Truth for the Trenches

    I am finding that I am in a new season of cultivating relationships. Continuing to foster life-long friendships, repair some, let go of others and create new ones. I had expectations of living next door to my best friends as we raised kids together. Cooking out on weekends as family, girl weekends to the beach and our kids becoming best friends as well. As I find this to not be my reality I’m finding it hard to picture what place friendships hold in this season of life. I am surrounded by 3 little people all day who need and want my undivided attention making play dates difficult for me and more of a parenting exercise in kid socialization than coffee with a friend for me. I moved away from 30 year friendships and there is no replacement from that. I was pregnant or nursing for the past 5 years and that put challenges on friendships. Life happened and friends moved away or choices drew us apart. But what I was so lovingly reminded of by my husband is that as...

These walls need painting, they need new plaster and pictures hung. But, inside these walls hold echoing laughter, squeals of delight from 3 small kids. These walls have seen games of hide and seek, kids jumping out to surprise daddy’s homecoming, new siblings brought home, a family being formed. They have held secrets of tears, hurt feelings, loneliness and heartbreak. These walls are ours. They form our home. Our home to raise children, to love children, to fight for reconciliation with each other regularly. This home is not perfect. It is old, crumbling and in need of life. But, I am too. I need life and I am called to give life to others. To invite them into these walls. To sit around the table in the room with orange walls. To make pancakes and sing birthday songs in the room with beige walls. To bathe squishy new babies in the room with pink rose tile. It is not the color of the walls that makes the home.   As my husband holds our almost 2 year old “eating his belly ...

It's not.most days we get to be one vacation, have an afternoon free of commitments, buy a really expensive new pair of shoes or get weekly date night. Joy isn't always something big but I've been looking at regular, ever day moments and noticing so many joy jewels tucked away in 30 seconds here or 5 minutes there. It's easy for me to fill my schedule so full of people, errands, and tasks that there aren't free moments to watch my kids interact or time to let our imaginations run wild. This summer as we wrap up school I am looking forward to intentionally planning for joy in our days! Here are the glimpses of joy I have noticed lately... what are the moments you have noticed in your life? My 4 year old drawing her brother and his curly hair!!! Sunshine and outside play in February, rare for Ohio and soooo amazing! My 2 year old holding this worm and making a "ssss" sound to tell.me what it is. Drinking out of mason ...

(1980s with my mom) As women we still find it hard to grow up. We want our moms to be the moms of our childhood. To forgive, not show their hurt feelings, hold us and love us. But do we let our moms be human? Do we let them be women? This is such a challenging relationship for most, a struggle and a joy tangled together. We want our moms to not have feelings, to not ask anything of us and to think we are the best. I promise your mom does think all those things. But, she is human, she is also a women and she has emotions; they range every spectrum just as yours do. She has expectations, she gets her feelings hurt and she can't turn off her desire and need to protect you. As we grow from girls to women and we ask our moms to allow us this freedom we have to give them the freedom to grow from a mom into a woman. As I got married I pushed away to form a new family with my husband. But, I hurt my mom in many ways and I didn't communicate well. She gracefully walked in h...

“I will sing with the voice that He’s placed in my soul So the world will hear what He was done We must sing if our hearts have been changed by our God Let the whole world know that he has come Come and sing with the angels to the king Come and bring Him your song” -Jeremy Quillo This song has been bouncing around in my head for a while. The idea of bringing Him my song has made me question: What is my song? I spend time thinking about what I am not, how I do not measure up or what I should be. God has given us each a purpose, we each reflect His beauty and glory to the world and we should build on the areas where we do this well. We should use them with a kingdom focus for a purpose: to “let the whole world know He has come”. We have different roles but I think the song we should sing, the gifts we should use are strengths that carry over throughout all those roles. My biggest role right now is being a mother and it is very hard for me. I am much ...

I spend so much time trying to change things, trying to not feel something that really hurts or forgetting to settle into what is truly satisfying. I get distracted or I choose distraction. I don't allow myself the space to reconcile the emotion, to understand the emotion and to communicate the emotion clearly to myself or to others. I think I am not alone. Am I? I am being challenged in this in many areas of life. Challenged by defining myself as "someone who is not sensitive"...but I am. Challenged in my desire to push away from conflict, to ignore feelings until they disappear, but they don't disappear. They alienate, they lie, they disguise themselves as other feelings and cloud my thinking, my reactions and my beliefs. So I am asking myself "what if I settle in?". What if I settled into the hard season or the hurt feelings and explored them? What if I finally admitted  what reality was like? It would be ugly, it would be vulnerable. It would revea...

Are you ever paralyzed by fear, anxiety, indecision? I am often. Typically about silly things, but they never feel silly. EVERYTHING feels significant. These boots for instance...I needed a pair of functional boots: run errands in wet weather, play in the snow, keep my feet warm so I can keep up with life boots. However, the decision on what boots left me frozen. I couldn't make a decision. I wanted to be wise, I wanted them to solve multiple problems and I also wanted to like how they looked. Last night I found 3 pairs of boots and 1 pair of fleece boot socks sitting on the floor of my bedroom. Some had been there for 2 weeks! My daughter voted, my mom voted, my sister voted and my husband voted...enter silliness here! This morning I picked, I put them on and I walked outside in the snow to take out the trash. THERE, can't go back now!  I realized as I stood in the snow in my new boots that fear and anxiety held me back for weeks from enjoying this new gift of boots. ...