YOU MAY BE A MOM IF...

My youngest and I were tracking through WalMart behind a young mother with four little children. On the dairy aisle, Helen leaned over and whispered, "I think I've heard 'Mom!' shouted fourteen times in the last five minutes!"

I laughed. I remember days when my own children were small, when I thought the incessant "Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!" would drive me crazy. Occasionally, I would announce, "My name is not Mom today. I changed it, and I am not telling anyone what it is!"

Yesterday, I was working on an article about coffee. Specifically, about how many times I reheat a cup of coffee in a given morning, before I actually have a quiet moment to sit down and drink said coffee. Which got me to thinking...

YOU MAY BE A MOM IF:
(in no particular order, because moms don't have time for that kind of nonsense)

• You have ever exchanged "Mom" for a secret name known only to yourself.
• You have ever heated your cup of coffee more than five times before drinking it - or - you completely forgot about your cup of coffee in the microwave (eg., found Monday morning's coffee sitting cold and forlorn in the microwave on Tuesday morning).
• You pick spinach off of other people's teeth or boogers out of other people's noses.
• You seem to have an inordinate preoccupation with poop...not your own, but everyone else's in the family.
• You have ever locked yourself in the bathroom, not to use the toilet but to have two minutes alone to yourself so you can breathe.
• You are the only person in your house who knows that light switches and electronics have an off position as well as an on position.
• You have a secret stash of chocolate in the freezer or on the top shelf of the pantry.
• You make a circuit to flush all the toilets before you leave the house.
• You have ever woken up terrified at 3:00 am because a small child was standing next to your bed staring silently into your face.
• You sleep with "mom ears" - no matter how exhausted you are when you fall into bed at the end of the day, you are suddenly wide awake at the sound of the faintest bad-dream or tummy-ache whimper from down the hall.
• Your idea of an all-nighter is getting five consecutive hours of uninterrupted sleep.
• More times than you can remember, your lunch has consisted of half-eaten PBJs and leftover Cheetos that got lost in the clutter on the kitchen table.
• You have ever held the hem of your shirt up to a small person's snotty face and said, "Blow!"
• You have ever caught throw-up in your hands.
• Little people have waked you up in the middle of reading a bedtime storybook because you fell asleep and they did not.
• Comments like "Do you want me to pick up pizza on the way home?" - or - "Let me take care of baths and bedtime with the kids tonight" - or - "Here, sit down and enjoy a glass of wine while I wash the dishes" are sooooo much more romantic than "You sure do make those jeans look good, Baby!"
• You feel like the inside of your heart is bigger than the entire universe because of the space your children occupy in it.

THE GOOD DOCTOR

When my youngest was four years old, she suffered a traumatic head injury. I called a neighbor - "I need you at my house NOW!" - buckled Helen in her car seat, grabbed a sibling, and drove 90-miles-an-hour to the nearest hospital emergency room.

"Keep talking to her! Make her stay her awake!" Big Brother was a trooper. My heart raced and tears streamed down my face as I bulleted down the highway.

At the ER, staff fastened Helen into a bunting board, a device that swaddled her small body tightly. The board made her immobile so that she couldn't thrash around while the doctor treated her wound. Helen was already crying when we reached the ER, but after they put her in the bunting board, her wails went through the roof. Pain was one thing; the terror of being completely immobilized against her will, that was something altogether different.

"You will have to step out into the hall." A young woman in blue scrubs led me to the door, then closed it behind me.

From the other side of the door, Helen's screams ripped at my soul. I leaned against the wall for support, then sank to the floor. Curled up in a ball, knees to chest, I buried my face in my bloody hands and wept. Big Brother curled up next to me on the floor, and his small voice - "I'm right here with you, Mommy. You are not alone." - and the warmth of his small body provided a comfort disproportionate to his size.

A few minutes-that-felt-like-hours later, the screaming subsided. The door opened. "Mrs. Kendall, you can come in now."

One of the hardest things I have ever had to do as a mother is to entrust the welfare of one of my children, when they are suffering greatly, completely to another.

"Can I hold her?"
"No."
"Can I stand next to her and touch her, so that she knows I'm here?"
"No."
"Can I at least be nearby, in the same room?"
"No. You must step outside and wait."

And, as hard as this has been in situations where my children's physical health was concerned, it has been ten times more difficult in situations where their hearts and souls have been concerned.

When Helen suffered that head injury many years ago, I had no choice but to trust the ER doctor who treated her. I had no medical training, no technical skill, no ability to help her. I could weep for her and pray for her, but, as much as I loved my daughter, I was not qualified to treat her wound and alleviate her suffering. The best I could do for her in that terrible moment was to take her to the doctor and release her from my hands into his. I had to trust the doctor, because he was the only one who possessed the knowledge and the skill to help her.

Likewise, I find that often, when it comes to painful spiritual growth, to heart wounds, to dark nights of the soul, I can do nothing to fix the broken places deep inside my children's hearts or souls. The best I can do for my children is to take them to the Great Physician and place them in His hands. As I weep for them and pray for them, I must trust God to heal their hurts and to restore them to joy and to spiritual vigor, because He alone possesses the wisdom, skill, and power to do just that.

It is a terrible place to be, in that shattered, time-warp world on the other side of a closed emergency room door. But even in that terrible place, God does not leave us without comfort. He is such a good, good Physician - I can trust him completely with my children, their bodies and their hearts and their souls. And when I find myself curled up in a ball on the other side of that door, moved by my children's groans to tears and to prayer, God never, never, never leaves me - "I'm right here with you. You are not alone."

THREE PRAYERS

Three prayers I pray with absolute confidence that God will hear and answer:

1. Lord, so work in my heart that I earnestly desire to know you better and to love you more. When my affection for you grows cool, grant me sincere repentance, and stir my heart again to flame. Help me to find in you - and in you alone - solace for all my hurts, abiding peace in place of my fears, and full satisfaction for my deepest longings.

2. If I am to know you better (and love you more!), I must spend time in Scripture, for that is where you reveal yourself to your people. Sometimes, though, my appetite is weak. Lord, create in me a hunger for your Word, and draw me daily to feed upon it. When I am busy with the demands of this day, bring what I have read in your Word to mind; help me to meditate on it, so that am nourished and refreshed by it all day long.

3. Keep me mindful of my complete dependence upon you, so that I come continually to you in prayer. Help me to remember that my Lord Jesus and your Holy Spirit intercede on my behalf, so that I never come to you alone, but always in mighty company. Let me never for one moment think that you hear and answer my prayers because of any faithfulness on my part, but only because of the unwavering faithfulness of my Savior, your Son, in whom I can pray with full assurance of your favor and with great boldness and confidence and with full expectation of being heard and answered.

IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE?

"Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior." - John Newton

* * *

We were talking at my house recently about sin, particularly, about ways Christians try to overcome certain sins that all-too-easily take us captive. I have witnessed believers addressing sin with what look to me like purely secular tactics:

"Idle hands (or minds) are the devil's workshop" - or - "Idle hands are the devil's playthings," we have been told. So, the cure for sin is to stay very busy, busy doing something else besides that pet sin, anything else, so long as it occupies our thoughts and our energy and our time and keeps us too busy to notice temptation.

And we create safeguards to protect us in case we accidentally find ourselves with five free minutes when we might be inclined to think about or engage in our pet sin. We put a fence around our pet sin, then a concrete wall around that, then perhaps a row of concertina wire, then...ummm...how about a moat? (Since I am prone to want to eat an entire chocolate cake at one sitting, I will not eat cake of any kind. And just to be safe, I will cut out all other desserts, too. As a matter of fact, I will completely eliminate sugar from my diet. There, that should do the trick!)

And then, just to be extra safe, we recruit an accountability partner - someone to check our email or internet browser, someone to record the number when we step on the scale each week, someone who promises to drop everything and rush over at a moment's notice when I text the code word that tells her my clueless next-door neighbor just dropped of a decadent three-layer chocolate cake at my house, and my self-control is about to go out the window!

I am all for being wise and careful and having accountability. Don't get me wrong. Those are good things, and they can be helpful to us in our fight against sin. But the above strategies for overcoming sin, while perhaps helpful to some degree, all center on the sin. They are about...

• Don't do [particular sin].
• Or, do this other thing, so that you don't do [particular sin].
• Or, recruit Fred to check and see if you are doing [particular sin].
• Or, call Sally if you think you are about to do [particular sin].

These tools, in and of themselves, do nothing to address the issue of the heart. They only address our behavior. And yet, it is from the heart that our sin springs. If we don't address the heart, then, no matter how many safeguards we employ, sin is an ever-present threat, still consuming our thoughts, emotions, and energy.

Is there not some way to take the focus off the sin and to recenter the heart on something entirely different instead? Practically, instead of thinking "Don't eat the whole chocolate cake" - or - "Eat some hummus instead of a whole chocolate cake" (Yeah, right!) -  is it possible for me to be so completely enraptured with something else, something so good and lovely and virtuous that, by comparison, the thought of eating an entire chocolate cake sounds about as appetizing as eating a platter of mud pies? Is it possible for me to become so delighted with this other thing that chocolate cake doesn't even enter my mind?

Is there anything in the world that good, that big, that wonderful? So beautiful that it fills my vision and becomes the focus of my desires? So altogether lovely that, with my eyes fixed firmly on that one thing, I no longer find any attraction for the cheap, bawdy trifles that would otherwise entice me?

YES! I believe there is something that big - a someone, THE Someone, God himself!

Sadly, I have seen that even within the church, we act as if we believe the "solution" to the problem of sin is a method, a list, a plan...instead of a Person. And we mete out to our brothers and sisters our "method" instead of the person of Jesus. Oh, sure, we'll get around to God and Jesus and all that spiritual stuff eventually. Of course we will - it's what we do. But first, we need to address the undesirable behavior. The behavior is the real problem, right? (What, not the heart from which the behavior flows?!)

To the extent that we believe the behavior is the problem, to that extent we have forgotten our true condition. To the extent that we think we can fix the problem of sin with a method or a plan, to that extent we underestimate how desperately we need a Savior. And to the extent that we think modifying behavior is the solution, to that extent we have forgotten the Gospel.

God, when I am struggling with sin, show me Jesus, in all his ravishing beauty. Grant me true repentance for loving anything more than my Savior, who loves me - a faithless child - with unwavering faithfulness. Oh, what compares to Christ and his steadfast love?! Nothing!

God, when I see my sister or brother struggling with sin, please, help me to show them Jesus.

* * *

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - C. S. Lewis

"It grieves me to say this, but the primary reason people are in bondage to sin is because people are bored with God. One of Satan's most effective tactics is to convince us that God is a drag." - Sam Storms

A NEW COOK IN THE KITCHEN!

Snowed in? Bake something delicious!
I tried a new bread recipe today from Shauna Niequist's book,
"Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table." YUM.

The youngest is taking over menu planning and grocery shopping at our house. Yes, I am excited! After 30+ years of planning and preparing meals, I feel burned out, used up, stuck in a rut...same old meals, over and over and over. There's nothing wrong with trusty favorites - chicken pie, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, beans and greens, venison stew, etc. - but a young cook makes mealtime so interesting. A new cook doesn't have a repertoire of tried-&-true recipes: because every recipe is new, any recipe that sounds or looks interesting is worth a go.

Have I mentioned yet...I AM SO EXCITED!!!

So, Helen spent the morning looking up recipes and making a list of ingredients. She came up with a fantastic strategy for planning evening meals for each week: one night, soup and bread; one night, a pasta dish; one night, meat and three; one night, veggie main dish; one night, salad or whole-food bowl; etc. (I love that she developed a framework for meal-planning. Cool idea.)

Because Helen is a full-time student who is also holding down a part-time job and because I am responsible for upkeep of the house and am going back to work, we plan to split cooking duty. On Helen's long days, Mom cooks. On her light days, she cooks. Saturdays and Sundays, we cook together. Pretty sweet deal, huh?

On the menu for the week ahead (provided we can get out of the house and down the snowy highway to the grocery store), Helen has some familiar foods, plus these new recipes:

White Bean Parmesan Spinach Soup
Maple-&-balsamic vinegar-glazed pork chops, plus sides
Black bean and sweet potato tacos (Yum!)
Chicken Florentine w/ white wine cream sauce, served with pasta

Have I mentioned...I AM SO EXCITED!!!

Looks like dinnertime is about to get a lot more exciting at the Kendall house. 😋

RUNZAS FOR LUNCH

My friend Katherine has informed, challenged, and encouraged my faith as much as anyone living today. And it is Katherine who introduced me to runzas. A runza is basically a German pocket sandwich - a yeast bun filled with a mixture of meat, cabbage, and onion. They are delicious hot out of the oven or as leftovers for tomorrow's lunch.

To make runzas, start with a good basic yeast bread recipe. (A bread recipe calling for about 5-6 cups of flour makes enough dough for the filling below.) Mix and knead your dough; set aside to rise. While the dough rises, prepare your filling.

For today's runzas, I browned a pound of ground beef and half-a-pound of sausage together, along with two small diced onions. (Sausage is my own personal twist - I am the granddaughter of a hog farmer, and I love sausage!) I drained the meat, then added about 5 cups of shredded cabbage, and cooked and stirred until the cabbage was just wilted.

I punched down my dough and divided it into 16 blobs. To make each runza, I rolled a blob of dough into a circle...

...spooned about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of meat & cabbage filling onto the circle...

...and then folded the dough over and crimped the edges together with a fork.

I placed the runzas on a lightly-greased baking sheet...

...and baked them at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, until nicely browned.

At my house, we like to eat runzas with lots of mustard.

Katherine taught me that there is something very good about spending time with friends in the kitchen, hands together in dough. (I have never met anyone who owns more rolling pins...plenty for anyone who wants to join in the baking!) Food and faith go together so very well.

I'm weathered in here in Northwest Tennessee today. There's no telling where in the world Katherine is today. But Helen requested runzas for lunch, and when we eat runzas, it feels like Katherine is right here with us.

ABOUT WORDS

Things I have learned about words over the past year:

It is hard work to listen, really listen, to what another person is saying. It takes focus, effort, patience, and tremendous discipline to listen to understand or to learn, instead of listening to reply, explain, or defend. (I am not very good at this, but I am trying to get better.)

When someone has an erroneous preconception about about me - the words inside that person's mind that codify his or her understanding about what I think or believe, why I do what I do, etc. - that preconception can be much stronger and have more influence than anything I say or do to try to communicate the truth to that person. People want to believe what they want to believe, regardless of evidence to the contrary. The words we think - whether they have any basis in truth or not - can become so deeply entrenched that they skew our perception of reality.

In a difficult or emotionally tense conversation, what someone else says to me or about me often says more about the person speaking than it does about me personally. Words reveal more about the heart of the person speaking than they do about the person to whom their words are directed or about whom they speak. (Learning this one concept has completely transformed the way I listen...most of the time.)

Things I already knew about words, but that I have been recently reminded of anew:

Words have tremendous power for good or evil. Words can be used as instruments of healing or as weapons of war, and there is a place and a time for each. Conscious of this truth, I need to think before I speak/write, and I need to choose my words carefully.

The more I talk, the more apt I am sin. "When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise" (Proverbs 10:19). Sometimes, I must speak; but sometimes, I need to be silent. Likewise, sometimes I need to listen to what another has to say (really listen), and sometimes I need to walk away.

Words are intoxicating, and words, like alcohol, produce happy drunks, mean drunks, sad drunks, drunks who do crazy or wicked things they would never do sober. When a person talks, and then talks more and more and more, throwing down words like champagne at a New Year's Eve party, that person may exhibit a personality completely different from the one he or she exhibits when "sober."

Words are addictive. Like alcohol, words create a heady buzz that some cannot resist - they cannot stop once they've started. They cannot resist making just one more comment, adding one more verbal flourish or jab, saying one last word (and then another, and another).

* * *

Words are one of the things that set us humans apart from the animals. They are a gift from our Creator. It is through words that we are able to know God. And it should be through our words that we reflect His truth and beauty most clearly.

"But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment" (Jesus, speaking in Matthew 12:36).

Does this verse give you pause? Does it sober you? It sure does me.

THANKFUL FOR THE TEARS

Granddaddy banged on the door early Friday afternoon. He'd found a dead cow and an orphaned newborn calf in the field by the pond. He needed Ben and Helen to help get the calf up to the barn.

We weren't sure how long the little fellow had been out in the cold and damp without food or care. A day? Two days? Last week was so bitterly cold. When one is very new to the world, every hour is the difference between life and death.

To me, the calf was an answer to prayer. My youngest has had a difficult couple of months. Too much hurt, too much sadness, too many tears. I was thankful for the tiny calf - something to captivate my daughter's heart, something to draw her thoughts from her own grief to the needs of another frail creature. You can see from the picture that although Friday began with a gray countenance, it ended with a smile.

Orphan calves often do not survive. Helen did not want to name the calf. "If he makes it past a couple of weeks, then I'll name him," she said. Granddaddy was not so reluctant. He named the calf Sam. (The name Sam Kendall is a bit of a joke inside the family, and it always makes us smile.)

So, Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Monday, Helen was often at the barn. Sometimes, she headed over toting a giant bottle of milk/calf formula. Sometimes, she headed over empty-handed, just to check on her charge and spend time with him.

Monday evening, my daughter and I walked to the barn together for Sam's 5:00 feeding. He had been lively and eager to see his adopted mama earlier in the day. Monday evening, he was dead.

And so Helen and I sat in the barn and cried.

"I am so sorry, Helen," I said through tears.

"It's okay," Helen sniffed.

"No, it's not," I replied. Death is never okay. Death screams at us that all is not as it should be, that something is badly wrong with the world. Death is a dark shadow that testifies to sin and its consequences. It reminds us how desperately all of creation needs a Savior.

Helen has grieved the deaths of other orphan calves before this week. She knew from the get-go that Sam might not make it, probably wouldn't make it...but still, she hoped. And I hoped with her, hoped this bright spot in the midst of a gray season would last. But it didn't.

There is something therapeutic about tears...something healing about embracing sorrow and crying freely, away from the callous comments of those who would press our hearts in its tenderest places. No need to explain, or justify, or give an answer.

Before we left the barn yesterday evening, Helen took off her coat and spread it over the little calf. She knew her warmth could not revive him. She covered him as a loving Amen.

I need to walk back over to the barn today to retrieve the coat. Granddaddy will dispose of the body.

I am thankful Helen had Sam for a short time. I am sorry that he did not live.

I am thankful for the privilege of tears shared in a dim, dusty barn.

I am thankful for a God who is sovereign over every detail of life and death - mine, Helen's and Sam's. I am thankful for a God who sees our tears and counts them as precious.

ENDURANCE

ENDURANCE
- originally published 1-16-2012

The adult Sunday school class at Grace is winding up a study based on J.I. Packer's book "Rediscovering Holiness." I don't think I can recommend this book highly enough to my fellow Christians. Yesterday, we worked through the first half of the last chapter, which deals with endurance. The entire book is excellent, but this last chapter is my favorite yet.

After stressing the truth that Christian endurance is lived out by fixing our eyes on Jesus, Packer writes, "The most vital truth for the life of holy endurance is not, however, that Jesus is our standard, momentous as that truth is. The most vital truth is, rather, that Jesus is our sustainer, our source of strength to action, our sovereign grace giver (see Hebrews 2:18, 4:16), "the author and perfecter of our faith" (v. 2)."

Packer continues a bit later, "It is precisely the glorified Lord Jesus, who by His Word and Spirit brought our faith into being and keeps it in being...who now helps us to stand steady as we gaze on Him and cling to Him by means of our focused, intentional, heartfelt prayer. It is often said that 'Help!' is the best prayer anyone ever makes. When directed to the Lord Jesus, it is certainly the most effective."

Pain in this life is a certainty. We are assured in Scripture that we will encounter various trials, sometimes very difficult trials that threaten to overwhelm us and crush our faith, and Scripture does not lie. Our suffering is useful for our growth in holiness - sometimes exposing sin and leading us to repentance, sometimes causing us to lean harder on Christ, sometimes "building muscle" for a future battle or gifting us with the ability to encourage our brothers and sisters in their struggles. Oddly, through our struggles, we discover new encouragement: We are amazed to find God's Spirit doing in us what we could never do ourselves. We discover new strength and deeper faith. We yearn more fervently for Christ and for Glory.

And when we wipe out in this great race of faith and find ourselves face down, bruised and sore, it is then that we feel most powerfully the tender ministrations of our Redeemer. He cleans our wounds, applies His healing balm, binds us up, and lifts us back into the race. Like Paul, we discover anew that at our point of greatest weakness, God's grace and strength are put on glorious display...and we are amazed. Packer writes, "He (God) reveals the glorious riches of His resources in Christ by keeping us going, so that overwhelming pressures do not overwhelm us, even when they look like doing so....one way God glorifies Himself in His saints is by keeping them going when anyone else would have had to stop."

I think sometimes we under-rate the significance of this work of God, His simply sustaining us, His working to keep us "keeping on." We think the victorious Christian life must be something like sunshine and daisies (an idea totally contrary to Scripture), when actually it looks more like this - It is the broken-hearted mother who prays again today, for the millionth time and against all visible reason for hope, for her rebellious and wayward son. It is the lonely wife who again today prays that God will empower her to love and be faithful to her emotionally distant husband. It is the college student sitting through another lecture that denies God, who confesses in his heart and conversation again today that God is sovereign over all His creation. It is the terminally ill patient who prays again today, "Lord, help me to live the days left to me to Your glory, and then help me to die well."

Jesus is my sustainer. I will finish this race - will stand one day in Glory, holy and righteous, rejoicing in the presence of God. I will. And if today I find that I lack the endurance to press on, I have this great confidence - Jesus is not lacking in endurance. He has an abundance of strength and encouragement, enough to pour over even me, and He will sustain me.

OVER THE TOP

The expression "over the top" originated in WWI. When soldiers were ordered out of the trenches to charge across a dangerous stretch of unprotected ground, they went "over the top." These charges usually resulted in many casualties, and going "over the top" took remarkable discipline and courage.

Today, this idiom is used to describe someone who exhibits excessive or extreme behavior, someone who takes needless risks.

I recently received one of the greatest compliments I have ever received in my life. The person seated across the table from me stated: "You are over-the-top crazy about the Gospel."

I thought a second. "Yes, yes, I am," I conceded, "because the Gospel is all I have."

I am a mouse of a woman. If you have followed this blog for very long, you know that I struggle with an inordinate fear of man. On top of this fear of what others think about me, I am prone to be passive-aggressive - I'll do just about anything to maintain a semblance of peace rather than face conflict. And on top of that, knowing that concision is not my strong point, I am so afraid that in the midst of my too-many words, I will speak error into the life of someone I love.

People, I am a disaster. Fearful, insecure, overly analytical, weak, hesitant...NOT the kind of soldier with the strength and resolve to go "over the top" about anything on this battlefield called life...except that Jesus is so all-together lovely, so completely sufficient, so unfalteringly faithful, so sweetly tender and compassionate, so truly amazing that I cannot not follow where He leads.

So, yes, I am over-the-top crazy about the Gospel. Maybe that seems extreme or excessive to some. But I would rather stand exposed and vulnerable next to Jesus in the middle of No Man's Land, than to remain behind, tucked safely in the trenches, trying to defend myself without Him.

If I am going to be over-the-top crazy about something, let that something be Jesus. 

A NEW YEAR (2018)

I am glad 2018 began with sunshine and blue skies! Black-eyed peas, hog jowl, cabbage, and cornbread at Grammy's for a late New Year's Day lunch. Back home now, a bright fire in the fireplace and Old Dominion on the radio. As I type, a pan of hot chocolate simmers on the stove and Helen is baking chocolate chip cookies...yum!

At lunch, my brother-in-law said he wants to be kinder to people and to have a more positive attitude in the year ahead. These are such awesome goals.

At this season in my life, I feel like I am waking up after a long gray zombie-fest. Like the fuzz is beginning to clear from my head after a heavy drug-induced sleep. Today in particular, the cold and the sunshine keen the senses...it is good to feel so alive.

Alive and looking forward to a new year.

This year, 2018, I want to pray more, to read more, to write more, to move more, to sing more, to laugh more, to go on more adventures. I want to be more honest about my feelings, about what I'm thinking, about my goals and dreams and desires and frustrations and fears. I want to live out my faith in more practical ways, with more conscious dependence on God and with fuller assurance of his presence and his favor. I guess, in short, I simply want to be more awake, present, and engaged, and more completely saturated with Christ.

Alive...and becoming more alive every day.

From where I'm sitting right now, it looks like 2018 is going to be a great year.

(Mmmmm, cookies are done!)