The Fish Tank

"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4 We like to talk about how faithful God is. God was so faithful blessing us with this baby. God was faithful to heal me. God was faithful in my success. We throw the word around a lot. But, are we misguided using this term erroneously? God is faithful in many things. The Bible says so. God is faithful to: Cleanse us of all unrighteousness Keep His promises/covenants Love us Forgive us Shelter us Be a place of refuge Give us hope God is faithful in many things. But, when it comes to life, I wonder if we are misplacing his faithfulness and confusing it with his generosity. What do you say to the person who doesn't have that baby yet and is struggling with infertility? God isn't faithful to you? Maybe you aren't "delighting yourself in the Lord" enough. And to the one who isn't healed. What do you say to them? Well, I am not sure where God's fai...

'During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." "Lord, if it is you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water." "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" Matthew 14: 25-31 Trust. It's a difficult thing. We tell our kids, especially our ten year old, not to lose our trust. Trust is tough to earn back after it is lost. Many of us have heard the story of Jesus walking on water. Even if we wouldn't c...

I am a rule-follower. I like rules, order, and justice. I struggle in living outside of my safe comfortable box-shaped life. I try and I am learning to curve the lines, but I cannot proclaim victory just yet. When I started my Christian journey in the 90s, daily quiet time and devotions were buzz words. This is what you did if you were a good Christian: you wake up, roll over onto your knees on the floor, say your prayers, grab your devotional book, and have a little quiet time with God. Give me all the rules and structure. I am sold! Life happened and daily devotions became difficult to complete. I never really found one that held my attention. Never did I go too deep in searching my faith through these devotions. Daily quiet time became a ritual; something to check off the list. And then I had kids. Not only did I have kids, I had my first child who LOVED early mornings. I'm talking, if I woke up at 5:45am to get my quiet time in, he was up at 5:30am. And then I kept having kid...

How do you introduce yourself? Who do you say you are when people ask? Who or what do you tie yourself? Career? Family? Spouse? College? Political affiliation? My husband and I actually stayed up past 9pm the other night and had an opportunity to talk about a lot of deep stuff. We talked religion, politics; you know, the stuff you aren't supposed to talk about. When talking about our faith, Scott made a point (a valid point, might I add) that I always knew but needed to hear again. He explained to me how he and his faith are not attached to a pastor or a church. Meaning, his faith does not rest in the hands of our pastor nor does the church we attend have ownership. Now, we love our church and our pastor. However, for Scott, his faith is right where is should be: between he and Jesus. This got me to thinking: Where is my faith? Where do I put my trust? Where does my faith land? How do I introduce my faith to someone? Do I talk more about where I attend or what I believe? Does i...

My boys like to pick weeds. Let me rephrase. My boys like to pick weeds in order to make money. When we redid our backyard, we decided to pull out a lot of the grass and make planters. Well, even though we removed the grass, it still grows through the mulch. The boys work relentlessly to remove the sporadic blades. They don't, however, get the root so the grass grows back the next week. Sometimes, the grass grows back more vigorous. We are fighting the wrong battle. We are beating each other up with our words in this political battle ground increasing the crevice of division deeper into our hearts. We begged, pleaded, and cried for a new leader waiting for him/her to come riding in on a white horse ready to save us all. When that didn't happen, we all started looking around for the cameras knowing Ashton Kutcher was about to jump out because surely, we are being Punk'd. We are fighting the wrong battle. We are pulling the weeds never getting to the root. Thus, the probl...

Pick. Pick. Pick. Have you ever had one of those seasons where little things picked away at you like a crow picking hay out of a scarecrow? Eventually, you become depleted and fall into a lump of stress and exhaustion. You try to do it on your own because you know yourself and that you can handle this mess. It's only little things, you tell yourself. I am horrible at something. Well, I am bad at a lot of things, but this takes the cake. Let's start with what I am good at, though. Always start with the positives, right? I am really good at helping others out. Need prayer? I'm your prayer warrior. Need me to run an errand, watch a kid, grab you something at the store? I've got it. Need a meal or surprise gift on your porch because you've had a rough go at things? Yep. I'm in. Here's what I'm really bad at: letting others do this for me. I don't want to put anyone out. I feel like I can handle things on my own. It's not that I don't think I ...

I didn't go today. I was in the car headed in that direction but didn't go. I turned left instead of going straight. After the week I had, I need a few minutes to breath and catch up on stuff before school let out and the boys got home. I decided not to go to the Fun Run at school and that was tough. We try so hard to find balance. We like this word. Something about finding balance makes us feel like super heroes. We will exhaust ourselves with lists and organization in order to find balance. What if I told you that balance is unattainable. Balance isn't something we can find in our life. Think about it. Some days we feel like we have crossed everything off the to-do list and accomplished everything we set our minds to the moment our feet hit the ground in the morning. But, what we don't realize is in completing the tasks, we've said no to other stuff. We had to say no to some things in order to be successful at the other things. Balance is an unnecessary nuan...

Four years ago, my eyes were opened to a major personality flaw. We had just sold our house and moved about twenty minutes away into an apartment. We were building another house and it wouldn't be ready for ten months. When we first entered this season, I was excited and thought it would be a nice change. Simpler is better became my mantra. And then it hit. I had a two year old, three year old, six year old, ninety-pound one year old lab, and a traveling husband. We lived on the second floor. Managing a dog who needed to go out and babies that needed to get to the car with all their stuff was a challenge. If you have skeletons in your closet that you are trying to stuff away, they will appear at the very worst times: like when you are living in a very small space dealing with the stress of parenting, building, and having your teammate gone. We moved into the apartment in August and I felt the change in me that October. I remember a friend coming over one night when my husband w...

I began working at a really young age. I started babysitting when I was twelve and continued working in some form or fashion until I turned 29. I thought I would work all my life. And then I had kids. I was not prepared for what happened when my first child was born. I thought I'd snap back into life and be itching to get back to teaching. I had just finished my masters degree in education and was on my way to expanding my career. I don't think I stopped crying that first day I dropped my son off at daycare. The tears flowed freely. A few weeks into my irrational emotional state, my husband told me we couldn't do this anymore. We began discussing the possibility of me staying home. After much time, consideration, prayer, and a move half-way across the country, I became a stay-at-home-mom. I loved this new life. I thrived in this new space. I made other mommy friends and did mommy things. I kept the house and got myself involved. All of a sudden, nine years passed and tw...