How do people get rich?

I have been sleeping in Delaney's room the last two nights since she has been so sick. Last night as we were laying in the dark Delaney began a funny conversation that went like this.

"Mom, Does dad have to work again tomorrow?"
I answer her, "Yes, honey, daddy is working extra hours to help pay for our bills so we have a house to live in and food to eat."
There were a few moments of silence.
"I wish we were rich so you and dad never had to work and we could be a family all the time."
More silence
"How do people get rich anyway?"
I think for a moment. "Well, people have all different kinds of jobs that make different amounts of money. Mommy used to make a lot more money when I worked in real estate, but now I stay home to be with Danica and only work part time. Doctors and Attorneys make a lot of money but they have to go to school longer too. How much money you make is not as important as really liking your job."
Delaney says, "Well, how much does a dolphin doctor make?" (This is the profession she talks about the most.)
I answer, "I think marine biologists make pretty good money."
She quips back, "How long do they have to go to school?"
"Well, I will have to look that up, maybe only four years of college."
She says with all seriousness, "Ok, so that's January, February, March, April, and I would be done, right?"
I am laughing, "No honey, four YEARS, not MONTHS. We will have to pray about what God wants you to be when you grow up. Now get some sleep."

God Songs

I was tucking my sweet Laney in tonight and for all her independence and very grown up ways she turns into such a little girl at bedtime. I crawled in next to her to snuggle and she said, "Sing me a God song, mom." With the ocean sounds playing from her sound machine in the background I sang through the songs I have sung to her since she was a baby--Jesus Loves Me, Jesus Loves the Little Children, Oh Be Careful Little Eyes, The BIBLE, Seek Ye First and Sleep Sound in Jesus.

Thank You for my dear daughter and the desire of her tender heart to drift off to sleep to God songs.

Knowing the heart of God

“God is too wise to be mistaken, and too good to be unkind. When we cannot trace His hand, we can always trust His heart.” Charles Spurgeon

I read this quote in a comment posted on my dear friend's blog in response to her battle with breast cancer. I have chewed on it for days now asking myself, "Do I know the heart of God?" Knowing God is the root system of my salvation and any growth I will experience in my Christian life depends on it. I am realizing how shallow and hungry and thirsty my roots are.

Growing up I was saturated with teachings about who God is as I sat in church twice on Sunday and every Wednesday night. I remember the primary message was constantly directed to sinners in the hands of an angry God. Years of this picture of God as a judge who would never be satisfied instead of a forgiving Heavenly Father became a stumbling block in my faith. I now realize to truly be saved by grace through faith alone you HAVE to know who God really is. Yes, His anger with our sin and our deserved judgment is a critical part of His nature but never when painted without the focus being on the redeeming love offered in the gift of His Son, Christ Jesus.

In J.I. Packer's book Knowing God he writes, "A study of the nature and character of God is the most practical project anyone can engage in. Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives...We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in the world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life disappointing and unpleasant business for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul."

I can look back in my life, even recently, and see how my distorted view of God made everything unclear. As I am in the Word and my eyes are opened to the person and work of Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God, my loving Father, I am amazed at how different my perspective is becoming.

Thank You for showing me more of Your heart as I seek You in Your Word. Help my knowledge of You to grow deeper and stronger each day until I see You face to face.

Faithful in the small things

"We shall not waste our time in looking for extraordinary experiences in our life, but live by pure faith, ever watchful and ready for His coming by doing our day-to-day duties with extraordinary love and devotion." ~Mother Teresa

Thank You for glimpses of what being a faithful servant is all about. Forgive me when I long for something more important and more glamorous when Your will for me is clearly the here and now, serving You in laundry and lists and simple suppers. Help me show Your great love in every detail of my daily work.

Empty Spaces

"Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes the void." Simon Weil

I have felt hollow the past few days. I have felt myself on the verge of a depression I cannot completely explain. I know myself well enough to allow for the sadness and not try to fake my way into some kind of contrived joy. I know my God will meet me here in these empty spaces of my heart and life if I am still and seek to know Him. Today as I tried to pray and no words would come I began to cry. "God, You are Enough." I said it over and over.

The decision for Dan to have a vasectomy was well thought out. We were told it would be very foolish to ever try to have children again. It was a true miracle I did not lose my kidney or die from complications with my last pregnancy. We are blessed with two beautiful girls. We needed to wisely protect my health so I will be here to mother them. Why does Satan try to trick me into thinking I need more? It's like I'm Eve back in the Garden of Eden, and I want the one thing God has clearly closed the door on. God is God, and I am not. He is Enough.

This word "Enough" that I have bound on my heart this past year appeared in a post this week from my dear blogger friend, Ann from Holy Experience, Dawning in the Dark. He is Dayenu. "MORE THAN ENOUGH." Not just enough but exceedingly abundantly more than I could ever need or want is given in my Savior to me. Given to me, a woman who would surely eat of the tree if given the chance. A woman who would turn her back time and time again on all the gifts freely given to try to taste the one God has forbidden. Yet, in amazing love He meets me here in my nakedness and shame and gives me grace for my empty spaces, and He fills me up drop by drop.

Thank You for lessons learned through emptiness and grief. Thank You for grace overflowing for those who thirst. Thank You for thirst, the gift that proves You are alive and at work in my heart and life. Thank You that all of You is MORE THAN ENOUGH for all of me.

Do Over

I used to have the following quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson on my bulletin board at work, "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." Basically, he was saying to try to treat each day as if it was a do over. Of course this is a great attitude to have but not completely realistic in the world of business and certainly not always achievable in personal relationships.

Today was one of those days I wish I could just erase and live again. It began calmly enough at 6am rolling out of bed to get Delaney ready for school and going through our morning routine, but I quickly realized my cold is really not improved and my cramps and headache from the night before brought their monthly "gift" with a vengeance. My sweet husband who is usually so helpful, especially when I am debilitated by the "gift", had his own cross to bear with a long planned trip to the urologist to end his ability to procreate. So, with a bag of frozen peas waiting in the freezer and plenty of anxiety, he was in his own funk, and we were quite a pair. Danica is teething and was running a fever and so she too was grumping in her own sweet way. When Delaney came home from school I was so cross and rushing around trying to just get through the evening until I could curl up and rest. I was unkind in my harsh words and nit picking about little things and the entire time I began to feel worse and worse about how I was behaving.

Once I got the baby to bed I snuggled up with Delaney on the couch to read, and I told her I was sorry for how the evening had gone. I reminded her that mommies and daddies need forgiveness too when we disobey our Heavenly Father and our love is not patient or kind. As I tucked her in bed we went through our nightly ritual before saying prayers of telling one another what we are thankful for. Tonight Delaney was thankful for dolphins and the beautiful sunny day. I told her oh how thankful I am that in the blood of our Savior each new day is a chance for a do over!

"I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more." Isaiah 43:25

The Boys of Summer . . .and Indian Summer

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. ~A. Bartlett Giamatti

I have always loved sports. One of the reasons my husband says he fell in love with me was when we first began dating I would snuggle and watch Sports Center with him and really enjoyed it (maybe even enjoyed the Sports Center more than the snuggling). I like college football and the NFL. I like college basketball, especially the ACC and March madness. I like hockey games in person or during the playoffs, but I LOVE any and all baseball.

I don't know how it started really. I remember as a child listening to Indians games when my dad or grandpa had them on the radio. I learned to love the sound of the game. When I was 15 I started going to see a local college league play called the Staunton Braves. College players from competitive schools around the US would come and play in a summer league and stay with families in the community. I fell in love with the field, the smells, the setting sun on summer nights, and I was hooked. I loved the pitching most of all and the exquisite detail of the game. I began following the Atlanta Braves who had arguably some of the best pitchers ever during the summer of 1993 and almost a decade following. I had a poster of Smoltz, Maddux and Glavine hanging in my room. My friend Becky and I would drive down to see the Richmond Braves, the AAA team under Atlanta, and we swooned over Chipper Jones and Javier Lopez. In college I began following the Indians closer since my parents had moved back to Ohio, and I made friends with Marty Dzurenko whose dad and brother worked for the Indians and could always get us into the games. Who can forget when Manny Ramirez was part of the Tribe and the excitement of those chilly October playoff games at the Jake?

I will argue with you about which field I have visited is the best and tell you about the fields I still dream of visiting. I will tell you why I hate free agency and why if I could go back in time to do just one thing I would would go to a Yankee game and watch Joe Dimaggio, my lucky number 5, play. I will talk about baseball books I have read and the Ken Burns baseball documentary. I will tell you about watching the movie Field of Dreams 100 times and quote my favorite lines. Most of all I will tell you about how I love October baseball. No matter how tired I am I will stay up to watch the playoff games, and they have become as much a part of the season's routine as a trip to the pumpkin patch and planting mums. And when the last game of the World Series is played I feel sad, like a friend has gone away.

Walt Whitman said, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us." Granted he wrote this in a time when baseball was played with a "purity" we will never see again, but the heart of the game remains the same today. As I watched the Dodgers, Phillies game last night I did for a time forget about the failing economy, my day to day worries and even my horrible sinus headache, and I found it was a blessing to me. Part of my Simple Abundance journey is recognizing the gifts wrapped in the ordinary. This is the first time I have ever been consciously thankful for the simple gift of a game and relaxation and joy it brings me. And so I add the boys of summer . . . and indian summer to my list of a thousand gifts.

More on Seeing

And one of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of all?" Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (NAS, Mark 12:28-31)

I like to think I am not a very judgmental person, which of course is not true because I make judgments big and small all day long, but I try to temper my thoughts with constant remembrance of where God saved me from. I think we all have hot spots though, things about other people that drive us crazy. Often, without knowing someone's story at all, I know I make conclusions about why they are behaving a certain way, and it sticks under my skin and eats away at me.

Our neighbors to the right of us drive me nuts. I don't know the details of their familial relationship, but I know the older lady who lives there is the mother of the adult son who lives there with his two children, Ava and Buddy. There are other "girlfriends" who filter in and out, none of which I can determine is a mother to the two kids. Delaney and Ava are almost exactly the same age and every time we get home from somewhere or are outside the little girl asks if they can play. Well, those of you who know Dan and I know we are super careful about who watches our kids, who they play with, safety outdoors, and on and on. I had pretty much dodged the situation for the most part and then I hear through an open window Ava yelling at her little brother, "Get over here, @#%! head," and my mind was made up once and for all the girls were not going to be "friends".

The thing that most peeves me about the situation is the adult father who does not appear to work at all. The yard is a mess. The trash is left out BESIDE the cans so an animal rips them open making a mess. The kids always look disheveled, and he goes to get fast food seemingly every meal to bring back to them. The older lady is clearly not in good health and still works and hobbles in and out, trying her best to make a home for the kids. I have a HUGE problem with lazy and this is my judgment of the dad.

I have prayed about the situation and my heart, because it's a classic example of how I could be a missionary right where God has me, but I don't even know how to reach out of my Pottery Barn, Clorox wipe existence even far enough to touch a neighbor. So, last Sunday I see a bus pull up from a Nazerene church and the two little kids run out and jump on by themselves. Did the grandma send them? Was she a Christian and trying to influence her grandchildren for Christ? Why had I never invited them to our church? How do I even do that?

I thought back to my childhood. We lived in what seemed like a fine neighborhood, but I now know it was pretty close to "the tracks." There was some kids in our neighborhood who were very rough, especially two girls, Darby and Shelly, who lived in a little house down the street. I think their mom worked and their dad was an alcoholic. I know there was a guy, Tim, in the neighborhood who would go in their house when they were there alone, and I know he took advantage of them. My mom had a rule, the kids could play in our yard as long as they didn't take God's name in vain or use bad language. Somehow, poor as we were, she always found another peanut butter and jelly sandwich for any one who straggled over and looking back I see our house as the shining light to the kids who had never had a front porch swing where a mom just sat and talked with them and made homemade chocolate chip cookies and taught them cat's cradle.

I need new eyes. I need to see EVERYONE as a soul. I need to step outside my comfort zone and show God's love in practical ways to those He brings into my life day to day. I have been listening to Brandon Heath's song Give Me Your Eyes. This is my prayer today.

Looked down from a broken sky.
Traced out by the city of lights.
My world from a mile high.
Best seat in the house tonight.
Touch down on the cold black-top.
Hold on for the sudden stop.
Breathe in the familiar shock of confusion and chaos.
All those people goin somewhere, why have I never cared.

Give me your eyes for just one second,
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing,
Give your love for humanity.
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten.
Give me Your eyes so I can see.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.


Step out on the busy street.
See a girl and our eyes meet.
Does her best to smile at me.
To hide what's underneath.
There's a man just to her right
Black suit and a bright red tie.
Too ashamed to tell his wife he's out of work, he's buyin time.
All those people goin somewhere, why have I never cared.

Give me your eyes for just one second,
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing,
Give me your love for humanity.
Give me Your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten.
Give me Your eyes so I can see.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

I've been there a million times.
A couple million lives.
Just movin past me by, I swear I never thought that I was wrong.
But I wanna second glance so give me a second chance to see the way you've seen the people all along.

Give me your eyes for just one second,
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing,
Give me your love for humanity.
Give me Your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten.
Give me Your eyes so I can see.


Give me your eyes for just one second,
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing,
Give me Your love for humanity
Give me Your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten.
Give me Your eyes so I can see.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah

In My Daughter's Eyes

A year ago today I saw my sweet baby girl, Danica Jean for the first time. She was born in the afternoon of October 3rd, but I did not get to see her until the afternoon of the next day. It seems strange to say the day your child was born was the worst day of your life, but it truly was. I think God knew I needed time before I could see this child as the gift she truly is. I needed a day to bridge the pain and confusion to why it was all worth it. I have loved the following song since Delaney was small, but the lyrics are perfect for Danica and I. Everything in my life and my heart was completely changed the day I found out she was growing inside me, and I know I will never be the same.

Thank You for this child and the amazing journey You took us on to make her life possible. Thank You for a year of health and happiness and love on top of love for our family. Thank You for the pure joy I feel every time I look into my Danica's eyes.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com