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Taking the Long Way Home
Three weeks ago our family packed all of our belongings into the largest U-Haul we could rent and said goodbye to the only place we’d ever called home. We are certain God has called us to this new place, but driving away from all you’ve known is still hard. The last little league games, school days, and best friend goodbyes are bittersweet. Excitement mixes with sorrow as we embark on a new journey—a new way home. In the car driving away, minutes turn into hours. You remember all you’re leaving behind in the rearview mirror. You day dream about what lies ahead in a new place. You follow the twists…
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Memorial Day, A Powerful Teaching Moment
Memorial Day is coming! How many homes and Sunday school classes will make the most of this teaching moment? History is full of memorials. This is a cultural teaching moment opportunity to train our children in the importance of remembering. If we don’t intentionally plan to remember, we won’t. If we don’t preserve what we remember, we forget the most important details, the meaning of the event, the lessons learned, the victories won. The Bible is full of memorials. From Jacob to the calling of Moses in Exodus, to set His people free and continuing throughout the Bible, God sets up memorials. In Genesis 31:45 we see Jacob setting up…
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Guided By an Unseen Hand
It was a year to remember—but not for the reasons I hoped. Just two weeks after finding out we were expecting our third child, my husband came home with news we always feared. He’d be moving on from the coaching job where he’d served for thirteen years. Our family would be moving on from the community where we’d raised our children. We walked forward into an unseen, unknown, and unexpected future. Where would our soon-to-be kindergartener go to school? Where would we live? How would we make ends meet? The uncertainty continued for months. My husband jumped on a seemingly endless carousel of job interviews before ending up at a…
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Some Lessons from a Forty-Year-Old Marriage
This spring my husband and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. We are grateful to God for bringing us together and for His grace in our marriage. To celebrate, we wanted to find some trails in Colorado to hike. However, after looking for several weeks, we were unable to find any trails that would work. Unbeknownst to us, God had something else planned. A missionary agency contacted my husband to inform him Albania had requested some medical training in his specialty. The planning trip would need to take place during the time we had set aside to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. We felt God would have us postpone (or…
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Walking in the Wilderness
This post was originally published in 2012. But it fits as much today as it did then. I once had a mentor tell me that the lessons of our lives often go in circles, just like Israel wandered a circular path in the wilderness. The older I grow, the more I see the cycles—the same lessons are learned more deeply as we step into new but different places. If you find yourself walking through a wilderness season, take heart. God is using the deeply worn pathways to teach you and take you somewhere good. Forty years—it sounds like an eternity. I’m sure it felt that way for the Israelites too.…
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Loving and Giving
“For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
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Living in Limbo
Normal. Where has it gone? A few months ago my boys romped on playgrounds daily and bounced into their church classrooms on Sundays. Today we watch church online and debate whether it’s safe to start pre-k this fall. The routine we once enjoyed feels years removed. In its place we navigate endlessly changing regulations, mask mandates, and shifting data. As much as I want to believe this will be over soon, I know the end isn’t quite in site. So I’m learning to live in limbo. It’s a hard lesson, isn’t it? Letting go of the past and embracing the present—however messy and uncertain it feels. Here are a few…
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Better Than Before
The past few week have changed us. No person, community, or country remains untouched. We’ve stayed inside our home day after day. We’ve grieved over loss—personally and corporately. We’ve feared for our livelihood and wondered how long we can make ends meet. Life won’t be the same following COVID-19. But as we slowly emerge from national and international shutdown, I want to leave better than before, lessons learned, life lived differently. Here are a few things I’m trying to take hold of in this season: Life’s fragility. If there’s anything COVID-19 has confronted and disbanded within us, it’s our sense of invincibility. As we stare at daily rising death…
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WAITING WELL
Have you set some New Year Resolutions? How long will you persevere before giving up and returning to the old habits? If you are like me, you have a life time of unfulfilled resolutions and only a few that you actually accomplished. I think often that life is a journey. And when you set out on a journey the one thing that you know for sure is that there will be a period of waiting. There is no, “Beam me up Scotty!” We are all slowly traveling toward our Heavenly destination. And no matter how impatient we are to get there. Even as we progress toward our destination we have…
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GOD’S KINGDOM OBJECT LESSON
God has a kingdom. Jesus came to herald the coming of that kingdom, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns too, for that is what I was sent to do.” Luke 4:43 Net Bible. When Jesus sends out the seventy, He tells them to say, “The kingdom of God has come upon you!” Luke 10:9b Net Bible. Interestingly in that same passage Jesus makes this comment as well, “The one who listens to you listens to me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” Luke 10:16 Net Bible. Do you…
