Draw me ever closer…

That when I hurt, I will pray.

That when I am overwhelmed, I will pray.

That whenever circumstances rub my raw heart til it bleeds tears, I will pray.

And…in so doing, make me a greater blessing away than I ever could be while still here.

To God be the glory…

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.” Job 1:21b

“My times are in your hands…” Psalm 31:15a

And it appears that it is time to move.

“The path of least resistance makes both men and rivers crooked.” – American proverb

And I cannot (WILL not) ask him to be less than he is so that I can stay in my comfort zone for the rest of my days…

²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”(Matthew 11:28-30, NIV 1984)

“The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?” Psalm 27:1

Earlier this evening, I was sobbing and wondering out loud if Sarai cried when Abram told her they were leaving Ur. Did Lot’s wife process everything that was going on as they were racing away from the life they knew – twisted though it was, it was familiar and that made it comfortable.She did not know where they were going and that was uncomfortable.

“⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.” Prov. 3:5,6

I do not have the excuse of being unprepared as this has been in the making for at least six months now. At times my heart has been harder, at other times, I’ve been a emotional quicksand or black hole.

To the few of you that will receive this post because you know me and graciously subscribed, I covet your prayers as I seek to move from dramatic ups and downs to a steady, peaceful path.

“Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.” Isaiah 40:4

Many thanks to you,

Jess

Another yummy, nourishing soup: Sausage, Tomato and Bean

I guess the only good thing that comes out of Jess having a cold is that all of a sudden Jess wants to create super yummy, nourishing soups. The heat of the soup is lovely on a throat tired of coughing and the nutrients are great for bolstering an overworked immune system.

Sausage, Tomato and Bean Soup  

1 medium onion, cut in half, de-seeded and sliced
6 large button mushrooms, sliced
olive oil
1- 1 1/2 T. whole dried oregano, divided (to taste)
1 T. Redmond Real Salt, divided (or so, depending on whether or not your broth is homemade or storebought)
6 – 7 c. beef broth (It’s super easy to make your own…much cheaper, too!)
1 can diced tomatoes with juice
1 c. grassfed sausage crumbles
1 c. grassfed beef liver crumbles (yes…really. Why liver? I’m so glad you asked!)
6 oz. brown rice macaroni noodles
1 1/2 – 2 c. of Great Northern beans (This is approximately 1 can’s worth.)

1. Heat the olive oil in your soup pot over medium heat. Add mushrooms, onions, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. whole oregano. (Please keep in mind that all spice measurements are approximate – when I’m creating recipes, I just add until it looks right.) Stir together and cover.

2. When onions and mushrooms have softened, add the meat crumbles. Stir together for a minute. (Or, if you’re like me and you just pulled them out of the freezer, re-cover and let them cook together longer – until the meat is pretty much all thawed out.)

3. Add the broth and the noodles. Cover and let it come to a boil, cooking long enough to cook the noodles. If you choose to sample at this point, you may want to go ahead and add more salt and oregano.

4. Once the noodles are cooked, add the tomatoes with juice and the beans. If using canned beans, be sure to drain and rinse them before adding to the soup.

5. Add salt and oregano to taste and let it simmer for several minutes. Serve with buttered toast or fresh biscuits. YUM!

Wow! The new chicken noodle soup recipe

Bear with me…I just made this up and I’m trying to get it down before I forget! All of the kids ate it, hubby and I both got seconds…this is delicious!!!

1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 apple, thinly sliced and chopped (I used a gala)
4 carrots, sliced into rounds
3 largish mushrooms, cut in half and thinly sliced
1-2 stalks of celery, thinly sliced
8 oz. of elbow shaped brown rice noodles
6 c. of chicken broth (Next time, we’ll definitely be adding more!)
2 large garlic cloves, pressed
Approx. 2 T. of expeller pressed coconut oil
Approx. 2 T. of extra virgin olive oil
2 c. of shredded chicken
1-2 tsp. of Redmond Real Salt
1/2 – 3/4 tsp. of ground sage

1. Prep all of your veggies (or adjust heat of the burner down accordingly to give yourself more chopping time).

2. Melt coconut oil in your soup pot over medium heat.

3. Add onion and apple and cook together until softened.

4. Add carrots, mushrooms, celery, pouring the olive oil over the veggies and stirring to coat.

5. Cover the soup pot and let everything cook for a minute.

6. Add the noodles, stir and recover. Let cook for 3-5 minutes.

7. Add the chicken stock, 1 tsp. of salt and the garlic. Let everything come to a boil and cook until the noodles are done. This may vary depending on the type of noodles you use and, erm, whether or not your chicken stock was completely thawed out before you added it. 

8. After the noodles are cooked, add 1/2 tsp. of sage. Stir well and taste. Add more salt and sage to your taste. I always have to add extra salt because I make my own chicken broth. This ensures that it’s made with pastured chicken parts and that it is MSG (and other additives)-free.  (AND…it’s lots cheaper! When you’re using the leftover bones from whole chickens and veggie scraps such as carrot tops, celery roots and leaves, and onion peels, tops and bottoms – things that you’re already buying and would otherwise just go into the compost bin, it is, in my estimation – FREE! “Woot! Woot!” with a fist pump and all that.) 

9. Let it cool for a few minutes and serve. YUM!

I’d include a picture, but I burned up the camera’s batteries while recording the kids playing with their balloons in the hallway this morning. You’d never know they were sick to look at them! 

My 2012 Reading List

In the interests of accountability and after being inspired by Crystal of Money Saving Mom‘s success with her 2011 list, I decided that I’m going to follow suit. 

In addition to my desire to read through the whole of the Bible this year using this plan, each month I also want to read at least 1 non-fiction, 1 fiction and 1 of the Sitepoint books that I’ve been acquiring over the last several years. I may read more, but I don’t want to read less. 

So, without further ado, I present….the list!

January:
Nonfiction: Finish up Entreleadership by Dave Ramsey
Fun/Fiction: Freckles by Gene Stratton (This is being loaned to me and I need to read so I can return!) 
Tech: HTML Utopia: Designing without Tables Using CSS by Rachel Andrew & Dan Schafer

February:
Nonfiction: The Money Saving Mom’s Budget: Slash Your Spending, Pay Down Your Debt, Streamline Your Life, and Save Thousands a Year by Crystal Paine
Fun/Fiction: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Another loaner that I need to read to be able to return.)
Tech: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, 2nd Ed. by Jason Beaird

March:  So…as I’m having a baby at the end of February, I’m giving myself a pass here. As long as I keep up with my Bible reading, I’ll be a happy camper.
Nonfiction:
Fun/Fiction:
Tech:

April:
Nonfiction: Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend
Fun/Fiction: The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
Tech: Build Your Own Database Driven Website with PHP and MySQL by Kevin Baird

May:
Nonfiction: Seven Secrets Women Want to Know by P.B. Wilson (I’ve read this before, but it’s been a long time, so I’d like to re-read it. Her book “Liberated Through Submission” is amazing, too!)
Fun/Fiction: Tramp for the Lord by Corrie ten Boom – I love, Love, LOVE her book “The Hiding Place” – she’s such an inspiration.
Tech: Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes by Allan Cole, Raena Jackson Armitage, Brandon R. Jones and Jeffrey Way

June:
Nonfiction: Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis
Fiction: The Emily Trilogy by L.M. Montgomery (Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, Emily’s Quest)
Tech: The Principles of Project Management by Meri Williams

July:
Nonfiction: Prophetic Worship by Vivian Hibbert
Fun/Fiction: A Foreign Devil in China: The Story of Dr. L. Nelson Bell by John Pollock
Tech:  Online Marketing Inside Out by Brandon Eley & Shayne Tilley

August:
Nonfiction: Good to Great by Jim Collins (I absolutely loved this the first time I read it…back in 2005. Time to re-read!)
Fun/Fiction: Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours by Dr. Kevin Leman
Tech: The Art & Science of CSS by Jonathan Snook, Steve Smith, Jina Bolton, Cameron Adams, and David Johnson

September:
Nonfiction: The Ten Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming our Passion, Purpose and Sanity by Dr. Meg Meeker
Fun/Fiction: Cure Tooth Decay by Ramiel Nagel  – Yes…this sounds like a fun read to me – laugh all you like.  ;D
Tech: HTML5 and CSS3 for the Real World by Alexis Goldstein, Louis Lazaris & Estelle Weyl

October:
Nonfiction: One Thousand Gifts by Anne VosKamp (After buying it twice and giving it away both times, I’m finally going to read it! Anne’s blog is amazing and oozes with the grace and poetry of communion with Christ – I just had to share it.)
Fun/Fiction: Letters from the Land of Cancer by Walter Wangerin Jr. (If you’ve never read his book Ragman and Other Cries of Faith – do yourself a favor and read it. Ah-mazing!)
Tech: The CSS Anthology by Rachel Andrew – I’m not sure if this is the same edition as the one that I have…we’ll see.

November:
Nonfiction: Do It Gorgeously: How to Make Less Toxic, Less Expensive, and More Beautiful Products by Sophia Uliano (Just in time to be able to make some Christmas presents, eh?
Fun/Fiction: Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider
Tech: Create Stunning HTML email that Just Works by Matthew Patterson

December:
Nonfiction: Loving God with All Your Mind by Elizabeth George
Fun/Fiction: The Kingdom Agenda by Tony Evans
Tech: Sexy Web Design by Elliot Jay Stocks  (Uh…yeah. This is about developing well-designed user interfaces. Really.)

Want to make your own reading list? Here’s a link to the printout I downloaded from the Money Saving Mom website.

To everything there is a time, to everything there is a season (Or: Life is short. Heaven is long.)

A Time for Everything

¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, NIV)

This was brought home to me the other day. Not so much the full passage, but the first verse – definitely.

You see, I was in the hospital a few weeks ago.

The last day of 2011, our scheduled Christmas festivities with my in-laws, ended with my husband driving me back over the mountain to our local hospital. I was a little over 30 weeks pregnant at the time and experiencing some pelvic pain and bleeding. Uh…scary? You better believe it! Especially after being on bed rest for 2 1/2 weeks with my last child...especially after seeing our son hooked up to feeding tubes and wires and breathing apparatus when his scheduled delivery didn’t go exactly as planned. I was a mess on the inside – “Lord, I don’t think I can bear to watch another one of my children go to the NICU.” and “Lord, I’m scared. Why am I bleeding? Is it all going to happen again?” as well as other internal incoherent prayers offered up as I struggled to trust in His grace and His sovereignty. My in-laws kept all three of our children at their house for the night, so that we knew they would be okay. My husband held my hand as he drove.

After five or six hours hooked up to the machines, and only 1-2 real contractions during that whole time, I got to come home. However, the pelvic pain occasionally starts back up and – and – to see me walking right now is an exercise in absurdity. I’m 33, yet to watch me walk right now would bring to mind 90 year old ladies and people learning to walk again. Halting. With obvious difficulty. With pain.

I’m not upset about this. And, I’m not posting this to make anyone feel sorry for me. It’s okay. It’s a season. It’s a painful season, but still…just a season. And, hey – I get a baby out of it. That helps make it all worth it.  

Which brings me to the point of this post:

This life, this time that we spend on this planet – it’s a season.

I was leaving LifeWay the other night after helping pull a publication together. I shuffled myself out to the van, opened the door and carefully lifted myself in to the driver’s seat. I was feeling a bit exasperated about the whole walking thing and I was talking to myself (I’m sure no one else ever does that, right?). “Okay, Jess. It’s going to be okay. This is just a season. Yes, it hurts, but it’s just for a season.”

Out of the blue, a couple of thoughts bubbled up inside of me:

• This life? It’s just a season.
• Yes, it hurts. Life does that sometimes. But, it’s just for a season.

I was reminded of a C.S. Lewis quote that I saw someone post recently on Facebook: “If you think of this world as a place simply intended for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place for training and correction and it’s not so bad.” (Another Source for the quote.)

As Christians, Heaven is our home. Earth is the way station…the training grounds…the place where we are born in flesh and blood and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, reborn through spirit, water and truth, granting us an eternity with our Master and Maker. Pain is but part of the birthing process. It’s part of the natural birthing process and part of the spiritual birthing process. Jesus, the almighty and amazing Son of God, endured suffering – the author of Hebrews said that it was “for the joy set before him”. (Heb. 12:2, NIV) May it be the same for us.

My current season of pain will (Lord willing!) end with a baby born and another healing C-section scar. There will be more pain after that. It’s a given. It’s part of living in a fallen, sin-filled world. (John 16:33, NIV) But…take heart! We’re only here for a season.

My prayer is that I, too, walk joyfully through the pain, looking at it as part of the labor pains of being slowly, surely formed into a new creation – one fit for heaven.

Let’s walk joyfully together.

“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” (Heb. 3:13, NIV).

Shuffling forward in joy,

Jessica 

FB Food for Thought: Why we *need* to read to feed

heh…alliterate much, Jess?

A young lady that I know was asking why we need to know God’s word, why we need to read the Bible daily, why we need to pray, why we need to learn all about God to have/walk in relationship with him…basically, she was curious as to the basics of growing as a Christian.

I took a little time (and it took a bit of time as there were babies running around and screaming, etc. , hehe…    ) and responded to her post. Another lady read my response and said I needed to print it out and post it. I’m not sure about the printing, but, as I have my own little corner of the internet here, I figured I could handle the posting part.  ;D

So…here goes:

Her post:

“why do we need to know God word? Why do we need to read Gods word every day? why do we need to need to pray every day?why do we need to know everything about God to have a realtionship woth me????? just wondering!?!??!?!?!!??!???!”

My response:

“How often do you need to eat? How often do you need to sleep?

As a Christian, you are made up of 3 parts: spirit (the part of you that was born when you accepted Jesus), soul (your mind, your will, and your emotions), and body (uh…yeah, pretty self-explanatory).

You feed your body 2-3 times a day, usually. You rest your body 1 or 2 times a day/night, usually.

You need to feed your spirit, too. The food of the spirit is the bread of life – aka Jesus. Jesus is also called the Word. By taking time to daily read the Bible (God’s word), you are feeding your spirit what it needs to both survive and thrive. It’s the spiritual equivalent of eating our fruits and vegetables. We can get by without it, but that’s all we’re going to do – get by. We won’t walk in the vibrant spiritual health that God desires for us. Instead, we will wither up and barely make it and “Oh, woe is me! God must not care about me.” Or, because we don’t know God’s word (because we haven’t been reading and studying it!), anyone that comes along and sounds spiritual will turn our heads and we’ll fall away from God’s ways and follow someone else. The Bible specifically warns us about this happening to people who are more interested in making themselves feel good than they are about following God.

You also need to rest your spirit. We rest our spirits when we take moments to pause and reflect on spiritual things – God, his plans and purposes for our lives, and his word. We rest our spirits when we worship him, when we recognize that he’s in charge and we are not, when we let the weight of the world fall off of our shoulders and into his capable hands.

Your soul, however, is a bit different. How do you feel your mind, your will and your emotions? Well…it’s in the same basic way that you feed the other parts of yourself – by what you put into it. Except, that instead of using your mouth (used to feed your body), you’re using your other senses. What are you allowing your eyes to watch? What are you letting your ears hear?

When you become a Christian, there are years of well…garbage, generally, that have been fed into our minds and our hearts. Self-esteem issues and bad habits, faulty thought processes and unrealistic romantic ideas, etc. that we have nurtured within us for years. And, now, Christ has come in and made us new! Old things have passed away – HOORAY!

So…now that the initial buzz has worn off, why am I still struggling? Why do I still want to fight with my mom or call my brother names or do this, that or the other thing? It’s because of the state of our soul. In order for our souls to walk in the passion and the purpose that Jesus died and rose again for, we have got to re-build our souls.

How do we do that? By feeding and nurturing our spirits every day, as many times a day as we need to. By learning his word, so that when the same old situations arise, we can cling to what he says instead of what we used to think. This is what allows us to win at life.

Jesus talked about this when he told the parable of the Good Shepherd. He said that his sheep know his voice and follow him. When we spend time in the Bible and prayer everyday, we are training ourselves to be able to recognize His voice. He describes his voice as being still, small…something that we have to be still to hear. There are lots of other voices that we have to be able to sift through…ours, our parents, our friends, our culture, our coworkers, etc. Daily time in the word helps us to train our ears to hear.

Hope that helps, dear. ♥”

It blessed me to write this for her. Hopefully, it will bless (and encourage!) you, too.

Heavy

Oh, heavy heart,
Would that I could pluck you from my chest
And carry you in a bucket
Until such time
As equilibrium is restored.

RIP Tiffany Opal Winkler
2011-2011,
6 lb, 9 oz
20 in.

We longed for your company. We mourn at your passing. We wonder at what may have been.

FB Food for Thought: On Being Bullied (and Pregnancy Update)

Recently, one of my FB friends posted that his son is being bullied by a kid that had recently been a friend. For whatever reason, this other dude had turncoated and was now turning all of their other friends against him. My heart immediately went out to this boy. See, I’ve never met him, but I have been him. I have walked in his shoes.

It was hell.

It was a daily emotional nightmare. It was looking at the kids around me, people I’d done nothing to, knowing that at any moment any of them could lash out to intentionally hurt me, thus causing laughter among the other kids and making the hurt cut deeper.

But anyway…back to present day. As this is something I have walked through, I wanted to offer encouragement to both the parent and the kid. And, as this is likely more common than not, I wanted to share these thoughts with you in case you should ever need to refer back to them. (Names have been changed. Here ‘Bob’ is the dad and ‘Doug’ is the son.)

I’ve totally been there, Bob. I know that it’s hard, but on the other side of it, he will have a compassion for the hurting and the outcast that he never would have had before this. Love him, support him, encourage him to take the higher road and show grace to his frienemies. (Not that I’m saying to chase after them! They’ve shown that they’re not safe people to talk to/be around.) 
Reinforce that his worth does not come from his peers but from who he is and what *he* does. Encourage him to journal – it really helped me through the three and a half years (/sigh) that I was friendless. Also…realize that there’s only so much you, as a parent can do. I was 9 when it started. I had really bad acne and went to a very small school. My parents would tell me that I was beautiful in an attempt to counteract what my classmates were doing to me, but I felt that, as my parents, they were obligated to do that. If you can talk to some of the other adults in his life and get them on board with encouraging as well, it may help more than you trying to solo. I’m sorry he’s going through this. There is life on the other side, though. 

♥ to you, Doug! I made it – you can, too, dude. You are the bigger man and this test of your character is going to show it. Keep the end goal in sight (survival) and pour yourself into your goals and pursuit of the things you love. Be the very best hockey player you can be. Study like there’s no tomorrow. High school is a place where you will meet new people and make new friends. You can reinvent yourself there – the same goes for college. Hold on, better times are coming! /hug
Also…try to keep your parents in the loop as to where you are – even if you can’t talk about it, try to write a letter to them every now and then. I lashed out against mine because I was hurting and didn’t know what else to do. It made a hard time harder and made a tense place out of our house – what should have been a safe place. I’ll be praying for you.

There is life on the other side of being bullied.

Yes, my self-esteem was trashed for a (long) while. Yes, it took ages to be able to trust people again. (And I’m still a work in progress on both of these.) It didn’t stop me from participating in the high school drama club and speech team. It didn’t stop me from getting a four-year academic scholarship to a university. It didn’t stop me from finding and marrying a godly man who loves me and gently works with me on the previously mentioned issues. Most importantly, it didn’t stop me (and may have even partially paved the way) for me to find and fall in love with my God.

I’m not glad that this was a part of my life. I’d rather it not have been. Still, I’m going to stick with the Joseph of the Hebrew Torah and Christian Old Testament and say that from what was meant for evil – God turned to the good. (Gen. 50:20) He’s pretty amazing like that.  :)

Have you ever encounter/participated in bullying? Have you ever talked about it with anyone or let God heal you of your brokenness? 

 

Pregnancy Update: I am now 14 weeks along. This last Thursday, I had a bit of a fright when I started cramping. While the cramps were not as severe as when I went into pre-term labor with Baby #3, it was still enough to be alarming. Thankfully, a dear lady who frequently helps me with the children was able to come over and play with them while I rested. The spontaneous doctor’s visit showed nothing visibly wrong and baby has a heartbeat of 150. The cramps eased up as I rested and guzzled water. It happened again on Friday, but Grammy came over and helped me through that episode. Prayer is both requested and appreciated.

One Last Thing: Before I sign off, Keeper of the Home is starting a six week Meal Planning Challenge! I’m excited about this as I know the peace that having an executable plan produces as well as the chaos that ensues when you’re (I’m!) trying to figure out what to make for dinner at 5:30 (“Um…we’re having PBJs again! Uh…yay?”) (Although, generally, I go with pizza - we all like it and it’s pretty fast, too.) Let’s get the (meal planning) party started, shall we?

Our Baby Story

Recently, one of our associate pastors came to us and asked us to make an audio recording of our story. He was getting ready to do a sermon series on miracles and he was wanting some local examples. Here’s the transcript:

“In 1997, a doctor told me that I had a uterine anomaly that would most likely prevent me from having children. I might be able to get pregnant, but I would have miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage. If, by some miracle I did not miscarry, then I would have to be on bedrest for up to six months to safeguard the life of my child. Heartbroken, I took away from that meeting the “fact” that I could not have children. I was 19.

When I was 23, I entered into a courtship with Nathan B——. I remember telling him that he might want to find someone else to marry if he wanted children. I remember asking him how he felt about adoption. I remember that he smiled at me and said that we’d jump that bridge when we came to it. We were married the following June.

About three years later, we were ready to jump into parenthood. We knew what we’d been told. We knew that the cards were seemingly stacked against us. But – we also knew that God was bigger than any diagnosis and that he could reshuffle the deck.

We also knew that the Bible was full of women who had had miracle babies. Sarah had Isaac, Rachel had Joseph and Hannah had Samuel. If he did it for them, he could do it for us.

And so, it was with great rejoicing that we discovered I was pregnant in the spring of 2005. And it was with great sorrow that we discovered I had miscarried about three months later. There had been no signs, no symptoms that anything was amiss. We felt the doctor’s predictions hitting home and had to really exercise our faith that this was not going to be our reality – of seeing life flicker and then dwindle again and again.

Seven months later, we were pregnant once more. It was a day by day walk of faith, and I frequently wavered with “what ifs”. Thankfully, our God is faithful. When I was weak, he showed his strength. He used our church family as a life boat for me – people were praying for me and our child, for grace to abound to us, for a safe, healthy full-term pregnancy. And with each day that went by, my faith grew stronger and my miracle baby grew more sure.

Cassandra Joy was born in October, 2006.

Seventeen months later, Sarah Rose was born in March, 2008.

Twenty-two months later, Raphael Anthony was born in December of 2009.

And, Baby B—— #4 will be making the world a better place in March of 2012.

A miracle and a baby have a great deal in common. The seed of faith and the seed of man are both planted, one in a heart and one in a womb. Both are meant to be nourished and nurtured until it’s time to break forth to the glory of God. Sometimes, by the way we respond or react, we can uproot that seed and nullify what God would do in, through and for us. Don’t be the person who almost had a miracle.”

It is my hope and prayer that this provides encouragement to those of you in the midst of rough times.

¹³ May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  (Romans 15:13, NIV)

Blessings,

Jess

 

 

Who knew the squirrels liked fish?

Gone Fishin'

So…we’re coming into the house from a grocery trip. One of the girls dropped her snack cup.

/sigh  “I’ll get it later.”

Then, while the kids are eating lunch, I look out the window and see that a local fisherman beat me to it. 

/smile

May your day be as filled with unexpected smiles and blessings.