My Home Sweet Home: Decorated with Family, Faith, and Photoshop

Decorated with Family, Faith, and Photoshop

How Do We Have Love for One Another?

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This week we not only approach the beginning of a new year but the birth of a new decade. Our family feels it especially, as my oldest daughter prepares to deliver her second child and we celebrate my second daughter’s twentieth birthday. I still remember the fear and uncertainty of expecting a child in the days before Y2K, when the world wondered whether we would experience widespread computer malfunctions that would send our banking and power systems into chaos since many computer programs used double digit dates for the year and we entered the year 2000, not 1900.

I think we typically approach milestone dates with unease and uncertainty. Am I where I thought I would be personally or professionally by this time? If not, why not? What are my goals and resolutions for the year? Do we typically set higher expectations for ourselves at the start of a new decade?

My hopes for my children, as they grow into adults, have shifted with time. In our early parenting days, I wanted to raise smart, accomplished children (and of course, I still do). The grades I made and the schools I attended were very important to me. Now what I want most is for them to be good, kind people, to make a difference in the world (even on the smallest of scales), to hold fast to faith, to live joyful lives. Although these expectations seem simple, look around and you’ll see they aren’t easily attained. 

When our Heavenly Father looks down on us — His children — what does He hope to see? I imagine He’s more concerned with our character than our resume. 

Please join me today at (in)courage for the rest of the post as we prepare for a new year and a new decade!

How Do We Have Love for One Another?

You Are Not Alone at (in)courage

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A few years ago, my dad and stepmom moved to the countryside of rural South Carolina to live in her childhood home. They went to care for her aging father, who has since passed away. Our family loves to visit and drive their golf cart and ATV beneath the trees and over the fields of the property. They live on several acres, home to an assortment of animals ranging from cats and dogs to horses, goats, and donkeys. While most of us choose our pets, they were once favored by a fascinating creature who, eventually, chose them.

My dad is something of an animal whisperer, but no one could get close to the wary, street-smart black cat who visited their property looking for food. His battle-scarred body bore evidence of a hard life and the effort it took to survive without an owner. He ate what was left out for him but wanted nothing to do with those who placed it there.

His trust issues probably stemmed from a life in which he’d received little kindness, much less affection.

You can only imagine my dad and stepmom’s surprise the day they looked outside and saw our youngest daughter sitting on their back steps holding that big black cat and scratching him behind the ears. How did she charm this animal who didn’t want anything to do with anybody?

She meowed at him.

That one word — one sound — crumbled the protective fortress around his feline heart. She bridged the gap when she spoke his language. From that day forward, Lamont, as my dad named him, was a lover not a fighter. He no longer feared people but learned to trust them. I remember the weight of him curled against me while I sat on the porch, his purr a rhythmic motor rumbling deep inside him.

Like Lamont, we all yearn for affection and connection, but trust doesn’t come cheap. If we’ve been burned by past relationships, we learn to build walls or make excuses to shield ourselves from the rejection we fear.

Please come visit me at (in)courage for the rest of the story!

You Are Not Alone

Exactly Where I Need to Be When I Need to Be There

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When people realize I have eight children, they often remark, “You must be so patient!” Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. When I want something done I want it done yesterday — or at least now. Recently the Lord took a frustrating situation that tested my patience and reminded me my timing and priorities are different than His and that He often places me exactly where I need to be when I need to be there.

Earlier this year, my husband’s company offered to include us on their corporate Costco membership, so when ours expired we had new cards made under their account. The cards worked fine at registers inside the store, but when we tried to buy gas it showed our membership as expired. The employees were always helpful — they made us at least two more sets of cards, and someone always activated the pump for me — but I buy most of my gas at Costco and felt like a fraud every time I had to explain to an attendant that my account was active even though the screen said it wasn’t.

I finally decided to wait at the membership desk until they were certain the problem was fixed. Little did I realize it would require two hours from a day two weeks before a book deadline, when every minute of my day counted.

Employees conferred, called corporate, and tested my card time after time while shaking their heads in confusion. No one had ever seen this problem. A smile masked my inner turmoil as the minutes ticked by and I glanced at my watch too often. Finally, the glitch was found — hooray! — and I would be on my way soon.

A young mom circled behind me, parked her shopping cart, then walked over to get her picture made for a new membership card. A two-year-old girl, strapped in the seat of the cart, had recently covered her arms and legs with black ink. Her one-year-old brother sat beside her in only a diaper. An infant car seat carrying a newborn rested in the cart’s basket.

My mind flashed back to a time when I shared her season of life, although my babies weren’t that close together. All three were content, but any mother knows that can change at any moment for no apparent reason.

And suddenly I knew why I still stood there: I was there for such a time as this.

Please join me at (in)courage for the rest of the post!

Exactly Where I Need to Be When I Need to Be There

The Gift of Daily Graces @ (in)courage

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OOPS! I’ve been working so hard on my next book’s deadline that I didn’t share my (in)courage post with you! Here’s a snippet:

“It seems like everything is going wrong,” he said, discouragement evident in his tone and written on his face. Still wearing his office clothes, sweat soaked through my husband’s button-down shirt, and dust and grass covered his black dress shoes from multiple trips between our basement and the air conditioning units outside. 

The night before school starts is always crazy. Our children attend and I tutor at a Classical Conversations program once a week; we’ve been there for years. Usually, there’s chaos because we can’t find all the books for the new school year or figure out what to pack for lunch, but this was different: the fan in one of our AC units stopped spinning and the wall in my son’s room felt so hot the outlet cover had begun to discolor. With daytime highs in the 90s, the house was miserably hot. Plus, we were becoming afraid of an electrical fire in our son’s room. 

Sometimes it makes my husband crazy that I assume he can fix anything. Usually he proves me right, but I know it’s a lot of pressure. However, an hour after arriving home, he had switched out the outlet box in my son’s room, installed a new capacitor in the AC unit (in honor of our 80s heritage we call it a flux capacitor), and the air coming through our vents was cooler than we’d felt in months. A week earlier, he had fixed the dishwasher when it suddenly quit filling with water. Our leaky washing machine is next on his honey-do list. 

A friend once told her husband if he came home and everything looked the same as when he left, she’d done a lot; she’d managed to maintain. We worship a God of logic and order, but for us, entropy — a lack of order or predictability or a gradual decline into disorder — is usually the name of the game. 

Things fall apart.

Please join me at (in)courage for the rest of the post, where we take the time to appreciate our daily graces.

The Gift of Daily Graces