All tagged God
I noticed the silent distress in her dark brown eyes as soon as she walked into the room. She rushed by in a hurry to get to her destination, bright smile flashing. I followed her, gave her a minute, and as she spun around, I inquired, “Are you doing okay?”
It was my first known pregnancy. The first time I had seen a doctor to discuss this new life inside of me. I was excited and nervous. David and I had been married for six months when I learned I was pregnant. I had stopped taking birth control three months previously and took pregnancy tests religiously for the next three months.
I'm struggling with how to start this blog post. Usually, I have all the words, but tonight none of them seem to articulate the thoughts and feelings I have inside of me regarding my first mission trip outside of the country.
While in the car scanning the stations, a radio announcer caught my attention with an interview he was conducting with an up and coming country musician. The musician sounded charming, so I stopped the scan and listened to what was being said. It was amusing and fun.
After the brief interview, the station returned to its regularly scheduled programming which involved an upbeat song. Whoa! Thirty seconds in, and I was glad my kids weren't in the car with me. I immediately changed the channel.
My seven year old said he had something to show me. He was sitting at the table with a smooth, blank sheet of paper. He said, "See this paper. When someone says something hurtful to you," he bends the corner of the paper, "it looks like this. Crinkled." He went on, his demeanor serious, instructional, "And then the next person hurts you," he begins to wad up the paper, "and it does this to you." He repeated this several times until the paper was a legitimate ball of crinkled mess.
This week has been one of those weeks you don’t want to repeat. It seemed as though one problem stacked against another problem forming an impermeable wall of stress and despair.
As I type these words, I think to myself, "What a cliché topic." I get tired of it, quite frankly, but my feelings about it doesn’t make it go away.
Have you ever had a time in your life when you've asked, "God, if you want me to be successful, why is it so hard?
This week, David and I have gotten one piece of bad news after another creating a string of frustration and disheartened demeanors.
It was happening. I could feel all of the physical symptoms surge through my body. It had been quite some time since the last time this had happened. Probably six months or so ago. But it was definitely happening.
"Well, here I go again," I thought to myself as I boarded a tiny eight passenger plane heading home. "I can do this. I'm going to be fine."
Have you ever had someone hurt you deeply? I have. Have you ever had a hard time forgiving someone even though you knew you had to do so? I have.
When someone hurts us, it can be hard to forgive and even harder to forget. What if the person who hurt us made a mistake and has legitimately changed? Do you still hold the wrong they did to you over their heads?
My oldest is very creative, but he wasn't feeling it lately. For three days, he would say to me, "I don't feel creative." It was making him sad.
We had a talk about our identity not coming from what we could do, and we talked about not letting our emotions control us. Feelings can't always be trusted. A hard lesson to learn for some.
I haven't been able to stop thinking about a situation I witnessed in a parking lot. I was loading things into my car and heard a woman yelling. At first, I thought she was yelling at someone in another car. And maybe she was, but then, she was DEFINITELY screaming, in the parking lot, at her teenage daughter, I assumed.
Recently, I was talking to a well respected lady in my community. We were both laminating over how we had both, in different ways, been attacked by people. We both said, "Me, too," a lot as we shared our hearts about how it feels to be hunkered down behind a shield while arrows of lies were flung toward us full throttle.
It can be a paralyzing, anxiety ridden day, month or season of life.
I have been a bit on the weepy side lately. Maybe it's because I am coming up on the one year anniversary of my Dad's death, maybe it's because my ten year old is getting closer to the teenager years with each passing day, or maybe it's because of all the new bouncing babies that are popping up continuously on my Facebook timeline. Yes, I am that girl that watches "A Baby Story," doesn't know the family but cries uncontrollably. Babies that are joining us on our earthly journey always get me right in the tear duct.
My Dad is the only person I have ever watched die. Such a painful and fresh wound on my heart. I remember one of his final nights of full awareness. The room was dark and quiet. My Momma, brother and I gathered around his bed as he called us in closer. My Dad is the only person I have ever watched die. Such a painful and fresh wound on my heart. I remember one of his final nights of full awareness. The room was dark and quiet. My Momma, brother and I gathered around his bed as he called us in closer.
Recently, I traveled out of town to North Carolina to attend a conference. After the conference was over and my bags were packed, I caught a cab to the airport. Since I am a paranoid planner, I arrived at the airport the suggested two hours ahead of time to make sure I smoothly maneuvered my way through security and found my gate.
I walked along the edges of the beach just enough for the water to tickle my toes when I spotted her. I was watching my own children splash in the waves. My eyes darted back to her as she elegantly walked into the water, not seeming to have a care in the world, blond curls blowing in the wind.
One of the first meaningful things I learned about my husband when I met him was that he had struggled with a severe anger problem earlier in his life. He told me stories of how angry he would get, sometimes knocking holes in walls.
