Lean Into the Light, Pictures From A Nutcracker Birthday {and Gratitude}

My little Lilly,

this light that came into our life as a complete surprise, you bring joy in the dark places of me and how could I have known? Because if you'd never come, I'd have gone on with life as usual, towing the three kids, never knowing there was supposed to be a fourth one, the one to plow up the bad soil of me and make my innards sing, light bursting through the fragments of my heart.

We celebrated the third year of your fresh, young life and yes, I wanted it to be an affair to remember--I admit I did--a beautiful celebration of the day you were born.

I regret that well, I may or may not have been a little too involved in the baking and preparation. But I'm a creative being, and I want to celebrate you and God and goodness and His holiness and this creation and all the wonderful brightness there is in your smile and your laughter and the sun and the warmth I feel when we're together.

How long do I really have, how many times will the hands go 'round the face of time before it ceases its race and I find myself bored, you having flown off?

When will time just run out?

I have a secret to whisper to you, baby girl--I. am. afraid.

Afraid you'll grow and I'll miss it. I'm afraid it'll happen while I'm folding clothes, while I'm running, gardening, or pursuing any number of things that make me happy.

And God forbid I should miss you while I tap away at my computer, or talk to people through screens.

But the truth is, all of that will happen. You'll grow while I put shirts in the drawers, while I talk to my aging grandmother on the phone, and yes, even while I write.

And the real nugget here, dear girl? You need me to do all of those things--even the things that make me sing-on-the-mountaintop-happy.

You need me to be an example to you of how life is lived.

Mothering is such a delicate balance of living a life of example before you of what a woman should be and throwing example out of the window for an impromptu game of tickles and giggles underneath bed sheets in mornings softest rays of light.

And darling, how I love running around in the grass chasing you, the sun shining down upon us.

How I love when time slows down as I watch the light dance in your pale wheat locks. As time slows, all I can see is light around you, on you, in you, it's in every part of you and it is you. The light.

And only you could do that for me, girl.

How I love lying in our hammock in the summer barefooted, you piled in with your sisters while I read to you in low tones 'til it's late afternoon and our eyelids droop and threaten to close.

And in the winter you are the only shaft of light in the dungeon of dark, rainy cold that creeps into this old home through holes and cracks. The way you bounce around the house, your halo blonde waving as you run in your tutu, you remind me that good still exists in life.

I admit I am afraid, child.

I know I will miss you once you are gone. I fear walking around in circles, trying to figuring out what's missing and knowing all too well what is wrong, my hands with nothing to do, my heart bursting to give and all I can hear is the silence and the clock echoing on the wall.

I know the day will come.

And for now, sweet, sweet Lilly, I want to pull you close and whisper in your ear, how that really, we don't have to fear.

I want to tell you this secret, sweet child. Listen close. Love conquers fear. The wild, forgiving seventy-times-seven, going the extra mile, makes no sense kind of love.

The love that turns the other cheek, the love that washes over with grace and counts no wrongs and leaves wide open spaces to be ourselves, and believes the best always no matter what, even when mistakes are made, and doesn't want what God hasn't given and doesn't worry about tomorrow--that love drives out all fear.

And so, little one, I have told you the best secret of all. I have told you the only truth you ever really need to know.

And now you know the whole story. So lean in close to me, and let's be fearless together.

Let's lean into our Father. Lean into the light, child, always into the Light.

Starting up counting gratitude here once again:....#1037-1048
For writing again...
For finding my voice...
For chimes singing a wind song for me...
For being quiet enough to hear...
Hearing my little Lilly say so many words...
How they fill up the silence with glory...
How she  teaches me to listen...
For Husband encouraging me to come outside in the sunshine
Walking around the deadened, rain-soaked yard, looking at all things that were once alive that are now dormant and cracked
Really seeing the state of things for what they are
Hoping for spring
Hope itself

                              Pictures from Lilly's Nutcracker themed third birthday party:

Linking with Ann in the gratitude community.....



Laura...

and Emily...

So I Stopped Eating: Guest Post by Emily Wierenga {And Book Giveaway & Gratitude!}

Welcome, lovely readers--all of you--friends--yes, beautiful you--to a guest post by my friend Emily Wierenga, one of the most loving, gracious, generous writers and bloggers I have met in this blogging realm. She asked me to write on anorexia for her over at her Chasing Silhouettes site, coaxed me through the process--a process which was difficult as it brought up old wounds from the past--and cheered me on--being Jesus' hands, pulling my talent to the surface, bringing glory to God. She probably didn't realize she was doing all of that--Emily just loves because it's in her heart--not because of any notion of "Christian duty"--I love the soul that is Emily. Can you tell? You will like her, too. I promise. It's because of writers like her that I have had the courage to strip naked of fear and wear brave fierce. Please take a moment to read her story, to browse the links and consider buying (or pre-ordering) her book, and don't forget to leave a comment telling me about a loved one who is dealing with an eating disorder, or your own battle with an eating disorder and why you would like to win the book--or why or how you would like to win to use it as a resource--in your church, in your school, etc! I am excited to share her book with you! The release date is September 25th, 2012. Won't you join me in celebrating with her and getting the message out? Share on facebook, twitter--use the links at the bottom of this post! Thanks!

So I stopped eating

By Emily Wierenga

We were moving, for the tenth time in seven years, and I’d seen a bad word on the side of the grocery store wall (but had no one to ask about it) and Mum didn’t tell me I was beautiful and I couldn’t go to public school and Dad was never home, so I stopped eating.

I chewed pencil, tasting lead. Our heads were bent over textbooks, together at the kitchen table, and Mum’s back was turned, while she rolled dough on the counter, and I wanted her to look at me, tell me she loved me, over and over, give me a mirror and trace my cheeks and help me believe I was worth something, but she didn’t know how, having never known it herself, and so I broke my pencil pressing it into prose and tried to find myself in the lines of the page.

I heard the sounds of girls going to school, ran to the door, and saw they were wearing pink backpacks and I wanted to run with them, but my legs were too fat; no one likes a fat preacher’s kid. Besides, we were home-schooled in case we should move again. Also, I had cried when I’d gone to kindergarten, so Mum had brought me home, ordered books, and vowed to teach me. That kind of thing was supposed to tell me she loved me, but I didn’t feel it. Because, to me, love was words and gifts. So I sat down to do my math and tried to forget.

I tried to forget the way Dad laughed with strangers in their pews, listened to them, as if their stories were more important than mine. And the way he closed the door to his study and sighed when I knocked, timid to ask him a question. I tried to forget the way he spanked me not knowing what I’d done wrong, only that Mum told him to because she was too angry to do it herself, and scared of that anger. It didn’t hurt me anymore, not even when he used his belt, because I refused to let it.

A neighbor saw me on the carpet, toy-playing, seven-year-old oblivion, and said, “What a big girl,” and I carried those words around like a bird in a cage, until one day the bird got loose and I stopped eating. Soon I would run on thin legs with the girls next-door.

It was a slow-stop, one that began with saying “No,” and the “No” felt good. I refused dessert. I refused the meals Mom dished up for me. I refused the spreads on my bread and then the margarine and then the bread itself. And it felt good, like the ribs on my fingers, as I practiced my counting.

I was nine and I felt 109. Mom let me go to school again, but I wasn’t allowed to do English class, because the books were too risqué, and she still didn’t say I was beautiful. The days were long and I was tired and no one could hear me, so I starved harder and the teachers couldn’t see me, so I shrunk my words making them smaller, smaller, until the teachers were forced to pull down their glasses and study the prose I’d made, the winning prose, and I aced class and I flunked recess.

 At night, I dreamt of food. Mum found me, hunting for chocolates in my bedspread. I wanted her to hug me and make the fear go away, but then I was worried I’d eat real chocolates, because my guard would be let down with the soft of her touch, so I stopped hugging her for two years. My legs were getting thin, and that was what mattered, but I dreamt about her arms, and woke up hugging myself.

God didn’t care. He made me recite names each night before bed and I couldn’t go to sleep without reciting, because then people would die, and I wanted to die but I didn’t know it until the day everyone tried to force me to eat and I refused it all, and now it was clear to the world and maybe to God too: I was in control.

It was supper and we were seated and Mum was dishing, dishing, dishing and the macaroni and cheese piled orange and white as she handed them, plates plunking against old wood table, and I’d already decided, it tasted like straw, even before I took a bite.

Tonight, I would eat only half, and she’d threaten me with no dessert and I’d tell her point blank, that’s fine. Maybe it would make her worn sweaters unravel and her straight-lined school schedule smear and maybe then she’d take me into her arms and tell me she was sorry.

Sorry for praying that prayer when I was in her womb, the one I learned of later on, the one she said with good intentions not knowing how it would hurt me, the prayer which uttered God, don’t make my baby beautiful, in case she becomes vain. (I can see Mum’s hands trembling on her abdomen in the night as she offered her baby like Hannah did with Samuel, and it makes me love her, yet, despise).

In my own dark nights I worked to reverse that prayer. I’d train as though for war, to see food as nothing but a trap. I’d lie there feeling ribs, measuring wrists, planning the next day’s meals. And if there was to be a party somewhere, soon, I’d eat less in preparation, allowing myself the freedom to snack for then no one would know the difference.

By day, I’d peer into the mirror as if into my soul and imagine myself skinnier, beautiful. I’d creak onto the toilet seat after bath, spend half an hour turning this way and that, analyzing naked bones. Sucking in and pulling skin and strategizing how to become invisible.

Salvation came through imagination.

 The apple grew a face which mocked me, and so I didn’t finish it, for every time I defeated the food, I gained points against Mum, and maybe God, and I was winning. The food had nothing on me. Sometimes I’d trick it, making the piece of bread think it would fill me up then rip it into halves and eat only one, and there was a thrill in leaving food on the plate, as though I could disappoint it. Even the raisins in the tapioca seemed to stare holes, and I would push it away, feigning fullness.

But food was everywhere, and it never slept. It would beat me in my dreams—the cakes, the pies, the sandwiches. In my mind there would be a buffet, high-calorie. I’d gorge, drool, and crumbs would spill over into daytime and I’d wake feeling bloated, spend the next day getting back at food by eating less.

I’d suck in my cheeks in the mirror; I’d suck them in for photos and I’d try not to talk so I could suck them in day-long. It was tiring, this looking like a model, but I was determined to be beautiful. I would weigh myself every time I ate, every time I went to the bathroom; I’d take off my shoes, my socks, my pants, just to see the numbers drop.

And I wept through the pain, wept behind closed doors with my arms wrapped tight, but I couldn’t stop.

                                             


                      (Repost; originally appeared at The High Calling, November 2010)
                                                                                       (**photo added) 

                                                                                                                                        





Emily Wierenga is a wife, mother or four boys (two of whom are hers), artist, and author of ‘ChasingSilhouettes: How to Help a Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder’ (Ampelon, 2012) available here. For more info, please visit www.emilywierenga.com.. 

you can:
Pre-Order here.
View Endorsements here.
Read Sample Chapters here.


and i'm wondering... will you help me?

i know many of you have not struggled with eating disorders, but there are 8 million Americans that do... and many of them are young girls, in families that are desperate for solutions... there is only one solution, and that is Christ, and this book points to Him. would you help me get the word out about this?

will you pre-order a copy for your church library? your school library? for the family down the street?

and will you share about this book on fB and twitter? and pray? yes, please pray.

i am also happy to do guest posts/ profile pieces for your blogs to help get word out, too.

(thank you)

Purchase Emily Wierenga’s new book Chasing Silhouettes: How to help a loved one battling an eating disorder within the first four weeks after its September 25, 2012 release date and receive a special invitation to watch an online forum on eating disorders with bestselling author Dr. Gregory L. Jantz, FindingBalance CEO Constance Rhodes and author Emily Wierenga. Readers must email a scanned receipt, a picture of them with the book or tell us when and where they purchased the book to events@ampelonpublishing.com, and they will be logged in to receive a special invitation to watch the event. They may also submit questions for the panel to answer, some of which will be selected and answered during the forum.

Orphans At The Gate--{What To Do When You Are Wandering and Failing}

I'm good at ignoring reality, bad at serving others' needs, even my own. It's my naturally introverted personality. I really need to engage quietly with my world--bathe in sunlight, pause at a meandering brook, revel in children's laughter, bathtime's bubbles and bedtime's wandering stories.

But sometimes, when I'm overwhelmed, I go too deep inside, so deep it's unhealthy. I forget to eat. Hours pass while thinking and writing, and we haven't done homeschooling and I marathon-race to catch up to time, my old nemesis.

I go so deep, I don't do what's best for me and my family. I don't run because I just can't bring myself to walk. out. that. door.

 I don't go to church because the lights are too bright and people's handshakes make my fragile soul quake. The sheer thought of the sea of faces makes my stomach lurch. Slamming doors, blaring toy horns, and the sibling screams and fighting make insides churn.

And I grow weary of growing things--flowers always so dry in this heat, children that won't relent, thirsty for me--and I'm thirsty myself. They always need me, pull at every corner of me. I've given way more of myself away than I would've ever dreamt possible when this all began. And yet, I know that God, the Master Gardener--he never grows weary and so I pray for some of his strength, seek His face like a blind woman, feeling the grooves and crevices with her hands, desperate for some spark of recognition, some slight remembering.

It comes out in a whispered hush when I first get out of bed in the morning and Satan whispers his first words of defeat to me for the day. I hear him--"You're such a failure, an idiot--you should just crawl back in bed." I hate that I do this ugly self-talk, and my soul cries and it just comes out gently hushed--in barely audible groans--"God, help. Help me through this day."

I want to find a well that runs deep, an oasis in this desert. God, He's still gardening, though my eyes see darkly and I can't make out the fruits--He's preparing something like paradise. Oh, I've searched so hard and so long, so desperately I've drank blood from the camel's side, letting it substitute when God offers real drink in this parched land.

And my eyes widen in horror at what I've allowed my children to drink in lieu of God's pure goodness and sweet righteousness.

How?! How, I ask God, can I give them drink, these children looking at me, thirsting, when I am parched myself?

How do I die to self some more, because really--I get it--I think that's what you're asking of me--asking me to forge on, to travel through this pilgrim land searching for the Promised Land, only a cloud to follow, the holy heaviness of you pointing the way.

My eyes are hazed over with the fog of you, You all mystery, and my limbs are weary with the weight of promise and the burden of this place called Now. I groan and ache with the reality of it.

And I sojourn with others weary--I see it in their eyes, hear it in their words, read the pain in their face as they stand there and tell me that they had lost all hope. Yet, I know You've promised so much more--and all you ask of me is to trust that I will some day hold the promise in my palm.

For now, it is elusive this side of Heaven and Your perfect Presence, and the only real joy here, now, is getting to know You, tasting of you, yearning for you more and more until my heart's cry is only "More of you! More of you! Christ, come! Come, and save! Part those skies and ride in like thunder, swift, mighty, fire in your eyes, take me, Beloved!"

But here I stay and while I wait, orphaned, here--in this Now--I wander under-prepared and oh so inadequate and I just beat on Your chest, God, like a confused, angry child and beg, "Why?" My heart hardens and I struggle in my own sin-stench. I have been the desert-wanderer, the chosen child, grafted into your family vine--I've been that one, given so much grace and refusing to see--refusing to open my mouth and eat the manna.

My stomach lurches and groans with pains and yet I refuse to see the manna you've provided as good. 

I don't do what's good for me. I go deep inside and hide in caverns of sin and recesses of bitterness and grievance. What I would see if I came out of my cave, is you standing there, gently holding out your hand, offering life--real life.

And the whole time I'm refusing what's good for me, You're saying "Something better is coming, child, if you will just eat--just open your mouth."

I swallow down the goodness of you, and I'm a stubborn child, surprised at the sweetness and delight of it. I want to be there with my children--swallow down all that goodness--open mouth wide.

I dont want to miss the moments that were designed for me to comfort, to soothe, to affirm. I don't want to miss any opportunity because of my lack, because I'm inadequate to behold the beauty with abandon, because im shunning all the noise and racket and pounding feet that make up the song of life.

With so many things calling all around for my attention, so reckless, holding me, dangling there in their throat-choking grasp, God just keeps planting me firmly on the ground, keeps showing me that the most authentic, most deserving and most precious community is right here at home.

They are my sojourners.

I flail around in bitterness and the cold left by absence of fellowship. I grieve and what for when God has put me here with them to nurture and to talk with, to read for hours in the hammock with and play music with and read the bible with, to worship with as we bake cookies and scrub dirty counters, to explore nature with, to run through the hills and go on a life-adventure with.

The whole wide world--and the wide web--can make it seem as though what mothers do in their homes isn't important--that the little, quiet, sacred community we're building isn't holy work. It all seems to scream that we need to be doing some ministry to the poor, or we need to be involved in a local church, or serving in community in some way.

The deceptiveness of culture has slowly trickled down into the church and told women that just being a mother and wife isn't enough. But that's a lie from the roaring hell-lion.

Oh, how the roaming lion wants to decieve us to think that the work we're doing--the work of a mother--isn't holy and sacred--he does not want us to think that just loving them is enough.

I know that if I'm serving in the context that God has placed me in, I will touch the lives I'm meant to touch, regardless of my church affiliation, my community and ministry involvement, or my blog numbers.

I am only human--and God knows--He designed me this way. A standard that tells me I have to constantly be reaching higher depletes me of the air and life that I could give where He has called me to give--and mostly, that is at home.

I really think this could be my oasis--the deep well of laughter and bedtime giggles and stories and living like Jesus is in the room.

This could be my strength to never stop--the eternal value of four lives that have been discipled for Christ--literally led to Christ's feet at the cross and transformed, radically changed and devoted to His cause.

We can do that--you can do that--I can do that--that's the burden God placed in us mothers.  When else will we get the chance to disciple so intensely? To put our mark on someone, to leave a legacy?

We have such an amazingly golden opportunity here with our children.

When else will this godly call, this priceless hour pass by again?

We must seize it with all the gusto we can muster and that takes putting off of some earthly things, some voices that call wild in the wind and vie for our attention and ask to carry us and toss us around with every new doctrine and opinion.

So I won't crawl back into bed. Not today. I will stand with my children, Husband by my side, us all just orphans at the gate. And I will remember that. I will remember that as I mother them--they are orphans--they are His--and they are waiting for His return just as ardently, expectantly, desperately as I am.

While they wait, while I wait, I will mother these gifts well, with my dying breath, I will be a real mother to them--a mother worn for the journey--and they won't have to journey or wander alone.

I will journey with them, and at the end, place them back into His hands.

Gratitude: {#956-976}........


#956...a lunch in the park...women talking, children playing...

#957...the warmth of sunlight...

#958...hard eucharisteo...learning to hang in there when these social events aren't easy for me...

#959...my sweet Bella flourishing in the classroom with her Mama after not doing so well in the other classroom...

#960...a director who gives me the week off when energy is flagging and anxiety takes over...the practical care of a sister in Christ...

#961...having the week to clear my mind, rest, renewal...

#962...patching up disagreements, how best friends can scrub you like sand-paper and make you Christ-smooth

#963...chasing butterflies, dragonflies in the backyard with my girls...

#964...watching my strong girls swim their hearts out for the team...

#965...hard eucharisteo...pounding headache and nausea, the noise of the crowd too much--giving it to God and learning to be a {somewhat} patient mama through it all, loving on my children...

#966...going out to celebrate with the girls for their first meet out of town--Husband meeting us when he got off work..

#967...watching birds, squirrels in the backyard...

#968...not going anywhere, napping in the hammock on a Sunday afternoon; Sabbath rest...

#969...my Bella asking if she is still the new girl next week, reassuring her that no, she is not the "new girl" after the first week.

#970...taking care of my sweet Bella-girl, how she lets me bathe her face with a cool cloth to bring down fever, how she sits up and tries to spoon in the ice cream, submissively puts the thermometer under her tongue, lets me hold her...

#971...Lorna making oranges for Bella, bringing them to her bed...

#972...Ivy's concerned "Bella, are you hot?"

#973...Spider lillies splashing the whole backyard in red...

A gift cool, warm, sun-soaked...
#974...the end of my daughter's nose...
#975...hot shower
#976...feeling the warmth of sun on my bare skin and then the first of tiniest drops of rain....













Still counting and linking up with sweet Ann and others...

On Where Church Is {And Gratitude in Pictures}

 

In the Deep South on a Sunday morning, Husband and I sitting on porch swing drinking coffee and resting on the Sabbath the best way we know how, the black gentleman neighbor across the street brings something right up to the picket fence. I can tell by his posture he has come over on a mission.

He never goes to church when his son and wife pull out the drive--he stays behind. And on this day, he has spotted us out on the porch.

My husband goes out to meet him, and Mr. James, smoking his cigar on this fine Sunday morning, he hands a bag of fish over the fence to my husband, and I can hear him telling of the trip and how he caught them.

He doesn't do it because he thinks we need the food, or because we are poor, or because the church said to get out and knock on doors--he just does it because it's what's in his heart.

Just like a couple of weeks before, when his son showed up on our front step with fresh vegetables from the garden, a big sweet grin on his angel-boy face. I know his sweet mama had plenty of family she could have given that fresh summer bounty to, and for some reason, she chose to share it with us.

From my spot on the lazy swing, in mid-July sweltering Mississippi heat--heat so thick and heavy it makes your throat close up and your lungs just pure forget how to work--I can see him waving his cigar and his booming voice talking of all of us going down to the lake together some time to let the kids fish. We can use his boat, he says. Why he came over on a Sunday morning out of the blue to say all of this, I really don't know. It's always hard for us humans to believe that someone may just want to be friendly, no strings attached. Life teaches us to be hard.

My mind goes back to a few weeks before that, when the girls and I walked over in the middle of the day just to show them our new kitten, because we know they love kittens and they know we've been looking for one for the girls for a couple of years. When I walked across the yard up to where Mr. James was working on a load he had brought home, he looked up at me and eyes wide as saucers, jumped and let out a foul word. He apologized profusely, of course, and kept telling me he thought I was a ghost suddenly upon him. One minute I wasn't there, and the next I was right up on him, he said. I said to him, well, I am white enough to be a ghost, aren't I? We had a good laugh about that.

They haven't talked much, except the time my husband borrowed a post hole digger, and the time that we had no phone and no heat and I went over to ask to use the phone in the cold--and Mrs. Viola said Come over and stand in front of my heater and get warm anytime, baby--and then the time we stopped by on Christmas Eve to bring a warm loaf of pumpkin bread wrapped up with love.

Mr. James is still waving that cigar around and talking up a storm, and my husband just keeps nodding, yes sir, and his voice carrying over on the breeze, going on and on about lakes and the best times to fish, it's like he's making up for lost time, right there at our picket fence on the Sabbath.

Maybe he is all the church we needed today, because it is where two or three are, and church can be had over a picket fence. Many in the church would never grace my picket fence--I invited and they wouldn't come, many would never walk over uninvited just to say hello--but they will bang on my door if I don't attend service, many would never bring food just because--but they will put me on the list to receive help from the food bank, and they would hardly laugh with me right in the yard over a foul word slipped--because Christians don't laugh, especially about things such as accidental curse words.

And when I was the one in the throes of deep depression and illness, I felt like a leper no one would come near--when I was the "least of these", where was Jesus with skin on? Where was the church?

And it just hits me so severely and stuns with it's power of revelation, right there with beads of perspiration forming, that Mr. James--

maybe he is Jesus to us today.

 

Gratitude in Pictures and Lazy Summer Days all running together...{#931-955}...:

 

The pure light of the two of them together...

 

Sisters laughing....the laughter in a home being medicine...

 

Older sister spinning little sister and the way she adores her...

 

 

Mid-summer backyard fun...

 

 

 

Littlest sitting with her big sister for protection...

 

My babies trying their hands at sparklers, their curious, joyous faces lighting my life....

 

 

How she will always take anything from Mama's hand...

 

The perfect summer treat--ice cream in a cone {with raspberries and blueberries and dipped in baker's melting candy and red crystals!}

 

Letting the ice cream run down because we can...

 

 

Taking in the wonder of nature...

 

That I can remember her like this...

 

 

Watching them play in the rain...

 

 

 

Old friends visiting....

 

 

 

The goodness of God's bounty offered us every day...

 

 

Light caught on wood...

 

The wonder of color...how it captivates me...

 

 

Thank you notes written to Daddy for working so hard for us, an idea I got here, from Alicia, who I like to call friend--so thankful for her encouragement {that could be 2 thank-you's!}...and it couldn't have come at a better time for this Husband working 7 day weeks, the days so long...

 

 

Family in the backyard when Husband is home unusually early, the makings for popcorn popped on the grill, and pizza

 

 

Hearing their laughter, squeals; Hard Eucharisteo: calming their yells and crying...

 

 

How she carries her hippo and blanket with her everywhere she goes...

 

 

Caramel popcorn popped the old-fashioned way, the beauty of creating... 

 

 

Fudge adds the sweet finish...

 

Please come back tomorrow for the recipe for my Old-fashioned caramel-fudge popcorn! And maybe a story in the works....

 

**Friends,
your comments mean so much to me--they soul-drench me in grace and minister to me. And your prayers mean even more. I am not able to answer each comment--I am probably wrestling a mountain of laundry, or baby girl who apparently thinks freedom means clothes-free; cleaning up potty-training messes or apple cores lost in the recesses of un-folded clothes, reading a good book with my kids in the hammock, {or dancing to hip-hop with them while they roll their eyes}, out running, having a glass of wine with Husband, or lying in a warm bath just trying to breathe, friend! I hope you understand? Thank you in advance for grace. If you are reading this, you are awesome and I already love you! Head here to get to know me better and to read why during this season of life, I am just quietly writing, and not visiting via social media as much.... if time permits, I will come by your place and leave some encouragement for you!

** Thank you for so, so much grace, friends. My heart cannot express in mere words, my gratefulness.

Still counting and joining in community with sweet Ann and others...