The Garden

The Garden

The Garden is serving someone you know.

It’s the girl sitting on the same row with you each Sunday. She’s the girl in the next cubicle over. The cousin you love but only see a few times a year. The teacher who pours out her life into your child. The lady sitting on your board. The woman on the other end of the conference call. The girl on your worship team.

It’s her.

Simple, Puposeful Living With Kids (Part 2)

Simple, Puposeful Living With Kids (Part 2)

I’m so excited to continue our series on living simple with purpose. I’ve being living on purpose for quite some time now, but sharing this series with you has helped me think through why I do the things I do. I don’t know about you, but I can’t believe Thanksgiving is next week, and Christmas will be right around the corner. If we’re not careful, I think it would be easy to let life just slip by. As we’re walking through this series, I hope it encourages you to think for yourself and your family the “why” behind the things you do.

When my kids are all grown up, and they’re raising children of their own, I want their favorite memories to be the ones we made consistently with intentionality. And that can’t happen if we’re not being intentional now.

Infertility Gave Me You

Infertility Gave Me You

Our stories, they both started with brokenness. 

Mine looked like month after month, year after year of negative pregnancy tests. It’s all I ever wanted to be, a mama. So when doctors and my flat belly told me it wouldn’t happen, it was a deep pain, probably the deepest of my life. It wasn’t suppose to be this way. My body is designed to conceive and carry babies. 

I don’t like to think of your story as painful. It tears my heart in half to think of you being in pain. But the truth is, in a perfect world, before the fall, God intended mommies to carry their babies. Your birth mama, she loved you so deep, she knew she couldn’t give you what you needed. So she made a brave choice, and chose life for you, a life she couldn’t give.

Dear New Mama,

Dear New Mama,

You never knew you could love like this, did you?

That first cry. It’s etched forever into your heart. How you absolutely melted over the weight of someone so small. In an instant, you were changed. Forever. This precious miracle, truly a gift straight from Father, is yours.

You just stare. Scribing every sweet line and wrinkle into your mind. Breathing in the smell of newness. Memorizing the exact spot where that bald head rests on your chest and the way those tiny legs curl up under that sweet rump.

 

It’s Only A Stage

The summer sun is out to stay, until a little shower pops up to water our gardens. Kids are out of school and running between our houses barefoot in my neighborhood. I hear laughter and basketballs bouncing right up until the time the sun meets the horizon and passes...