I sat on the stone tile floor yesterday for the third time with a child guilty of crimes brought before me by a sibling equally as guilty of being a tattletale.  As I tell my kids, there’s no getting around being touched by another’s sin.  It’s just gonna happen so you better get good at forgiving one another because your skin-to-sin contact is inevitable. 

I sat there as his dark eyes pooled with tears and he explained why he had hit his brother, interrupted by sniffles of regret I listened giving him a second to breath and think through his reactive tendencies.

Some days are so full of training.  

Here I am in the middle of searching out justice for my boys, quietly praying for God’s wisdom and a covering of patience to rightly administer the proper correction.  All the while secretly noticing how dusty and dirt covered the stairs are and how the laundry is stretching it’s sleeves into the hallway near me like a thief trying to steal my joy.  The washer has stopped spinning and needs to be shifted to the right and I’ve still not gotten around to painting the wainscoting staring me in the face a mere two feet in front of my nose.  

​In all my thoughts of “to-dos” I hear in my heart, Be about the Father’s business.
My soul clutches tightly to the words and cradles them, agreeing with the Holy Spirit’s timely antidote to this moment.  I regain my focus on the child in front of me and no longer keep tabs on the laundry, the dust or the faded paint.  I see the Father’s business and I get to being about it, offering a simple loaf and fish, truth and punishment to those involved.

​There’s things to be accomplished, for sure.  And I think every mom out there can say they’ll never get it all done.  So just slow yourself right down and live in this moment, participate in this moment.  Even if your moment is hard and messy, loud or maybe too quiet, frustrating or straight up rug pulled out beneath you; whatever moment you’re in, slow it and let it steep because the God who created you and your children is alive in your moments too.  He’s destined to never fail and plans good for your future, so rest your rushing thoughts onto His broken for YOU shoulders, and slow it all down.  

Over a dozen years ago I sat in a therapists office for the third week to finally be diagnosed with depression, anxiety and ADHD.  Panic attacks that led to hyperventilation weren’t uncommon for me as were stacks of unfinished work at my desk that I just couldn’t seem to lift.  All the symptoms fit and I agreed I must just be different.  
I spent only a week on a trial medication before ditching it for a deeper truth.  The truth that when your eyes are set on The King, the emotions of a broken heart, a broken past and an uncertain future can fade in the light of Him who heals and holds tightly the ones who come open and broken hearted. 

The weaknesses that could have kept me from walking out a life of freedom are now used to show who God is and how deeply He cares.  Not to say there aren’t people who truly need medication for these kinds of diagnoses, in my story only the shifting of eyes and relinquishing of my will is what brought cure and comfort.  A daily shifting I might add.
Satan said, “you’ll never breath easy”.  God said, “this will bring me glory.”

​I’ve had to learn over the years that God is the only one who deems me qualified to do what He’s asked.  No manmade credit can authoritate my calling.  My marked up resume has been rewritten by The Author of everything and He has set me in a position to teach my children with confidence and joy, to be helper to a man of integrity and quiet blogger in this space.  None of which I’m qualified by experience to do, but all of which God has positioned me to fulfill.   

"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight-in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.“ 2 Corinthians 12: 9-11

​What good to the world would I be if only strength I did possess?  What compassion could I hand out if never had I woke to the simplest of shortcomings?  And what have I to offer if I need not meet God's strength at the start of each day?  Thankfulness now envelopes my heart, 35 years from a loving God and I am grateful to wake to my weaknesses that keep me fully in His strength. 
Our disadvantages do not disqualify us for all God has placed in our beings to do, our disadvantages leave us fully dependent on God's mercy to allow Him to work through us for the glory due Him. 
We are all called to be broken and maimed kingdom builders, with pasts that hurt and futures unknown and with a King who holds us dear, full of mercy and love. 

Pulling into the U-shaped driveway I scan for children running across the porch or swinging freely in the back yard.  There’s no one this time but in a few months when the grass is thick and sun is still hanging low in the sky and popsicles take their place back at the top of my grocery list; there will be children.  
​For now only the silent stars accompany my walk from van to kitchen door, fingers stretched around as many handles as possible.

Home. 

It's quiet this time.  Children are already tucked in, reading silently to themselves under the heat of sheet and blanket.  The dishwasher hums a wet song and the dryer flops the last load of the day 100 times over until the heavy jeans surrender to the machine. 

​I recall my mom as a realtor telling me, “if you want to sell your home, bake bread before the showing.”  She was right.  There’s something powerful about the smell of fresh bread that encourages lingering a moment longer, listening a bit closer and hopefully being charmed into staying forever.  Sold!  

​​Oh, if gold crusted bread was all it took to make a house a home, wouldn’t that be just too simple?  Though homemade bread may be powerful enough to comfort the ache of a homesick soul, there’s so much more to making home a place worth longing for again and again.

4/1/2020
Edger Albert Guest wrote a poem about the strength home has on the soul when lived in well.  He writes, “it takes a heap ‘o livin’ in a house ‘t make it home.”  

So if you think nothing much is happening as you spend day after day under the same roof with the same people, know that little by little you’re turning your house into a home.  Each breakfast served, candle lit and pillow dropped into freshly washed pillowcase is leaving an imprint on the ones you live with.  Don’t underestimate the permanent strings you’re tying when you turn up the music and dance, or turn down the volume and pray; both will ink love into their memories and joy into their eyes.  
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There’s something big and unseen happening these unsure days in homes across the world, something more impacting than the moms and the dads of this generation could have created on their own.  There’s heaps of living being done in houses now called homes.  ​