I have come to the fundamental understanding that I am LAZY! I even googled it! I WikiHow’d the title “How to stop being a slob.” While we all joke about being lazy now and then it goes far beyond that. After much denial I am ashamed to say I struggle with the sin of slothfulness or laziness. We're past procrastination. I dream about accomplishing things that I never start. I miss deadlines. I am often late. I have a problem. Waking up is the beginning of my troubles; I am the type of person that sets the alarm 30 minutes early so I can hit the snooze button a dozen times. And don't even get me started about how much wasted time goes into meandering about the rabbit trails of social media. 

My life is messy. Let me just start today by putting the truth out there. Of course, you wouldn’t know my life is messy just by looking at me. Like all of us, I know how to keep going in hard times and I cope when I need to. I used to guard the truth of my life, and I would continually makeover appearances of my exterior life so people wouldn’t ask questions about my internal struggles.

Today I'm happy to host as a guest blogger Kat Armstrong, author of the recent book No More Holding Back, which I urge urge urge you to order.  

If we could sit down for coffee I'd ask some questions...

Has God placed something in your heart for you to do? It could be correcting sinful behavior in your own life. It could be serving someone else. It could be speaking up in a situation where a voice with biblical principles needs to be heard. Whatever it is involves two aspects of trusting God. You must trust him as you step forward and do your part. And, you must trust him to do his part in the areas over which you have no control. Those two aspects of trusting God are necessary to act on what God has placed in your heart to do. The book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament provides a beautiful illustration of this for us.

I just returned home from the funeral of a friend who passed away within days of going into the hospital for surgery. Although it was a serious surgery, nothing like this was expected. Sadly, this isn’t our only funeral this week. On June 30th a private plane carrying two couples and a family of four crashed, and my husband knew two of the men on it. He attended one couple’s funeral today and will go to that of the family of four on Saturday. 

God be gracious to us and bless us,
And cause His face to shine upon us—Selah.
That Your way may be known on the earth,
Your salvation among all nations. Psalm 67:1-2 (NASB)

Today famine, war, gang violence, sectarianism, and political power wrench people from their homes. They flee to save their lives or to escape imprisonment or abuse. Hoards of people flood across borders and live among those they once feared or even fought. The U.N. Refugee Agency has documented 68.5 million people displaced worldwide.

10 years ago, I wrote this post about lettering names on wooden swords. And 10 years later, that’s on my agenda for today, for a whole new batch of 5th grade boys who weren’t even born yet when I wrote this post!

“Fifty percent of our infertility patients end up getting a divorce,” the nurse explained, when I questioned what I thought was a peculiar portion of the hospital’s legal paperwork. At that moment I was surprised to hear the statistic. But with raised eyebrows and a let’s–just–get–on–with–it mentality, I circled the appropriate decision for which one of us would be given custody of our frozen specimens “should divorce occur” and I went on with my day.

Nondescript. The daughter of no one,

married to a drifter whose family name

was her only defense in a world gone mad.

Weeks disguised themselves as days,

reckoned only by the periodic returns of the

drifter—drenched in stale wine and rage, declaiming

marital rites. With a yank and thrust he dashed her humanity,