woman Named Damaris
My son recently discovered the joy of building blocks. He painstakingly gathers both pieces in his chubby baby-not-quite-toddler hands and angles them together to connect. Sometimes the ends don’t fit and he grumbles in frustration, but when they do, he looks up with his big blue eyes to see if anyone noticed. He’ll hold up his stack of blocks and smile, full of self pride. We cheer like any good parents…but then our hoorays turn into muffled giggles when the blocks inevitably fall apart and he wrings his hands in the most dramatic fashion to express his supreme dissatisfaction. Through the multi-colored building blocks, my sixteen-month-old has already learned a…
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The Bountiful Benefactor
My dad and I have this thing where we read the first sentence of a book to each other and then we rate it on a scale of average to awesome. If the first sentence grabs us, it’s usually a book that will keep us enthralled through the end. The more the suspense, the better. After deciding to officially read through the Bible, I cracked open the cover of my hand-painted journaling Bible to “In the beginning…” Genesis, the origin. And so begins the greatest story of all time. Suspense, romance, adventure that rival every Oscar nomination. Character development, twists and turns, poetic beauty that rival every New York Times…
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Tithing Your Time | A Free Bible Reading Log
I’m a wordy. I fell in love with books in middle school. I’d check out a stack from the public library and a stack from our church library and have them read in a week. I’d return them only to leave with more stacked tall. There’s a running joke in my family when my teacher mom literally said “You aren’t allowed to read anymore books” in an effort to discipline me. It was the only suitable punishment she could think of because my nose was always in a book. This love for reading eventually led me to majoring in English at college, where I discovered I would much rather write…
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The Thing About New Year Resolutions, Word for 2019, and the Book that Revolutionized My Year
I once had a boss who would write reminders on her hands. We’d be in the middle of a meeting when something said would trigger a thought and she’d grab a pen and write a word on her palm. Toy – to reminder her to bring a toy to a birthday party for her friend’s son. Milk – remembering her toddler drank all of it that morning and she needed to go to the store to get more. It became somewhat of a joke between us – all those black and blue and red words on her hands. Whatever it was, if she didn’t write it down where she’d have…
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Pick Up Your Pen | The Treasured Work of a Heaven Scribe
I found out I was pregnant on Christmas. Well, sort of. The second pink line indicating a positive was ever so faint, I didn’t believe it. I swayed between hope and doubt so much so that I put the test in a bag early Christmas morning and stuck it under the tree only to have paralyzing doubt overtake, stuffing the bag deep behind the tree at the last minute until I could dispose of it without Hawk seeing. I’d already had months of hope being deferred and couldn’t allow myself to sit in the excitement without first being sure. Two days later I bought one of the digital tests –…
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This Is Advent | The Stretched Out Threads of Grace
The tree is in the corner of our living room. Its lights are bright and the ornaments are high so a certain little boy doesn’t mess with them. I splurged on embroidered stockings last year and they hang off the blanket ladder to the right of the tree. All gifts have been ordered and wrapped and are piled under and around the broad artificial branches. During this time of Advent, a spirit of uneasiness has lingered and I just can’t quite shake it. One morning I sat by the tree with the twinkling lights and asked myself the hard questions. I saw all the gifts and the unease rose to…
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My Great-Grandfather’s Well | A Legacy of Faith
The Bible sits on one of my mom’s bookshelves. It’s red, normal looking. Doesn’t have an interesting design on the cover. Doesn’t even have a name imprinted on the lower corner. I was ten when he died. My great-grandpa on my mom’s side. She asked to have this particular Bible after his death. Inside the cover is a pamphlet from when he and my great-grandma drove her to college for the first time. It may be non-special to look at, this red book, but it’s very special to her. Blue pen marks mar the otherwise pristine thin pages. They tell a story, that shaky script, of demons fought, of spiritual…
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Against His Chest | Experiencing the Presence of God in Motherhood
He hasn’t been an easy baby, we say. As his personality continues to develop, his stubborn streak appears. We think he’s going to be a strong-willed child. It’s a good thing God made him so cute, we say. Even in the overwhelming cuteness, our sanity dangles at times. The challenging newborn phase isn’t so far removed that we’ve began talking about expanding our family further. Not yet, but one day, we say. Of course we say all these things totally in love and absolutely captivated by the little boy who does indeed have bits and pieces of both of us wrapped up in his two-foot frame. And yet our humanness,…
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Why Journaling Matters
It was my sixth Christmas when I got my first journal. It was green and had a praying angel on the cover. Even though the pages would be penned in my very large learning-to-write characters and the greatest climax it ever saw was the frustration to be getting a second brother instead of a long-awaited sister; it would spark in me a passion. I wouldn’t become part of God’s family for another year and I wouldn’t fully follow him for years after that – but that angel covered book, and the countless ones I filled after, would be a tool. A tool God gave me to harness the words within.…
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An Ode to the Army
When you first introduced yourself I didn’t know much about you. I apprehensively shook your hand. That clammy first handshake turned into a begrudging nod and after six years of eye contact we’ve become intimately acquainted. Since Hawk’s days of wearing camo and dog-tags have officially come to an end, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on a few of our memories together. I’m deploying. I still remember the night our stories intersected – sitting in the passenger seat internally reeling from the words that just came out of my friend’s mouth, the man I was slowly getting to know and really like. It was the 4th of…
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Make Yourself a Plate
Your theology is very personal. Lauren Chandler’s statement has stuck with me in a profound way. These words, my journals, hold records of my theology, my very intimate and deeply personal wrestlings with God. Documenting this continuous journey of working out my faith by pressing deeper into communion with God. They chronicle so much about my fears and faith, my doubts and belief. They are my Ebenezer Stones, my Songs of Remembrance. I started my last journal 18 months ago with Psalm 40:5- Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell…
