I saw Jesus in two cups of powdered sugar Saturday morning.

Not in one of those unusual miraculous appearances like when a bunch of birds flock together and form a face in the sky. 

More in the way I’m often looking for Him: in a whisper, a change in perspective, an “aha” that makes me feel one step closer to understanding.

You’ve maybe seen this miracle for yourself. You start with a couple of cups of sifted powdered sugar – they look like tiny snow drifts in your mixing bowl. 

You add just one little teaspoon of vanilla, and one little tablespoon of milk.

When the liquids first hit the sugar, it just makes a few drops in those powdery mountains, but then the mountains seem to sort of collapse from within, right in front of you.

You start stirring, thinking that tiny bit of liquid will never be enough to touch all that sugar, and get it moist enough all the way through to be icing for you.

But you stir anyway, and that’s when the miracle happens.

In case you haven’t witnessed this miracle for yourself yet, I’ll tell you: a teaspoon of vanilla and a tablespoon of milk? They truly are enough. 

Enough for you and your wide-eyed seven-year-old to marvel: sometimes what seems like too little can be more than enough.

With a little bit of faith, and the will to keep on stirring, you get icing.

In the moment with the sugar Saturday morning, I thought about those loaves and fishes that didn’t seem like enough. I thought about the disciples furrowing their brows into question marks when Jesus said, “You give them something to eat.” 

I thought about myself, and so many of my friends these days, who feel like we don’t have enough. And maybe? We are not enough.

Maybe it’s not enough time. Maybe it’s not enough patience. It’s not enough love. It’s not enough money. It’s not enough intelligence. 

Sometime, somehow we all look at ourselves, who we are or what we have, and we hear that whisper “It’s not enough. You’re not enough.”

But this is the beauty and Truth of walking by faith:

God takes mustard seeds and moves mountains.

He builds His church with flawed fisherman.  

And He feeds 5,000 with five loaves and two fish.

So I invite you today to speak louder than that not-enough whisper, maybe even right there to yourself in the mirror: 

God IS enough. He has enough. And if I give Him my teaspoon and my tablespoon of faith or time or finance or wisdom – He is able to make it more than enough. 

More than enough to parent well. More than enough to love well. More than enough to serve well, in our families, at our jobs, in our communities.

This is the miracle of the powdered sugar icing, and it’s the Truth worth holding onto:

We bring what we have to Jesus, and He makes it more than enough.

P.S. The Holidays are almost here, and I’d love to help you feel less frenetic and more focused as Thanksgiving and Christmas approach! Head over to my Holiday Gift Guide Page to  grab the 2020 Hassle-Free Holiday Guide I created just for you! It will help you plan menus and events, choose gifts and make lists, NOT feel like you’re forgetting everything and enJOY the days ahead so much more!

Some posts on my site contain affiliate links. When you click on those links to make purchases, I receive compensation at no extra cost to you. I love it when you do that! Thank you for your love and support!

“Is it a wash-sumfin day?”

As she’s rounded the corner on age 5, my youngest’s pronunciation of the question has become slightly clearer, but for a while I might’ve had to translate for you. At the start of many-a-morning, I have two kids who ask:

“Is it a school day?”

And a third that asks, “Is it a wash-sumfin day?”

Translation: “Is it a watch-something day?” or, better put, “Am I allowed screen time today, and if so, how soon can I get it?”

I have this crazy privilege/responsibility: managing to a very large extent the comings and goings of the lives of my children.

So naturally, morning by morning, they stumble downstairs, wrinkled pajamas and wild hair, and they begin looking up, into the face of the people determining their day to get some expectations for what’s ahead. Maybe we could go so far as to say marching orders, but I don’t run quite that tight of a ship. 

In the midst of the big problems, the big questions, the big ordeals of the world these days, I’ve been thinking about what Jesus meant when He said we had to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Perhaps we’ll chat about this a bit more in the weeks to come, but I think one point is especially poignant for us at this very moment in November of 2020.

My kids show an impressive amount of trust while the Hero Hubs and I stand in a position of sovereignty in their lives.

They ask permission, of course. They make requests, absolutely. They complain from time to time. Alas.

But they mostly show up in the morning with an innate understanding that they’re not really in control of what is going to happen with their day. When they have the freedom to get out in the backyard and play, or head upstairs to the land filled with Legos… well, they go wild and enjoy it as best they can.

For the most part it’s more of a follow-the-leader affair.

So what about you and me?

Well someone is going to win an election this week. And, yeah, there’s still this pandemic thing happening. Maybe for you it’s a job thing, a relationship struggle, a bank account or health concern. We’ve all got our struggles, our fights, our discomforts, don’t we?

Maybe becoming more like little children means settling into an understanding that there is a small and finite amount of our lives over which we have control.

Maybe we can settle into the idea that we should do our best with the aspects of our lives we can control.

And maybe we could show up wide-eyed and wrinkled looking up at our Father in the morning, too, to ask for guidance, to place our trust back in His sovereignty, maybe even to ask our own versions of that very important question: “Is it a wash-sumfin day?”

Let’s hold tightly to this wisdom from Corrie Ten Boom this week, with the innocent trust we ought to have, because you and I? We are the children of God.

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

Keep walking, and keep trusting, friends. He’s got the whole world in His hands.

P.S. Last week I shared that I was working on a free gift and it is HERE! The 2020 Hassle-Free Holiday Guide is a gift I created to help YOU…

• think through menus
• plan events
• schedule tasks AHEAD of time
• organize the gift-giving process (and more, of course)

It will definitely simplify holiday preparation for you! You can click here to grab your copy! Or mosey over to my 2020 Holiday Gift Guide, and you can grab it there!

Some posts on my site contain affiliate links. When you click on those links to make purchases, I receive compensation at no extra cost to you. I love it when you do that! Thank you for your love and support!

Do you ever read a passage of Scripture you’ve read and thought about a dozen times before and suddenly ask yourself, “Well, yeah, but what does that really mean?”

Just me?

Well anyway, it happened again on Sunday and I was curious enough to start poking around in the Hebrew to answer my question. #nerdalert

There’s this beautiful passage in Psalm 37 that watered my soul, way back in 2005 when I was living in Scotland:

I’ve thought about the trust part, and the doing good part. I’ve also thought about delighting in Him, and trusting that He will literally put the right desires in my heart – not just give me what I want, but actually, give me my wants. I like all of those thoughts.

But what is this “feed on his faithfulness” business? 

The ESV says “and befriend faithfulness.” 

The KJV says “and verily thou shalt be fed.”

The NIV says, “enjoy safe pasture.”

The Passion translation (I love this unpacking of it) reads, “Fix your heart on the promises of God and you will be secure, feasting on his faithfulness.”

When I dug a bit deeper, I discovered that in the Hebrew, David used a verb that means to pasture, graze, or tend, along with a noun that means firmness, steadfastness, and fidelity. 

What these two lovely words put together mean is that like sheep on a hillside, grazing on a bonnie wee patch of grass (this is definitely bringing back my days in Scotland, hey?) our souls can be fed – continuously nourished by the steadfast character of God.

His unchanging goodness is an unending source of consistency in a world that feels so strange these days. Maybe for you it’s the pandemic and isolation, maybe you’ve just lost a loved one or a job or you’re not sure how the next bill is going to be paid, or maybe you just had such a dang hard day at home with your kids that you feel like you’re a failure as a Mama and you should throw in the towel.

You have an open invitation to literally feast on the goodness of God. Feast by remembering how He’s come through for you before. Feast by remembering the joy that is set before you and the reason nothing in this world can truly satisfy: you were made for more than this world can offer. 

And, in His goodness and faithfulness, more, better, sweeter, and deeper is what God has in store for you and me.

Hold tight to the Good Word. Remind yourself of your favorite stories of answered prayers. 

Whatever you’re facing today on the outside, on the inside you can let His faithfulness be a feast that never stops feeding your soul.

P.S. I write words of encouragement every week… but they don’t always make it to this space. I’d love to welcome you to click the button on the right below so that I can send you a weekly email with love. With the simple goal of bringing you one step closer to Jesus, I hope those words will be a bright slice of happy in your inbox once a week.

P.P.S. If you want the skinny on the journey of this writer-longing-to-publish-a-book and see a screenplay become a movie, that’s in the emails, too!

Some posts on my site contain affiliate links. When you click on those links to make purchases, I receive compensation at no extra cost to you. I love it when you do that! Thank you for your love and support!

I stood in a parking lot last Thursday, phone pressed to my ear, staring at the toes of my brown boots on the black pavement.

A few quiet little tears slid down my cheeks while I listened to the voice at the other end of the line.

Sometimes a moment we’ve been looking forward to looks different from what we expected, and, caught in the weight of what isn’t, we don’t actually see what is.

I’d just received three things in that meeting: 

1) A huge and meaningful compliment about my writing from an acquisitions editor.

2) Some suggestions about the book I’d proposed, as it was not a good fit for her publisher, but would probably make much more sense to accompany a potential movie at the right timing elsewhere.

3) A welcoming, warm invitation to circle back with a different book idea, perhaps somewhat like the one I’d been writing before all of this happened with Blake anyway.

Overall, it was an incredibly positive meeting – but that one unexpected ‘no’ couched in several very positive ‘yeses’ was what my brain momentarily latched onto.

As I stared at my boot and talked and listened, a carpenter ant came trundling along with some special load of great importance. Ant on a mission.

I watched him hurry forward, and then decided, as I stood, just to put that boot right in front of his path … just to see.

Without hesitation, he turned to get around the mountain blocking his path.

So I blocked him again.

And without hesitation, he turned the other way and hurried off, making his way around, until he could make forward progress again.

When I laid a road block in front of him for the third time, he didn’t get frustrated and turn back. He didn’t stop and give up. He didn’t even hesitate to think about it. He had a load to bear and a direction to bear it in.

He hustled right over the top of my boot, not even pausing to take in the view from the summit – and off he went with his load while I nodded, impressed with his persistence.

I’m sure you can surmise the message already, friends: you are the ant, and so am I. And if we have a message and a destination, we’re better off steering around the obstacles – or even over them if necessary – to get on with the business we were created to do.

Even if we have to go over, under, around or through, progress is progress. 

If I learned anything last year, it was that God writes amazing stories. We can accept His invitation to trust the story He’s writing, and to do our best to stay faithful in the story.

If you don’t like where things are headed or you’re in a hard moment and it’s out of your control, take a deep breath and know: He is deeply invested in you. He sees you. He cares.

You can choose to keep showing up. You can do your part by choosing to keep being faithful.

You can trust Him with your story, friend, and I can trust Him with mine.

P.S. I write words of encouragement every week… but they don’t always make it to this space. I’d love to welcome you to click the button on the right below so that I can send you a weekly email with love. With the simple goal of bringing you one step closer to Jesus, I hope those words will be a bright slice of happy in your inbox once a week.

P.P.S. If you want the skinny on the journey of this writer-longing-to-publish-a-book and see a screenplay become a movie, that’s in the emails, too!

Some posts on my site contain affiliate links. When you click on those links to make purchases, I receive compensation at no extra cost to you. I love it when you do that! Thank you for your love and support!

What’s the state of affairs in your sock drawer these days?

Are you a planner? A scheduler? An organizer much? 

In order to stay on top of life while homeschooling four kiddos who also live in my house and call me “Mama” (and expect meals at regular intervals), I’ve built some systems and patterns into our life that have helped me run hard at this Mama gig without feeling like the wheels are gonna come off at any moment.

So when Kendra Adachi’s new book, The Lazy Genius Way popped up on my radar, I kind of wondered: do I need help with my system or do I have a good thing going? Should I leave well enough alone? 

Her book is an invitation to “Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn’t, and Get Stuff Done.”

When I decided to crack open the cover and step in, I realized there was one important step my systems often seem to be missing: Naming What Matters.

If you’re anything like me, you might think just about everything matters. And because I think everything matters, I kind of try to do everything right – and then feel like I’m sort of failing a lot of the time.* 

*Except maybe sheets. My sister asked for recommendations for new sheets on Facebook this week, and people were passionate about the subject. I quickly realized: hmm! I’ve found something that doesn’t really matter to me!

Want some examples in the “this matters” category? Sure thing.

I think I’ve had five or less bottled waters this year because I’ve been on a personal mission to reduce the amount of single-use plastic I consume. Might be weird to you.

I’m a little bit over-the-top about finding recipes that triple so that I can freeze ⅔ for future meals and spend less time in the kitchen. Also…maybe odd to you.

But the step that comes before those choices is the one I need to zoom in on: the bottled water thing has to do with caring about the planet. The batch cooking thing has to do with wanting to fill my hubs and kiddos’ tummies with home-cooked meals without working myself silly.

It’s up to me to name what matters, and then choose the next steps accordingly. 

For many of us, this is where the challenge comes in: what matters to me and what matters to you are probably going to look different. So who’s got it right?

We were created differently, right?

I sat still and pondered Psalm 20:4 this week, “May He grant you according to your heart’s desire, And fulfill all your purpose.”

We were created with different missions. We were created for different purposes. Our lives are but a breath – but God has plans for these breaths, and no two will look the same.

So I get to name what matters to me, and you get to name what matters to you. We both get to stand before Jesus, and hold out our hands and say, “This is what I did, because this is what I thought mattered.”

Neither of us is going to get everything right. There is grace.

But if I eat sour grapes, my lips will pucker, right? Not yours.

So in the midst of our frustrations with our neighbors, our concerns over political choices, and our preferences about everything from loading a dishwasher to choosing a new set of sheets, it’s important to remember that we were created differently, and different things are going to matter to each of us.

You’ve heard me say it before, maybe? Each of us has our own calling to faithfulness.

We can allow that truth to help us choose wisely how we are going to spend this blip of a life we have on the timeline of eternity. And we can also allow that truth to remind us that different things matter to others – and that’s okay.

Is there hard-and-fast Truth that is never gray? Absolutely. His Name is Jesus – and He’s also the Way, and the Life. He’s the Word we should cling to. He’s the Anchor for our souls. I will keep talking about Him because He matters to me.

But even the way we choose to worship Him and live into that Truth is going to look different for each of us, and rightfully so.

Let’s take a deep breath and make space for our differences this week. 

If you’d like some help discerning what matters to you, I highly recommend The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi.

If you’d like some help dealing with people who are different, look back at Psalm 139 and remember: we were created in different ways for different reasons… but we all, all, ALL bear the image of God.

Let’s Stay in Our Lane, and keep being faithful.

Some posts on my site contain affiliate links. When you click on those links to make purchases, I receive compensation at no extra cost to you. I love it when you do that! Thank you for your love and support!

Have you ever had one of those beautifully serendipitous moments, when the very thing you needed was right there, in your pocket? 

Like, it’s so funny you need nail clippers in the middle of this hike! I saw some in the living room and stuck them in my pocket but forgot to put them back in the bathroom – so here they are!

Or, I put an extra hair tie around my wrist this morning and I have no idea why! Yes, girlfriend with your hair blowing in the wind, this thing is all yours! 

I recently had one of those moments, but it took me a while to realize just how big the serendipity of it all really was. 

Back in 2015, we’d been homeschooling for a couple of years and decided to join a Classical Conversations community. I was drawn to the philosophy behind a Classical approach to education, to the focus on memorization that incorporated different types of learning, and to the Christ-cenetered heart of the program. One thing I found especially fascinating was the concept of “training the brain to retain” information – and how starting this at an early age can set a child up for a lifetime of success in learning. 

A huge component (and my favorite part) of our participation in Classical Conversations is the memory work – helping our children memorize a wide variety of facts, passages, and definitions across several disciplines like Math, Latin, English, Science, and History. 

Through songs and chants and practice and hard work, we’re building a strong foundation upon which to hang the pegs of higher education together later on.

So when we came home from the hospital with Blake, and the dust settled, and we began to take inventory of where we were, what we were doing, and what we needed to do, a few things became obvious:

• Blake would need the special attention of an individualized tutor, especially in the early days, to help him overcome his visual field neglect.
• Blake would need special attention to identify appropriate schoolwork that was tailored to his situation as a child recovering from a brain injury. Maybe he’d be able to do 3rd Grade Math again right away… or maybe not. Maybe he’d need extra time to ease back into schoolwork.
• As he struggled with very significant short term memory loss in the early days of his recovery, Blake would need additional help to train his brain to retain information. He would need help to remember. 

I’m sure you’re immediately seeing what it took me weeks – maybe months – to rightly identify. We were bringing Blake home into the perfect situation for him to recover from his brain injury. I was already his personalized tutor. I was already very well acquainted with what he had been capable of before, what we could work towards again. I could take the time to assess Blake’s ability with each lesson, to tailor each lesson to his attention span and memory abilities. 

And four years before this brain injury took place, we’d begun a journey of training Blake’s brain to retain information.

From a severe and significant injury, to him thriving as we jump into a new school year, I marvel at it now, wondering: is part of the reason he’s doing so well the fact that we were training his brain before this ever happened? Was all this brain training part of the reason that when he miraculously woke up from that coma, just a few days into rehab he could remember these extended passages, recite countless facts and count in Spanish?

Now I simply marvel that it took me so long to see it. And I wonder: what else am I missing?

If God says, “You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart,” I think that’s an invitation to take Him at His word. 

I think we can see Him because there are nail clippers in our pocket or there’s a hair tie on our wrists. I also think we can see Him in red lights and flat tires, it usually just takes a little bit more seeking for us to recognize His hand in the circumstances we don’t like. 

This week I saw him in the eyes of a nine-year-old who came out of the hospital eleven months ago asking the same question on repeat every thirty seconds, who’s now memorizing the names and locations of the states and capitols with very little effort. 

One of the most beautiful things about finding God’s fingerprints in the details of your life is that it’ll give you a sense of peace that He knows and He’s there – but also? It’ll make you thirsty to keep right on looking for Him, and you’ll find Him even more.

So let’s seek Him in the small things today, friends. Perhaps it’ll train our brains to remember to look for Him, and find Him, in the big things, too. 

When we all pile up onto a bed at bedtime, I usually feel like I know what to expect as each of my kiddos prays. 

The eldest is deep and thoughtful, remembers people who are hurting and asks God to be with them for months on end, chooses his words carefully, and is slow-paced and heartfelt.

The next is the character foil: usually praying the same series of things word-for-word verbatim, and often at a pace that reminds me of an auctioneer hoping for one more bidder before the gavel.

Number three falls somewhere in between – mostly bringing the same thoughts and requests and concerns to the surface, but always remembering to add, just after her amen, “andpleasewipethecoronavirusoffthefaceoftheearth!”

The youngest tends to pray wide-eyed, sometimes looking around the room, identifying objects and giving thanks for them one by one. “Thank you that we have this bunk bed which is comfortable. Thank you that we have these toys to play with, which are fun. Thank you that we have a clock to tell us the time…”

Lately I’ve been giving more thought to a few of her more surprising prayers.

Two weeks ago, we had to stifle a giggle at this one: “And thank you that I know my days of the week… like October… and December…”

And in an attempt to mimic her siblings’ prayers that the Lord would “wipe the coronavirus off the face of the Earth” she recently began to request that the Lord would “Wipe the face of the Earth.” And now, on repeat she mentions at the end of her soliloquy: “And please wipe the face of the Earth.”

I have to giggle at her childlike innocence. I absolutely love it and don’t want it to change.

And then as everyone gets tucked in and I head down the stairs, I wonder, “Lord, is that perhaps the way you feel when you hear my prayers?”

The girl who gives thanks for knowing the days of the week and then listing months? I think she and I probably have more in common than we realize. 

I remember the mother of two of Jesus’ disciples coming to ask him if her sons could sit at his left and right. He responded, “You don’t know what you are asking.”

And I wonder: Would He say the same to me? Perhaps quite often He would. 

I prayed to stay in South Africa longer, but the Lord led us home. I had 18 months with my Dad before he passed away.

I prayed Blake would be home from the hospital the day after he was admitted. I had no idea the glorious story God would write with those 48 days there.

When I think about childlike faith, I think about the littlest of the four – the one who isn’t afraid to say anything, isn’t afraid to ask for anything. The one who often “knows not what she asks” but in whom I’m so sure the Lord delights. She is His child and He loves her.

What can we learn from all this?

We can pray our hearts out, absolutely, wholeheartedly, with honesty and faith. 

We can also hold on loosely to our requests, praying with our palms up, knowing that perhaps more often than we’d like to admit, we know not what we ask. 

We can try to see ourselves more like that four year old than we want to admit – in comparison to the incredible, endless wisdom of our unending, omnipotent Creator – and let that humble us enough to know: our Father knows best, and we can trust Him.