I think anyone living the human experience can agree that sometimes, life just happens. It’s just a fact of life, that one day you feel like you're flying, only to find the next day that you were actually falling. You were never flying at all. Any number of things could happen to you. You could crash your car. You could lose your job. You could find out your spouse is cheating. You could walk through grieving a loved one. 

Personally, I’ve recently found out someone very close to me– one of my best friends– has cancer. If you’ve ever been in the position where you’re a part of the support system for someone going through cancer, you’ll know there are many emotions attached. There’s grief that life is about to change radically as your loved one walks through treatment; trying to do everything you can and feeling like it’s not enough. There’s worry for the days ahead and the many outcomes that can happen. And at the same time, there’s an adamant and stubborn desire to remain strong for that person, wanting to be encouraging and steadfast and ready to dig your heels in and help that person fight.

I say the word “slavery” and what do you think?

Do you think modern-day slavery? Do you think of vulnerable people that are snatched, stolen and taken to toil in terrible conditions and lifestyles?

Do you think of America in the 1800’s? When African people were sold off to work in fields and treated as less than even animals?

When I was pregnant with Piper, the craziest idea to wrap my head around was that she felt so far away and yet she was literally right with me all the time. It’s hard to reconcile those feelings: that your child, being grown inside your body, feels so far away because it take nine months to grow them. You can’t hold them. You can’t see them. You can’t track their progress outside of your own growing belly and the occasional scheduled sonogram. Sure, you feel your baby kick and move around inside you, and you talk to them constantly, but for some reason, in my brain, it always felt like my daughter was a million miles away. Until she was born, then POP! All of a sudden, she was real and there and bigger than I could imagine being stuffed up inside my belly.

In every good marriage, there’s a worrier and someone who is not easily rattled. In mine, I take the position of the worrier, and Sam is the one who is always telling me to let things go. Even if you’re not married, you probably know whether you’ll end up being the worried one or the other half who will constantly be telling your spouse to take a breath and change their perspective.

It took Israel three months from their exodus of Egypt until they took up residence around Mount Sinai. In those three months, they saw the end of their slavery, deliverance from Egypt, they walked across the Red Sea, witnessed God’s miraculous provision of food and water, and won a war in God’s name. They saw evidence upon evidence of God’s love and care for them; His strength and power over their enemies and yet His protection over this chosen nation. Israel would go on to spend a long time in the wilderness of Sinai and a lot of their societal structure would be established there. Nevertheless, God wanted to meet His people at Mount Sinai the way He met Moses from within the burning bush.

The first war Israel had to fight after becoming a free nation of people is seen in the latter half of Exodus 17. Their enemy, Amalek, and his army attacked the nation of Israel unprovoked and in a reprehensible way. Instead of attacking Israel’s camp head on, they attacked them from the back. In ancient times, the elders, leaders, and strongest among a group would be out in front, leading the way and providing the protection needed for their more vulnerable members located in the back. Taking up the rear were usually women, children, elderly, and the infirm. For Amalek to surprise attack Israel and target their defenseless citizens was not only below the belt but despicable and cowardly.

In 2014, back in the days before this website existed, God laid it on my heart to go on a mission trip to Africa. At the onset, I thought the obvious path was to go with a family friend that had an organization in Tanzania. That mission would consist of traveling in the African bush, visiting tribes and ministering to them over the course of about two or three weeks. There were months of planning, between figuring out what vaccines I’d need, supplies, putting my finances in order to fund it, and travel logistics. Finally, it came time to buy the plane tickets and try as I did, confirming a booking proved impossible. I’d have the tickets, pick my seat, enter my payment information, and submit, but for some reason each time I tried, the seat was no longer available. This happened several times with multiple airlines before my mom stepped in and voiced my own concern: Something wasn’t right.

Have you ever stood in front of nature and been completely in awe of the awesomeness of God? For me, I was a teenager standing on the Maid of the Mist, a little boat that launches out of the New York side of Niagara Falls and sails into the horseshoe at the bottom of the falls. Standing at the bottom of this huge waterfall, water hurdling over the edge and crashing with such force into the river below that it ricochets into a hazy mist that drenches everything.

Is Jesus precious to you? Don’t just knee-jerk answer that. Don’t just give it the answer you think makes you look good to other people. Really think. Do you value Jesus as precious every moment of every day? Do you treat him the way He deserves? Do you regard Him above all else in everything you do?

My daughter got four vaccines at her last doctor's visit. If you’ve ever had a baby, you’ll know that even one vaccine can make a baby fussy, clingy, uncomfortable, and unhappy. Now multiply that by four. After getting pricked at her appointment, she fell asleep long enough for us to pick up infant Tylenol and make it home, then the crying commenced. We did everything: nursed her until she refused any more, hopped in the shower for skin-to-skin and let the water run over her, bounced her, walked around with her, turned on music, the whole nine. Finally, the thing that helped her relax and sleep again was laying on her daddy’s chest for a good snuggle. And now, as I watch her relaxed and comforted, her little hands wrapped around Sam as far as they’ll make it, I am reminded of how that’s exactly the way God sees me: small, innocent, and in need of a Father God to be saved and comforted.

I am learning that with every major milestone in life, there is one common denominator: thank you cards. And after the birth of my daughter, Piper, we’ve gotten so many gifts from so many people that it’s hard to keep track anymore. So much so, that I decided to finally buckle down and take care of sending out thank you cards off of a very inconsistent list Sam and I started putting together once the packages started coming in from everywhere. As I was going through a list of people at least an arms length long, something extremely obvious occurred to me. Thank you notes are considered a nice touch, if not a common courtesy. If you get a gift big or small, you thank that person for it and a thank you note sends a specific message of deep gratitude.

When I was a little girl, my parents instated a bedtime routine for me. It was some iteration of bath, snack time, brush teeth, story time, and then saying prayers. Like most prayers for little kids, there was a rhythm to it so that eventually I’d be able to say them on my own and know what to pray for. One thing we always prayed has always stuck out to me. Each night, we’d thank God for His many blessings, seen and unseen. As a kid, I didn’t understand the full breadth of what that meant, but as I got older it meant more. It’s simple, but hard to wrap our minds around: the fact that God blesses us in ways that are readily apparent and obvious, but He also blesses us in ways we aren’t even aware of, simply because He can see things going on around us that we could never possibly see from our limited perspective.

I don’t think I’ve ever walked through a season of life where so much change was happening all at once. Not even when I was married, although there was a lot of change in that season as well. And I know, I have a decent amount of readers that don’t have kids and are probably tired of hearing me talk about being pregnant, but I can’t help it. It’s just where I am right now. Having your first child is a life-change like no other. Simultaneously, you’re growing a baby in an area that only you have occupied all your life. Every day, it seems like there are new changes, new aches, pains, growth, symptoms, and all the while, this child is reminding you that they are growing out of what once was next to nothing.

We are living in an age where social justice is one of the most important aspects of society. It’s seeped into everything. If you’re interviewing for a new job position, social media posts from 10 years ago can disqualify you for candidacy. Conversely, if a company is not perfectly politically correct or deemed “woke” by mainstream culture, they may struggle to find people to put on their payroll. In schools, kids walk around endlessly barraged by political and social agenda, being led to believe that if they think differently than the mob, they’ll be rejected and hated. Don’t even think about logging onto Facebook without coming across some kind of argument or call to cancel someone else.

In 2019, I left the church I attended my whole life. As a child, teenager, and young adult, it was a wonderful place to learn about and develop a relationship with God. The leadership was amenable to allowing youth to serve and be heard, and in turn, that made me and my friends excited to be a part of that body of believers for many, many years. But at the age of 25, I felt the Lord leading me into a new direction. In a lot of ways, that transition out of everything I knew was scary. I was comfortable in that church and it had a large hand in shaping me into who I was. I loved my pastor and the community that I’d trusted and gotten so used to. But once I left, I realized that up until that point, I didn’t really know my Bible. I had taken everything that was preached from the pulpit as gospel. And that’s not to say that my pastor was a false teacher or anything, but it is to say that I never really tested the full measure of scripture for myself, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself in the Word to me on a personal level.

Last week, we discussed the prosperity gospel– what it entails and why it isn’t gospel. Primarily, we focused on the financial side of the movement and how teachers of prosperity gospel twist the Bible to claim that God is the way to health, wealth, and material success. In my personal life as someone who wants to make freelance writing into a career, I follow a lot of freelancers or writing coaches to study their business models and tips. The weird thing is, without fail when talking about the “spirituality” or “mindset” of the lifestyle, they tend to mention that they subscribe to people that are known teachers of prosperity gospel: Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, Kenneth Copeland, and the list goes on.