Status Symbols

Status Symbols

2 Dec By 2 Comments

I have to admit it. I have a lit­tle prob­lem with sta­tus sym­bols. Well, with one in par­tic­u­lar. Okay, I prob­a­bly have more, but today I’m strug­gling with one.

We are in the process of sell­ing our van. I love my van.  It is a beau­ti­ful 15 pas­sen­ger van. Sand Beige, not white, which was a big deal to me when we were on the mar­ket for our van. Run­ning boards, DVD installed for those long trips. Nice. I love it. Did I say that? But let’s face it, it’s a 15 pas­sen­ger van. Not exactly on the hot list of most stolen vehi­cles. Not on any cover of any mag­a­zine because of how sleek it is. It’s a util­ity vehi­cle, minus the “sport.” My dear hus­band, early in our mar­riage, was aghast at the idea of ever dri­ving a minivan. What self-respecting fighter pilot dri­ves one of those? Haha. I laugh now. Let’s just say that per­spec­tives and pri­or­i­ties changed, praise be to God!

My status symbol

My sta­tus symbol

Well, my hus­band recently decided it was time to down­size. Our fam­ily is shrink­ing these days. It’s nor­mally just me and maybe the three youngest tag­ging along. So, we had four of us in a vehi­cle that seats 15. A tad bit of an overkill. He’s right. All of my objec­tions were met with the real­ity that I was grasp­ing at straws.

He bought me a new (to us) Volvo SUV. It has things on it that I didn’t know cars had. It’s a nice ride. It’s fun to drive. AWD for the snow. Perfect.

But today, when I was out, I saw a happy fam­ily dri­ving by in their large 15 pas­sen­ger van. And I felt a pang. “Hey! I used to drive one of those!” My heart ached for all that it rep­re­sented to me: a large, thriv­ing family.

And I real­ized that I liked being rec­og­nized as a mother of many chil­dren. I LIKE that iden­tity. It’s who I am. And I like that sta­tus. Now, that eas­ily iden­ti­fi­able sta­tus sym­bol is gone. And I’m that mom with just a cou­ple of kids. I never real­ized how much I liked being “in the club.” I would never have admit­ted it before. But, it’s slap­ping me in the face, and I can’t ignore it.

The thing is, my iden­tity is in Christ! Not in how many of His chil­dren I get to cart around every­day in my big ol’ van. I’m shocked to learn this about myself. Truly, I am.

And I’m thank­ful to learn it. Or at least to have it right there star­ing at me with those beady eyes. I’m sure deep down I always knew it. So smug. Ugh. Don’t I know that *I* had very lit­tle to do with receiv­ing the gift of my chil­dren? I know I know it. In my head. But my heart wants to pat myself on the back for such a won­der­ful accom­plish­ment: I pushed 6 kids out all on my own. Right. That’s not that great of a feat. I mean, in the moment, it’s a pretty huge deal, but in the big pic­ture, not so much. The big­ger deal is that the Lord hand­crafted each one in His image, and gifted them to our fam­ily for a sea­son. And He made our hearts will­ing and able to do so. So why am I strug­gling now with the whole los­ing my iden­tity thing?

I have heard that peo­ple start going through mid-life crises, want­ing fast lit­tle sports cars, new wardrobes, and all those “young” things. I just want the same old stuff. My chil­dren all home, hop­ing for more to come. But, the real­ity is that they are grow­ing up as I age. It’s what we have worked towards their whole lives. It’s good and right and nor­mal. And a huge bless­ing. And yet, here I sit with my much smaller car wait­ing to drive me places, while I look long­ingly as the maxi-sized vans drive by with all their young chil­dren in tow, remem­ber­ing that com­mon phrase about the days being long and the years fleeting.

Per­haps it will be a reminder to me to embrace the gifts of today, not wish­ing them away in favor of some future dream. I hope so.

The other day, Faith came to me before bed. She asked me if, when she grows up and gets mar­ried,  she could come over every Fri­day and help me clean my house. The vision! How pre­cious. She is already mak­ing plans in her sched­ule to bless me and visit me. “Because you’ll be old then,” she tacked on before she danced out of the room. Um. She could have left that part out. But she’s right. That clock just keeps tick­ing away.

 

Filed Under: VW Front Page
Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

28 Nov By Leave a Comment

I’d like to wish you a very happy Thanks­giv­ing to you and your fam­ily. May your day be filled with joy as you reflect on the abun­dant bless­ings the Lord has given to you and your loved ones.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!  For His mercy endures for­ever. Psalm 136:1

 

Photo credit: Pin­ter­est

 

Filed Under: VW Front Page
{health}

{health}

22 Nov By 11 Comments

I haven’t posted much in my health cat­e­gory. I have to admit I’m a bit  ner­vous about it. Peo­ple come to their con­vic­tions pretty strongly in this area, I have found.

And I don’t want this to be a strong divid­ing line between friends.

Per­son­ally, I see great advan­tage to using a mul­ti­tude of approaches to health. It’s not one size fits all for us.

For our fam­ily, we start by striv­ing to main­tain our health. We eat real food, pre­pared mostly from scratch. I don’t say that to brag or bind any­one to my way of doing things. I just think it tastes bet­ter com­ing from real food rather than a box. And, let’s face it. It’s cheaper when you are cook­ing for many peo­ple to grab your own ingre­di­ents rather than a small amount that might come in an expen­sive pack­age. So, I have learned to cook this way. And, I do think it is health­ier for our bod­ies to elim­i­nate as many chemical-sounding things from our diet. I hon­estly can’t imag­ine doing the box thing any­more. It isn’t appeal­ing, and I don’t think it could pos­si­bly be much faster than cook­ing from scratch once you have the tech­nique down, but I sup­pose it might be. One caveat: two of my chil­dren like boxed Mac & Cheese. I don’t fight it. I used to like it, too.

And, by and large, we don’t drink sodas. We sel­dom have any juice in the house unless we are hav­ing guests, and I remem­ber to buy some. We are water drinkers. Almost exclu­sively, except for the tea and cof­fee, of course.

So, we tend not to get sick very often. We live post-fall, so we do get sick on occa­sion. What I do in those sit­u­a­tions depends on what is going around and what I think we have caught.

I have exper­i­mented with var­i­ous herbal tinc­tures, home­opa­thy, essen­tial oils, and chi­ro­prac­tic care. I have found vary­ing degrees of suc­cess with each of these meth­ods. I have a cou­ple of desk ref­er­ences that I turn to for advice on our med­ical care. I always seek that advice when we are first fac­ing an ill­ness. I love how thor­ough they are. And I seek out peo­ple I know are knowl­edge­able in this area if I am stumped.

Lately, I have been con­cen­trat­ing on learn­ing more about how to use ther­a­peu­tic grade essen­tial oils. What I love about them is that they are made from the plants that God cre­ated. We read ref­er­ences in scrip­ture about their use in bib­li­cal times. They are not chem­i­cally cre­ated. They are not going to come with a long list of adverse reac­tions and com­pli­cated dis­or­ders result­ing from their use like phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Nor do they come with a long list of ingre­di­ents. I like that.

What bugs me about them is how the new age move­ment uses them with­out glo­ri­fy­ing God in the process. That can tend to make them look like they should be off-limits for the Chris­t­ian in some people’s minds. I get that. But, so many other gifts from God have been abused by non-Christians (and Chris­tians alike, sadly). Like food. And sex. And money. And alco­hol. None of those things are con­demned in scrip­ture when used prop­erly, with thank­ful­ness to God, in the con­text of which they are given (ie, sex within the bounds of mar­riage). It’s when we start idol­iz­ing them that we get in trouble.

So, can Chris­tians use essen­tial oils, while glo­ri­fy­ing Him for His beau­ti­ful gift to us in heal­ing? I think so. I am so thank­ful for what I have learned about them, and how my fam­ily has ben­e­fited so much from their use. They have become my pri­mary go-to resource for our health needs. From a cough to vom­it­ing to sleep­less nights, I have found essen­tial oils to be an incred­i­ble aid to our family.

I have also just dipped my toes into the world of Juice Plus+. My mom has begun tak­ing the Fruit, Veg­etable, and Vine­yard blend cap­sules to see if it will help her body dur­ing her fight with can­cer and the chemother­apy that goes with it. My prayer is that she will find great aid on a cel­lu­lar level. I have heard so many amaz­ing tes­ti­monies about how Juice Plus+ has helped peo­ple in their dif­fi­cult can­cer bat­tles. Sto­ries about putting it in the feed­ing tube of a patient who just couldn’t eat any­more.  Another story of a woman with non-Hodgkin Lym­phoma who was told fif­teen years ago that she would have to have chemo for the rest of her life to keep the can­cer at bay, who dur­ing her sec­ond round of chemo started tak­ing Juice Plus+ and has never had to have chemo again.

And not only that, more than 20 Juice Plus+ research stud­ies have been con­ducted in lead­ing hos­pi­tals and uni­ver­si­ties around the world. So, we’re not just talk­ing anec­do­tal sto­ries, which I’m glad about.

I have heard how excel­lent juic­ing is for a body. Get­ting good qual­ity, organic fruit and veg­eta­bles in the quan­tity needed for juic­ing is extremely expen­sive. Juice Plus+ appears to be an alter­na­tive way to get those nutri­ents in our bod­ies with less mess, less expense, but with all the ben­e­fits. So, we will see how it goes. One ben­e­fit is that when I bought the Juice Plus+ cap­sules for my mom, they gave me a free sup­ply for one of my chil­dren. So, I have one of my chil­dren on the Juice Plus+ for free. As long as my mom is on them, my daugh­ter will have them. And, if we decide to put any­one else in our fam­ily on them, we get another sup­ply for a sec­ond child, and so on. Not a bad perk!

I’d love to hear any sto­ries you might have about Juice Plus+. Have you used it before? What are your thoughts? I was telling my hair styl­ist about it, and she said she used to take the Gum­mies they sell. She said they were so good that she would want to eat them like candy. So, that’s good news for the kid­dos. You know how some gummy vit­a­mins aren’t very tasty? Appar­ently that isn’t the case for these!

What are you doing to keep your fam­ily healthy? I am con­stantly desir­ing to learn more, research more, and learn how to bet­ter care for my fam­ily. I will say that most of my chil­dren have never been on antibi­otics. Ever. A cou­ple have, but that was before I knew any­thing about how to keep my fam­ily healthy and using more nat­ural means for fight­ing off dis­ease. I’m not say­ing that we would never use them. They are cer­tainly valu­able in some cases. God has obvi­ously spared us those crit­i­cal health crises that require the aid of the big guns. But, the whole idea of tak­ing them for every snif­fle is beyond me. We don’t use Tylenol, Advil, etc., very often either. Very rarely. They can be toxic for your body. Tylenol can cause issues with your liver. Advil can cause issues with your kid­neys. And more. Google side effects if you haven’t before. I used to think that we could take as much as we want, as often as we want, that it was just free for my body to use as I wanted. Of course, that was MY faulty think­ing. They don’t say that on the bot­tle. They give dosage rec­om­men­da­tions and cau­tions. But, I never much thought about that.

So, I’m learn­ing. Hope­fully, I will con­tinue to learn. My desire is that my chil­dren will know the things I am strug­gling to learn and mem­o­rize as more of a sec­ond nature kind of thing. They already know which essen­tial oils to go to for many things they might encounter: burns, bug bites, stuffy noses, coughs, sore throats. They don’t even have to ask me any­more. They just go to the oils and apply them as needed, or dif­fuse them beside their chairs or beds. I love it. And they are learn­ing how to look things up in the desk ref­er­ence. They come to me for a sec­ond opin­ion, or for coun­sel on how to specif­i­cally use an oil if they haven’ t used it before. We’re learn­ing together, which is pretty neat.

*Note: In our home, we choose to use Young Liv­ing Ther­a­peu­tic Grade Essen­tial Oils because we believe they are the best on the mar­ket. When look­ing for essen­tial oils, be sure to use only ther­a­peu­tic grade, which are safe for inter­nal use. If you would like more infor­ma­tion about Young Liv­ing Essen­tial Oils, please feel free to con­tact me either through a com­ment on this post, or through my con­tact form.  

 

Filed Under: Health, VW Front Page Tagged With: , ,
Amo Amas Amat…

Amo Amas Amat…

21 Nov By 8 Comments

Well, now that we are well into Octo­ber  Novem­ber, how’s your home­school­ing going?

We’ve been plug­ging along. It’s been a great start to our year. The chil­dren are apply­ing them­selves, not drag­ging their feet too much at the thought of work­ing hard.

I’m teach­ing Latin to the girls together. I had taught my older boys Latin. It sort of dwin­dled over the last sev­eral years, but I picked it up again this year for my girls. Obvi­ously, they are on dif­fer­ent lev­els of grasp­ing it at 7, 10, and 13. But, it’s been so fun hear­ing Faith con­ju­gate her verbs. It amazes me how much young minds grasp and remember.

And it’s been won­der­ful watch­ing the older girls coach Faith and drill her on her vocab­u­lary. Lit­tle do they real­ize, but it helps them remem­ber the words at the same time.

We have been learn­ing “O Come All Ye Faith­ful” in Latin. The girls can sing it now with­out the words in front of them. And they can play it on the harp. I love see­ing them inte­grate their harp into their Latin. {I still have to have the words in front of me!}

We’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with a new sys­tem of record keep­ing. It seems to be work­ing. Keeps us all account­able daily for our work. And I mean us, because I have found that if I don’t have a sys­tem in place, that I get all off track and con­fused about who has done their gram­mar that day and who is hid­ing their sci­ence. They can be sneaky like that, you know, if they really apply them­selves to it. I’ve been try­ing for years to find some­thing that works for me, that is a quick and con­cise sys­tem. And I went back to our very early days of school­ing and pulled out that sys­tem again. Hello? I guess I can be slow some­times. It was right in front of me the whole time.

I was look­ing for some snazzy iPhone app or some­thing more mod­ern. Good old note­book with printed pages for check marks for the win!

I think the babies and the tod­dlers over the years really chal­lenged me. I never knew what the next 10 min­utes were going to hold, and it frus­trated me. Now my baby is 7. I have no more excuses. Mamas of lit­tles, hang in there. It is hard going some days. I know. Just get­ting all those bod­ies fed and clothed with brushed teeth and hair is about all we can man­age on some days. Let alone the laun­dry and vac­u­um­ing, dust­ing, mop­ping, shop­ping, school­ing, and PLAY. Yes, the chil­dren ought to see the sun dur­ing the week. It’s so easy to cram every­one into the base­ment for work, totally for­get­ting their frames and their need for nat­ural Vit­a­min D.

I guess I just want to encour­age you today. I want you to know that you won’t always have dirty dia­pers, runny noses, naps, and nurs­ing babies demand­ing your atten­tion. Say­ing good­bye to those days has been hard for me. I hoped for years that the Lord would give us another. But, after a cou­ple of mis­car­riages and the cal­en­dar flip­ping so rapidly, I have come to accept that we most likely won’t be hav­ing any more babies in our home. So, even­tu­ally they come to an end, and you have more time to focus on spelling.

So, we embrace today. We embrace the grow­ing, learn­ing, con­ju­gat­ing Latin verbs that can now pick up again. And embrace it with JOY.

Wher­ever you are in this jour­ney of your life, embrace where the Lord has you today. Today is your gift. We have no promises of tomorrow.

It gets eas­ier, in some sense of the word. The phys­i­cal sense, I sup­pose. And it gets harder, in that the chil­dren start ask­ing really hard ques­tions and push­ing lim­its and bound­aries (other than how far away from Mommy can I walk and still be safe). They start think­ing log­i­cally, they start ques­tion­ing the why of the rules. They start won­der­ing about doc­trine. They have opin­ions (other than the famous two year old “NO!”) and well thought out ideas. They ask ques­tions that we don’t know the answers to.

Pride has to be set aside if we want to face this stage well. Humil­ity is on the menu daily. Cry­ing out to God for a whole new type of strength is our only hope. I go to bed at night some­times won­der­ing how I did. Did I ade­quately address the heart of my daugh­ters who are strug­gling with con­tent­ment? Did I react with frus­tra­tion at the bick­er­ing? Did I show my chil­dren hope in my inter­ac­tions with them, or was I too busy with the sched­ule that I squashed oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth, and instead chose to bark out orders to pick up toys and set the table? It’s a con­stant bat­tle between get­ting things done in time for the next dead­line and truly liv­ing out the day, accept­ing the inter­rup­tions of life as God’s prov­i­den­tial gifts to us.

Being a mother, a truly Godly mother, is so hard. We can’t just live for us. We must live for God. We must draw our strength from Him alone. May the Lord give us wis­dom as we plot out our days and make room for the inter­rup­tions that always come. One day we’ll get back to the task we thought was so impor­tant before life took over. And hon­estly, I miss those sweet baby days, the foun­da­tional days, which make con­ju­gat­ing Latin pos­si­ble in the later days of our children.

Filed Under: Homeschooling, VW Front Page Tagged With: , , ,
Count it all Joy

Count it all Joy

11 Nov By 6 Comments

Mike and I were talk­ing the other night as we drove home from some­where with the kids. We were talk­ing about joy, and how we feel so blessed that we see that joy abound­ing in our home with our chil­dren. We tried to fig­ure out what it is that brings that joy to such a level that we feel it most of the time in our home. It’s not like we have a rule that we have to be joy­ful or any­thing. We just feel it within our­selves, and we see it in our kids.

I mean, we know that Christ is the cen­ter of it all. We know that our joy comes from Him alone. We get that. But, we know other Chris­tians who love the Lord and have a faith­ful walk who seem to strug­gle in this area. We all have strug­gles, to be sure. But the joy seems like it should be cen­tral. We have been saved from death (in the eter­nal sense of the word)! That’s no small thing. How is it that we get bogged down by the insignif­i­cant daily events of life enough for it to steal joy from us? I sup­pose they daily events don’t seem insignif­i­cant at the time. Flood­ing bath­rooms (I should tell you that story some­time…), lay­offs, can­cer, dis­obe­di­ent chil­dren seem pretty insur­mount­able when you’re liv­ing in that moment. But, when we look at the big pic­ture, per­haps we can step back and look at Christ, at His amaz­ing gift to us in His per­fect sac­ri­fice on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins…then just maybe we can look past our fears and pains and headaches and see joy.

One of the things that came out in our con­ver­sa­tion is the con­cept of con­tent­ment. I sug­gested that maybe peo­ple are not con­tent with their lot in life. Moth­ers who stay home with their chil­dren to school them have signed up for a very dif­fi­cult and often thank­less task. We joke that I don’t get “employee of the month” or a spe­cial park­ing spot. I don’t get raises or bonuses or any other acco­lades to put on my resume. I get dirty dishes, piles of laun­dry, squab­bling sib­lings, and no-notice din­ner guests.

But I LOVE what I do. The Lord has been mer­ci­ful to open my eyes to the bless­ing that it is to be able to do what I do. I don’t always do it well. I have days that are real chal­lenges to me. I’ve sure you’ve heard the adage that the dirty dishes mean that you’ve had food to eat, the piles of laun­dry mean you have ample cloth­ing to wear, the squab­bling sib­lings mean that the Lord has seen fit to give you blessed chil­dren, and din­ner guests mean that you get to show the love of Christ to a stranger (and that you have a home to wel­come them into). So, what do we do with that understanding?

I remem­ber years ago when we had babies, I used to men­tally keep score over who changed more dia­pers than the other. I actu­ally said things like, “I changed 5 dia­pers in a row. It is *your* turn.” Or, when my hus­band came home from his very demand­ing job, I would hand him the baby and say that I was tired and tag, you’re it! I shud­der at that today! What was I think­ing? Who would want to come home to that? {He still came home faith­fully every­day and jumped right in to relieve me, in spite of my thank­less atti­tude.} I was not con­tent in my role as wife and mother. Don’t get me wrong. I loved being a wife and mother. But, I wanted the sto­ry­book edi­tion, not the real life, get your hands dirty edi­tion. When Emma was a baby, I decided that I was going to be the dia­per changer. Small thing, really, but to me at the time, it was pretty huge. From then on, I just took her and changed her. You know what? I ended up lov­ing that time with her. It became a very spe­cial time of bond­ing with her. I had joy in that task which I had kept score on  for 4 babies prior to her. I wish I had known this before I had my first child. I was miss­ing the gift! And the joy. I’m so thank­ful that the Lord opened my eyes.

Thank­ful­ness leads to con­tent­ment, which I believe leads to joy. When we strug­gle in this area, we ought to look around and remem­ber that God doesn’t have to give us any­thing. Christ Him­self most likely had way less mate­ri­ally when He walked the earth than most of us have. Yet, we think we need more: More time, more chil­dren, more help around the house, more clothes, more some­thing. We need to look around us at what God has given to us and count our bless­ings. Have you noticed how many stor­age units are out there? Peo­ple have so much junk that they have to pay a monthly fee to house it all some­where other than their house. The junk doesn’t bring con­tent­ment. It doesn’t feed the joy. It feeds more cov­et­ing and greed. It’s bondage.

I had the blessed priv­i­lege to chat with a friend today. We were dis­cussing the feel­ing of los­ing our joy. She is going through some pretty hard things, and she needed a friend to talk and pray with her. I gen­tly reminded her that God is not unaware of her heart’s desire for her future, her strug­gles of today, and her heartaches. God is sov­er­eign over her today and over her tomor­row. He is uniquely prepar­ing her for her future. The things she is bat­tling today are for her sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, to make her ready for what lies ahead. To teach con­tent­ment, to help her remem­ber that joy is from God alone. It’s one aspect of the fruit of the Spirit. And I reminded her that she is loved. Not only by me, her fam­ily, and her church, but mostly by God. And so it is with all of us. We will be sifted, put through the Refiner’s fire, and sanc­ti­fied. Those are not easy processes. They hurt. They bring heartache for a time. But they pro­duce beauty. The dross is skimmed out. We are left more puri­fied, able to love more, serve more, radi­ate joy more.

We ought not be afraid of the tri­als that come to us. We need to walk in faith, not by sight. We can embrace what God has for us because He is per­fect, lov­ing, and all wise. He holds us in His gen­tle hand, those who call upon His name for sal­va­tion. Run to Him. Hold onto Him. He doesn’t judge you based on what you can do for Him. It isn’t about that. He judges us based on what His Son already did. We *do*because we love, not because we want to be loved. There is a huge dif­fer­ence in that. We can’t earn that love.

If you are read­ing this, and you have lost your joy, turn to Christ. I want to encour­age you to count your bless­ings, name them one by one, thank God for them (sounds oddly familiar…are you hum­ming along?). Be con­tent in what­ever state you are in. Pray that the Lord will restore your joy. Are you bur­dened by the very demand­ing job of rais­ing chil­dren? Tackle today. Don’t con­cern your­self with tomor­row or next week. Just do today the best you can. Light some sweet smelling can­dles, play some beau­ti­ful or fun music, smile at your chil­dren. And do today. Kiss your hus­band good­bye if he leaves for work, and greet him with another when he returns. Be thank­ful for this man you have covenanted with, even though he most likely isn’t per­fect. And mostly, pray that the Lord will get you through today with joy.

If you are read­ing this and you don’t know Christ, but are look­ing for joy and con­tent­ment and peace. I’d like to intro­duce you to the One who cre­ated all things, includ­ing you. He is the only place you will find peace, joy, con­tent­ment. For eternity.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6

Feel free to email me or even leave a com­ment if you are strug­gling with any of this. I don’t believe any­one can force Chris­tian­ity on any­one. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit. But, I am happy to dis­cuss it with you, to show you where to find hope. As they say, “I’m a beg­gar show­ing another beg­gar where to find bread.”

I have a friend who is fight­ing a hor­ri­ble can­cer. The prog­no­sis doesn’t look good. It grieves me so incred­i­bly to watch her, mostly via Face­book, going through her bat­tle. But the thing that is so over­whelm­ing to me is see­ing how her faith has grown to such an incred­i­ble level. Her trust, her faith, her love for the Lord over­flows in her words. We are pray­ing for heal­ing, daily, not know­ing what the Lord is going to do with her life. But, we have com­plete con­fi­dence that her life is in His ever capa­ble hands. He is walk­ing with her in her val­ley. He is bol­ster­ing her faith. She is teach­ing so many impor­tant lessons to her chil­dren about faith and hope and trust. Mostly she’s teach­ing them about the faith­ful­ness of Jesus.

Let us there­fore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16

He is giv­ing her mercy and grace in her time of need. I love this verse. We often won­der how we could go through a trial that some­one else is going through so well. “I could never go through that! She is such a great exam­ple! She has such strength!” Yes. Per­haps. But, we don’t need that strength and that par­tic­u­lar faith today to go through her trial. We receive that mercy in our time of need. But, we get our faith bol­stered by watch­ing the Lord work in the lives of those who are hav­ing grace rained down on them. He is real, liv­ing, com­pas­sion­ate, lov­ing. And He is personal.

May your day be filled with joy today. May you be con­tent wher­ever it is that God has you in this sea­son of your life. Let’s all learn to take the gift of today and be thank­ful. We have no promises of tomorrow.

Bless­ings to you!

 

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