“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” – Matthew 1:23 (NLT) Jesus is still with us today in the person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the greatest gift God could give to his children because it is the power of God within us. It is a remarkable promise that God is always with us and we can connect with him anytime and anywhere. But, what happens when you find yourself asking, “What’s the point of God being with me anyway?” It was May of 2016 when I found out that I was expecting my first baby. My husband and I were so excited and began dreaming about our future with our child. As I entered the 2nd trimester of my pregnancy, I started to have some complications that
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I had gone off the grid. I had to. The signs of a crash was coming. First, everything started to slow down, no systems were running at full speed, but I’m not talking about my MacBook . . . I’m talking about me. Life had gotten way too busy. Too many programs were running all at the same time, and I started to feel like the spinning wheel of death that freezes everything on my computer when I try to operate too many things at once. Everything needed to come to a halt. For months I had been nonstop. On a mission, doing good things that the Lord sent me out to do, but I had come back exhausted from my journey. I needed to enter into a season of rest but my mind and emotions did not agree. “There’s too much to do, you can’t stop now,” were the
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Sin. It beckons us back to the place of shame; back to the place of doubt; back to the place of self-destruction. Over and over it calls us by our wrongs and tells us that’s who we are and will always be. Come back. It fools us into thinking we had it all, have it all, in that moment. It clouds our perspective and tells us this is all there is. This is the best that will ever be and it won’t get any better. Come back. It skews our vision of blessings that are right before our eyes. It causes us to think that we need to look for more, that it’s not enough and we need to create the good things in life ourselves. And we go back. We go back to the place of doubting what is good, what is true, what is honest and lovely. We
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Growing up, one of my favorite movies was the 1995 version of the story, “A Little Princess”. I had seen the Shirley Temple version a couple of years before and enjoyed it, but the ’95 adaptation captured my heart. In this story, a young girl named Sara, who was adored by her father, was sent to a boarding school while he went away to war. She was popular and loved and treated like royalty until news arrived that her father was killed in battle. Now an orphan, suddenly Sara’s world changes overnight. She is no longer the star pupil, but forced to work as a servant at the school to help cover the costs that her care incurred.  My favorite thing about this movie is how Sara handles this horrible change in her life. She continues to hold her head high and her spirits higher. She is still loved dearly
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Longing for the NEXT while forfeiting the NOW! There have been many times that I longed for the end of a season.  It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the gift of the season I was in, but when something was unpleasant, I looked ahead to when things would be different.  I had no idea how quickly those moments would pass and a new season would begin.  It never dawned on me that once that season was over, I couldn’t go back to relive it. It takes weeks, months to prepare for Christmas.  But once Christmas is over, winter weather drags on and I am longing for the budding of Spring flowers and warmer temperatures. When pregnant, I counted the days for the baby’s birth.  It came, eventually! Loved those midnight feedings, but looked forward to a little more independence. It came!  Loved having my kids at home but anticipated when
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I was thinking yesterday about being a mom and what I wish I had known earlier in my imperfect stint as a mother of three. The first thing that came to my mind was “the personalities.” Discovering this concept started me on the long journey to self-acceptance and knowing my true identity. I was eventually released from the comparison syndrome, performance trap and the self-worth roller coaster. Whew! Was I ever glad to get off that ride. Not that the enemy doesn’t try to ensnare me again but I’m much wiser to his tricks. You’re probably wondering, “What does that have to do with being a mom?” Well, it takes a lot of energy striving to be something you are not. Striving robs you of energy that could go toward being in the moment with your children, having fun and being creative. Being a perfectionist is time consuming, exhausting and anger producing. That’s time being
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I have a natural tendency towards self preservation. I suppose we all do, it’s an inborn instinct with the design to prevent harm and ensure life. On the surface it doesn’t sound like a bad thing. We make choices, what appear to be wise choices, to keep ourselves safe. We drive carefully, we avoid dark alleys at night, we park in well-lit areas, and hopefully we follow laws meant to protect us. All wise choices, all done to play it safe. But what happens when our playing it safe mentality transfers to our spiritual walk and keeps us from experiencing the miraculous? One my favorite women in the Bible is the woman with the bleeding issue. For twelve years she suffered with prolonged bleeding, and although she spent all her money on physicians, none were able to heal her infirmity. At that time, because she was considered ritually unclean according
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