Tongue Tied

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever." Psalm 118:1 God's love was here before the trial. I could see it tenderly written on the pages of my life. Everywhere I looked, I saw his love. A love that forgave sin and restored relationships. A love that blessed beyond what I deserved. A love that provided a hope and a remedy to my unrighteousness.  God's love is current. It's here in the midst of the trial, supplying me with strength and peace, and even joy. Because of God's love, I can still smile. I can feel positive about my circumstances. I can shed a tear and laugh aloud in the same breath. I can see all the ways that the trial is good, all the blessings and protections he is supplying even in the midst of life altering change. And God's love will be here later on, when the wound isn't so fresh and doesn't hurt quite as much. He has planned out each of my days, supplying me with all the tools I need to...

I wonder when it will start to feel real. I wonder when we'll stop waking up at 5:00 am. I had to change my ringtone on my phone, because whenever it rang I was instantly in that moment, being pulled from sleep and hearing mom's shaky voice on the phone. " It doesn't look good." As I raced over to your house, I knew it. I just knew  that this was the end of your earthly story. I didn't even think to pray that God would spare your life. Isn't that strange? All I could think to pray was God, thank you for my dad. That morning, death was trying to win. The verse that says "Where, O death, is your sting?" kept running through my mind, and I was thinking, this is the sting right here. Everywhere. I found it. This stings. It felt like the air was thicker, the silences heavier, the thoughts in my head sharper. We just sat there, shocked, realizing all the things that day was going to bring us. Funeral arrangements. Life insurance. Cemetery dec...

One week ago, I lost my dad. Well, one week ago tomorrow morning at roughly 5:00 am, to be more precise. Words swirl around in my mind, but they refuse to be typed. Maybe that will come with time, but for now, everything's a little too raw. For now, this will suffice. The night after it happened, I had a weird dream where my sisters and I were in our childhood home, which was on fire, and we were trying to salvage things that we wanted to pass on to our children. When I awoke, all I could think about was taking pictures. So, even though it was weird, I starting shooting. I shot all the things that seemed to pull me to them, all the things that expressed in their simplicity the emptiness and shock I felt inside. His suits in his closet. His empty office. His bulletin board decorated with pictures from his grandkids. I shot them all. I shot them and then I ignored them, because I couldn't handle looking at them. But tonight, I forced myself to confront them. I both lo...

It may not always be pretty, but the point of this blog is for me to hash stuff out and learn. 90% of the time, I edit my struggles or don't write my feelings with exact precision. But sometimes, it just has to come out. And I know my four or so readers understand that and give me grace. Over the weekend, a lot of Awana discussions transpired, not because of my blog so much as a frustrated comment I left on Facebook. I got in contact with a nice lady who works with Awana and shared with her my concerns with the wording in the T&T book and how it makes kids with disabilities even more confused. She told me about the reasoning behind the weird questions, and she didn't say that those specific things would be changed, but she did say that an update for T&T was in the works, and that they hoped to give churches more options in choosing their materials. So that's hopeful. I talked with many wonderful leaders in our Awana program and we set up a plan to finish out the y...