Merritt is in LOVE

Completely and utterly in love.

You know, the kind of love where he won't stop talking about her.
He brings her up multiple times a day.
He asks us to call her family and see if we can visit her regularly.

Don't worry... he still thinks girls have cooties.
But boy, oh boy does he want a horse.
It's funny how quickly the birthday wish list can change
from video games to cowboy boots and riding lessons.

This love affair started like this...

But has progressed to this...

He doesn't mind watching and waiting patiently to get a turn

And when he's getting some instruction, he listens carefully.
He really wants to learn!

And oh what joy to not be on the lead...

He even WANTS to help out with the work (at least so far)

He isn't the only one who gets in on the fun...

He's just the only one who's in LOVE!
(at least so far)

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Pretty Lips

She has a bit of a love affair with lip gloss,
Or as she calls it "pretty lips."

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Good Friday

Today has been a busy day.
But as I get ready to share in the Passover meal with my family at Epic,
here is where my heart is meditating...

He was despised and rejected -

a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.

We turned our backs on Him and looked the other way.

He was despised, and we did not care.

Yet it was OUR weaknesses He carried;

It was OUR sorrows that weighed Him down.

And we thought His troubles were a punishment from God,

a punishement for His own sins!

But He was pierced for OUR rebellion,

crushed for OUR sins.

He was beaten so we could be whole.

He was whipped so we could be healed.

All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.

We have left God's paths to follow our own.

Yet the Lord laid on Him the sins of us all.

He was oppressed and treated harshly,

yet He never said a word.

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.

And as a sheep is silent before the shearers,

He did not open His mouth.

Unjustly condemned, He was led away.

No one cared that He died without descendants,

that His life was cut short in midstream.

But He was struck down for the rebellion of my people.

He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone.

But He was buried like a criminal;

He was put in a rich man's grave.

But it was the Lord's good plan to crush Him and cause Him grief.

Yet when His life is made an offering for sin,

He will have many descendants.

He will enjoy a long life,

and the Lord's good plan will prosper in His hands.

When He sees all that is accomplished by His anguish,

He will be satisfied.

And because of His experience,

my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous,

for He will bear all their sins.

Isaiah 53:3-11

May God bless you this good Friday!

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HE IS AMAZING!!!

Yikes!
It's already Thursday - again.
Baseball season has started and with both boys playing in different divisions, it is practically 6 days a week with double duty on some nights.
Add that to Life Group, Worship Practice, Ballet class, not to mention homework, dinner, baths for the kids - it makes the days FLY by!
(I'll post some baseball pictures as soon as I can get them off the camera.)

And in the midst of all that, I'm still working on simplifying.
I've been working on cleaning up the computer hard drives, sorting out kids clothes that don't fit anymore, sorting out my clothes that don't fit anymore (ouch!), and organizing so much that needs organizing. I'm not done, but I'm working on this necessary step.
Clutter is such a distraction for me.
And sometimes it feels suffocating.

But as I simplify, I'm trying to hear God better.
And I want to share something He's done in the past month or so that has overwhelmed me with how amazing He is.
As I share this story, I know it probably won't have the same effect on you as it did on me, but try to imagine how you might have felt if you walked through this. And please don't think I am sharing this to tell you what I did. I'm sharing this to shout praise to God for what He did.

HE IS AMAZING!!!!

There is a family I know of because of the internet.
I don't know them personally. I don't even know their family or friends.
I happened upon their blog in my search to learn more about photography.
In the beginning of February they left Seattle for an almost 2 month vacation in Thailand. Its the place they go to get away from the hussle and bustle and be renewed by God. When I first read on FB that they were going again (they went last summer) I sensed God asking me to commit to pray for them every day while they were gone. I agreed, but I have to admit that I didn't do the best job of it. I often prayed as I was falling asleep, "oh yeah God, please be with Brian, MeRa and their kids and bless their time in Thailand."
That was a lame copout for what I felt God was really asking of me.
During their first week in Thailand, they were ill.
The second week they went to Cambodia to help out in an orphanage (which was a God thing). While they were there, they had a very scary moment being chased by apes in the jungle as they tried to navigate their way back to their hut.
When they returned to Thailand they were ill again.
By last week they were diagnosed with Dengue Fever.

Now let me take a break in their story to share where I was in the midst of this story and my commitment to pray for them...
On Wednesday, March 10, I woke up with a real burden for this family.
I knew I hadn't been praying the right way for them.
Yes, I had prayed, but only because I said I would, with the obligatory prayer above.
I was convicted about this and spent a good amount of time interceding the way I knew I was supposed to.
I got my prayer partner to join me in this and decided to fast and pray on their behalf on Sunday, the 14th.
This was posted on her blog on the 15th. And this was posted on the 16th.
But the post this last Tuesday was where God's glory shone so brightly for me as He revealed why He wanted me to pray, and how He was there in the midst of their suffering.
Here is an excerpt from a letter MeRa wrote to her brother...

Pascaline is about two days behind me. She is still suffering on and off. She has been such a trooper. I sat and cried in the doctor’s office and told him that we felt like our bones were breaking, and he told me the fever’s street name “The Bone Breaker”. It was comforting in a very disturbing but relieving way. I have never felt pain like this Shauni—ever. I have been in and out of delirium with faint memories of Brian putting cold washcloths all over me, trying to bring my body temp down to no avail. I have seen his eyes scared. It’s hard to see it in his eyes, and at the same time feel like the fever has taken me a hundred miles away. Yesterday morning Pascaline woke up screaming. She was screaming that her nose broke off. Her whole body was twisting and turning in pain. I had just been through it all night, and I held her and wept. There is no medicine. There is no immunization. Your body must simply let go. Everything in you wants to fight the pain away, but this only makes it worse. Brian sat above her, as he sat above me the last five nights, and whispered instructions to her as he gently held her legs down. “Pascaline, the fever has already lost. Don’t fight the pain. Let go and focus on this spot.” He laid his hand over her collar bone. “There is no pain there, and that is where God is resting. Rest with Him, and let the fever swallow you b/c I won’t let it take you. I will be on the other side.” To stop fighting the pain and let it pull you under like the sea’s undertow is overwhelming…but to feel like you won’t ever surface, to see the sheer fear in my baby’s eyes… As I held her, I couldn’t help but cry with a feeling of such helplessness. Our Thai housekeeper came up behind me. Her name is Cha, and she has the most beautiful smile in all of Thailand. She laid her hands gently on my shoulders and whispered words to me in Thai, comforting words that I couldn’t understand, but I knew she was speaking from one mother to another. And then something magical happened that I must back up to tell you about… We have monkeys here, as you remember. There are two kinds of monkeys, and then we also have Gibbon Apes. The Gibbon Apes are high up in the trees and give off a beautiful call in the morning. It’s like a whirling, siren noise that washes over you, repeating itself, with different apes joining in at different octaves, and the whole jungle is quiet as these beasts sing. They never come down to our house level, but you can see them with binoculars. And yet the other day, Pascaline was mimicking their sound off the back deck. And FIVE of them came down to the trees off our deck and watched us, mimicking back to her, swinging through the trees with such speed and fierce ability, your mouth dropped open. That morning, Blaze was fevering his worst. Yesterday, when Pascaline was screaming with pain, the Gibbons started singing. I didn’t notice at first until someone said something. Except they weren’t high up in the hills, they were all around the outside of our bedroom and back deck—watching from the trees. They were in the low trees and whooping their call so loud and so divine, it swallowed Pascaline’s screaming. It was then that she actually smiled with her eyes closed from the pain. “Can you hear them mom? They’ve come back down. I think they’re singing to me.” And so they were. I can’t explain how magical the moment felt with Cha whispering faith into my ear in an unfamiliar tongue, and Gibbons singing to my daughter, but I felt held by the jungle, held and not shunned by this fever any longer.

I am overwhelmed by how amazing our God is.
How amazingly He met this family.
How He burdened someone to pray for them, even though I don't know them.
How He taught me more about prayer and obedience in the midst of this.

HE IS AMAZING!!!

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Psalm 55:22

I happened upon Seeds Family Worship the other day.
I LOVE this ministry!!!
Worship for kids that is directly from scripture and GOOD music.
I love it as much as the kids do.
Check it out...



There's a give away for one of the CDs here. I'm not sure how long the give away is going on though.

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Simplicity

One needs to be dispossessed of the possessions that possess – before one can be possessed of God.
~Ann Voscamp

I have been overwhelmed with a feeling of clutter in my life lately.
I need to clean out my closets and spare room
and let's not mention the garage.
It even goes beyond the physical stuff to things like my computer hard drive, which is nearly at capacity and desperately needs to be cleaned up and organized.
I'm ready to purge so much stuff.
Over the past 6 months, God has been opening my eyes to what I really need.

We have been studying Matthew chapter 6 in our life group
and this is exactly the discussion that entailed last week -
God knows what we need and He WILL provide for those needs
The problems come with how OUR definition of need meets up with God's definition.
How often I call wants needs.

We don't need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it. ~Donald Horban

So we've committed this week to the spiritual discipline of simplicity -
only spending money on sincere needs.
And for me it means some purging.
And most importantly, praying for God to change my definition of need -
to align my desires with His desires.

Because simplicity starts from within.

Its easy to deny oneself for a week or maybe even a month if you know that, eventually, your commitment to denying that thing will be over and you can have it again.
I don't want just a week long or month long change though -
I want my desires to be in line with God's desires.

What if I started praying this prayer...

O God, I beg two favors from you; let me have them before I die.
First, help me never to tell a lie.
Second, give me neither poverty nor riches!
Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.
For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?”
And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.
Proverbs 30:7-9

What if you started praying that prayer?
Give me neither poverty nor riches. Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.
That is SIMPLICITY.

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Unredeemed by Selah

This song really ministered to me so I wanted to share it with you.
Enjoy...
(for those of you that would rather just read the lyrics, I posted them below the player.)

Unredeemed

(written by by Chad Cates, Tony Wood, Brian Petak)

The cruelest words, the coldest heart

The deepest wounds, the endless dark

The lonely ache, the burning tears

The bitter night, the wasted years

Life breaks and falls apart, but we know these are…

Places where grace is

Soon to be so amazing

They may be unfulfilled

They may be unrestored

But when anything that’s shattered

Is laid before the Lord

Just watch and see

It will not be Unredeemed

For every choice that led to shame

And all the love that never came

For every vow that someone broke

And every life that gave up hope

We live in the shadow of the fall

But the cross says these are all

Places where grace is

Soon to be so amazing

They may be unfulfilled

They may be unrestored

But when anything that’s shattered

Is laid before the Lord

Just watch and see

It will not be Unredeemed

Places where grace is

Soon to be so amazing

They may be unfulfilled

They may be unrestored

but You never know the miracles

The father has in store

Just watch and see

It will not be Unredeemed

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