love to paint

When I watch Hallmark movies, my husband rolls his eyes. When I read cheesy, cheesy Christian fiction books, he also rolls his eyes. I am not ashamed that I enjoy both. But, I have found that many movies and books follow a formula that always centers around a romance. I think we all love the ideas that love conquers all, that love is greater than everything else, that love heals all wounds, that the love of a significant other is what will complete people's lives and make them happy and enjoy life. I love a good happy ending--where the conflict gets resolved and peace is found. But, I think we have to be wary and not get caught up in these ideas. A few years ago, I read a book called Seduction of the Lesser Gods. It was quite a good book and it has come to my mind many times over the years. Basically, anything that we give more importance to than God becomes an idol. Anything can become an idol--friendship, children, jobs, and even love. There are different kinds of love...

A few months ago, I received the Read And Share Bible for Autumn and I wrote a review of it that I posted it on this blog. I'm not sure exactly what I wrote--but we have loved this Bible Story Book! It is very biblical and has really caused me to think about what the Bible says and what it doesn't. I don't have the DVD version of the Bible, but have been curious about it. So, I was very excited to receive a copy of The Christmas Story storybook from Thomas Nelson. It includes a DVD with a sampling of the stories on the Read and Share DVD Bible. This storybook is a larger sized storybook than the read and share Bible that includes the stories about Zecharias, Elizabeth, and John, as well as the stories about Mary, Joseph, and Jesus' birth. My 6 year old enjoyed the pages at the end which ask you to tell the story with the pictures (which are out of order). The stories on each page tell a story (they don't have to be combined all together and then put in order)...

Letting Go is always hard. Trusting is even harder. They should always go hand in hand, but sometimes they don't. It's easy to turn inward sometimes when we let go of things instead of turning to God and trusting. In our hurts and struggles, we cry out to the Lord, but we can also harden our hearts if we don't choose to trust God. I love Jerry Bridges definition of what that means (in my words) to choose to look to God and glorify Him by trusting His love, His plan, and His goodness instead of giving in to ourselves and our desires to wallow in our struggles and pain. I come back to the verse in Psalms that God laid on my heart when I had miscarried Hannah before Autumn. It was "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." I find great comfort in God's reminder that He will heal my heart in His timing and in His ways.

Maybe I should have just titled it A truth about people pleasers. It's hard being a people pleaser. I am one. It messes with your motivations and why you do things. It also makes you feel horrible when you think someone doesn't like you. I feel like God is really challenging me in this area right now. I feel like I'm being faced with it right and left. I find myself afraid of what people have said and haven't said. I talked to my mom about something that someone said to me last week via email. My mom knows my life and what I have to cope with and my mom (who is a people pleaser and loves people a lot! with such a loving heart) told me to let it go. I can ruminate about things, because I just want to please everyone and I know my mom was wise to say this to me. Yesterday at church, a woman spoke with me about the church nursery at the new church we are attending. Over the past few months, God has been laying it on my heart to submit to authority and love my f...

We have come to the place where we have realized that we really need to decrease the stress at our dinner table. So, we're going to give Sami one serving of everything and then not give her another serving when she's done unless she's eaten her vegetables. We both know that means she will likely not eat them, but we're going to stop fighting her on it. I know little kids tastes change and there are lots of things she does eat. It's just vegetables, mainly, that she won't. So, we're going to save up for a Vita-Mix and add vegetable/fruit smoothies to our diets. I think that will be a good thing =) It will get her the nutrients she needs and make life less stressful for us!

Autumn told me that I needed to turn off the lights so that they wouldn't blow out the birthday candles...Hee Hee =) She's silly!

When I was in college, I chose to take History of the New Testament. It was taught by a liberal Chaplain who was also a professor at the small college I attended. He looked at the New Testament from a purely historical perspective. When we studied the synoptic Gospels (Mathew, Mark, and Luke), we focused on the discrepancies between the Gospels. The differences were called discrepancies . Little rabbit trail... Yesterday on the way to church, my husband cornered me and challenged me to sit through Sunday school. In the process of having and nursing 3 children over the past 5 years, I have gotten out of the habit of being able to focus and sit and listen (without talking) for any period of time. I haven't been able to sit through a church service in a long time without one of my children needing me. And I have seen this in myself, but it took my husband's challenge and encouragement to go and sit through Sunday School. I am so thankful I did! I left that college class u...