Moving Day!

Today I'm opening a new chapter in my writing and moving to a new online home. This space has served me well, but it is time to move on. I hope that you'll move along with me. I promise my new space is fresher, cleaner and has even more of the good stuff that you've come to expect around this place.


Click on over to join the celebration, enter the giveaway and learn more about the wife, mama, writer and believer that grace is the biggest kind of brave. See you there!

From the Inside Out

A few days ago I got stung by a yellow jacket. It seems we have had a bit of an infestation and they have been sneaking there way into our house through some crack or cranny for weeks. My sting followed a cowardly attack when I unknowingly grabbed the handle of a bag along with the yellow striped perpetrator. If you've ever been stung then you know how the throbbing can last for days. With each pulse of blood in my finger I was reminded of the incident.

Eventually it stopped hurting. In fact I realized just a bit ago it hadn't given me any pain in about a day. The healing was imperceptible but happening even as the throbbing continued.

Isn't that how healing is?

Deep work goes on under the skin and we don't even perceive it. We feel the ache. It can feel like an open wound but somewhere along the lines we wake up and the hurt, though visibly scarred, has become something you can live with.

There are wounds I bare that continue to ache after years and years of living with them. The scars are emotional. They are the wounds inflicted by experience, circumstance and  great loss and at times they have threatened to cripple me entirely.

Visit me over at Velvet Ashes today to read the rest of my story of healing.

How have others been a part of your healing? How have you entered into another's pain to bring the healing of Christ?

Photo Credit: Fiona McAllister Photography via Compfight cc

The End of The Chase {Really Just the Beginning}

I'm tired ya'll. 

It's a miracle that I've made it 26 out of the 31 days with this little writing experiment. If you know me then you know planning isn't my strong suit. I would love to be someone who writes a dozen posts ahead of time, but if I have two posts pre-written for the next week I feel pretty much golden.

The tiredness isn't from writing 31 days although admittedly I am ready to write some other things and to have a day or two in between posts to catch my breath and do other things here on the internets.

This month has been a fight for joy amidst busyness and doing all.the.things. you don't want to do at once. We're under threat of snow today. I'm not exactly crazy about the idea on November 1st, but I need the stillness that winter brings. I need the dormancy of winter and contemplation to reignite my bones for the chase. 

Running makes you tired. The pursuit of God can energize us and wear us thin all at once. He promised in this world we would have trouble, but then He sweetly leans in and tells us to take heart because He's got this thing. 

He's got this. We're His and this chase isn't going to break us.

 We will stumble. We will fall. Keep moving forward. Keep embracing the light in the every day and searching it out in the darkness.

I wish I could tie this series up with a nice little bow, but my own light chasing journey is messy and real. Running with fleetness of heart and foot is exhausting and exhilarating and my two left feet trip me up more times than not. Because at the end of the day it seems to be a dance more than a chase and His lead is gentle in all the rough worn places of my following.

At the end of it all I know that I need Jesus, I need others and I need to believe in the darkness that His Light is unfailing faithful to burst through.

{Thanks for walking with me these last 31 days. This next month I have a new site going up, new surprises and announcements about where I am going and the community I want to continue building. So let's keep chasing light together, ok?}

When You Hit the Wall and There Is No Runner's High

I hate the burn in my lungs from running. I've been told a million times you can push past and a runner's high is second to none, but me? I'd rather dance it out or do ANYTHING other than run.

Chalk it up to my small stature and lung capacity. Running has never been my thing. I've tried and I'll keep trying, but I'm doubtful that I'll be running a marathon...well...ever.

Running takes determination and endurance. It requires motivation and lazy people need not apply.

There will be miles that you don't feel like continuing on and you'll want to stop. My friends who run tell me if you push through and believe you can do it  you catch a second wind. They tell me it isn't near the finish line that you breach exhaustion. No, it's right in the arduous middle.

Ya'll, I hit a wall yesterday in the chase.

October has been looney tunes for my family. A month plus of engineering exam studying for my husband, constant travel for his job, two weekend mission's conferences, his exam and my trip to Allume has made for an overflowing month. October with it's glow usually finds me reveling in it's beauty, but I've wished again and again for it to pass right on into the past this year.

Yesterday was the day that broke my back...actually it was my knee. I could see the light. My husband was headed home from his final trip of the month. I was headed to the gym with only the lightest morning sickness and then something in my knee popped- like the bad kind of pop where you know nothing good can come of the next few steps.

It seems that my loosened pregnancy joints caused me to strain the muscle that connects my thigh to my knee. Oh goodie. Cue the self pity as I try and hobble around behind my almost three year old. I'm sad to say that little injury drained all the light right out of my day. I'm ashamed at how easily I stumble into the darkness. 

The writer of Hebrews called us all out to run the race before us with endurance. I gasp for air at the first signs of difficulty. Increase the grade of my chase and I'm quick to complain of the difficulty. 

My knee injury has been a forced slow down in my life. I sat in the waiting room at the doctor's office today and read the words of James over and over as he reminded me to consider the trials joy because they are making me more like Jesus. I needed to tune my heart back to His voice. I needed the Spirit to re-energize me in the chase.

Don't be confused because chasing light isn't about a try hard brand of Christianity. It's about leaning hard into the Spirit when we feel too weak to continue on. It's about believing that our second wind in our weakness is the very Spirit of the living God alive inside of us.

After all isn't that what this chasing light thing is all about? 

God, Jesus, Creator of light, the Spirit that fills us wants us to live in the light ever becoming more like our brother and Savior Christ. I will stumble and my lungs will blaze hot with the effort at times. I will want to stop and I might even momentarily take a knee as I wonder if I can make it.

I am confident that the Spirit will meet me there in my dark moments of wondering and push me forward in my chase.

Tell me about your month of light chasing. Where has it taken you? 

Let Me Have a Sip of That: A Chasing Light Love Story

It was nine years ago today when I slipped my hand through my brother's arm and walked down the aisle toward my husband-to-be. One of those perfect autumn days where the colors blaze the breeze blows warm and the possibilities seem endless.

The other night he reminded me of the life we've lived in these short nine years. We've had more adventure in our few years then some have in their whole lifetime.

He is the only man who I want to share my food with. Scratch that. He's the only human being that I am remotely willing to share my food with. {I have a problem} Save our children who take their portion of mama's food by force- something I'm still growing accustomed too.

He is always the more generous one. He is the first to give and the one to slide his drink across the table for me when I ordered water. Because he knows I'm going to ask for a sip of sweet tea.

We've crossed oceans and almost been homeless and wondered about money and how we would make it. We've found the humor in most of it and the broken beauty in the rest and we've believed in a God of redemption together.

Our lives have changed. Our roles have changed. He's the silliest Daddy and I don't know if he fully knows how much that brown-eyed little look-alike girl of his loves him. I know I love him more for all of his love for her that I get to front row seat to watch. It heals me in all the father-less places.

And to think it all began with a walk to see a pig...yes, a pig. We walked to see how the Christmas pig was fattening up and then I ran away from him. But God wouldn't let me run too far from this brown-eyed boy and a year later we were married.

He is the smartest, wisest, funniest, bravest man I know.

My life has been brought closer to the Light by His lead. 

I think Light chasing might be the best part of our marriage. I'm continually amazed at the pull he has on me. He can find me where I am in my fear and shrinking and he points me again and again to truth. He is a live piece of Jesus that puts my life in perspective again and again. 

I have discovered it is infinitely better to chase light together. 

Yes, it gets messy. There are dark days when you'd rather roll over and turn out the light in silence then roll to the middle and invite the Light of God into the mess that is your marriage. We've learned to navigate the darkness always steering toward the Light. I'm glad those dark days have been far outnumbered by the days bursting with Light. That is God at work.

When my lungs have burned from the effort to find God in the cracks of life he has pointed and pushed and believed with me that God has not abandoned us. 

I don't have a grand point. I'm grateful, humbled and oh so happy the bearded man who makes my life is coming home today from his travels. I could have spent the last nine years a thousand different ways, but I'm glad that I've spent each one with him. There's no one I'd rather chase light alongside. 

We're Each Others Light

She sits alone in a darkened room. The light barely peeking through the window is just much for her eyes, her heart. She turns away and burrows into heavy pillows and blankets and buries the pain, hurt and the exhaustion. She shivers cold in the dark of it all because the heat of blankets can't warm the coldness of a body, a soul living far from the Light.

We've all had moments as this woman. Some of us have had more moments and more struggles with depression and darkness wrestling than others. There is no place so dark that the Light, the first Light that was called from the darkness, can't find a way in. We are the way in.

Me and You. Sisters.

We are the conduit to get Light into the darkness of those around us.

Darkness isolates and bullies and we have to be the voices, the candle holders, the lamp lighters that drive away the dark for each other.  We can find each other in blackened through and through places.

Miscarriage, babes who won't sleep through the night, disease wrecking a body, a marriage on the cliff's edge, are all places that we can find each other slipping into the darkness.

I need my sisters. I need to be seen by them. I need them to know when I am stumbling toward the darkness. I desperately long for them to speak truth and invite the Light into my life.

There are times that I don't want the Light. It's the same feeling you get when your eyes have grown accustomed to the dimness and a light is suddenly turned on. You shrink back. You long for the darkness because the light requires too much of you.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:5

I've experienced the pull of those in the Light. They call me out. They wrap me up in truth and remind me that the Light is warmth and peace. The Light is my greatest need.

How have you been drawn into the Light by others?

Why We Might be Looking too Low {Day 27}

I've been chasing light quietly away from my computer. I was at the Allume conference over the weekend and I was filled and wrung dry at the same time.

In another universe I would have been way ahead on the 31 Days posts, but in this universe? The one I live and breathe and potty train a toddler in? It just wasn't happening.

I'm back at home in my glorious ordinary with dishes stacked high, a wheezing washing machine and a new scented candle to cover up that smell I can't seem to track down.

This is my life and the messy middle of where I chase light. 

I was inspired this past weekend by something one of the Allume keynote speakers said. Confession: I was super tired in the evenings while at the conference. Chalk it up to not enough caffeine and a wee baby growing in my belly (hadn't you heard?) but it was all I could do to track along with the evening speakers.

As I zoned in and out of consciousness at Timothy Willard's keynote I managed to catch one thing. I'm constantly looking for God to show up right in front of me in my plain old everyday. I think that is good. I think He is very present. However, Tim asked us to allow our gaze to be drawn upwards.

Some days those dishes, and my friends illness, and the rattle in the front end of the car are all a bit much. If we aren't remembering, yes God is with us in all of the details, but He is also over all of them.

God is gloriously high above our dirt stained earth problems. 

We are an entertainment obsessed culture. We want to be awed, but our threshold for being awed has increased until it is almost entirely out of reach. God wants us to be awed by Him. The One who carved with His finger the canyons and coaxed the mountains to rise up into the sky. He calls us beloved and longs for us to stare at Him with the wonder of it all.

Light offends. Stare into the sun and you will be blinded.

I wonder what a steady gaze above to the truth of our God, mighty to save yet gentle to stoop, would do for our everyday.

"I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my strength come?" Psalm 121:1

If we could see Him with us in all and arching His love over all then maybe we would start walking and living in a way that pours itself out from the overflow of who He is and not our limited humanness.

Do you see God over all the little in your life? Tell me your story of being in awe of God.