Tag Archives: love

To my friend, you know who you are

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I don’t have any wise answers.

I don’t know what the outcome will be.

I do know how it feels like a surprise punch in the gut to receive bad news, or at least news we hoped would be different

I don’t plan on quoting lots of Scriptures to you.

I don’t plan on downplaying your emotions.

I do plan on standing with you and hopefully bolstering your strength.

Take my hand, we can even link arms like when we were kids and played Red Rover,

“Red rover, red rover, hey cancer come over

We’re ready for you

Me and my friend here

The one who’s not alone

In fact, if you look on the other side of her you’ll see some of our other friends linking up too, our line stretching and growing

In fact, if you look more closely you’ll see Jesus down there on the end.  He’s our anchor.

You’ll have a hard time knocking us over or breaking through.

There’s too much love on our side, God-given peace and strength you can’t understand or explain.  You might as well give up and go home.”

To the enemy, with the overwhelming love and tenacity building in my heart I almost feel I could take you on myself

To my friend, you know who you are

If you get tired or sad or afraid lean on me as I lean on Jesus.

Look!  There’s hope ahead.  Healing in ways only God can dream up and bestow.  Love and faith, freedom from fear.  Laughter and dare we say…joy.

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, can tear you away from God’s fiercely faithful and loving embrace.

Rest in that truth tonight, my sweet friend.  I asked God if every thought of you could be considered a prayer and He said “sure.”

I love you.

Shift

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It’s happened before, numerous times actually.  God shifts my gaze from myself and my so-called problems to Him.  Unfortunately, I seem to gradually rotate back to my old way of thinking and often need Him to turn me around again and again, back where I see only Him.

Last weekend he turned me around by letting me see a special friend who is in the midst of her fight against cancer.  I hadn’t seen her in person since her diagnosis and it moved me more than I expected.  Though she has lost her hair and we both look older, in her beautiful eyes I still saw the real her.  Love flooded through me and then shame for being so caught up and overwhelmed by my “problems.” Continue reading →

Waaaaaa

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I’m reading several books at once and that probably isn’t the best idea for my scatterbrain to retain something valuable from each one.  I started reading “The Me I Want to Be” by John Ortberg (discussing as I progress through with a good friend of mine) and am still reading it.  Then another good friend recommended “Shattered Dreams” by Larry Crabb which is also a really good book.    Toss in my daily Bible reading and, slightly embarrassed to admit, another read through of Eclipse and there are lots of words tumbling around in my head.

I haven’t written for a few days, oddly enough because I felt at a loss for words.  If I could just grab a hold of a few of the ones churning in my mind and put them into some kind of meaningful order to share with you.  Continue reading →

Pops

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On Father’s Day, more than other days, I think of my dad and all He is and has been to me.  I know there are many who don’t have dads at all or have dads that are detached from their lives or dads that hurt them in various ways.  This makes me especially thankful for my daddy.  I call Him Pops. Continue reading →

I think God likes going to the zoo

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Years ago during one of my brother’s visits we bought some modeling clay and, on the back porch, sitting at the fisher-price plastic picnic table, made little animals and creatures with my girls.  It was a lot of fun.  One reason being that the girls, who were really young at the time, were tickled with each little thing we made.  My brother especially enjoyed making his little animals and dinosaurs detailed using toothpicks to draw smiles, poke pupils in eyes, add finishing touches.  We must have played that way for a couple of hours, enjoying giggles and squishing the gooey colorful clay together.  Continue reading →

Loving Mr. Johnson

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I’d seen him working in his yard or heading to his truck, almost always dressed in camo, fishing rod in hand.  He never smiled and barely looked up.  I saw his wife even less often.  A little reclusive, these neighbors of ours.  They were obviously retired.  We had moved in a few months ago and I was looking for an opportunity to say “hi” and extend a neighborly hand of friendship.

One afternoon I saw him out back.  They lived right next door and he was repairing his fence that stood between our two backyards.  I ventured outside, my doggy Sunny following me, and walked over to where he stood with his back to me, hammering away on the old planks of the fence.  Continue reading →

God is love

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Having spent the weekend with a bunch of other pastors’ wives at a retreat, listening to Beth Moore study about God’s love and loving others, love was on my mind more than usual this week.  I learned so much and got plenty of things to ponder out of watching the messages and talking with the other ladies.

One of the things Beth shared that stuck with me is that God’s love doesn’t change with His mood like ours does.  Sometimes the love we show is based on an emotion or feeling, but God IS love.  The love we feel and experience is an expression of who He is at the core, through and through.  We only love because He loved us first.  He cannot NOT love.  What an awesome, mind-boggling thought!  I will never fully understand it.  I have been trying to unlearn for years the idea that I have to perform well for God to really love me and accept the notion that He just loves me.  Why would he do that? Continue reading →

Which makes me think of…

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I’m thankful for airplanes that cross miles in such a short time…which makes me think of
Destinations…which makes me think of
Possibility…which makes me think of
New experiences…which makes me think of
Trying something I’ve never eaten before at a restaurant…which makes me think of
The Japanese Grill we visited last week…which makes me think of
Catching scrambled eggs in my mouth in surprise…which makes me think of
Laughter…which makes me think of
All my wonderful friends…which makes me think of
Community…which makes me think of
God’s family of beautiful, diverse, and varied adopted kids…which makes me think of
Being accepted for who I am by Him…which makes me think of
Love and not just surfacy, shallow affection but the deep, wide, and utterly amazing love of God….which makes me thankful all over again.

Got Grace?

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I made a big mistake at work today.  It hasn’t happened for a while but it was bound to.  I get lots of projects going and something will fall through the cracks of my brain.  There are some pretty wide cracks and gaping holes in there, my brain that is.

To make matters worse, my error affects a friend of mine and he isn’t too keen on the situation.  I don’t blame him.  As I realized what happened I got that awful stomach-twisting, hard to describe nervous feeling go up the back of my back and neck and my heart started pounding a little faster.  Continue reading →