Broken, Blessed, and Made New

Intentional. My word for 2019. I don’t know that I really believe in New Year’s Resolutions. I think there’s a lot of hype around the new year, when really every single day we wake up is a chance to make a new goal, make a change, or be better. Don’t get me wrong, I have no judgements against people who make resolutions. They just aren’t for me. To me, the New Year is equivalent to the Monday of the week.   “I’ll start my diet on Monday, the weekend doesn’t count”, when, in all reality, the scale on Monday says the weekend DID, in fact, count. I’m not looking to set myself up for failure. I’m looking to make real changes in my life – changes that make me more like Christ. I think it’s because I’m a big picture person, I don’t spend tons of time focusing on the details. In everything I do, I want to leave it better than when I started it. So, I’m writing this down [for anyone who wants to read], and hopeful that when I read this in 2020, I feel like I did what I wanted ...

Today is one of those perfect weather days. If I could choose to live in a world like today every day, I would in a heart beat. The sun is out. It’s a fall sweater and jeans kind of day. I’m off work and sitting outside with my coffee (and my puppy) while my husband plays golf. My sister is coming to hang out with me in a few hours before we all go out. October is just around the corner. This girl’s heart is happy.  I can’t help as I sit outside to think about the story of Mary and Martha in the Bible. This world anymore is so go, go, go. And I feel like our life this summer was so reflective of that. Barely a minute to sit down, always have something going on, or always feeling like I’m catching things up that are behind. It’s nice to feel some calm settle into our lives.  If you haven’t read the Bible passage of Mary and Martha, you really should. {John 12:2, Luke 10:38-42} Jesus and peeps come into the house. While He is there, Mary is sitting at His feet and liste...

It has been a long time since I’ve been on here.  I’m writing this one for a few of the people I love most on this earth and mostly to tell you what God is doing in my heart.  I write this one with tear-filled eyes and a heavy heart. I write this one with anger but also fierce, fierce love.  Some people I care deeply for are hurting. And not hurting like ‘I had a bad day at work’ but rather experiencing deep sorrow and pain. Oh my goodness, if I could take it all away for them, I would. But I do know there is a plan, a bigger plan than I can even comprehend right now. God knows, I don’t, and I have to be still and rest only in that. He is making something beautiful out of these ashes. He is creating a masterpiece out of His saints. He is chipping away at the bad to make us look more like Him, if we let Him. This process is so painful. But I’m clinging so tightly to His promises, because He has proven faithful. If I’m being totally transparent, I’ve really bee...

Over the last couple weeks specifically, God has been laying it on my heart that life is a gift. It is a simple statement that seems to be used frequently but people don’t absorb it’s meaning.  Life is a gift.  And it is.  I am 26 years old. I’m young. Yet I keep hearing about people who are my age that are dying in tragic car accidents, dying by suicide, overdosing on drugs, passing away from cancer/other diseases, or being murdered. My heart breaks. The news breaks my heart.  It says in the Bible that life is a vapor (James 4:14). We are here today and gone tomorrow. This has been convicting me on so many levels. What in the world am I living for? You want to know the sad but truthful answer? Me. At church, we have been working our way through the book of Philippians in the Bible. Paul says in chapter 1 that to live is Christ and to die is gain. Simply put, my life is only to be lived for the Lord, and to die is better than life here on earth becau...

Much of my high school, college, and young adulthood was spent with the wrong kind of guy. You know what I mean, the boys who crazy excite you but are so terribly wrong for you. Every broken-hearted Taylor Swift song was exactly how I felt from being a teenager to the age of 24. Truly, it is sad that I spent so much time chasing after these kinds of relationships - shallow, superficial, ill-intentioned, toxic. Everything that I didn’t want in a husband, I spent majority of these years pursuing. What I’ve found in my conversations with most women of all ages is this: it seems we’ve all settled for these relationships at one point in time. You might not fall in this category, and if you haven’t, praise the Lord! Seriously. Sometimes I think we long for someone so badly, we forget what we are worth and what we deserve. I still see and work with these women on a daily basis – the ones who are in toxic relationships. Relationships that consume them, control them, make them feel les...