Slice of Peace

I always seem to want to write around Thanksgiving. While some may think of it as a secular, all-inclusive type holiday, for me it's one of the most "religious". It's an entire day devoted to gratitude! No gifts, just grateful. Feasting on abundance, full, thankful. Family shhhing for grace. Bowing our heads. An over-cooked turkey, paired with raw thanks.

Paul says in Philippians,

"Don't worry about anything, 
instead pray about everything. 

Tell God what you need 
and thank Him for all he has done. 

Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."


Unending Thanksgiving begins by not worrying, but instead choosing to pray.

And prayer is two-part: 1) Tell God what you need (ask for help!)
                                  2) Thank Him for all He's already done (praise 'em!)

Only in doing the above will we know peace, God's Peace, which is so great it's beyond understanding. And that very Peace will protect our troubled hearts and worry-prone minds. Guarded for Good.


My practical way of following through with Paul's priceless advice has always been taking an old notebook and T-ing up all the pages. Then pouring it out as often as I can.

Tell God what you need / Thank Him for all He has done

Prayer is incomplete without thanksgiving and Thanksgiving is incomplete without prayer. Simple.

-Take life, omit worry. 

-Substitute with prayer. 

-Mix together some asking with thanking.

-Bake at 450* and enjoy.

Slice of Peace anyone?

Philippians 4:6-7

I Need You Still

What with having a semi-needy newborn, a tornado of a 2 year-old, and a new home that I'm resolving to actually keep up with, I haven't been able to sit, gather up my mind, and write until now.
(Thank you two-hour delay and PBS!)
My time alone with my thoughts and my God has mostly been confined to 15-20 minutes before the sun's even up. But at least it's there. It's not pushed aside. Not ever again.

I have a confession and I could use the above reasons as an excuse, but I won't. Because I'm not confessing out of guilt, I'm confessing to remind myself never to let this happen again. I'm confessing to declare that I have needs. Big ones. Ones that I can not function, breathe, walk, especially parent, without.

I NEED GOD, I NEED HIS WORD, I NEED PRAYER. I still NEED it.

We moved a little over a month ago, right before Christmastime. It wasn't until after New Year's that I realized my go-to Bible was still packed away. My toaster was out and popping and my TV was fully functioning, but of the half a dozen boxes still left unopened was the one labeled "IMPORTANT" with my Book inside, closed.

With the holidays, our Bible Study was on vacation. With all the projects around the house, weekly prayer time with my hubby was pushed aside. With a baby shifting around my sleep, my early morning time with Him was traded in for more time with my sheets. Maybe my writer's block was due to lack of Word, not time.
And when the holidays came and went, and all 3 kids had been home for weeks, and the house still wasn't where I wanted it, and had almost no routine to lean on, and had hardly had any real talk with my husband, I lost it. Crumbled. Completely caved in to every pressure around me.

It took an emergency date night with my husband early this month and time away from the house, kids, etc. for me to wake up. My husband will confess right along side me (triangle, bam!) that we kidded ourselves, if just for a few weeks, that we could do this solo. Without the spiritual support of each other, but most importantly, without Him. We were see-you-on-Sunday followers.

When the world seems to be going swimmingly, blessings all around, we tend to forget our desperate state. But I want to be constantly desperate. Needy. For Him only. And intentional to fill that need daily. Not if I get to it. Not if she sleeps in today. Not if that project gets done. Everyday, needing Him and going. Running into His arms and filling myself up with His Love and Grace and Mercy and Truth and Joy and.... everything I need, in Him.

I won't be thirsty. I have a bubbling spring within me, I'm going to drink from it often. More than often. Now. Always. Every second. Sipping, gulping, slurping. And I have food. So much food! Food some know nothing about. My nourishment comes from doing His will. (John 4)

But you gotta check-in with the Boss to see what He has for you. Hallelujah, I'm here, I'm sorry, I need You still, as much as when I was broken on a dirty dorm floor, I need you now, on my newly cleaned kitchen floor, I need you just as much. 

And I won't forget it.

Mouse in the House

One of the unconsidered joys of living in an old farmhouse surrounded by horses and fields is the occasional mouse that comes wandering in looking for shelter. I guess I figured they were probably around, but lately it’s become more than obvious (i.e. -  when one stops right in front of me and stares for a while).

 A few months back, when I saw the first gray blur scurry past me one night, I screamed so loud that I woke the kids, and Baileigh came running downstairs. I was standing on top of the dining room table, so she just joined me. Doug was out coaching that night, and we actually stood and even slept on the wooden table for almost 3 hours until he got back. After that incident I hadn’t physically seen one in a while, but just the other week, Doug and I rented a movie, sat down to relax after the kiddos were down,  and this then little guy ran out in front of us then ran away then came back again. I stood on top of the couch hysterically crying, covering my eyes, yelling at Doug to just tell me when it was over. (We ended up waking up the kids and sleeping at Mima’s that night because Mommy was unstable.)

So needless to say, this has always been a horrible phobia of mine. It might have slightly settled down a bit once I became more acquainted with these guys. But if being 8-months pregnant isn’t enough to keep you awake at night, a chilling scritch-scratch sound behind the old walls will certainly do the job. I’m exhausted. After trying every humane, home-remedy (traps, oils, buzzing machines), we finally taped up the gaping farmhouse holes and got an exterminator. So I’d say the problem is finally under control, or at least we’re on the winning side at this point in the game. Plus, literally facing this fear of mine has toughened me up quite a bit.

Of course, even mice issues bring me back to God though. At some point, I realized there wasn’t much my husband could do to protect me. I had spent at least 100 bucks on “best-selling solutions”.  And the exterminator, while a relief, said after his 10-minute treatment  to “give it a week or so.” So who was going to help me? I wasn’t sleeping. I was completely paranoid, even out in public. And my day-to-day essentials, like going to the bathroom or cleaning around the house, were becoming an exhausting mental battle.

So I got down with some raw, impromptu prayer - no fancy words, not on my knees, not even with my eyes closed (they haven’t been closed in weeks, this was no exception, too vulnerable).  Think wide-eyed, slightly psycho-sounding mumblings instead.

·         “Jesus, protect me, protect me. Give me protection.”

·         “Give me peace of mind, Lord. Calm me down. I’m freaking out!”

·         “Help me function. I’m running on nothing. Please, God! Please, please, please.”

And while they may just be mouse-in-the-house type prayers, they were some of the realest prayers I’ve prayed in a while because I was so desperate! I’ve personally seen time and again that out of desperation, God delivers. I’d also say it’s a humbling state to be shaking over something furry and smaller than my fist. Humbled and Desperate makes for good prayer!

 I realized too that everything I was praying for at 4 a.m. was Bible-backed, God-guaranteed.

·         Protection

·         Peace

·         Strength

…some of the main promises of God.  And when I cry out to Him for these things, in desperation and with expectation, I  know I’ll be heard and answered. Thank goodness. I just don’t know why I far too often go to Him as my last resort. After I tell the hubby, after I browse the internet, after call the professional, then I think, oh hey, did I even take this to God yet? He needs to be my number one emergency contact, regardless of the emergency. God cares about something as small as a mouse in the middle of the night because it’s big to me and I am His child.

“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”

~ 1 Peter 5:7

COM 101 - Intro to Prayer

Isn't it absolutely insane that the God of the universe actually cares enough about you that He specifically told you to bring your needs to Him? Sometimes it blows my mind and other times I think, "Well, of course that makes sense." As a mom, the one who gave birth to my children, I could only hope that they would come to me in times of need. Just the same, the One who created you desires that you bring your little and big concerns before Him, so that they can shrink in His powerful presence.

 It's not so much an attitude of "Don't worry, be happy". 

But instead, God says, "Don't worry, talk to Me about it."

Phillippians 4:6 says plain and simply, "Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything." 

EVERYTHING. Nothing is too little or too big for Him to handle. He WANTS you to bring it to Him. 

The verse goes on to say, "Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus." 

When you thank God and ask God, He will bring you peace. This peace comes from relationship with Him and a relationship requires communication. When it comes to prayer, it is not selfish to put yourself first sometimes. He wants you to get insanely honest with Him, run to Him to celebrate your highs, and fall in complete desperation at His knees. He wants intimate conversation with and about you. If I remember anything from my COM degree it's the following definition that got pounded into our brains: communication is when a sender gives a message and a receiver hears the message and provides feedback. I drew a version of this model, much like the one below, on many exams (if not every flippin one!). But if we want relationship with our Creator there has to be communication (*medium = PRAYER).

Even though God knows your heart before you speak a word out of your mouth, He wants you to talk with Him about yourself, not just to be heard, but because He knows it will bring you peace. And also because He just wants to chat with you... you're His child and He wants to know what's up. Again, much like typical a parent. When we know something is wrong with our child's heart and maybe we may even already know the exact reason why, we still desire that they talk to us about it because 1) we care! 2) they'll feel better if they admit it out loud, and 3) we can most likely help them with it.

Likewise... God definitely cares enough, He told us prayer gives us peace beyond understanding, and God (unlike us) is most definitely equipped to do something about it! So go ahead... He already gave you His Message, now give Him some feedback. Chat it up. He's waiting for your call.

Love = You > Me

1 Corinthians 13... "The Love Poem" we've all heard at least in a romantic comedy, if not at 9 out of 10 church weddings. I have to admit we used it at ours too, but first I went to our pastor and said, "Do you think 1 Corinthians 13 is too overdone?" Like it was a once-catchy, now-dreaded song on the radio or something (i.e. - my daughter's favorite "I Gotta Feeling") But he simply said, "I don't think scripture can ever be overdone."

And just this week I heard the chapter once again, but heard it in a much more personal, practical, and applicable way. The first line says, "If I speak in the languages of men or of angels, but do not have LOVE, I am only a resounding gong or clanging symbol." In other words, even if I am able to make a clear, articulate message, but am not combining it with love, it's just a bunch of noise! I quickly thought of this blog. Amazingly, my little informal blog that I started to keep my long-distance family in the loop has been read by people across the world!? People in places like Russia, Germany, and even Cambodia have come across this page, but even more amazingly God's message has reached old classmates, fellow moms, and doubting family members and friends. I've somehow managed to articulate myself in a way that is clear enough for people to understand... and that is GOOD, but where is the love? (oh no, not more Black Eyed Peas  lol)

Paul said it... without LOVE this blog (and anything else) is a bunch of noisy nothing. And according to Jesus, sincere love, God-like love, is putting YOU before ME or choosing to put others needs ahead of your own. But how can a dinky blog do that? How can I add a LOVE button? "Take time to pray for and listen to those reading what you have to say," is what came to me. How simple! But how do I do that with a medium that is usually used to talk about me, Me, ME. Thankfully, I have a tech-savy hubby who actually made this happen!

So... you'll notice there is a Prayer/Discussion tab and a Chat tab at the top of the site now. You can add prayer requests (general, specific, little, big, anonymous, etc) that I pledge to put serious time aside for. And other readers can also pray for you and your need or praise with you in your victory. We can also have open discussions about faith, fitness, and food (my favs). Or, if you'd like to personally talk to me with a request, comment, question, encouraging word :)  then you can do that with the Chat with Mumby tab, which only I can see. So hopefully this can be not only an outlet for me and my thoughts, but also a personal place of encouragement and LOVE for you!