Notes to Self...and whoever's listening

As a child, I loved reading.  Little House on the Prairie and the Love Comes Softly series by Janette Oke were my favorites.  I also loved Beverly Cleary books as a younger girl and the Sweet Valley High books in middle school. In high school, I didn't find a lot of time to read and didn't pick up many book recreationally until my twenties.  I would always look for Christian fiction, but quickly grew tired of the same old story.  Woman had a job, but is unfulfilled.  She meets a man, often one that is not interested in her or that she doesn't like.  Fast-forward after several chance encounters and several missteps and VOILA!, they fall in love.  Bleck.  That works for a Hallmark movie for me that I'm only required to invest less than 2 hours in.  But not for a book. Hours of time go into reading a book.  Sometimes just finding a book that looks interesting takes a lot of time.  That is, until I found the author Karen Kingsbury....

Lucas and I enjoyed seeing the leaves fluttering down from the trees this morning as I took him to school.  We at first wondered why they were all falling since the wind wasn’t blowing. We had a hard frost last night, though, and today it seems the leaves realized it was their time. The thing with leaves is they have been preparing for this.  They’ve known their host, the tree, was just a temporary one.  They’ve known they would only last a short time, months to be exact.  They’ve grown from tiny shoots, clung to its host during tornado season and scorching weather. But, they also knew they’d get one last moment to shine before they fell and they have been regaling us with their beautiful colors the past few weeks.  They’ve known their end was near and many began their quiet decent from their host today, joining their friends on the earth below.  Their usefulness and beauty have ended, but their lesson lives on. Change is inevitable.  Ecclesiastes ...

Yesterday I was brought to tears by a simple Facebook Messenger exchange which actually started out as ME sending something funny to a friend to cheer HER up!  The conversation moved past the funniness and she was asking me about my plans for when my boss retires. I've played that over and over in my head and still don't have a definite answer for that.  I do know God knows my needs and when they'll be needed so I'm not very worried about it right now.  But, I told her that I do know that I never set out for my job as an assistant to be permanent.  It was a temporary job that just ended up heading into 12+ years!  I also told her I don't think I ever became what I thought I'd grow up to be! She asked does anyone really? I know how I got to this job is NOT what I expected for myself.  Let's see...As a younger girl, I would often say I would be a teacher when I grew up.  At some point, that changed and up until I was somewhere in Junior High, I was...

In deciding where to start reading for my time in the Bible this week, I finally settled on starting to read through the gospels again.  It never gets old and there is always something that stands out to me in new or different ways.  So I opened to Matthew 1. In the Bible Study I've been leading, we're studying Ruth and last week we read a portion of the genealogy of Christ to decipher where she played a part in Jesus's family.  So instead of skipping over it like I have done in the past, I decided to carefully read each name.  And I'm so glad I did. Four women made the list with side notes explaining their presence.  Of course, genealogy lists only usually listed the men of the family.  Each family is listed by the Patriarch.  BUT, these four women: Rahab, Ruth, Uriah's wife (Bathsheba) and Mary, were added as side notes. I'm guessing it was to show God's grace and how he used these women in history and in their families.  But look clo...

I've had a note on my desk all week that simply said "violence" on it.  And all week it stared back at me with few words that I could find to speak.   Condolences have been shared, horror expressed, anger flowed, sorrow deeply felt...nothing can adequately sum up the tragedy that has taken place in Las Vegas or any other tragedy that has taken place over the last number of years.  Whether by guns or bombings, this nation and others have experienced great loss at the hands of evil.  We can cite Bible verse after Bible verse, we can call for gun control and mental health screening, we can close borders, we can open borders, we can cite radical extremism or racism.  There is a lot of blame to spread around. But, after processing all I've seen this week, I come back to one brief story I read. A gentleman was staying in the Mandalay Bay Resort on the 30th floor, I believe, just two floors below where the shooter would eventually carry out the evil in his h...

A year ago when dropping off my youngest nephew at school, I noticed a little boy clinging to his father and near tears.  My heart ached for the terror in the little boy's eyes and I said a prayer for him in that moment.  There was also a little girl hidden behind the leg of the father on the other side.  As the school year went, I continued to pray for this family.  I didn't know them,  I didn't know their story, but I sensed the sadness in this little one.  The father is a big, burly guy with a long goatee and lots of tattoos, but comes across like a giant teddy bear, fiercely shielding his cubs.  As I prayed for this family each day as I saw them in the drop off line, it was often for a good day for the kids and for the little boy especially to find a friend, anyone that could help him pull out of his shyness and sadness. Fast forward to today when I got to meet the teddy bear and his cubs officially. My nephew needed me to get out and help him ...

Attending Logan's flag football games on Saturday was a test of strength.  By the time the second game came along, my entire family choose to sit in the end zone rather than with the rest of the families to avoid the parent chatter.  If it wasn't Willie's mom screaming at the top of lungs that "YOU CAN DO IT, WILLIE!  NEVER STOP!  NEVER NEVER STOP!" or the mom yelling angrily that they could play better than they were or even if weren't for the man that kept telling the kids that they were playing like girls...maybe we would have gone and sat with the rest of the families. Unbelievable behavior by a bunch of people who supposedly have their child's best interests at heart.  I'm for tough love, but ridicule?  Berating?  Name calling?  THAT is not parenting. But back to what the one dad said.  "You're playing like girls" and "You just gotten taken down by a girl!" were his favorite phrases.  One issue with those phrases is ...