In Hope of a New Day: Chapter Three.

"Wise Council"



As we started to talk about and process a potential move back to Reno, there were a lot of mixed emotions floating around. One day I would feel completely excited about it... the mountains, the old friends, the family, the less intense weather... and the very next day I would feel nothing but fear and uncertainty. I mean, how exactly does one go back, you know? Back to a place that knew you ten years ago, and has its own view of who you are, when you are no longer that same person? It felt a little bit like a butterfly trying to wedge its way back into its old cocoon. The thought of it felt a little confining.

Through all of these emotions and doubts, though, I kept telling God that I would go WHEREVER He wanted to send me. Even if going back home would be uncomfortable in some ways, I would go without hesitation if I felt Him leading us there. It became my daily mantra: "I will go wherever You want us to go, Lord. Reno or Alaska or the Czech Republic or Timbuktu!! You lead, I follow." It was a really tense time, because there were a bajillion unknowns coupled with a complete willingness, and only a crumb or two of clarity. That combination made for some frazzled emotions, let me tell you. Most days I felt like my head and my heart were just a loud mass of noise, and I couldn't find the mute button. I couldn't turn off the questions that were swirling around in my brain all day long.

Chris was still dreaming like crazy during all of this. He had some dreams about Lake Tahoe (which is just outside of Reno) and his old high school, but none of them brought any clarity, just more and more questions. We met with our friends Brad & Bethany to process and pray through all of this stirring we were feeling, and they encouraged us to run to God with our desires and longings, and to start pushing on doors like kids who were exploring a big old house for the first time. This advice helped us tremendously throughout this entire season. God can handle our asking and knocking and exploring!! He is faithful to lead us in the direction He has mapped out for us if we will just keep listening for His voice. He will not let our feet slip or stray to the right or the left if we are truly seeking after His heart. He is a good shepherd who gently guides His flock.



We really wanted to explore all the things that we felt God might be speaking, so Chris started touching base with paint companies and churches in the Reno area that we knew of or had contact with a decade before. This was one way of "pushing on doors" out there to see if anything would open to us. We continued to meet with friends and people in our community that we trust in order to pray & truthfully process what we were feeling.

We cast some hooks out into the water, and then we waited.

One Sunday at church, Chris ended up talking with a couple (our friend Cordell's parents) who had just moved to Oklahoma City after a similar whirlwind experience of feeling like God was calling them somewhere new. They had some really great advice and words of wisdom for us that had helped them take the leap of faith and follow God's leading even though it felt scary and uncertain. They said that throughout the whole process, it was like they would take a tiny step towards something in faith, and God would meet them there with confirmation. Then they would feel led to take another little scary step out of their comfort zone, and God would meet them there with blessing and confirmation again. Again and again and again, baby step after baby step, God led them all the way to Oklahoma City. We started to pray that God would do the same thing for us.

Late in September of last year, Chris woke up super early one morning and couldn't go back to sleep. He stumbled out to the kitchen table to pray and read his Bible while the house was still quiet. As He was praying, He started to feel like we were supposed to put the house on the market, as a first step of faith.

When I woke up later that morning, Chris told me what he had felt like God was asking him, and I completely agreed. I had been feeling the exact same thing for a couple of days prior.



So. It was time to sell our precious little house, where all three of our children had grown from babies into boys. The only house that any of them had ever known... the house where we had become a family. The thought of it was completely frightening, but underneath the fear and the questions there was a solid sense of peace. I knew that God was asking us to take this step of faith, and I also knew that He would be faithful to protect us in it. I tried not to cling to the "who what when where whys?" and instead I tried to cling to God in trust. It was hard.

I mean... where would we live if the house sold right away? How would we show this tiny house to potential buyers with three boys who were like tiny tornadoes of destruction and still needed to nap throughout the day? Would we have to move into an apartment nearby so Ezra could finish out the school year? What if we still had no idea where we were supposed to move when the house sold? WOULD the house sell? Would we be able to buy another house somewhere else- in a different state- where the cost of housing is so much more? Would we rent? Was Chris supposed to switch vocations in the midst of all of this? Should he start applying for random jobs in Reno or here in Oklahoma or elsewhere, or should he continue painting? Would he be able to transfer his painting business to a different state, a different economy? Was he even supposed to?

HOW THE HECK was all of this going to work out?!? I could see NO possible way. I felt completely helpless to figure it all out.



We agreed that morning to take the leap of faith, despite the screaming questions. We started getting the house ready to sell. And what happened next was more perfect than anything we could have ever "schemed up" or "mapped out" on our own. The God of the Impossible came through and made a perfect way.

In Hope of a New Day: Chapter Two.

"The Land of our Fathers"



A few days before Chris and I talked about moving, we had taken a trip up to Kansas City to meet up with my friend Harmony and her sweet little family. Harmony gave me a book for my birthday called '1000 Gifts' by Ann Voskamp. I didn't know it at the time, but this book would be like a lifeboat in the crazy storm that was ahead. It helped me anchor my longings to God, and it kept me focused on being thankful and grateful for every single moment, even when I didn't know what the "plan" was going to be. I started to count & document the things that I was thankful for throughout my days. It was (and continues to be) a completely life changing exercise. It helped me to stop grumbling and be able to ask for new things without despising the old things, if that makes any sense.

I read that book THREE TIMES in five months... it was that good. ha!

As my eyes started to open to the God who is everywhere and all around me at every moment of every day, I started to trust Him more. And as I was able to start trusting Him more, things started getting really exciting. We started to hear God speaking to us in ways we never imagined He would. Chris started having really significant dreams almost every night. Lots of the dreams were about his work truck... selling it, trading it in, walking away from it and knowing he couldn't go back to it, watching it get swept up and washed away in a raging river...

The thing you need to know about my husband is that he is a passionate and talented musician, who, for the last 10 years, has been "Clark Kent-ing" as a Painting Contractor. He labors faithfully with his hands and he never grumbles and all the while, there is this gift inside of him that has purpose and destiny written all over it. For 10 years, I have been praying that God would swoop him up and make all of his wildest dreams come true.

On the morning of September 20th, I was driving around in my car after I had dropped Myer off at school. I was listening to a song by The Robbie Seay Band called "New Day" (OF ALL THINGS) and the lyrics were echoing everything that was in my heart. I was singing at the top of my lungs. I hadn't heard the song in a very long time, and the only reason I had pulled it out again that morning was because Myer saw the CD in the car and asked politely demanded that I put "the black one" in.

As I was singing along, I suddenly felt this urgency to pray for my husband. I wasn't quite sure what to pray, so as I drove I just started praying that God would make all of the dreams in Chris' heart come true. But this time, something different happened as I was praying those words. This time, I heard in my spirit, clear as day, a resounding "YES". And not just a quiet, timid little "yes", but a bold and loud and unexpected "YES!!" that reverberated in me and sent chills up and down my whole body and instantly filled my eyes with so many tears that I had to pull off the road because I could not see. I wept and I prayed and I was in complete shock and awe. I felt like God was telling me that he was going to speak to my husband that very day.

I was physically shaking when I called Chris. I had completely forgotten it, but he was going to a conference that day- a leadership conference for local businessmen. Chris had felt very strongly that he needed to sign up and attend this event. He had NO idea at the time why he was signing up for this thing, but he really felt like God had asked him to. When I called him, it was just getting ready to start. I quickly told him I loved him and felt like God wanted to speak to him today. He said he had been feeling the exact same thing, and we hung up.

He sent me a picture later in the morning of the bulletin they handed him when he walked in the door. At the very bottom, the words:



Get ready. It's a new day.

I kept praying all morning long and I couldn't wipe the giddy smile off of my face. I anxiously awaited a phone call from Chris to find out how the day had gone.

Later that afternoon, he called. He was on his way home and he was talking so fast and sporadically, I had a hard time following everything he was saying. He was excited and felt like God had spoken to him about two things specifically. The first thing was the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. The second thing was the book of John, chapter 15.

Now, this next part may sound totally crazy, and even I still have a hard time believing it, but just bear with me here for a moment. As Chris was talking to me on the phone, I was kind of pacing around the house, listening and feeling really excited. Without even realizing what I was doing or WHY I was doing it, I found myself digging around under our bed, with the phone still pushed up to my ear. I reached under there and pulled out this giant cardboard box that has been under there for YEARS, and that I have never gotten out before. I sat on the floor by our bed, still listening to Chris talk about the conference, and I opened the box. It is full of all of my old journals from the past 12 years of my life. On the very top was a bright red spiral bound notebook from 2005. I pulled it out and set it in my lap.



Now, mind you, I still didn't really have any conscious idea of what I was doing. I was just "going through the motions" and listening to Chris. I opened up the journal that I had set in my lap. The page that it fell open to was a synopsis, in my own handwriting, of the story of Ezra & Nehemiah, and at the very top of it all I had written "John 15".

Needless to say, I was speechless. I had mindlessly pulled out a journal that I hadn't seen in years and opened it right to a page that had Nehemiah and John 15 written on it, AS my husband was telling me God spoke to him about Nehemiah and John 15. Uhh... whaaaaaaat? I told Chris what had happened and we were both... just... in shock. He came home and we talked about all the crazy things that had happened that day.

He was telling me how Nehemiah had been called back to "the land of his fathers" to help rebuild the city that was in ruins. As he heard the speaker talk about all of this, Chris couldn't get one place off of his mind... one of the places that was hit the hardest when the economy started to tank back in 2008... a place that has some of the highest unemployment & foreclosure rates in the entire country.

The city where we grew up.

The literal "land of our fathers".


Reno, Nevada....

In Hope of A New Day: Chapter One.

"The Longing"



There are times in life when it feels like everything in you is being stirred up, heart soul and spirit, like a big pot of stew on the stove. Have you ever experienced this? Your inner person all a'tumble? It can happen suddenly or gradually, but the churning seems to come from somewhere beyond your control, and, try as you might, you just can't get it to bed back down again.

I am slowly beginning to learn that, in times like these, there really are only two options:

1. Trust the momentum and follow it, or

2. Fight it until you're bone-tired, and are swept up in it all the same.

This has been just such a season for us. And somewhere along the way there came a moment when both Chris and I made that unnerving decision to follow the current rather than fight it, which, I believe, has made all the difference.

It all started about 9 months ago, around my birthday last year, the feeling that I just couldn't breathe this air anymore. I was beginning to resent every lung full, and I was exhaling nothing but discontent. I sat down and wrote this blog. Oklahoma was having the hottest Summer ever recorded in ANY of the 50 United States... meaning, there had never been anywhere in this country that had ever been that hot for that long ever... and I was completely done. Baked. Cooked. Burnt.



I crumbled.

I poured it all out to my husband one night on the couch. The kids were tucked away in their beds and I just... broke. The stirring inside of me had been intense for quite some time, even from the year before, when I did not know if the third child growing inside of me was a girl or a boy and I had chosen the girl's name of Dagny, which means "New Day". I longed for it and I longed for her and I knew that the Lord had said "the time is yet to come" when Truman was born and my heart overflowed with all these bright flashing sons.

Even then I had tried to bottle up the longing. But on the couch that night, I finally reached the point where I just couldn't fight it anymore. It was too strong and I was too weak. At the time, I had believed that this longing in me was a bad thing... the result of an ungrateful heart. Instead of trusting the God of the Universe with it, I had been trying to shut it down, thinking it was the "holy" thing to do.

But that's the tricky thing about longing, isn't it? It is only as holy as it is submitted. As soon as I grip my fingers around it and try to force it into existence, it becomes my enemy. It becomes my god. It becomes what I live for. But if I can really say, "God, I desire this, but I desire You even more!", then GOD remains my God. He remains what I live for.

It is a dangerous can of worms to open, this longing and desire, because it makes you vulnerable to the possibility of disappointment and grief if those longings go unmet. But on the other hand, to never open it up or listen to it at all is a different grief altogether- one heavy with regret and the feeling of never having truly lived. And I think, at the end of the day, I'd rather be able to say that I had lived vulnerably, instead of questioning if I had ever even really been alive at all.

That night, I opened up the treacherous can. I told Chris what I was longing for. I told God what I was longing for. A new place, a new start, a new season. New air! A new day. It felt SO good to get it all out. We had talked casually about the future before... about how this never felt like a permanent home for us, but we had never felt released to really consider other options. Chris had been known to say, "If we are going to move again, God is going to have to speak to me from a burning bush!" (Little did we know....... more about that later!)

We have a lot invested here in this neighborhood, in this town. Chris owns his own thriving small business. We are surrounded on all sides by a community of dear friends and neighbors who are only steps away in times of need. It would be no easy thing to consider uprooting from all that God has done for us in the past six years we've spent here. This dangerous longing of mine was going to change everything. Even as the words left my lips, I felt afraid. Was I really ready to exchange it all and follow the current that was churning me all up inside?



That night we agreed. Chris took the time to ask questions and really hear my heart. We decided we would follow, not fight. We would trust that God was the author of this longing in my heart, and we would trust that He had good plans in and through it. We would take a step of faith and start asking... start "pushing on doors". We talked late into the night about Denver or Reno or San Luis Obispo or Portland or Seattle or somewhere new here in Oklahoma... we allowed ourselves to dream big for the first time in a very long time.

That night was the start of it all, when the floodgates flung wide open, and there would be absolutely no going back.

New Things.

Things, they are a-brewin'.

A story has been gradually unfolding underneath the busyness of this everyday life, like a slow pulling current, changing the direction of everything above it.

I plan to tell the story here, from beginning to end, in chapter format, starting very soon. It is full of twists and turns, tangible miracles, and a few good nail-biting moments. (of course!) I will be writing mostly to record and preserve the amazing things that God has done for us over the past few months, so that I can remember, but I pray that it would also encourage and build faith in those of you who choose to read along.

Monday.

A week from today.

That is the day when, Lord willing, the final chapter will come to a close and the story will beg to be told.

I hope you'll forgive my lack of writing lately. I've had so very much to say, but haven't yet had the freedom to say it. I am so excited to start writing again, and to get to tell you all about what an amazing journey this has been!

Stay tuned! :)

The Many Months of Truman.

Tomorrow is my sweet baby Truman's birthday. I put together a twelve month montage like I did for Myer when he turned one.

This baby is perfection... the very antithesis of birth control. We adore him more and more each day we get to have with him.

My favorite thing on this earth right now is to watch him bounce on his chicken legs when music (of any kind) starts playing. I will have to try and get some video of it. You guys will DIE.

Without further ado, I present to you "The many months of Truman":








































Oh, how we love you, sweet Trumie-doo!!! Thank you for making this life of ours ridiculously awesome. :)

Holding On.

It flooded my mind as I drove back home today- the way I'd found it just sitting there in that bush by the side of the road. His wrist watch. The time had stopped at the moment of impact. He was a cousin-in-law and an officer and he was much, much too young and there are things in this world that don't make any sense... that leave you with a heavy 'why' and the daunting question of where you're going to lay it.

When I had found it there, all those years ago, my heart stood still and something deep in me cried out sharp. All else faded away and there was a clear message waiting for me to reach down and pick it up, gingerly, like it was a holy thing:

"Time here is fleeting! There will be a last recorded minute for us all. When all is shaken away, what of all your frenzied building will stand firm?"

It is good to be reminded of the fragile state of things sometimes... this precarious dance between life and death that we count in candles. When I am reminded that I am but a vapor, God rises large in my sight and the problems and anxieties are blown away like dust from an old trunk in the attic... like smoke from a candle buried in sugary cake.

There are a lot of full-bodied hopes hanging upon a lot of fragile unknowns for Chris and I right now. Will they burst forth and ripen? Or will they fall to the ground heavy? It is a hard place to have been in for so long and my soul is weary from the tension of it all. How does one desperately hope for fruit and yet steel oneself for the possibility of a fall? How does one survive the sickening 'thud'? How does one get to the place where either outcome is accepted with gratitude, knowing that God only authors good?

Hope is a perilous thing.

And yet a life without it is no life at all.

So, we continue on in our treacherous hope... our eyes set upon a good thing, knowing that the stripping away of that thing will be counted good as well. Because even when the fruit tears away from the branch and lands heavy, the seeds are forced down and new things grow up through the mess. They are nourished by the mess and made strong.

Our ultimate hope will never fail, and the cares and anxieties of this life are counted as nothing when we allow ourselves to see God as He is... eternal and unshakeable. What are these months of strenuous uncertainty when compared with eternity? Minutes may freeze on the face of a watch, and things may not turn out like we think they should, but this hope in GOD trumps all time and all pain and even death if we will hold fast to Him and refuse to deny Him in the face of difficulty and trial.

Lord strengthen my hands to hold firm, no matter the outcome. May You always be more dear to me than a "yes" or a "no".

Elbow Room, Small Appliances, & Clarity.

I don't know how to receive gifts without this constant low-rumbling feeling that I don't deserve them. That I haven't earned them.

Gifts from others, yes, but most especially gifts from God.

We are in a season of extreme change. There are more question marks floating around our heads than definitive periods. It's hard for me to bend down and scrub my baseboards right now because I don't even know if that baseboard will belong to me in a short amount of time. Something deep in my gut longs for a little more than this 1100 square foot house that holds all 5 of us and our belongings, but this longing in my gut hits a brick wall in my mind and I somehow feel better telling myself that I don't need or deserve such an outrageous dream. I have been blissfully happy in this home for the majority of the last 6 years, but I'm suddenly beginning to yearn for more.

"I need to be able to make 1100 square feet work. There are people in the world who live in huts with dirt floors for God's sake! How can I possibly justify not being able to make this 1100 square feet work?!?!"

These thoughts hound me until I become vaguely aware that the voice of God does not operate in such a way- berating and confusing and making one feel wretched and unworthy. His voice comes with hope and conviction and peace and life! So I try to ignore the part of my brain that has convinced itself that it needs to sit quietly in the corner, keeping its heart-requests quiet.

"Be the child that doesn't rock the boat. Be the child that doesn't require special attention or favors. Be the child that doesn't pester."

The problem is, that is EXACTLY the child that God commands me to be! I am to ask and pester and long and dream before Him! I am to pound the door and frazzle the judge and ask like a child whose heart is set on that ONE thing in life like a shark after blood.

"I want a Red Ryder BB Gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time!"

Does asking mean that I am guaranteed to get what I want? (Currently, in my case, a little more elbow room for my family to expand into?) No! Absolutely not. I am not guaranteed anything in this life other than a desperate need for God. But by not even trusting His goodness enough to ask for the things that are in this heart that He created? What treason!! God has never once demanded that I not speak unless spoken to! He has never once commanded me to stifle everything that makes my heart surge to life! All he asks is that I ask... in honesty and truth... trusting that His answer will be good and trustworthy, no matter what it may be.

It makes me feel so silly, but so ALIVE... this asking big things of God. Are all of my requests bathed in spirituality and high virtue? Heck no! One of my most recent requests has been for a small kitchen appliance, of all things. Is a small kitchen appliance something to bother to the God of the Universe about? I'm beginning to believe... yes.

YES!!!

He cares for you! Not the spiritual facade of you, but the real you! The one with the mess all around and these raw desires beating in your chest! And, oh imagine... just IMAGINE the glory and honor and praise He will draw from your heart and your lips when your big & small requests come to fruition! Even a small kitchen appliance will seem a holy relic then, almost too holy to touch with bare hands, because it is most assuredly a gift directly from the hand of the God of the Universe, who cares for you.

So, I'm scrawling my requests out on a journal page... writing my heart out on paper... and seeking to know His heart in His Word so that my desires will slowly, over a lifetime, begin to look more and more like His own. Like an old married couple who can finish each other's sentences, my desires and requests will, by the grace of God, become mere extensions of His thoughts and His heart. For now, it's elbow room and small kitchen appliances and clarity. And I believe that the God who pours out blessings on those who could never even hope to deserve them or earn them hears me!

I believe that He hears me, and that He cares.

Opposites React.

My kids are so completely opposite of each other it makes me wonder if they even have the same mom. Maybe I just dreamt about giving birth three times? Maybe I only really gave birth once and the other two just followed me home one day? Stranger things have happened, I'm sure.

As I type, Ezra is in his bed having a bit of a conniption fit because his left nostril is ever-so-slightly stuffed up. He is sniffling and blowing his nose so loudly every four seconds or so that I can hear him from the other side of the house and I keep finding myself yelling things like "BREATHE THROUGH YOUR MOUTH! No.. your mouth! Your MOUTH! THE HOLE THAT IS NOT YOUR NOSE!!"

He won't stop, of course. And I can't reason with him. He is un-reason-with-able. This is the kid who just mastered the art of blowing his nose for the first time earlier today (seriously) and who has no grid for dealing with pain. None whatsoever. At the slightest twinge of discomfort he drops like a weight and just starts... freaking out. And shaking. Nothing can get through to him when he is in this state. He is always fine... a tiny scrape or an itty-bitty cut, but it's almost like his brain doesn't get the memo that he is not, in fact, mere inches from the pearly gates.

And then there is Myer. If this kid's hair was on fire, he could not be bothered to tell you. Trying to find out what is bugging this kid is an almost impossible feat. The more I question and press and ask, the more he retreats. This is exasperating on a completely different level. I have one child who informs me every time a hair on his head moves a little to the left, and I have another who won't tell me if all the hairs on his head are engulfed in flame. What IS a mother to do?

Maybe Truman will fall somewhere in the middle of these extreme boys of mine, bringing a perfect balance and equilibrium to our family dynamic.

More likely, however, he will end up on some whole different and new plane of extremes... regularly hanging from the light fixtures and gnawing on chicken bones or something.

Ah, motherhood. The land of perpetual "wait... WHAAAAAT?!"

The Brave Fear.

Sometimes I feel so brave.

I hold nothing too tightly and am ready to leap at any moment. Change makes me giddy and I really, honestly mean it when I tell God that I will go anywhere and do anything as long as He is with me.

Moving to Oklahoma six and a half years ago was a leap. We didn't know the "how what when where why's" of anything at all. We just knew it was time to get out of California and there was an open invitation here. That was all that we needed! I remember praying that same prayer all those years ago.... "Lord I will move ANYWHERE and do ANYTHING as long as I get to be doing what You are doing." I had been known to say "I would live in a BOX in the middle of NOWHERE if that was where God wanted to use me." And I really really did mean it.

He heard me, took me literally (ha!), and moved me to a state that meant nothing to me back then but hokey cowboys and (really flat) red dirt. And also.... tornadoes. Okay, God! Here we goooo!

And it has proved to be the most amazingly rich and rewarding and wonderful season of my life here. I've healed from spiritual wounding, I've fallen in love with the Church, with community, with this city, and I've come to realize that everything is grace. I've grown to LOVE staying at home and raising my boys and I've learned that what I am doing here within these walls has infinite worth and value and is more than enough. I could never thank God enough for bringing me here during this season of life.

Once again, I find myself in a state of exciting unknowns. I find myself in the poise of leaping. What will that look like? No idea yet. Maybe it's a newness here, maybe it's a newness there... but I find myself standing with my arms thrown open, saying it again in my heart... "I will go ANYWHERE and do ANYTHING as long as You are with me! I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked!" And I start to feel so noble in that prayer, so brave! Like I could fling myself off a mountain and know I would be caught up in the wind!

And yet...

...and yet all of these feelings of faith and assurance come to a screeching halt when I hear a still, small voice ask me, "Yes, but how much more of yourself are you willing to give?"

It's like, God, you can have my house and my security and my comfort and my STUFF and even my children and my marriage because You are GOOD and I trust you! But when I feel Him asking to come closer to my heart, to tear down a wall or two and expand things a bit in there, to grow our intimacy and die to self completely... I run cold. Fear grips. Backtracking ensues. I try patching up the floodgates I've thrown open in faith moments before.

Oh Lord, the things you'd find in there... I think we're both better off where we are at, don't You? This safe and chummy distance we have going on...?

All the while, though, I know the truth. The thing is... I can move to the most desperate place on the globe and serve the most desperate people on the earth in the name of God, but if I don't let that very same God consume me and sweep me away and be my everything, then... I am missing it! Location alone, adventure alone cannot be my substitute for deeper intimacy with God... for letting Him call down my walls like Jericho so He can storm in. Nothing that I do, no matter how noble it looks from the outside, will have any lasting strength, any eternal value, if I am not doing it from a completely surrendered & conquered heart.

So here I am now, toeing the edge of something big, ready to leap, yet at the same time... really aware for the first time of what is being asked of me.

Suddenly, I am not so brave. Suddenly, I am terrified.

Sure, I am willing to surrender my adorable house, my cozy daily routine, my 5 year "plan".... but am I willing to surrender my own HEART?

Even now, I can't help but feel that I am better off here in my terrified state than I was before in all my confidence. I can leap in faith until I am blue in the face, and God will be faithful to catch me and be gracious towards me, but what He is really calling me to, what He has always been calling me to, is more of Himself. Always, always, always... Himself.

Will I be found willing? Lord, in Your grace, let it be true! Conquer this fear, and help me! Sound the trumpet and break it all down. Cause me to want YOU more than the next "thing", the next adventure. Help me to desire Your nearness more than any other thrill that this earth can give...

Passion.

As I type, my husband is far away in Atlanta, Georgia- trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he gets to play his viola with the Charlie Hall band at Passion 2012 in front of 45,000 people at the Georgia Dome tomorrow.





Also as I type, far from the roar and lights, I have just tucked away our children in their beds for the evening- wiping goopy noses and administering breathing treatments and medicines out the wazoo for a certain sick little boy of mine who struggles with asthma and allergies and eczema. Oh, and as a bonus for this week- eye infections!





(He really is doing much better tonight than he was last night... poor sweet little Myer!)

I can't even explain the state of my heart tonight. It feels like it's about to burst through the walls of this quiet little home. I feel so blessed to be here caring for all these boys, and it feels good and right and pure. There really is nowhere else I'd rather be! Yet at the same time, I also feel tremendous excitement and joy and desire to be in Atlanta with my husband... getting to see his wildest dreams come true and experience the fruition of a lifetime of prayers on my part and his- his passion for playing music that glorifies God and encourages His bride, the church!

It feels like a very symbolic thing that is happening in our lives (for such a time as this!) and for a very specific reason. Where we stand right now, there are a lot of unknowns. We don't know where we'll be or what we'll be doing or what our lives will look like a year from now- as 2013 dawns bright and the confetti falls once again on soil all around this tired globe.

But we do know one thing.

It will be a new, grand adventure, and God will NEVER fail us.

He is faithful. He is faithful to let us see and taste a bit of our dreams in a season that has felt so thirsty for hope and substance... for answers you can grab onto and sink your teeth into. He is faithful to hear the cries of a simple housewife who longs to see her husband's oldest and deepest dreams come true. He is faithful to grow a boy straight into the heart of music and then give him an instrument he can cup underneath his chin and make sing. He is faithful to finish what He begins, and He is faithful to encourage all along the long and difficult way.




My husband is a painting contractor. Day in and day out he labors with his hands and brings his best and most honest work to the table for clients who may or may not appreciate all that he pours into them and their homes. His hands are rough and calloused and sometimes they bleed and he doesn't even realize the red is running down. But for as tough as his hands are, his heart... his heart is soft! His heart is tender! He longs for beautiful things and carries weighty giftings on humble and bowed down shoulders! And tonight... this week... this is a YES and an AMEN to that man who carries this family so gracefully through the muck and mire of this world! And my heart is just bursting with honor and pride in him, and gratitude and thanksgiving to the God he loves and serves so well.

I am overwhelmed. I am undone. I am here saying YES and AMEN as well. 2012 is going to be an amazing year.

"...I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me, declaring end from beginning and from ancient times things not done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish my purpose!' I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass. I have purposed, and I will do it."

-Isaiah 46:9-10,11