Covered

 When I was growing up I remember my mom always loving the spring. The longer the days grew, the more she couldn't wait to plant all the flowers and tend to anything outside. I didn't much share her love for spring. It had to be about 87 before I came alive outdoors. And even at that I didn't have the healthiest hobbies like tending flowers. Mine involved way too much of a decision I would later regret called baby oil aka tanning lotion circa 1992.

But the older I've gotten the more my perspective has shifted. On spring and burning myself to look like a lobster. We came home from spring break a few weeks ago and as we headed up the driveway all I could think about is if my hydrangea bushes planted last year had any buds or signs of life at all on them. I have now become my mother. 

I'm sure you can sense my joy the last three weeks or so as I've walked alongside those bushes some of which are now covered in green and basically marveled at all that they will become over the next few weeks and months. I might have the bloom covered driveway I've always wanted this summer. Just maybe. 

~

This morning Bella came bouncing downstairs all ready for school and the first thing out of her mouth on this Wednesday of Holy Week was, "How do you know for sure if you're name is in the Lambs book of life?" I just looked at her for a moment and kind of prayed real quick for the wisdom to answer her well. 

This is where I need to add that this question did not stem from any stellar parenting done by me. I credit her curiosity to a teacher this year who makes the Bible come ALIVE. Her heart is so tender and she's at an age where she soaks it all in and then some.

I stumbled over my words I'm sure but I did my best to explain to her that we know for sure our name is there when we can go back to the time that we believed in Jesus, repented and asked Him to be the Lord of our lives and to live in us forever. I remember a few years ago when Bella was curious and started asking all of the questions about salvation. And I remember the day vividly when she bounced into our bedroom early (she's always been an early riser) and said "Well, today's the day. I'm ready to be saved today!" She gave her little heart to the Lord right then and there. 

Bellas a kid with a lot of joy most of the time. She feels things deeply and I can tell her emotions are going to be something to work through as she grows. Welcome to the female population Bella :) I want her to remember that when the enemy tries to sneak doubt into her young mind the best thing to combat that with is the truth of God's word and the truth of what He has already done in her life. Truth is more important than anything anyone will ever feel.

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I don't think it was ironic that my bible reading this morning had me in Exodus chapter 12. I was reading about the Israelites instructions for Passover about the time that Bella had came downstairs and announced her question. Verse 13 says, "The blood on the houses where you are staying will be a distinguishing mark for you; when I see the blood I will pass over you. No plague will be among you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt."

The children of Israel were covered by the sacrifice and spoken for by the blood on their doorposts. 

And if you and I have given our lives to Christ we are indeed spoken for and covered for our transgressions still to this day. 

~

I don't know what suits your fancy as far as tangible reminders go, but my prayer for you today is that you too will see all the ways in which you are indeed covered by the blood of the lamb. If your name is not in the book of life then don't wait, let today be the day of salvation! But if it is, then I hope this beautiful spring season and the blooms that are causing so many allergy flare ups and a thin film of green to be everywhere will serve as a reminder to you that you are indeed covered too.

You are covered and cared for by the one who created those flowers and all things spring in the first place. And if he cares enough to clothe them in his splendor, then how much more does He love and care for you too?!

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It's All Going To Be OK

 This morning we pulled out of the driveway only a few minutes late and were doing what I thought was fairly well for the morning. Then, I remembered that shoes are essential and hadn't seen my little one wearing any when she jumped in the van.

"Bella are you wearing shoes?" I asked because we have gotten all the way to school once in recent months with this same thing happening. "No," she responded and I could tell she was a little embarrassed. We all need a lot of grace some days (or every day) so I didn't fuss about it and we went back and got the shoes.

After I dropped her off one of my sweet older ones and I had an unfortunate exchange right before she headed out of the van and off for school. Because I didn't want to hold up the line I drove away sad. That wasn't the note I wanted to leave her on. 

And as I drove away I passed my son, already at school because he leaves super early most days to work out before heading to class. I'm so proud of his independence but I miss him. We're both morning people and him whistling around the house as I drink my coffee has already been replaced by his presence elsewhere.

The morning continued to tumble but for the sake of keeping a few things concealed I found myself in the gym bathroom waving my white flag and asking God for help. I should add that I don't love the gym. But I've heard it's good for my mind and maybe a few other things so I make an effort a few times a week to go. 

And for me and God, it doesn't matter if I'm in the gym bathroom, my blue mini van or sitting here at home- I'm pretty good these days at asking-if not begging-for help. And that's how I found myself walking uphill at an incline of 7 this morning and a speed of 3.4 speaking encouragement back to my soul.

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Earlier this week I listened to Jackie Hill Perry's message from Passion about Hope and man. Did it ever hit home. She spoke about life circumstances and challenges that we face and how we must cling to the Hope of our Savior to make it through. 

I find myself often these days talking to other mom's who are also trying to raise our families well and one common theme is the mental weight of raising teens rather than the physical energy it took to rear younger children.  It's not that it doesn't take physical energy now-it very much does. There's still carpools, laundry and I very much have a sweet second grader who likes to do all of the things. So I better be physically ready too.

But the independence of the teens leads the challenges to be more of a mental weight where they're concerned. It's not that they're bad kids, they're in fact really, really precious and good kids. I couldn't be more proud of them if I tried.

But they drive now and that worries me a little. They have different dynamics in their own life that require prayer and that worries me too. I want them to follow Christ above all else. I want them to be a good friend. They're making choices right and left that will affect their futures and the questions-oh the questions about what is the best choice to make can leave your head spinning. 

Because of the ever increasing pace of life we help them work through one thing and the next day there's something else. Like laundry, it's never ending. I often wonder, did my mom have to think this much?! Did she question herself and wonder about us or did she even know what was going on at the Jackson County High School half the time?! Life was different then but I do know she worried and she also prayed. My mama prayed a lot.

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Yesterday I was leading a bible study at church and there was some ruckus next door. I didn't think much of it and it got loud enough that I leaned over and asked a friend what was going on next door. "Oh that's indoor recess for the preschool," she said. My heart melted. 

I walked out into the hall a little later and there went about twenty little four year olds following their teacher back to class. "Miss Susun!" One of them yelled up to her teacher. "Jackson just skipped line and traded places with Anna Beth. He shouldn't have done that!" 

I stopped dead in my tracks for a minute and it seems a little silly now but it warmed my heart and my eyes filled with tears. 

Oh I sometimes miss the days when I had a little blonde head and a brown one fighting for their spot in line! I miss packing those little Superhero and Barbie lunchboxes although I dreaded it at the time. There is nothing like the innocence of a child. 

~

Here's the thing. I really do enjoy my teenagers and my little eight year old caboose. I enjoy Tim and I'm so thankful for where we're at as a family. But that doesn't diminish the fact that the weight of them getting older and my responsibility to teach and lead them well through really good days and hard days is here and now. And so often I do not know the right thing to say or do and I have to pray and ask God for wisdom that I don't have. That is the thing that I find myself asking for more often than anything else as of late.

I have found that you can love your family so much that it hurts and in the same breath you can also worry about them and then you can pray. You can be so physically exhausted that you set a ten minute timer for a quick nap (not that I've done that every day for the past week) and you can also ask God to give you energy for the next few hours. You can be mentally spent and at the same time ask Him to lead you and hear His voice telling you this is the way, walk in it. 

He is good. He is faithful. He provides.

~

There was one line of Jackies message that I've thought about so much these past few days and it's worth repeating here. She was speaking of her own message and struggles and she said it's all going to be ok. He rose from the grave....it's going to be ok.

And it seems so simple but that's enough to encourage the heck out of me for this season that we're in. Sometimes life seems overwhelming but you know what? It's gonna be ok. It's all going to be OK!

Christianity is set apart from every other world religion because we have a risen Savior who got out of a grave. And that therefore is where we place our hope.

Even when it seems like everything is falling apart, it can't fall beyond what He can redeem. 

So I'm just here to remind you that this week when it seems that you're heavy with the weight of life on your shoulders, remember to look up to the One who lived, died and rose again to give us victory. 

That is where your strength will come from. 

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NYC Elevators and a Faithful God

Sometimes I feel so torn by this digital age that we're living in. I love the convenience, the easy access to everything and the pretty pictures. All of the pretty pictures...timehop can have me in a puddle of tears over how fast my babies have grown and I can catch up on our out of town families beautiful weekend shenanigans all in one sitting. 

While there is something to be said about capturing the good and putting it out there to preserve for our own memories and also for the world to see, I do think it can be a bit misleading at times. There's a fine balance of capturing the good while also remaining authentic.

I desire to do both, but it's hard sometimes.

This past weekend when I took my sweet mama and my girls to NYC and documented my memories, I kind of thought it might be a good time to take the time to go a little deeper than the pictures. I always desire to encourage others that even though those live shots to beautiful melodies might make everything seem beautiful and easy and whimsical and fun-sometimes there's a little more to the story. And it's so worth telling because that's where the good stuff is found.

~

Many, many years ago when I struggled with anxiety at my worst I had this lingering sense of wanting to get out. I would wake up panicking in the night and have to go out on the porch and look up at the stars. I would go into work (night shift at a hospital) and as the walls felt like they were closing in if I could just get a minute of fresh air outside, I could make it through the night. It was a dark season but God was faithful.

I now know that there's actually a lot of science behind what God was teaching me about His creation, what I was feeling and how to cope. It's been a beautiful process as I've grown and hopefully helped others along the way over the years. I'm happy to say that MOST of the time now, I go about my days and do not live in fear or panic. Im pretty intentional about consistently doing the things that keep me close to God and therefore a lot calmer on a daily basis. 

~

So in the middle of a big beautiful bustling city along with 982,837,894,346 (I kid) (sort of) other people....I found myself STUCK in a stinking elevator on Saturday. If you're thinking, "Oh I bet she wanted out" you'd be right.

And I don't like to admit this, but I panicked. There wasn't much I could actually do but I did stand there and cry. My girls were mostly fine, mama was fine, eight other strangers were fine....it was just me. I wanted OUT like nobody's business and as you know stuck in an elevator is kind of confining. Nobody was going anywhere. I do remember at one point reaching into my purse, pulling out a few chewable  supplements which are totally natural but to the strangers in the elevator might have looked like I was popping some sort of CBD. I didn't care. 

Thankfully one sweet man who was also a little unwell over the situation asked me if I wanted to pray. I did and within a minute of praying out loud the powers that be were able to open the door and get us out of there. Imagine that. God is faithful.

~

Now here's where it gets a little tricky because I would love for that to be the end of it. And in a large part, it was. We went on about our day, went to dinner and a show, had a blast an mostly forgot about said incident. 

It wasn't until about 3 am. in that hotel room when everyone else was fast asleep that the enemy came in like a flood and that feeling of needing out settled on me and had me thinking that getting out of that room, out of that hotel and down onto the street for a minute was what I needed to feel relief. It would be funny if it wasn't so true. Sometimes the lies that the enemy tells us when we aren't operating with the mind of Christ just aren't even halfway logical. 

Thankfully though even though it had been many years since I had anything like this happen-it wasn't my first rodeo either. I sent Tim a text in the middle of the night and asked him to pray for me. He immediately answered and told me to go read Psalm 46. I did and it calmed me. Then I read it again. He told me to play Shane and Shanes versions of singing Psalm 46 and 42 until I felt better. He was right. It works every time. HE works. His WORD works. God is faithful.

~

I was recalling some of the less than beautiful details of this incident to a friend yesterday and we were laughing hysterically. The hard parts of life are so much more bearable if you can laugh at yourself....God designed us to be curious, to ask questions, to laugh and enjoy life. He is continually drawing us into relationship with Him and I will proclaim this until the day I go home to heaven....I wouldn't have the blessing of knowing Him like I do without this stinking thorn in the flesh. So therefore it is worth it. Knowing Him is so worth anything it takes to find that when everything falls apart you are really and truly held together only by Him. 

I so hope that when someone sees my life in snippets of squares on Instagram that they see there is a God that holds me together. He holds all of us together and has us carefully tended to in the palm of His hand. We are going to be ok. Life won't always be easy and as a matter of fact some hard days turn into hard seasons which turn into hard years. That's the gospel life. It will ultimately be redeemed in Heaven but we have no guarantee that it won't sometimes be hard here. The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy but Jesus came to give us abundant life (John 10:10). 

The older that I get the more that I'm finding that abundant life is found not in everything always being perfect, but just finding Him in the midst of it. 

~

I share this with the desire that you remember that no ones life is perfect no matter how beautiful or aesthetically pleasing it looks on the Gram. And even if your struggle looks different than mine, don't you dare for a minute let the enemy stop you from living the life that our God intended. It won't always be easy, but it is so worth it to persevere! 

Go and live your life without fear as you trust in Him. Repeat that phrase to yourself and sing the Psalms over yourself as often as needed. God is faithful!

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Growing Pains

Yesterday our little "joyful caboose" as she's affectionally known in our house, got in the car at pickup line with a very pronounced pout. 

She buckled in without saying a word, just a look that said this day was a lot and I need help dealing with it. And then she burst into tears as we drove out of the school parking lot and the floodgates of her little heart burst open.

"I'm so dumb," she wailed. "I'm never going to pass anything!" I let her cry for a few minutes and then she began to tell me about how she had failed an AR test. 

I don't know if you all are familiar with AR but it's basically a group of reading comprehension quizzes given over a quarter. Each student has a goal that they have to meet. Sometimes this can feel like an assignment from the devil. I digress.

Don't get me wrong, I love reading and see the benefit. I love writing too, obviously. 

But in a busy family with older siblings sometimes meeting this little goal at the end of a quarter can seem like the last few miles of a marathon. Not that I've ever ran one or anything. But I imagine that's what it would be like.

So I'm not going to lie....I was disappointed that the test hadn't gone too well myself because she'd spent a lot of time reading those thirteen little chapters. For what seemed like nothing in return. 

I did what I always do and tried to put a rosy spin on it. For some kids that might work, but for Bella it went something like a small train wreck. She wanted those points badly. She had read that book and tried and dang it, she wasn't satisfied!

`

I remembered a time a few months ago when my teen boy was telling me a similar story and I immediately piped in with, "That's ok Tanner!" And then he proceeded to tell me in the same breath that sometimes instead of trying to fix something I needed to just hear him out.

Ouch.

But you know what? He wasn't wrong.

God made all of us different, each with our own quirky little spin on the world. Some of us see the glass half full, some half empty. Some see rainbows and sunshine and some tend to live under an umbrella waiting for the rain. And each personality-no matter how it is bent-is ok. We aren't cookie cutter images of each other. But we're each imperfectly human and all made in God's image. He gave us all different gifts and we're all a work in progress.

`

When we got home yesterday after I let Bella sit on her anger for a minute I tried a different approach. "I know you're so disappointed Bella. I am too." Instead of trying to fix her disappointment, I just acknowledged it. And I also sat with her in that feeling for a little while. I'm not sure how long it took her-I didn't really see it happen at any one moment-but she did shift. Before the night was over she had her joyful little disposition back and what her teacher likes to refer to as a "growth mindset." 

I love that. Lord give me a growth mindset too. Heaven knows I sure need it most days. Don't we all?!

`

To me one of the most beautiful things about motherhood isn't how flawless and perfect that it is most days. If I was ever waiting on that-I'd surely be disappointed most days just like my sweet Bella over her test that had gone wrong. 

Rather though, I just love the fact that we're all putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, trying and sometimes failing. But then getting up the next day and asking God to refine us into more of who He made us to be....that's where the beauty is found. The chiseling away of our rough edges doesn't always feel pleasant. But if we can keep our eyes on the goal ahead, it makes the growing pains a lot more bearable:)

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