What Rest Means Right Now

I climb into bed with her somewhere around midnight because when we moved into this already furnished house we didn't realize we were giving her the most comfortable bed in the house. My lower back and legs ache and I've moved between bed, couch and floor till I'm weary of trying to sleep.

She stirs and stretches her limbs long on the quilt-top and under a zoo of stuffed animals. I catch a whiff of her blond curls and my chest aches. I breathe in the scent until another molecule of air can't squeeze into my lungs, desperate to take it all in. It's that all to familiar feeling these days. I hear it from everyone about how these moments will flee all to fast and I wonder if my own mama knew it.

Sometimes it feels like God is throwing up cosmic billboards so that you can get His message.

I tried my best to come up with a witty list of interesting things about me to go along with my 30th Birthday {Some ways to send Birthday wishes to me at the end of this post so read on!}, but all I could think about is the way I am feeling wooed away from the whirring of busyness in all the cracks and crevices of my life and into a place of quiet rest and re-envisioning life. I'm feeling wooed by the rhythm of making a home, curating a life to the slow pace of intentionality and Jesus following.

The other day Millie kept saying to me “Mama, please, come back.” I gazed down at her perplexed. I spend nearly every waking hour with this tiny human most of which is one on one all up in my face interaction. The only thing that I could guess is that she had a bad dream that had planted a seed of worry in her heart. But her words haunted me in the worst sort of way. I want to be present to my life in every way. 

To be honest it feels a bit strange that her words would bother me because on the outside I’m not someone who bounces from meeting to meeting and has a crazy list of must-dos. My daily life is not packed to the gills with places to be and people to see. I am intentional, but the road to busyness is paved with good intentions and I think that my day to day can be refined for maximum joy.  

My inner life feels cluttered and stretched and I can see how it is stealing from me instead of giving to me.

Because at the end of the day is all of my doing really getting me where I want to go?

What I’ve slowly recognized is a tendency to float along hoping the things rooted deep in my heart will happen on their own. I’ve found that those things don’t happen on their own {duh}, at least not in the way that I want them to, and as the list of would’ve, could’ve, should’ves mounts so does my anxiety as I drown beneath my list of unfinished projects, unfulfilled hopes and wasted time.

I’ve spent time over the last few weeks mulling over my commitments and what I believe God is calling me to focus on in this season of my life. I’ve detected a few recurring priorities:

• Pursuing God with intensity and passion.
• Purposefully investing in my marriage.
• Focusing my time and attention as a mother so I don't miss a thing. 
• Nurturing and creating a home that reflects my family’s values, mission and personality.
• Managing my time well.
• Doing quality work for those I’ve already committed my talents and skills to.
• Intentionally building community with other women.
• Integrating service to others into the natural flow of my daily life.
• Taking care of myself through good health habits; mind, body and spirit.
• Refining and pursuing the gift of writing that God has given me.
• Consciously limiting my commitments to what is already on my plate.

I’m amazed at how do-able this list feels to me. I read over it and instead of seeing the million things I have to do I see a manageable list of life-giving priorities. I don’t see what I have to do I see what I get to do as a part of living a life that embraces Christ in every nook and cranny.  I’m marking every other to-do off the list that doesn’t help me meet the ends listed above.

It’s as simple as that.



I’m taking a blog break. Don’t worry it's just for the summer and I’ll still have things to share here in this space. For the month of June I’ll be sharing {with my friend Heidi joining in} about the story God is writing on my heart about truly embracing rest.

I’m also going to make a point to use this space over the summer months to tell others stories. I love to hear from my readers and would love to share a story or two from your life in this space.

ATTENTION READERS: I WANT YOUR STORY! 

Are you adopting? Do you have a special needs kiddo who has turned your life upside down and rearranged your heart? Are you struggling with infertility? Are you a young single woman setting out on an adventure of ruthless trust in Jesus? Have you battled fear, loss, disease and found your way to more deeply knowing Jesus than you ever imagined? Are you walking a path few have cleared before you and you’re uncertain where it is going? Yeah, me too.

I want your story to fill the space between these online walls while I take a rest. Send me an email at handmedowngrace(at)gmail(dot)com

I’m not breaking up with social media so look for signs of life on my Facebook page and on the twitter. Following me on FB and twitter will allow you to join me as I share archived posts that are still ringing true in my heart. I’ll also be curating life through instagram so please join me this summer as I snap shots of what it looks like to find rest in the messy middle of my everyday.

One of the things I’ll be finding my way back to is writing for the sake of writing. I’m a writer not a blogger at heart. In the blog world of write now, publish now I need to sit back and mull over some words before I share them. I plan to pick back up my online pen in September (or sooner if the words find their way here).

I was telling my husband the other day that I fumble over my words when someone tells me how much my writing means to them face to face. I don’t know where to look and I get all nervous. I’m humbled right down to the earth that ya’ll read my scribbles and love me still. I hope that you’ll stick with me as God continues to write my story even in the stillness. 

It’s a scary leap to disregard the million of things that the publishing world tells you to do in order to get to where you want to go. What I think I’m learning is that I’m going to get to where God wants me to go by drawing close to Him. 

Want to wish me a "Happy Birthday"? 

Read on...

I have a sweet young mama friend who is battling cancer with a bleak prognosis. Ya'll this woman has a huge heart and even bigger faith and it is amazing to see so many coming around her family to love on them and cheer them on in the fight. She's a mama of two wee ones like so many of us. Do something amazing for her family and for my heart, and go over the the Team Rachel Facebook page and leave a prayer or encouraging word. That would make my Birthday VERY Happy.

You could also head on over to the Mercy House Kenya Shop and pick up something pretty for yourself. It is no secret how much I adore the ministry that is happening through Mercy House. Go be a small part of it and grab a piece of beauty from their shop. 

Now it's time for cake. {Chocolate of course}

My Mess, His Mosaic

I'm so very late to the Five Minute Friday party this week. Late. Here I am to say "Yes" to five minutes of brave writing.

This week we're celebrating the release of Kristen Welch's book Rhinestone Jesus: Saying Yes to God When Sparkly Safe Faith Is No Longer Enough. She has a crazy {amazing} belief that we can say "yes" to God even if our life isn't neat and tidy and she dares us to believe that with her.

On Monday I'll have a "Yes" in my mess post and a giveaway of a copy of the book, but for now I'm joining with Lisa-Jo and the rest of the gang for 5 minutes on "Mess"

We're about to move twice in a month. My whole week has revolved around moving boxes and I'm bone tired from it all. It's a mess. A catastrophe of life exploded between two houses.

This is a juggling act of storage units and a temporary house and a million other questions about purpose and place.  And while everyone else is doing the day to day I feel like I am struggling to get from one day to the next with my sanity intact.

I feel buried under boxes and to-dos and should-dos. The load weighs heavy but I've not shouldered it alone. There has been this community of courageous Jesus lovers that have shown up around me. They have watched the wee-girl and walked a lap or two in around the park and this spinning wheel of life just to remind me that God is here with me in my mess.

It's here in the mess that I know my need most.

I know that in no area of my life can I go it alone. 

So on a Friday morning when the Millie has woken up at the crack of dawn because of the light peaking through the windows of her new {for now} room I can cup my coffee and rest. It will all get done. The boxes will stay packed for now and we'll move again in a month.

These questions will be answered and we'll drop pebbles behind us to point to God's faithfulness. It isn't really a mess to God. It's a mosaic. A mosaic He is piecing it together in the most beautiful way.

There isn't a magic eraser big enough, but there is a God bigger than.

It's messy and it might not ever be, but we'll clear the brush from the path as we go so that we can look back and see where He led us from no matter where we're headed. 

"Farther along we'll know all about it. Farther along we'll understand why. So cheer up my brothers live in the sunshine. We'll understand this all by and by."

~Josh Garrels "Farther Along" from Love & War & The Sea In Between

Let the Celebration Begin {Welcome to May}

This past month has been crazy for my family. Crazy with a capital "C"

It's been a wearying combination of moving and the unexpected of life plus once again finding our place in the in between of it all. I'm tired. I'm worn around the edges. My soul fills frizzed like my unruly mop of curls.

Once a year along comes the month of May.

My mama picked two days short of June to welcome me into her life, her legacy, her world. This May I'm marking a new decade of life. The thirties have come upon me and as I've tried to hype myself up for it I've repeatedly told my husband that my thirties are my decade. No, really I've said it over and over again with a wild look in my eye. "The thirties are MY decade."

I'm starting to believe that they will be.

Really I'm believing that my thirties will be a "hold on for dear life" kind of time that finds me clinging to Jesus more tightly than ever. What I'm truly hinting at is that I'm saying "Yes." to whatever that means.

I'm more comfortable in my skin than I ever was in my twenties. Yes, the edges are a bit more worn, my middle is a bit softer and my brain on any given day is foggier, but really truly I am more me than I have ever been.

Marriage, motherhood, and the things I love so deeply it aches in all the deepest parts are making me stronger and more whole than I knew I needed to be. Jesus, in His grace and goodness, is proving to be more than I ever knew He was. He is infinitely richer and sweeter and so is this life, broken bits and all.

I have no idea what this decade will hold. I have some hopes. I have heaping handfuls of dreams.

All I know is that I'm going to celebrate this month. I'm going to celebrate the life that I have and the God that I love and I'm going to trust that ten years from now I'll be doing the same regardless of what happens in between. 

I don't know about you but I could use a little truckloads of hope. It's been a winter that has challenged me heart and soul and I'm ready for the happy. I'm ready for the sun to soak into my skin and the truth of God to soak deeper into my soul.

This month I'm giving away some of my favorite things. In addition to giveaways I am going to be filling my blog with things that make me laugh, fill me with hope and bring me joy. I'm so excited to share with you the things that give me life and to celebrate everything else in the world coming to life- including myself!

I'm learning when grace is the rhythm of your life you might get lost in the song but you'll never really lose the beat.

Pull up a chair. I'll pour you a fresh cup of whatever you fancy. I'm sliding the bowl of chocolate your way. Let the celebration begin!

The New Year Starts NOW

Sometimes I wish life had a backspace button.

A little something I could click to back my way out of a string of days that feel wasted and have left me feeling like a waste of space.

I had high hopes for the first few weeks of 2014. After a month of holidays, travel and family I was ready to put two feet on the floor and hands to the task.

Let it be noted that I am a terrible patient. I hate being sick so when the beginnings of a sore throat started I mumbled and grumbled and prayed it wasn't so. Well, it was so and now the question has become SO?

How do you get your feet under you when time just seems to have gotten away?

My husband, ever the pragmatist, noted that Lysol claims to get rid of 97% of all germs on surfaces and that is a reasonable ratio to drive sales of their products. His point being that I have just as much of a year left and that shouldn't be reason to give up on plans, goals, dreams and motivation.

I know, I know...What kind of crazy person gives up a week in because of a cold?

{Raises hand. Hangs head in shame}

It was a really bad and horribly unproductive week. It left me feeling like an insignificant, incapable speck and that no good voice in my head was blaring as loud as ever.

For all my blabbing about grace it is in the muck that I still find how little grace I have with myself. 

I am far too quick to judge myself against a litany of to dos rather than extend grace to myself and the truth that God already has.  

My One Word for 2014 is "Embrace" so here I am to embrace that the first week of the year could use a do over, but in light of that physical impossibility and my lack of a time machine I'll settle for leaning into the grace that God goes before us in all things. He already new the first week would be a bust. Now I've got to lean hard on Him so that the other 51 weeks won't be.

Because that is really the issue, isn't it? I couldn't control what happened that first week, but God was never not in control. While I was berating myself for failures and having two left feet as I dance through life God was telling me that in Him all things are possible.

I'm sure some of you are wishing for a do over for the first bit of 2014. My husband offered me a restart on the year and I'm taking him up on it. A new chance at the new year is just what I need. I bet some of you are needing the same.

Permission granted.

Dressember for Justice

I'm a fan of dresses so this little endeavor isn't terribly out of character for me, but for the month of December along with women from all over the world we are dubbing it "Dressember". We're wearing a dress a day for thirty one days to raise funds and draw attention to the mission of  International Justice Mission (IJM).

Here is what IJM is about:

International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local officials to secure immediate victim rescue and aftercare, to prosecute perpetrators and to ensure that public justice systems - police, courts and laws - effectively protect the poor.

I'll be posting proof of my Dressember on instagram and twitter so be sure to follow this little adventure. 

My goal is to raise $50 during the month of December. That is just a little more than $1 a day for the entire month. Would you be a small part of this endeavor? It isn't much, but then again we are celebrating a baby who was to be our Savior. Talk about a little made much.

It's not too late to take part in this movement. Head on over to the Dressember site and join me!

Just a Little Bit More

I lean hard on the kitchen counter and I try to piece together my grocery list and do simple arithmetic to insure that the dollars in my pocket are enough. I go to the store and put things in the cart and pull things out and make a second list to go to the farmer's market and the discount store and I break a sweat and my stomach lurches with every beep of the scanner.

And I wonder...

I wonder...

Does anyone else feel this panic? 
Am I the only one trying to remember exactly how much is left in the account? 
Can I make these dollars and cents make more sense each month? 
Will there ever be more than enough? Enough to untie the knots in my gut?

The cashier tells the balance and there is just enough to cover the bill.

I've heard it said that when John D. Rockefeller was asked, "How much is enough?" he replied, "Just a little bit more."

Our culture piles and hoards and yet there never seems to be enough.

We fill paper sacks with the dusty cans from the back corners of our pantries and we cart them to soup kitchens to fill what is empty, but we find more often then not that we are the empty.

Hands full, but soul empty.

We hand over bags filled with fashion gone out of fad and we have no idea where it goes or what good it does or doesn't really do. 

A little more in the bank account, the closet, the stuff stuffed into the cracks of a cracked life, won't cover up our soul's need to be made whole. 

It is easy to wish away, pray away, hope away the want and the gap and our desperate need. We persist in thinking that "Just a little bit more" and we'll be free, but what if freedom isn't what God wants for us.

What if the scraping to get by is the very thing that keeps us on our knees?
What if all the things withheld are the very graces that we hold? 
What if the knots in our stomachs are an invitation to find our ends met in God when the ends don't seem to meet? 

Freedom from want and need is in finding, that in Christ, we have neither want nor need. 

Believe with every fiber that even when you dig for change in your purse, and the cushions and your kid's piggy bank and you only ever have just enough; God is for you.

He is the more when we barely have enough. 

We Stand There By Grace

There are a million times in my short life that in hindsight I see what could've been, maybe even what should've been, but what wasn't. Some of us look back and we see what was and how God plucked our feet clean out of the mud and set us on a rock. Many of us have forgotten all of that.

Wherever we stand we stand there by grace.

I'm a passionate person and I've got strong opinions about nearly everything. I imagine that most of us do. We have an innate desire to be known and heard and I get that. There are things in our world that are going on that are so heartbreaking and horrific that they beg to be spoken out, shouted out against.

I worry though that some of us are shouting out without looking behind, or in, or better yet, up.

A quick scroll through facebook or twitter can often make my blood boil. As another blogger put it recently, "If you are not kind on the internet, you are not kind". I would take it a step further and say if you are not kind on the internet or to those who are different than you then you don't understand grace. Period. I'm beginning to think I barely understand the marvelousness of grace.

Take any hot button issue and put "I would never..." in front of it and you have a person who has forgotten how God, in Christ, plumbed the depths of sin to rescue. Maybe you have lived a grace covered life and have done it all "right" or have shaken your head at stories' about mamas who saw no other option and made a choice you deem as "selfish".

I have shaken my head along with you, but God also has brought me face to face with women, not unlike me, whose lives are my could've beens. Those women have humbled me down to the holy ground that is God's grace.  I don't claim to understand the mystery which is why my life is different than another person's life.

All I know is that God's grace poured out through Jesus' blood is the great equalizer. 

If I believe that He reached deep for that abortive mother or willing sex worker or pedophile or suicide bomber or...name your ugly sin, then I have to believe He reached that deep for me. I'm not different. Given the right circumstance, the right configuration of my life, you could find me there in those dark places, desperate, alone and horribly lost.

Our's is a try hard, do good, show your trophies kind of world where we leave little room for those we deem undeserving. Christians are just as susceptible to this thinking and we often use the internet to flash our trophies of moral superiority.  It would do us great good to see ourselves as the undeserving. I desperately need to see myself as undeserving.

I believe facebook would grow a bit silent with such thinking.

Grace is the biggest kind of brave and maybe the marginalized could come out into the light if we would be courageous enough to see that we haven't earned one bit of our life. Grace erases the margins until all that is there are people who need, desperately, Jesus who rescues us all from the same depth.

We need to speak loudly in our world about the way sin has broken us and keeps shattering people and places over and over again. Planes fall from skies, waves break banks and flood homes, children are stolen and disappear, girls are enslaved to brothels where they are used and thrown away used and thrown away, families' starve, there is not enough and this world is sick and bleeding out and the grace drenched need to speak truth and love over the wounds, but we can't do it from a place of self-righteousness.

We can only speak from a place of Christ-righteousness. 

No trophies of our own held high, only Christ dead, buried, and gloriously, victoriously alive and searching for all who are lost. Even me. Even you. He dares to save us all.

5 Ways to Hold Your Children Together in a Broken World

She climbed right up on the table on hands and knees to cup a sweaty mason jar brimming with sweet Southern nectar. She gulps big and I turn around just in time to see glass turned up. I scoop her up and put her down on the ground. All thirty inches of a child who knows no fear of heights or hurts. I'm the only one that saw visions of an imminent fall and broken glass. She knows only freedom to roam safe within the walls of our home.

I'm a mama less than eighteen months old. I'm prone, so very prone, to fears of all things big and small. Big fears that storms will come and winds will blow us over or disease will wipe us out in the prime of our life leaving wee girls alone. Small fears that plans will alter and disagreements will happen and I will be left alone. Alone with my thoughts, alone with my fears, alone. Somehow my fears always end with me alone.

Isn't that all of our fears? That we will end up alone with no advocate, with no one to stand in the gap for us?

I watch her eyes dart from me to her daddy and back again. She is searching our eyes for fear. She is searching our faces for signs that she should fear. I kneel down to her level and tell her to be brave. I tell her that we are standing right here and she is never as alone as a heart can feel.

I talk to a woman in the evening years of life. The years when our eyes turn homeward a bit more and the idea of staying here in this ragged bent and broken world starts to lose it's luster. I realize that the world only gets more broken the longer you stay.

How do you teach your children to walk straight in a broken and bent world? 


She is small now and I can shade her eyes from the hurt and horror that is the daily newsfeed. I can shelter her from Oklahoma tornadoes and from people in bondage around the world, but at some point the brokenness will break in and break her and the only way that she can hold together is in Christ.

He holds us together till the end and maybe the end comes at the hands of wicked cancer or at the hands of a tsunami or even at the hands of another human just lookin' for some cash for a fix. All I know is that in Christ no matter how the brokenness breaks us God has made a plan to make us whole and better than new for all eternity. We've got to learn to live that not just mentally ascent to it by singing a round of "In the Sweet By and By" at grandma's funeral.

We have to break the spell of the brokenness by believing that winter will not last forever and a King has come, will come and break it for all eternity. 

5 Ways to Model Wholeness in a Broken World: 

• Serve- Acknowledge the brokenness by being a means of grace to the suffering among us. Get your hands dirty serving in your community or in another country. 

• Share- Make your kids aware that this is a broken world, but that there is one solution; Christ. Teach them to share that truth with everyone they meet through words, deeds and joy.

• Give Thanks- Make gratitude the posture of your own heart and train your children to do the same. 

• Live without fear- Bad things may happen, will happen, but God says perfect love (which He gives us!) casts out fear. You can live without fear and you can teach your kids to do the same. You can't raise a child and hold them back at the same time. 

•  Make your home a haven- Your home can be a haven from fear for both your kids and your community. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just swing open the doors and invite folks into your imperfect life to share grace. 

When the Mom Voices Tell You You're Doing It Wrong

My shelves are heavy with books, a book on the basics of midwifery, a book covering the ins and outs of vaccines, a handbook on labor progress, a few dozen infant care books and what looks like an encyclopedia of all things breastfeeding. {I am a doula after all!}

My resource library is a contradiction in itself. I've covered my bases with books on co-sleeping and books on cry-it-out. I decided long ago that I would know a bit about everything and that from there I would make an informed decision. Sometimes I feel too informed. Can you relate?

Could it be that we suffer from too much information? 

Could it be that the weight of all the information is breaking our backs and tearing at our mama hearts?

Sister, the sum of motherhood is not found in doing things the right way.  It is found in the fact that we fail at every turn, but Jesus...but Jesus. 

Jesus, rich in mercy, slow to anger, abounding in grace ties up all the loose ends and the just-can't-do-it-alls.

I am self-proclaimed as a semi-crunchy mama. That means my daughter wears an amber necklace, I coach women through pregnancy and birth, I spend hours of my day huddled around crockpots brewing yogurt or dehydrators making fruit leather and I clean with massive amounts of white vinegar.

Don't shut me down sister. I'm talking to you and me. We're all in this together. Grace abounds.

If you buy conventionally grown produce and love your Mr. Clean Magic Eraser you won't find me beating you down. My favorite parenting philosophy is grace.

You love your family just as much as I do. I believe this with all my heart.

Breast, bottle, freezer cooking, meal planning, cleaning schedules, natural birth, medicated birth, c-section, co-sleeping, cry-it-out, baby wearing, stroller pushing, cloth diaper, work at home, stay at home, full time job, t.v., no t.v., organic, home school, private school, public school, spanking, no spanking, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny,...blah,blah,blah. None of this adds up to a good mom and sometimes it can lead to a downright worn out mama. All these things that make life can drain it right out of us and leave us empty and longing to do it all right.

We've built some ivory towers mamas and we love to pontificate to one another from their heights. We blog about the best way to do "X" and we spout our opinions on Facebook and twitter.

I've done it myself. Guilty. 

I have a motto, "You can't know everything about everything."

We can give out advice and we can see all the less than perfect in everyone else, but I'll be the first to say that sometimes all this stuff that we're trying to accomplish as mamas can just leave us worn out and feeling like there is only more and more to know, to do, to be, to clean, to try, to fix in this broken world.

Who you are, in Christ, is enough. 

Not who you are on your Pinterest boards...No, who you are in CHRIST is enough. 

If you need to order takeout tonight because you're exhausted and if that takeout is a pizza from the less than healthy place down the street...well, do it and know that grace abounds and you are still loved.

There are a million blogs and books to tell you the right way to do this or that. A million ways and there are literally billions of mamas finding our own ways in this world.  Turn the voices down and turn Jesus up and sister, you will find your way. You will find His way and His way is always grace and more love then we can understand.

The healthiest thing for our families is for mama to stop listening to the voices that don't matter and listen to the ones that do. Our children. Our husbands. Most of all, our Jesus.

5 ways that you can turn down the mom voices in your head {and other mama's heads}

1. If you get into a discussion about a controversial topic on Facebook or Twitter tell the person you are sharing with that you can share your thoughts in a private/direct message. I did this recently on the topic of vaccines- a hot topic to say the least- in order to avoid unnecessary conflict with others that might read the post. Because not everyone needs to hear my opinion on everything.
2. Pray about the way you come across in conversation- both online and in real life. Are you accepting of other ways of doing things? Do you show grace for different perspectives? Ask God to grow you in gentleness. Not as easy as it might sound.
3. Make a point of taking the Sabbath as a day to rest. Rest from your mama "to do" list as much as possible. This always helps me see that my family survives even when I don't do everything I think I should be doing. 
4. Turn up some good music, take a deep breath and dance it out {Pretty much my answer to all of life's problems}- might I suggest Van Morrison's Tupelo Honey? You can thank me later for this smooth, soulful tune. 
5. Stay in the Word. {The Summer session of HelloMornings will help keep you accountable and in the Word.} No blog post or parenting book can answer the heart of our questions. When I'm not in the Word I always feel like I am lacking. The voices of others can easily drown out God's voice when I am not listening to His heart.

His Faithfulness Precedes Him

I’m standing on this side of things hoped for, but yet unseen.  We’ve moved in and out of thecountry and across town more times than I can count over the course of our seven year marriage and we’re about to pick up roots one more time and move to a new town and a new calling. 

I don’t have the slightest doubt that this is what we are supposed to do. We’re leaning hard into Him for the big stuff, the God-sized stuff. 

I’m beginning to think it is all God-sized stuff.

A year and a half ago we moved back from the coast of West Africa. My belly was bulging with a wee one on the way, my husband had no job and we had nowhere to live. I remember that summer wrestling with anxiety over where we would sleep, where this little one would sleep, where we would call home.   

In the end my husband found a job in a new city and started it the week after Labor Day that year. We found a rental house that was affordable and more than we needed. All the big stuff was covered. God showed up in a big way for us. 

Still I had anxiety about life in general. I knew no one except some family that lived in the same city, but an hour away. An hour isn’t exactly within “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?” distance.  We began to hunt for a church. In the past this has been a frustrating task so we braced for awkward worship experiences, meet and greets and the inevitable getting to know you stuff. 

I hate “icebreakers”. Can I get an “Amen!”? 

What we didn’t realize is that God had already gone before us. We found a church within a couple of weeks and one of the pastors turned out to be an old friend. Still as a woman, particularly an expectant mama, I longed for someone who already knew me to put their arm around me and let me know that they saw me and were praying for me. 

Assurance came wrapped as a gift. 

A friend who I had never met gave me a baby gift. Did you catch that? A friend who I had never met gave me a baby gift. We were visiting a church small group for the first time and she had heard that I was pregnant. I now know this friend to be a crafting ninja and one of the kindest, sweetest, most giving women I know, but at the time I was shocked and surprised that she had a beautifully wrapped handmade gift for me the first time we met. 

That gift was more than a gift. It was a hug straight from God. It was the evidence of things that I had not seen in the midst of anxiety and fear. It was evidence that God goes before us into every circumstance and makes a way for the big and the small. 

A few weeks ago I had an emergency doctor’s appointment and I sent out a text to a group of local friends looking for someone to watch my now wild girl. Women that I never imagined being a part of my life a year and a half ago responded in unison to meet this need. God arranged for them to meet my need long before the moment the need was felt. 

I am confident that He is doing the same for you friend. He doesn’t play favorites. 

For women who are grounded in one place and doing life together- make sure you look around at those coming into your circles. You might be an answer to prayer. You might be the radical kindness that a newbie is in need of to make them feel at home, to make them feel like they belong in a new place.

A year and a half later and God’s call is taking us to another set of “new” everything. New home, new community, new church, new ministry. I’m standing on this side of faith and I’m scared that I won’t make any friends in the new town. 

I’m afraid that I won’t have anyone to watch my daughter when I have a doctor’s appointment. 

I’m tempted toward anxiety over a million things outside of my direct control. Some of you are sharing my shoes. You have moved to a new town away from community and family, your husband is without a job, you are a new mama and you feel isolated and alone. There are a million different versions of my shared story. 

Faith is the substance of things hoped for and God promises that He is always on the other side of life’s question marks with more than enough answers to our heart cries. Some of those answers come with faces and handmade gifts. 

I have no idea what my new community will be like. It might be hard from beginning to end, but undoubtedly God is there. He goes before us. His faithfulness precedes Him and makes it safe to follow His lead. 

The Move and An Opportunity to Bless

I can't find which end is up right now. This big, brave move that we're about to make seems stuck in slow motion and buried in boxes in need of sorting. Friends, I'm going to be MIA for the next week. Partly because of all the moving business and partly because we're cutting our internet off in a couple of days. All of it is scary- including the internet-less situation.

This is the stuff that this blog is made of. The stuff that God is re-making my fearful heart out of. Fearlessness and faith all rolled into one ball of life and lived out for you to read on the screen.

Thanks for reading and right now if you wouldn't mind would you pray for me? Pray that I can love my family well and that all of this anxiousness would be turned to joy and praise for a God who revels in showing up big for us.In the meantime let me tell you about some amazing friends of ours who are doing some thing big and brave themselves.

The Clarks are a family of six (4 boys including a set of twins!) already and are going to folding into their family a beautiful little girl through the ministry of adoption. They are selling raffle tickets for a chance to win something amazing from Thirty One Gifts! I can't begin to share with you about this family. They work for Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters- a camp ministry that engages teens as well as men and women of all ages to live radical lives of faith for Christ (it is also where me and the husband met and married!)- where they teach students how to share the Gospel and grow in faith through the ministry of service.

It would really bless my socks off and encourage my heart if you would click over and enter the raffle with a $10 donation. This family loves Jesus and your small investment will place this little girl that God already ordained for their family in their home to be wrapped in His loving arms.

Who doesn't want to be a part of that?

Off to do some more packing, sigh...Thanks for every single tweet of encouragement and facebook message along the way!

What Brave Looks Like

My husband walked into his office yesterday and turned in his notice. Two short weeks from now he will no longer be employed in a "secure" job. A couple of weeks from now our medical insurance will stop and the bills will keep going. No, he doesn't have a better job offer that he has accepted. At least not a job offer that the world would call better. Yes, we know that the economy isn't good. Yes, we know that we have a child and that to the world this is an irresponsible and foolish move. We're aware of the upside down approach to life we're taking. We've counted the cost and well... 

We just think that God is bigger.

I would be lying if I didn't feel a bit of a lurch in my stomach over the whole grand adventure. This year of fearless is putting my will to the test in enormous ways. How badly do I want to live fearlessly? How badly do I want God-shaped bravery to consume my life? We're talking big, God-sized stuff, but again, isn't all of this life God-sized stuff if we're honest? Isn't the reason that we can walk into each moment with confidence because God is there in each moment and has been since before time?

This is a dream that we've been holding close for a few years now. The realization of a dream that was birthed in West Africa and has been growing through hard days and the even harder soil of our hearts here on the East Coast of the U.S. of A. We let go of the American dream the last time we quit jobs and packed five bulging suitcases for Liberian shores. We traded the idea of white picket fences and apple pie for zinc-roofed shanties and rice with greens and that trade changed us to our soul's core. It shouldn't have surprised us that the idea of coming home and settling into business as usual was not as easy as it had once been, not even possible. The vestiges of the American dream were decorating the corners of our hearts like macrame and wood paneling. It just had to go. What has replaced it is a desire to do life differently, to live life on the edges of faith, hope and love and to trust Him with every ounce of it. 

I'm guilty of wanting God's will to come wrapped in a tidy little box. A box with set parameters and crisp dimensions makes me feel safe and secure about the future, a future that I think I have some (imaginary) semblance of control over, but reality is that I want to dream big dreams. I want to dream God-sized dreams. Dreams that are so big that they will fail unless God shows up big. This dream, we've held close and dared to keep dreaming when it seemed impossible, is becoming a reality and God is going to have to show up big for it to work.

I know that someone is reading this and wondering how we can walk into the uncertain with any hope that we won't be broke and land ourselves in the poor house in six months. All I can say is that God promises and He NEVER goes back on a promise. God doesn't forsake His children and those counted righteous by His Son will never be found begging for bread. Some of you are shaking your heads and saying, "I'd never be able to step out with such faith." This move, this radical stepping out in faith, has nothing to do with us. Folks, we reached the end of our rope a long time ago. The rope was frayed and broken and we decided that God's rope even if it doesn't look long enough or strong enough at times is the better choice. We reached the end of our reaching for security and even though we don't know what the future holds we aren't looking back. We're only straining forward toward the cross and toward a God who glories to show up in gigantic ways for the sake of His great name.

We've been taught to think that brave is when you do something hard or risky and reap a reward for yourself or someone else. I don't know if our reward for this bit of faith bravery will be seen on this side of heaven. I don't know if we'll ever have anything to "show" for this life lived trusting desperately in a God who does not fail. We're just a little family with a God-sized dream. A little family that has decided that the American dream is far too small for us. Brave often looks like blind faith, even foolish, and today it looks like my husband quitting his job because He believes in a great big Gospel and a great big God.

We only look brave because we're trusting a God who is too big to fail.

Visit our family blog for more information on where we're going, what we're doing and how you can be a part of making "things hoped for" a reality for the ministry ahead. 

When the Small is Really the Big

The mountains in our lives are mole hills to God, but even the mole hills are not hidden from His gaze. A week ago I was praying hard. I was praying hard for things that I couldn't see. Sometimes you pray for small things when what you are really asking for are enormous, if-God-doesn't-show-up- we-will-not-make-it sized things. 

Our life is full of unexpected right now and there are more questions than answers scattered along this faith road, but still we walk. I had a hope. A hope in the midst of a tight budget that I might return to Allume this year. Last October I gathered with women from all over to talk all things blogging and Jesus. It inspired. It grew my vision. It made me just a bit more fearless. I was hoping to go this October, but we're about strike out into a new God-sized dream and funds are limited to say the least. We're about to ask friends, far and wide, to join in this dream with us financially for the foreseeable future and that is a step of faith that is more than a bit daunting.

While praying for a means of purchasing my ticket for Allume I felt God's nudge. Do you know what I mean? That moment when you know God is saying more than what meets the eye through your circumstance. He gave a nudge to my heart reminding me to not stop short in believing for the small things. I've got to believe Him for ALL things. If I am willing to pray that God would provide for a ticket to a blogging conference then how could I shirk back from believing that He will provide every thing for where my family is headed? The little stuff and the big stuff are all the same to God.

That is why it really shouldn't have come as a surprise when I opened up twitter to see that a friend, an anonymous friend, heard this need. This woman heard it in her heart from the same God, by the same Spirit that speaks to me and loves me and calls me, that she should be the hands and feet of His Son in my life. I'm humbled. Humbled right down to the holy ground that is all of life for anyone who dares to follow Christ. 



I want this person to know, whoever she is, that God used you in a big way. Yes, you bought my ticket to Allume and that is a tremendous gift, but you also showed my weak faith that every step on this journey my family is about to leap into without a net is already taken care of by a God who sees me. A God who even cares whether or not I go to a blogging conference. How much more does He care that we have enough to pay the bills?

In the end all of it is God-sized and the dreams we dream with pursed lips and through blurry eyes filled with tears are heard by the heart of God and some times whispered to others on our behalf. If we believe the small we can believe the big. Rejoice with me sisters. Some of you are walking through impossible circumstances and every little thing seems to require a mountain of faith. Some of you are hoping for your own anonymous Allume ticket. He knows the plans that He has for you. Walk strong in Him, pray even when your words falter, believe that God is for you and will supply every need. His riches are endless.

Thank you sweet anonymous friend. Thanks be to God who shows up big in the seemingly small.