Grow in Grace… and how God always has to trick me into growing.

It’s been a year. Not a good year. Not a bad year. Not a big year or a little year. Just a year.

As I get older, I am learning that this is a blessing.

God shows his strength and his provision and his unfailing love in the years where we are shaken and sifted. Where we transition and change. Where big choices are made and the roller coaster dips.

But God shows his faithfulness. His steadiness. His “be still and know” in the years where not much changes at all.

Ask me nine months ago if I felt steady or faithful or still and I probably would have laughed at you. But looking back, taking all the little moments and wrapping them with a neat bow and calling them a year…

It’s been steady. And faithful. And in all the little things, it’s been big.

Merry Christmas

Emmanuel. God with us. 

  In the middle of our traditions. Under our trees. Behind our smiles and within our reach. Giving good gifts. The best gifts. The “from above” gifts that aren’t bought in stores. 

God with us.
  Unwrapping His great heart and giving us gifts of family and beauty and people who love us even in our imperfection.  

  When the tree is crooked and the flour is in our hair and the paper bits leave a trail through the house. 

God with us.   Loving us even when we’re distracted with christmas.      

    Christ in the midst of our mess and making it the most wonderful.

 Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors

Have I ever told you that movies speak to me?

There’s just something about stories that grab my attention, and more times than I can count, God has used, of all things, movies to speak to me. To give me revelation. To confirm a calling. To open my eyes.

It’s a strange thing to be sitting in a theater bawling because God used a particular story to change my entire world. But that’s what he does.

A movie set me free. A movie told us to have a baby. And recently, a movie made me a better mom.

Wanna know how? You can check out my nostalgic review at the Knoxville Mom’s Blog and then you can watch Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors, which will re-air on Christmas night at 9pm Eastern time.

 

“But there was something about the mother in that movie, in that little house in the mountains with all those kids and nothing but love, that my heart yearned for.”