I am texting this post from my phone, in part to test this amazing blogg feature, but also to clear my head in a fleeting and rare spare moment alone.

I am without my much beloved spell check so please forgive me now that my spelling secret is out.

Last week we celebrated the birthday of our first baby, now 11 and on the cusp of becoming a young man. throughout the day I would catch glimpses of him, standing nearly as tall as me. Looking out for his brother, 7 years his junior. Goofing around and laughing with his very best friend, his sister. I would watch him and smile, overwhelmed at the blessing of having been entrusted with this amazing person, of filling his life with the opportunity to know and serve God.

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Where to even begin...

I have come to realize what a vital part of my life and my relationship with God sitting at this desk and pouring out my heart through this keyboard really is.

Every time I sit to write I hope that I am submitting something good. Something that goes out and adds to the cyber world. I don't expect it to be profound or life changing...not every post...but I do hope it will be something "for good".

Maybe that is why I have been away so long?

This last season in my life has been a little dry. Circumstances and my attitude towards them have put me in a mood to be less than enthusiastic about writing, or I have been just plain tired.

Through it all though, is the constant that gives my very breath meaning.

My God.

While life has presented many obstacles lately, God remains who He is.

My son asked me about the act of worship the other day, in a way only an innocent and inquisitive child, nearing his teen years, can why we worship God. Pointing out that "Yeah, Jesus died and everything but why do we worship?"

I was reminded again of the awesome blessing of being a parent, being compelled to understand things enough to explain them is just one.

For this question I had the ready answer, the answer that can make this whole journey of faith so uncomfortable for some, but provides freedom beyond measure.

"We worship Him because He is God. He is the creator of every atom and every mountain. We worship Him because he created us and gives us life. We worship Him because He is beyond our imagination. If He never blessed us, if He didn't have relationships with us, if He just sat in heaven...He would be worthy of our worship. But He does bless us, and He does have relationship with us, and He doesn't just sit in heaven...He is intimately involved with us. So that is why we worship."

Over the last few years, as my life circumstances cause me trouble, or heartache, or breed questions I have come to understand that all of that is irrelevant if I trust in who God is. If I am willing to see how much bigger than me and what I comprehend...and if I know in the fiber of my soul and am willing to submit to his ultimate goodness and wisdom...then I can keep moving in this life. In the midst of hurt, suffering, confusion...God is still God and ultimately beyond me and wants more for me than I can ever imagine.

Where did I go?

Has it really been over a month since I posted? That's crazy. I have been posting deals over at my other blog and just kind of left this one to sit.

I guess that's the way life flows sometimes. It's not that I haven't had blog worthy things, I've just been really tired. I wish i could say it was because I was so active or pregnant or something...but the truth is that sometimes things are really hard and I just grow weary.

Most of the weariness culminated in me sitting on the edge of the tub in my bathroom this weekend crying for 20 minutes and not really even knowing why.

That's not entirely true, the tears had sprung up from a phone call with my parents. My kids were having their very first, all three kids, sleepover Saturday with my mom and dad. My dad is not exactly a "kid guy" but my mom really wanted this... and somewhere in him my dad was looking forward to it too. Well, and I will spare you all the gorey details, my dad took the kids on a trail walk and...well... lost the two oldest. They ran ahead, he lost sight, they got turned around. They were separated and lost. My youngest, just 3, was crying for his brother and sister. Thankfully the older kids asked a grown-up they saw outside for help and everything worked out safely.

My dad did the "I was so scared" and lost his temper in a big way, and that has caused more harm to his relationship with the kids than the getting lost part. I think they are all three feeling around to find a way back to what was, even if what was wasn't cuddly it was comfortable for everyone.

So even though I only found out after the fact and the whole event was maybe a half hour, it just opened up all the stuff that has been swirling around and thus the bathroom crying fit.

I am so grateful that God has given me the husband I have because he guided me through my little breakdown and back into the arms of Jesus...with reminders of who God is, and His deep deep love for me, personally.

So with my spiritual glasses firmly in place I have navigated the waters of change and growth much better the last few days.

Just this morning I was able to see how beautifully God moves in trying situations. My mother is ill and has been for a while...she doesn't share all the details or the prognosis with me often but her time with us, if God doesn't intervene, will be cut short and she likely won't see my youngest in his teens. This breaks my heart more than even I realize as I can't take that reality off the shelf and look at it to long.

She has taken to borrowing my kids to help her with her bi-weekly shopping trips. It's an inconvenience and disrupts our school schedule since it's rarely the same day or time, but my kids are making memories with her and she is getting time she needs with them. None of this would be possible if God had not so clearly led me to homeschool the kids.

I doubt this is the only reason, but I cherish it none the less. Knowing God cares so much for each of them that even in this, he's given us a rainbow of hope and peace.

Just a quick announcement...

Since all of my friends are always supportive of my efforts...and since my shop thrives on word of mouth... I wanted to let everyone know I updated my etsy shop with lots of wonderful new products today (and have more coming in the next week!)

I am so excited about the new goodies...

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and a special thanks to Stacee Lianna for all the amazing pictures!

No cool picture...

So, the pain has passed but I still can not hear out of my right ear. I alternate between wanting to just wait it out, feeling sort of crazy because everything is a struggle to hear and I can't quite triangulate where the phone might be when it rings, and being a little concerned something might be wrong.

I have so many things I want to write about, even a few notes I actually jotted down in the silence.

But tonight I'm just gonna be real and honest and exposed. Well, as exposed as I can be.

I have a lot of really big stuff going on in my heart, in my head, and in my world. And I am struggling to make sense of it all, let God have dominion over it all, and allowing God to move in me. Changing my world view to match His.

Anyone who's ever been to church more than a handful of times has probably heard of, or heard preached, 1 Corinthians 13...The Love Chapter.

¹ If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. ³ If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. ⁶ It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. ⁷ Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

⁸ Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! ⁹ Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! ¹⁰ But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. ¹² Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

¹³ Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

Even typing it out here makes me want to groan with all the frustration in me. In every way I want to be someone who shows the love that God has shown me. Pure, Redeeming, Unwavering.

I want to give a love that comes without strings. I want desperately to endure, hope, and persevere.

I just don't always know how. How do you keep from being a doormat and chasing after relationships that don't exist on both sides...and still demonstrate this kind of love?

When your head steps in and reminds you to guard your heart?

Even now, as I type these words and come before My Great God, I am reminded that these issues are not new... they go as far back as Philipi.

^{Philippians 4
2} Now I appeal to Euodia and Syntyche. Please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement. ³ And I ask you, my true partner,to help these two women, for they worked hard with me in telling others the Good News. They worked along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are written in the Book of Life.

⁴ Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! ⁵ Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon.

⁶ Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. ⁷ Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

And still I don't know how this looks. What does this scripture look like with legs and a heart? Yet my heart is heavy at knowing it doesn't look like me.

I want to reflect these words, but I don't know how.

So I am here, crying out to God and admitting my own weakness and folly at knowing I am not reflecting him, yet wanting to with all that I am.

Please God, show me to love how you would love...

Delay...

Blogruary fun is temporarily on hold until the searing pain from a rather serious (feeling) ear infection abates...

Bullrides, birthdays, and my baby boy

Tonight, sitting around a table of friends, laughing and sharing in birthday celebration, I couldn't help but reflect on the stark contrast of the moments before I left my house.

My son, just on the cusp of middle school, is starting to see some things in people that his tender heart just can't understand. It seems like for most kids the ideas and activities of social manipulation come all too easy, but not my boy.

I remember his struggle to understand how someone could say they weren't friends anymore and not mean it. He believed that at that moment the relationship would be severed.

It seems that he is once again learning the nuances in speech and action of relationship, and while it hurts my heart to see him navigate these waters, and get hurt along the way, I grow increasingly impressed at the young man he is.

I see a boy who would give so much to people around him, who doesn't choose friends based on "coolness" or age or toys...just people he enjoys spending time with, be they older or younger. I see a boy who longs for responsibility and hungers to care for others. A boy who would exhaust himself jumping up and down to bring a giggle to a small baby. Who wonders how he can help a home for children recently homeless, asking if he can give them his beloved stuffed animal.

I remember him anxious to read stories to his younger brother, the one who likes to just lay on him because he's a cozy big brother.

I am ever grateful that God blessed me with the kids he did. I wouldn't trade them for the world. Even on days where I long for just a little more time to myself, and maybe an uninterrupted potty break, I am blessed that it is these three knocking on the door.