Resuscitating The Blog

It’s time to bring back the blog.

I’ve really missed my little corner of the internet.

After spending time vlogging, selling Lipstick, and mulling over 101 other ideas, I’ve had an ache to write again.

To document our family journey, share ideas, work through my faith, and post recipes I love.

Andy recently bought an AppleTV and hooked it up to the TV in our bedroom.  One night the kids piled into my bed and we scrolled through hundreds of old photos.  It was amazing.

I cannot tell you how much I was encouraged by looking through years of our life in photos.  It made me step back out of the forest and clear my eyes of all the trees so I could really see my life.

What I saw was good.

It was sweet and precious and happy.

I spend so much time worrying about doing it all wrong.  I constantly analyze and criticize my performance as a wife, a mother, and a woman.  This leaves me tired and discouraged.  I’m always reading another book or article or blog post about parenting and marriage and womanhood.  Looking for the nugget that will change everything.  That will help me get control of my life and relationships so that I can make everything right.

We all know that’s not possible.  We are not in control and we can’t make everything right.

What we can do is open our eyes to the goodness God has placed in front of us and we can be grateful for it.  We can ask Him continually to remind us of His presence and to give us wisdom and insight into how to spend our moments.

That’s the place He’s been bringing me to lately.

I’m coming out of a hard season.  The move from MD was stressful and our first month here was very difficult for me.  We were cooped up in a hotel room and my first experiences in Pensacola didn’t make the best impression.

That’s putting it lightly.

I had a bit of a meltdown.  I didn’t want to stay here and I felt incredibly frustrated and defeated by just about everything in my life.

As a person who regularly needs to be alone to think and pray and process things, that time was especially terrible because our whole family was stuck in a small hotel room together and there seemed to be nowhere for me to go.

Nowhere but the arms of Jesus.

I’d love to say I ran right to him ready to surrender, but I more or less dragged myself weakly to him crying and fighting the process the whole way.

The awesome thing about Jesus though?

He doesn’t care how we get there, he’s just so glad we’ve come.  He draws us into his embrace of perfect love and holds us close while we struggle.

I was hoping I’d get some miraculous delivery from my feelings and the black cloud that seemed to have taken up residence over my heart and mind, but I didn’t.  Almost that entire three and a half weeks was excruciating.

Because none of it looked like I expected it to (ie go to Jesus and everything becomes instantly better) I believed the lie that I was doing it wrong.

Doing it wrong?!

Going to Jesus is always the right thing.  As long as you go, you can’t actually “do it wrong” for goodness sake!

God is relentlessly showing me his love for me is without condition.  Like the older brother in the Prodigal Son, I am always with him and everything he has is mine.

I never had to slave away for God or get it all right, or try really hard to be good, or show him how much I love him.

ALL his love has ALWAYS been mine.

Somehow he’s taking the emotional ups and downs of all this military moving and relocating and full time mothering and he’s using them to show me his love.  His high, wide, deep and long love for me.

The journey can be painful, but there’s no where else I’d rather travel.

I’m excited to be back here writing along the way.  Thanks for joining me :)