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Daily Devotion – Love Isn’t Fair
One of the most difficult things we’ve had to learn over time is how to work as a team. I remember the days when my kids had to learn this in school. Every year without fail, the teacher assigned a group project. And every year they complained that it just wasn’t fair. Somebody on the team wasn’t trying. Someone wasn’t doing their share of the work. Someone was getting a free ride. So it is with life. Sometimes teamwork isn’t fair. Sometimes my husband is outside shoveling snow while I’m inside a warm house sipping tea. Sometimes he’s lifting heavy furniture while I’m folding sheets. And sometimes I’m cooking a…
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Making Your Home Magnetic
Today we are chatting about my favorite chapter of Courtney Joseph’s encouraging book Women Living Well, Chapter 17 on Making Your Home a Haven. On page 173 Courtney writes, “What makes a home a haven? Is it having a well-decorated home that looks as if it popped out of Better Homes and Gardens? Is it a home that has massive amounts of toys, food to feast on, video games stacked high, and every movie imaginable to view? Is it a certain number of square feet, a separate bedroom for each child, or the neighborhood in which you live? No. It is not the things we have or the things we…
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The Security of Our Story
Hearing our love story gives our children the assurance that they were meant to be. “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”. Psalm 139:16, NIV Carrying plates to the table, mashed potatoes and gravy piled high, I watch as my teenage boys plop down in their chairs. Peeling black paint reveals my secret – the original white enamel. I smile, remembering this was the first piece of furniture their dad and I bought together. We’ve sat around this table sharing stories and meals with these two boys for almost two decades. Tonight we’ll sit and talk and linger…
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She’s Always a Woman
Age 31 arrived and with it, the cold fingers of early winter tightened their slow, numbing grip on the last week of October in Portland, Oregon. Happy Birthday, but not really. Winter is colder when you’re alone and don’t want to be. “It is not good for a man to be alone.” Yeah, God, I know. So, where is she, because I’ve searched for her in every room, at every church service, through every crowd, down every busy street? I’m not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan but with 32 staring me in the face, I felt the vibe of his song, Dancing in the Dark, down in my bones. Even…
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100 Ways to Love Your Husband, 100 Ways to Love Your Wife
100 Ways to Love Your Husband: Available on Amazon now 100 Ways to Love Your Wife: Available on Amazon now So how did you know he was the one? I felt I should have had an answer ready on the tip of my tongue. A thoughtful insight of some kind. But mostly I just remember him walking into the dinner party with his confident stride. Wearing a thick, manly sweater, black Levi’s and western boots. Tall, dark, and handsome. With deep blue eyes. But that doesn’t really explain anything. I mean, no one simply falls in love with a pair of boots…do they? No, it was more than that. Way…
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When You Love Your Wife You Love Yourself
I’ll never forget those eyes, dancing above the rim of her glass the moment I walked into the room, the first dance of many . . . wild and wonderful. Four days later (An eternity, she said!) we kissed and purposed to spend our lives as one. As I lay across the bed from my beautiful, lovely Bride during our Hawaiian honeymoon (a typically generous gift from my brother and sister-in-law) those dancing eyes held my gaze, their radiance intensifying a vague sense of loss. Time. Suddenly all those years without her seemed lost. Drinking in the moment’s wonder, my fingers fell lightly, high upon her cheek, tracing to her…
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Love Is a Gift, Not a Swap of Emotions
My marriage is wonderful, and Michael’s incredible, but let me also say that our relationship isn’t perfect—it’s taken humility, patience, and grace to get where we are. There have been rough patches and some days when he didn’t seem all that “wonderful” to me, and I can imagine that he’s felt the same way. I’ve come to see that love is like an oak tree. When nurtured it takes root. We have storms that leave us feeling confused and miserable, but we put effort into seeing them through, because both Michael and I know that with each passing season those roots are growing beyond what our senses observe. Like most young couples,…
