1. Ever notice how children LOVE band-aids?  Every time we are at the store my daughters want to buy all the stock.  When disaster strikes, it’s the same scenario every time.  They get hurt and come running towards me.  Sometimes it’s really blood and other times, it’s just red and they claim they are bleeding profusely.  No matter the seriousness of the wound, one thing happens consistently.  They are always hysterically convinced that they will DIE if they don’t have a band-aid put on their boo boo within 30 seconds.  Each and every time the screaming will stop the second the band-aid hits their skin.  I am baffled by this phenomenon.  Does the pain actually cease when it’s applied?  My children certainly act as if it does.   This band-aid reality really got me thinking about how as adults, the term, “band-aid,” has a negative connotation.  “He’s just putting a band-aid on that problem, it’s not really fixing it.”  There is something that happens between childhood and adulthood that changes how we feel about what band-aids represent.  When we’re young, band-aids represent a promise.  The promise assures us that we will heal and that we will be okay even if they we suffering and even if we are in pain.  Children believe in those properly caring for them and they believe what the band-aid represents:  healing.  For us adults we’ve been let down by promises, we’re too wise to be fooled by childish things, but is that really best?  Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  Is that not what children hold on to?  No wonder Jesus emphasized the Kingdom of heaven belongs to little children.  If only we had the same faith.  I pray for the strength and courage to have this childlike faith to run to God in my brokenness and allow the promise of His heavenly band-aid to cover my wounds truly believing that healing will begin when I place all my trust in Him.
  2. Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.  This scripture was going through my mind a few days ago.  I had my “to do” list and my children seemed to keep getting in the way of it.  They kept getting into trouble and were getting so angry at each other and me.  I felt myself getting frustrated.  That is the greatest gift that God gives me sometimes.  He uses my beautiful children to show me the ugliness that exists in me that He wants to rid me of.  He shows me my lack of gentleness, my impatience, my irritability and gently calls me to a much more excellent way.  He gave me my children and others in my life to make me a saint, if I let Him.  I soon realized that them constantly getting in trouble was nothing more than me provoking them to anger.  They weren’t necessarily doing anything that bad.  They were just being kids and doing what kids always do!  I made myself stop and think about what I would love more than anything to do on a summer day with my Mom.  It came to me quickly.  I loved to build cool forts!  I put aside the laundry that will always be there and purposefully built the coolest fort I could with the furniture and blankets available in the loft.  They then stayed up late watching TV and had a sleepover there.  For a moment I felt that peace that surpasses understanding seeing the joy in their faces.  Tomorrow will be another opportunity to grow in the practice of patience and love.  I can feel the Lord, sometimes painfully, changing me into who I am supposed to be.  I pray for the grace to lovingly discipline these special treasures entrusted to me.  Please Lord, give me your Spirit to live in a manner worthy of the call I’ve received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with those in my life through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.

  3. Why the long face?

    I remember hearing a Priest say before that we are called to be disciples of hope.  My husband and my children know that anytime I go anywhere it usually takes me forever.  I’m pretty sure it’s because the Lord always seems to put people in my life who are in desperate need of encouragement.  It happens to me all the time.  I just happen to see someone I know and next thing I know I can feel the Spirit of God working through me to encourage them.  The word encourage literally means to give someone courage.  It happened to me again today.  I wanted to check on the time to get an id card from our clubhouse since we just moved and randomly decided to drive by and make sure it wasn’t happening earlier.  I have no clue why but at the exact moment that I got in my car and turned the corner, I saw someone who I knew was going through a rough time.  I turned my car around and stopped to speak with her.  My heart broke for the heavy burdens that I know she’s carrying.  She is struggling with work, family, service and most of all balance.  Her heart is so full of love for everyone that it’s being pulled into a million places.  I think we all get that way sometimes.  It is also a reminder to me that sometimes satan uses that eagerness inside us to run us ragged until we’re not capable of living any more to our full potential.  When I think about life, I am constantly trying to remind myself how limited each moment that we have is.  We’re given a set amount of minutes known only to God, yet we spend so many of them worrying and stressing about the temporal.  I wonder how different this world looked if we cared less about our 401K and more about our heavenly bank account.  If this life is a blink of an eye and our next life is forever, we sure have a funny way of saving up where it really matters.  I love Romans 12:12 that says, Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and steadfast in prayer.  If we in a constant state of hope, patience and prayer we have what we need to live a holy Christian life despite our circumstances.  We receive the grace of a peaceful heart.  I believe that is one of the main tools of the enemy.  He tries to do whatever he can to steal our peace.  He knows once our peace is gone, we’ll be to focused on trying to fix whatever we’re upset about that we become self consumed.  It’s only when we’re in a state of peace that we can truly reach out and be the hands and feet of Christ.  Today that is my focus.  Lord I pray that you will help me to overcome the battle that tries to steal my peace today and use me in mighty way for your kingdom, to heal the brokenhearted and be used by you to bring them to the grace that can be found only in a deep trust in your mercy.  Amen.

  4. Be still and know that I am God

    This scripture has been running through my head all day, as if the Lord is trying to press it upon my heart.  “Mommy can I have milk?”  Be still.  “Mommy I’m hungry.”  Be still.  “Mommy she’s being mean.”  Be still.  In between errands, laundry, cleaning, reading stories and playing:  Be still.  I can feel myself cry out to God that with my vocation as a mother of four it’s simply impossible to be still.  I never get seconds to myself, forget stopping to sit still.  He softly speaks to me, in the secret, in the quiet place.  “You are still when you rest in me.”  In confusion I try to figure when I have time to sit down or to rest in my busy days.  It becomes clear to me.  I rest in Him when I dwell in His house.  It is only when I dwell in Him that He becomes the one who comforts my despair.  He becomes the one who calms my frustration on the hardest of days.  He becomes the one who encourages me to walk in love when every human part of me wants to run the other way simply because He is God.  He is better than a cup of coffee, or a bubble bath.  The creator of the Universe, the God who made the glorious heavens above is beckoning me to a friendship and love that can only be sustained with meditating on His constant presence in my life, despite what I choose to fill my days with.  In a life filled with chaos and constant motion I can be still only when I know that He is God and His Spirit is life within me.

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