in the love of Christ

So many weeks of my life have been altered by the worship songs I prepare to sing the following Sunday. I don't listen to a lot of new music and, when I do, it is chosen for me while driving by a radio DJ. But, when I prepare for worship every other week or so, I am so thankful that I serve at a church where the worship folks are always finding the next best song to draw people closer to God and mix those new songs with the tried and true heart changers on Sunday morning. This week as I prepared for church, my heart was painfully joyful. I pulled up the list, looked at the songs and cried. Some are songs that have gotten me through rough days in college or simply bring me back to the Truth of the Gospel instantly. But, it was the last song that really put my heart into a fast rhythm. Driving home from an emotional church event in March, just two short weeks after our first trimester loss of our second child, I struggled with some facts about it that I just didn't know how t

I have been caught in a struggle lately. I would call it just an emotional time or what it really is: a season of pruning in my life. I re-read one of my the most influential books in my life a few months ago by Bruce Wilkinson: Secrets of the Vine. He writes about the different ways that the vine dresser or gardener cares for the vine as it grows and how these different methods are found in different seasons of our lives. I identified that I was in a season of pruning coming off of a season on discipline and learning some hard lessons. But, life got busy and things happened and I seemed to withdraw from any attempt to go further as a person. The thought of becoming a more faithful or diligent or compassionate or whatever type of person would have been an improvement on my current state of human left my mind on a vacation. The vacation is over and not because I am all of a sudden ready to work on myself again but because I am acutely aware of just how desperately I need Jesu

During worship a couple of Sundays ago, I sang the words "impossible things in His name they shall be done". I sang that tonight, realizing that the impossible things I prayed for were not done last week. I knew that our tiny baby had passed but I prayed God would bring that baby back to life before my next doctor's appointment. He did not do that. He welcomed that child into His glory in Heaven and I was asking for Him to send him or her back to me. I sang those same words with more belief than ever before again tonight. "Impossible things in His name they SHALL BE DONE!" because those words are true. They were true last week. They are true today. They will be true forever. I have learned and I KNOW that my God is capable of the impossible. He can breathe life into dead things. He is steadfast and faithful. But, if my prayers are not for His Will, they may not be answered in the way I hoped. I may be praying for "good" things but that does not mak

On this Sunday, one year ago, I sat in my house excited for what the next day held. We had decided to speed up a very slow labor and have baby Jane induced early Monday morning. I couldn't eat anything after midnight, not that I wanted to as the labor contractions had already started and they were not playing nice on the way to the hospital. Needless to say, that was an anxious Sunday. Anxious and exciting. Today is a Sunday. It is the beginning of the week my baby girl will turn one year old! What a whirlwind. But I am, once again, not having anything to eat or drink after midnight and heading to a hospital room not too terribly far from the one baby Jane was born in for a slightly different reason. Jane has a little brother or sister on Heaven now and it is time for me to let that precious child go. We had known for a few weeks we were expecting but I was extremely anxious about our first appointment. Our OB said that was common for the second time around so we had our little