Our Ordinary Life

This will be a challenge!!  This feels a little daunting.  I know that I already post a lot of my life on Instagram but I have never posted every day!  A couple of my acquaintances or people that I follow have tried to do this, and I have always been intrigued to do it, but out of fear that I wouldn't be able to follow thru with it, I would get intimidated and decide not to do it.  Not this year of 2018.  Why not this year?  I don't REALLY know other than a few things that seem to be standing out to me.  A big one is that I'm really getting into my camera!!  I want to use it every day.  I want to learn how to capture the little every day stuff in my life and the big moments, things with my kids and our ministry.  I'm as beginner with my camera as they get!  So often i'm unhappy with how a picture turns out or the lighting wasn't quite right or Adelyn didn't stay posed the way I wanted her to (hahahaha), so to all you camera profe...

Enough.  "I am not enough!"  I am not enough is a lie that runs rampant through our churches, our schools, our relationships, our work, our home life, our marriages, our parenting, and it is one that I struggle to fight every day.  Why?  Why is this lie so hard and one we so readily believe?  Because we want to feel more valuable?  We have a desire to be in control?  We want to measure up to someone else or someone else's standard?  We feel pressure to fit in?  I'm going to open myself up and let you into a day that this lie is the hardest to fight.  Oh Sunday!  This is a day where most people have off work (not everyone, I understand) and most people enjoy the day with their family.  It is a day where in my circle, people go to church to worship with the body.  Most people come away fed and encouraged, whether they served or consumed, they feel good about themselves.  But Sunday, for me, is a very different story ...

Can we just talk about how fast this year went for a little bit?  I am still shocked that it has already been a year.  It flew!  I'm having a hard time believing it has truly been a year ago that she entered our life.  We celebrated Adelyn's birthday with a small party on the 29th of July, several days after her actual birthday.  Leading up to her birthday, I was caught by surprise on several occasions about how quickly this year passed.  Faster than other years, I think.  That seems to be happening more and more the older I get. During this past year of her life, I have been humbled, on multiple different occasions, by the sovereignty of God.  Giving us the gift of Adelyn's life was something we didn't know we needed, but God knew.  Just about every day of her life something new amazed me about who she is, what she brings to our life, and I get excited about the future.  There are so many things that we love about her.  In the fi...

The other day the kids and I were driving to the church building to pick up Daddy from his office, and they started bickering like they always seem to be doing these days.  The one called my name, "Mommy, he just called me...."  The voice trailed off and I quickly heard the other coming back for a defense.  I snapped.  This was not the first time this had happened today and I was struggling thinking through how to guide them biblically.  So I came back with, "No more talking... I don't want another word coming out of your mouth..."  And as I said that statement a thought came into my head.  I finished with, "... unless it is something kind or good about your brother!  What is something you love about your brother?"  Silence.  That almost made me more mad.  But as I thought about the mental battle they were having (to come up with something they loved or even liked about each other when all they are focused on is what they don't l...

My Body Tells My Story  and it is only my story to tell. Life has not always been kind to me and I have not always been kind to my body.  Every stretch mark talks of what my body went through to carry and birth 3 children and the one I wasn't able to meet.  Every scar speaks to the surgeries, falls, chicken pox scabs, and burns.  My hunch back tells you how I have a slight curve in my back and the hours, years of hunching over my children and the many cuddles that produced bad posture.  The bunion tells you how much I love heels and how that got worse when I started running.  Lastly, the one I struggle to accept the most, the one that seems to cause my heart to sin, and the one I'm writing about today is my weight. This is what I know (head knowledge) to be true:  That true beauty doesn't come from the outside, it's the inside that counts.  God cares more about who you are than what you look like.  That my size doesn't make me who I am. ...

If you know me at all, you know that I hate doing the dishes. If you come to my house at any given time, there is always a pile of dishes. I think one of the reasons I don't like doing the dishes is because it makes me have to slow down, its a tedious task. When I do them, I begin to think of all the other things that need to be getting done, and so I find reasons not to do them and then they pile up, so you can see what happens. My mother hates that I do this (so she helps me out when she comes into town), but says "Why don't you just do them right away and get it over with?" I don't know, its one of those weird cycles, because I know my life would be much easier if I would just do them. So my husband speaks my love language when he does them. But over the last few weeks I have discovered a positive aspect for me when I do them. They have to get done, right, so at some point in my day or in my tomorrow they get done. Now I don't know what it is about runnin...

January We brought in 2016 in a special way because we spent Christmas and New Years in Ecuador S.A.!!  It had been 7 years since we were last there.  Daniel was only 10 months old then and I was pregnant with Aaron (How interesting that this trip I was pregnant again!!).  So this was a blast as the boys were old enough to remember the trip and they still talk about it to this day!  We all got some awful bug right in the middle of the trip but that only sidelined us for a few days.  My twin and her family was there as well, so the celebration was even sweeter.  I love it when the cousins can spend time together!! Then we came back home to the US and Bryan and I celebrated 9 years of marriage!  We are standing on the Equator, between North and South February   This was an interesting month as we announced that we had new life and were going to be expanding our family unexpectedly, then to find out later that day that my Grampie, at 92 ...