Celebrating Life As It Has Been Given To You

Accepting the limitations of life in general, was an essential step for my learning to make peace with life as it is, as it comes to me every day.

Allowing God to unfold my fingers one at a time from my tightly held expectations for order and fulfillment led to an ability to celebrate each day for whatever it brought.

It gave me an understanding that the divine love of God filled each moment, His companionship attended to me through each trial, and His care would cover every concern.

Read more about this in Different.

Tending To Your Soul With Fun

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Wonderful friends, wish you could be here with me on my three weeks of adventure. The highlight of my trip has been getting to cultivate new friends, listen to their hearts and their needs, and dreams, and enjoying a community , and having them listen to my heart as well. I realized in the midst of our week that I need more downtime with friends. It is a sort of healing to our hearts to be listened to and understood.

One of the most fun times I had was taking a French cooking class and creating the delicacies with my friends. Here I am taking my turn at whipping egg whites until they were so hard they stood up at attention.

Creating new recipes like this and asparagus risotto gave each of us a new scope for how the pros do it. I would love to know what some of your best recipes are as I need a little bit of creativity added to my cooking these days.

I will be gone for one more week, but I will keep trying to make at least short podcast to tell you where I’ve been. Have a great week! And be sure to make something new and creative to delight yourself and your family.

The Fruit Of Years Is Always Rich

Learn to be the conductor of your table. Set the rhythm and the rules of your conversation. Make sure the quiet are heard, make sure the talkative are loved. Through your example, teach your children to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry” (James 1:19). Let your table be the training grounds for graciousness and consideration.

When I look at the adults my children have become, I do not regret a single ounce of the effort I put into shaping our family dynamics.

Our dinner table became what I had dreamed it would be—a place of sharing and of growing. As I look back, I know that this has been one of the most formative parts of my parenting and discipling and my life in general—watching Jesus, the Word made flesh, bring life to all of us through the gift of words.

Read more about this in The Lifegiving Table.

The Road To Godliness Is A Long One

Learning to wait is a large part of holiness, or creativity, or success of any kind. Teaching your child how to endure and how to wait with grace could change the whole story of their lives. This is a fallen world, and your children are guaranteed to meet pain, loneliness, and discouragement as they make their way within it, doubly so if they are pursuing holiness.

Every great athlete endures hours of hard work and discipline of the spirit to win the prize, to receive the crown. In the same way, you can train the hearts and spirits of your children to endure in the face of hardship so they can be like Paul, who “finished the course” to receive “the crown of righteousness” from “the Lord, the righteous Judge” (2 Timothy 4:7-8). You can teach them to run their race in faith, to fight their battles well, and to become heroes in the story of God.

Read more about this in 10 Gifts Of Heart.

Tea Time Tuesday: The Joy Of Lasting Friendships

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Hi, my wonderful friends. Today I am writing a note and recording my podcast in Cornwall, France. I have gathered here with my dear friend Ainsley Arment, who invited me to spend this reflective and special time in Scotland. I invited several dear friends I have known for many years. We built a ministry together and they supported me through conferences and brick, launches and developing small groups and always being there for me when I needed someone to help and encourage. We have had such heart deepening and soul, filling chats and or moments of friendship together the past few days. 

These women are bold, faithful, encouraging, and willing to take a risk to reach the world. Today was a really fun podcast and recording with Ainsley and my dear friends who have been a part of God‘s movement through our lives into this world. May he bless you with strength and integrity to reach out to others for a friendship and support and to walk with one another in building a movement that changes the world. You caught us giggling in the middle of our podcast. I hope our joy together encourages you just a bit. God bless you with friends and support that you need to live your story well.

God’s Grace And Beauty Are Eternal

The details and worries of my life seem to loom so large in my days, casting their shadows over my thoughts and my feelings about life. My perspective is so limited and finite, yet it can control me.

The troubles and petty things will eventually pass away by His grace and help. But God and His beauty are eternal. His desire is that I should walk through life with my eyes set on His goodness and my heart set on His beauty.

Read more about this in Your Mom Walk With God.

The Gift Of Hope

My hope is what carried me through health issues, struggles in my family, going five years without a salary, and so much more. Hope is the physician of each misery, and God has given us this gift to heal us from our pasts so we may have a future that is full of joy and light.

Yet, we are babies moving from immaturity toward maturity. Learning the grace of walking in the Spirit, as mere toddlers learning slowly, allowing God to hold us through the storms, is a process of growth. Even as my children had to learn to trust me, to obey my requests, to trust my wisdom, so our walk toward maturity in Christ is a process.

Read more about this in Help, I’m Drowning.

Tea Time Tuesday: Pathway Of Love

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“The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines ever brighter until the full day.” Pr. 4:18

So is the path of love, It took me a lifetime of making choices to love, step by step, to become mature in living it out in my life—a process.

Letters from many say "Anger, passivity, sharp words, or criticism shaped my life growing up. Now, I do the same. I fear I’m ruining my children but I feel hopeless, exhausted. “

Without love, we become noisy gongs, clanging symbols, and fail to reach hearts of our people with messages of truth. Love is the most profound reflection of Christ in a fallen world.

I’ve never been loved too much. Have you?

We long for companionship, friendship, understanding, one to attend to our feelings, dreams. needs. So do our children. We invest in love by:

Asking someone to meet for coffee.

Staying up late with a teen who is anxious about life, and wonders if she is acceptable to her peers.

Holding a baby, rocking him until he falls securely asleep in protective arms.

Taking time for a cool drink, snacks with your husband so he can unload the stress he feels in life.

Making love a priority means giving up yourself, again and again. It’s the foundation of passing on faith.

As I read verses to my kids, I learned what God’s love was like. I slowly became a living picture of his love as I practiced one step at a time to behave in a way that helped them believe these truths.

Verses like:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself." Luke 10: 27

"Love is patient, love is kind. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in sin, but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres. Love never fails." I Corinthians 13: 4-8

"Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friend." John 15: 13

"Keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers a multitude of sin." I Peter 4:8

“Put on love, for love is a perfect bond of unity." Colossians 3:4

More on today’s new podcast.

Reminding Our Children Of Their Eternal Significance

As mothers, we have the hearts and the trust of our children from the earliest moments of their lives, and they need us for so many reasons. They naturally look to us for physical sustenance, protection, affection. Deep in their hearts, however, they also long for a special place to belong, a place to feel their worth, and they need us to help them find it.

These precious children were designed to fulfill a purpose for God by bringing his glory to bear through their lives. They were designed to be his hands, his voice, his heart and mind through the various kinds of work they undertake in his world.

Read more about this in The Ministry of Motherhood.

Finding Joy In Your Unique Puzzle

The circumstances you’ve been given are your unique puzzle. You must find a way to put the pieces together and bring cohesiveness to it.

What if your husband is never perfect and your children disappoint and you fail, and you continue to have a lot of issues to deal with that are hard? What if these things never change? How will you live? Will you be a victim to your uncontrollable circumstances, or can you pursue a path of growing acceptance with grace, happiness that is beyond your circumstances? Can you arm yourself ahead of time with attitudes, rhythms of life that bring grace, a determination to create beauty amidst it all, even if nothing changes?

If so, you will construct a place of goodness, redemption, and life with the pieces you are holding in your own hands.