Recess

Everyday at 10:30 revival happens in first grade. I announce to my small students to put away their things, grab their jackets and line up. Bored, glazed over little eyes pop open, as they jump from their chairs and sprint to the door. I force them to walk in a calm, straight line all the way down the side of the building until we reach the end of the sidewalk. The instant their tiny feet hit the grass, they are allowed to run. When their feet touch the turf, screams of joy and delight erupt. They run at full speed across the field to the playground equipment. Their plots thicken the air as they debate what games they will play.

When I watch them run, I am reminded of a couple of verses of scripture. The first is Philippians 4:4, "Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again--rejoice!" These kids understand joy. They erupt with pleasure when they are set free every morning. I have been set free from sin and the grave, I need to be showing more joy in my life! Seeing the joy these kids experience makes me hungry to cultivate that character trait a little more in my life. I have a lot of quiet joy, but I could stand more exuberant excitement about the privilege of following Christ.

The other verse is Philippians 3:14, "I run straight toward the goal to win the prize that God's heavenly call offers in Christ Jesus." My students are goal oriented, whether they are trying to get to the monkey bars, the swings, or the tether balls. They run at absolute top speeds, trying to break the speed of light on their way to acquiring their desired location. Lately I have been watching their determined burst of speed and wondering what my life might look like if I ran after God with that same intensity and passion.

Just a couple of thoughts from the playground: Live joyfully, run harder.

Be a Tool

In a recent sermon, Shawn spoke from Romans 6:12, "Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God." He pointed out that an instrument is actually just a tool.

My brain ran away from the sermon on its own little tangent for awhile. BE A TOOL. I have a toolbox. It has many things in it: a hammer, tape measure, screwdriver, pliers, etc. What if my tools tried to tell me how to do my remodeling projects? What if my screwdriver was convinced it could drive nails, and my hammer tried to measure the width of the window for curtains. Can you imagine the chaos? Yet, that is what I do to God. I try to tell him the best way to use my life rather than simply living surrendered to his will. Just like my hammer is best used to drive nails, my life is best used in the hands of the Master.

Even though I may use some tools more often than others, they are all valuable. I may not often need a pipe wrench, but when the moment comes, a pair of pliers simply will not do the job as well. I thought about this application. We as believers want to compare ourselves to others and see what God is doing in others' lives and whine about how He's not doing as much in our own lives. Instead we need to recognize that we all have infinite value to God.

I used to have an old hammer whose head occasionally flew off. While duct tape improved its longevity, it finally had to be trashed. I thought about this old hammer, and realized that sometimes when God wants to use me I am not ready. I may duct tape my life together enough to get by, but it is not a substitute for real spirituality. I realized that in our lives, we have to maintain our spiritual fitness so that we are always ready whenever God needs us.

I guess my goal for today is to work on being a well oiled, useful tool that God can use in any way he desires to further his kingdom purposes.

Winter Run

Winter Run

Icy air, searing lungs

Cloudy breath, frozen nose

Time to think, dreams to make

Sleeping homes, empty streets

Sun kissed branches on naked trees

The world awaits the magical whisper of spring.

Though not a poet, I am making a stab at a poetical expression of the run this morning. It was 33 degrees, with a windchill of 29. The air burned my lungs as I breathed in and froze as I exhaled. And yet, the world was beautiful. The sun shone on the trees, and the world seemed to be waiting, asleep for a touch of magic. It made me think about how our lives run in seasons. We have times of passion and excitement (summer), times of quiet and peace (fall), times of barrenness and discouragement (winter), and times of new dreams and ideas (spring). I thought about how without the winter, the spring would have no beauty. It is in contrast to the barrenness of winter that spring displays its magnificent colorful explosion.

God leads us home

I have a long, involved blog in the works on practicing the gift of hospitality and what it reveals about God's heart for his people. However, for tonight, I just want to share a verse I read this morning in Exodus 15:13, "With your unfailing love you lead the people you have redeemed. In your might, you guide them to your sacred home."

Last night I fell asleep discouraged about many things, but this morning I realized that God's leadership never fails. His love for me never falters or wavers, and it translates into leading me into his eternal presence. God is so hungry for a relationship with me (and you) that he sent Jesus to die for our sins. Then Jesus went back to heaven, to his home, to prepare a place for us to live with him. God is a hospitable God, making room in his home for his beloved people.

I kept this verse scribbled on a slip of paper on my desk today. When I was tempted to replay my doubts and discouragements from last night, I reread the verse and remembered that my ever loving, never failing God is leading me home where there is complete joy, peace, and rest. My only responsibility is to follow him as closely as I possibly can.

A Lasting Reminder

Months ago I smacked my thumb with a hammer during a special church service. We were nailing small slips of paper with lists of our sins to a wooden cross to symbolize Christ's payment for our debts. As the weeks passed, the wound turned black, and began to slowly inch upward as my nail grew.

At Christmas, the black spot cracked and popped off - right out of the middle of the finger nail. The process was quite disgustingly nasty. Now I have a bizarre hole in the middle of my finger nail that annoys me greatly and catches on everything. Shawn's grandmother noticed first the blackened spot, then the gaping hole. When I told her about what had happened she spoke quiet words of wisdom, "Whelp, I reckon some of us needs a bit more reminding 'bout thangs than others."

How true - every time I see the remnants of my mishap, I remember that church service. I remember what I wrote on my paper - a long list of sins, covered by a huge word, "REDEEMED." I am reminded daily that Christ took my punishment so that I could experience life in God's presence.

Maybe, just this once, hitting myself with the hammer was more of a blessing than a pain.

When the Lights go Out

The cool thing about my college courses is that every week the professors post devotional thoughts and prayers for us to read before we dive into the grueling homework assignments. Today my systematic theology professor posted a devotional about Ps. 119:105, "Your word is a lamp for my feet and light for my path." I've heard that verse my entire life. Like my professor, I remember quoting that verse at VBS and even singing the song. Today however I came to a new depth of understanding of that verse. It was like reading it for the very first time.

My professor talked about needing a light at night in the woods as an illustration of the verse. It reminded me of the stories my dad tells of coon hunting at night with a lantern when he was a kid. While I missed out on all that fun, I have been in the woods many times at night. It is a great thing to have a flashlight, and a very scary turn of events if that light burns out. A tiny light can make the difference in finding your way safely through the woods back home or getting lost and confused in the gloomy darkness.

Then I thought about just how dark it was the other night when I came home after a storm and the electricity was out on the entire block. The stars were covered by clouds and there wasn't a streetlight as far as I could see. It was extraordinarily challenging to just find my way from my car into the house. I ran smack into the glass door. Once I got in, Shawn had a few candles lit for me. As tiny as the flickering flames were, it was still a huge difference from complete blackness.

But I had a new thought tonight. I never know when the electricity might go out, so I keep a stock of candles and matches in a cabinet in our laundry room. In life, I never know when I may find myself in a place of great darkness and need to find my way out. If I am in advance familiar with God's word, then I have my candle with me, ready to be lit so that I can see. However, there is a much greater opportunity for me to get off the path if I am caught off guard and forget that light is the greatest weapon against the darkness.

God's word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path. Every moment in my life can be illuminated by God's word. Measuring my thoughts and actions against God's standards in his word can help me to find the right path and keep me from falling off into darkness. I realized that studying the Bible, meditating and memorizing scripture during the good moments in life is very important so that I will have the tools that I will need when the lights go out. I need to work harder at being consistent with spending time daily in God's word and memorizing scripture.

When I was in the MRI tube for the 3rd time the other day, I decided that I would go over all the scripture that I knew to pass the time. It was an embarrassingly short list. I became aware of just how little I remember. So that's definitely something I need to work on!

Pruning fruit

Sunday morning, I was checking Facebook and ran across a post by a good friend, Joe Argo. Joe was our worship/associate pastor 10 years ago in Fort Worth. A great guy, he's moved on to bigger and better things back in South Carolina. His post read something along the lines of his fruit trees are finally producing, but the books all say to prune off the first year's fruit because the branches are too weak to sustain the crop, and he didn't know that he had the heart to do it.

This really made me stop and think. In the New Testament, Jesus often talks about bearing fruit, about knowing believers by their fruit, and about pruning off branches, etc. - all illustrations that would be readily understood in a country of vineyards.

I thought about baby believers - after all The Crossroads is full of them. They often jump in really hard and fast into ministry. This is a great thing, but it can lead to burn out if they are not carefully mentored. I thought about needing to prune the fruit off the baby trees and thought about how often I advise new believers to pick one or two ministries to be involved with in the beginning and to go slow about committing to big things long term until they have tried a variety of ministries and have discovered how God has gifted them. It seems that pruning back on too many activities leads to better maturity and more depth. But it is very hard to tell new believers to slow down. I don't ever want to dampen their enthusiasm. I'm guessing those are similar emotions to what Joe felt about pruning the fruit off his trees.

I also thought back to having to occasionally support an overloaded branch on a fruit tree as a kid. We would have to put a forked stick under a branch sometimes to keep them from breaking under the weight of too much fruit. I think that in the Christian life there is a great need for the forked sticks. Believers who are producing lots of fruit, and are leading very busy, active lives in the ministry need people to help them bear the weight of their life. The weight of a fruit bearing ministry is exciting - a good harvest, WooHoo! But even an exciting and positive great weight can become too heavy for one person to carry. A good helper can alleviate the stress and the burden that the minister may be under.

I don't know that this is an "aha" moment for anybody else, but it seemed to make sense to me. So careful what you post on Facebook - you never know when you will become a blog.

I can dance

10 years ago, unable to lift my feet to walk, I shuffled into physical therapy for my back. Three pregnancies in as many years had aggravated my scoliosis to the point where I was no longer able to move without crazy severe pain. It was the kind of pain that made childbirth feel good. Well, maybe not really, but it sure seemed that way at the time.

After studying the x-rays, and watching me attempt to twist and turn and bend, the physical therapist asked me to help set some goals for the therapy. Weeping, I said, "I just want to be able to dance in the kitchen with my babies without any pain." It was always one of my favorite things to crank the music up loud and just goof off with the kids on my tile kitchen "dance" floor. The physical therapist showed me the x-ray of my gnarled, twisted spine and with sympathetic eyes, gently chuckled. He said that I could probably learn to walk without severe pain, and lift my kids again, but I would never be able to run, mop, and most certainly never ever dance pain free.

For many seasons he was correct. With his help, I regained most of my mobility, but survived in constant, horrible, severe pain. I continued with the stretches and modifications that I learned and gradually resumed most of my normal life, with the occasional need for a muscle relaxer when my pain became more than I could bear.

Tonight as I was gyrating my way through zumba (a Latin aerobic dance class), I remembered his diagnosis and prognosis. It has been many years since I have even worried about how I am moving my back. It is true that my back is stiff and doesn't have total and complete movements, and there are several of the rolling, twisting moves that I have yet to master. It is true that when the rest of the class is doing sit ups, I flop like a beached whale because my lower back only bends to the side. It is true that I am not polished or smooth or even good at the dancing... but dancing I am. I am jumping, and leaping, and running, and lunging, and squatting, and rolling, and pumping, and well.....moving. With basically no pain at all. With no thought to whether or not the next movement will be the one that pushes me over the edge into the abyss of unbearable pain.

So tonight as I was watching myself in the mirror, I was not contemplating my size like I normally am, I was rejoicing that God chose to go the extra mile and give me my wish. My wish to be able to dance in the kitchen with my kids without pain. I would have been satisfied with just walking. But He gave me dancing.

How awesome is it that our God is like that! When all we need is to walk - but he gives us the pleasure of more. He lets us dance with absolute joy. I am glad that He is generous and allows us to experience the depths and pleasures of life and that He takes delight in us being delighted. Of course, I am talking about more than actually dancing in the kitchen. I am talking about food having flavors, and colors being vibrant, and music being lovely, and children being precious, and so much more. God gave us beauty. And tonight, I remembered to be thankful.

Be vigilant.

Tuesday afternoon I was dashing about in a mad rush. I had a massive migraine and had taken double the recommended dosage on pain meds just to be able to see to drive home. It was Shawn's birthday, and we were having friends over for dinner. The house was trashed. Dishes filled the sinks and poured over onto the counter. Clean clothes were piled sky-high in the living room and not just any clean clothes - the ones that had piles of my sexy lingerie on top - the kind of laundry you don't want friends to see. The kitchen floor was covered in nasty crumbs from breakfast that had not been swept. Dirty laundry overflowed from the laundry room across the kitchen floor.

I had to run to the store to grab a present for Shawn (nothing like waiting till the last minute), so I assigned my children some chores - hide the dirty laundry, put away the clean clothes, wash dishes, and sweep. These are chores they know how to do and are capable of completing in just a matter of minutes.

My trip to the store lasted much longer than I had anticipated. When I arrived home 15 minutes before our guests were due to arrive, the house looked precisely the way it did when I left. I was furious that they had postponed the chores until it was too late instead of taking care of business immediately when I left and used their leftover free time to play. I was yelling, "Why didn't you do your chores. You knew that I would be returning. Why didn't you do what I asked you to do while you had the opportunity?"

God interrupted my tirade, "Exactly."

I stopped abruptly. "What?"

God, "Exactly."

Mark 13:34-37, "The coming of the Son of Man can be compared with that of a man who left home to go on a trip. He gave each of his employees instructions about the work they were to do, and he told the gatekeeper to watch for his return. So keep a sharp lookout! For you do not know when the homeowner will return - at evening, midnight, early dawn, or late daybreak. Don't let him find you sleeping when he arrives without warning. What I say to you I say to everyone: Watch for his return!"

Luke 12:35 - 48
³⁵ “Be dressed for service and keep your lamps burning, ³⁶ as though you were waiting for your master to return from the wedding feast. Then you will be ready to open the door and let him in the moment he arrives and knocks. ³⁷ The servants who are ready and waiting for his return will be rewarded. I tell you the truth, he himself will seat them, put on an apron, and serve them as they sit and eat! ³⁸ He may come in the middle of the night or just before dawn.^a]">[a] But whenever he comes, he will reward the servants who are ready.

³⁹ “Understand this: If a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming, he would not permit his house to be broken into. ⁴⁰ You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.”

⁴¹ Peter asked, “Lord, is that illustration just for us or for everyone?”

⁴² And the Lord replied, “A faithful, sensible servant is one to whom the master can give the responsibility of managing his other household servants and feeding them. ⁴³ If the master returns and finds that the servant has done a good job, there will be a reward. ⁴⁴ I tell you the truth, the master will put that servant in charge of all he owns. ⁴⁵ But what if the servant thinks, ‘My master won’t be back for a while,’ and he begins beating the other servants, partying, and getting drunk? ⁴⁶ The master will return unannounced and unexpected, and he will cut the servant in pieces and banish him with the unfaithful.

⁴⁷ “And a servant who knows what the master wants, but isn’t prepared and doesn’t carry out those instructions, will be severely punished. ⁴⁸ But someone who does not know, and then does something wrong, will be punished only lightly. When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required."

Oh my. I put off the tasks that God has asked me to do so that I can do what I want, or perceive, that I need to do for myself and my family. It's that same question I was asking my kids, "Why didn't you take care of business while you had the chance?" Talk about conviction. I didn't like that God was reminding me that I have let my busy lifestyle once again interfere with kingdom business.

The kids got off pretty lightly, especially since I totally lost track of where I was in my tirade while God was showing me my life in a mirror. Ouch.

And we recovered the house. The kids hid the dirty clothes in baskets, washed dishes, swept floors, and threw my clean clothes under my bed.

Run With Me

Let's go. Throw on your shoes and let's hit the street. Let's run away from our stress and our burdens and our hurts. Let's connect with God and let Him speak to our soul. Let's discover God's heart and listen to Him pour out His love on us. Let's run into the wind and let it whip our hair and feel its sensual touch on our skin. Okay, so maybe you are working or busy or hate to exercise. Today you can come with me without ever leaving your comfy chair.

I started my morning with 2 cups of coffee. I knew as I drank the second cup that I would deeply regret it. I knew that by mile two I would have heartburn that felt like the fiery flames of hell in my throat, and that I would need to stop back by the house to pee, therefore messing up my running time. Of course I drank it anyway. And of course, both things became regrettably true.

While sitting in my comfy chair, drinking my coffee, I checked my weather app on my phone to see what I needed to wear. My weather app says 73 and sunny. It is a liar. I slid on my short shorts, with a green stripe. (I don't know why it mattered if they were green. Not like I needed to keep people from trying to chase me down and pinch me while I was running.) I hit the door and realized it was cloudy and cold and my legs were in danger of frostbite. I set my ipod to shuffle and headed out anyway.

As I walked the first half mile, I realized that this is my fourth season to experience while running. I started running last summer. Summer was a beautiful time to run. I usually waited until late at night after it cooled off some. I would marvel at the stunning clear summer night sky. The stars sparkled like diamonds as sweat trickled down my back and soaked my white T-shirt and tiny black shorts. Something about the combination of stars and sweat and a little Norah on the iPOD was amazing. The summer running helped me rediscover my beauty as a woman and to find confidence in my body - whatever lies the numbers on the scales try to tell me.

Gradually the hot days became cooler. I loved running in the fall. I loved watching leaves sail to the ground, one by one. I enjoyed the wind in my face, and I loved the vision of God putting the world to sleep while it waited for spring and new life. I also began to conquer distance. My running increased from seconds to minutes to miles. I found a steely strength and will power that I did not know I owned.

Wintertime running was not my favorite. Bottom line - it was cold and the cold air burned my lungs. But there was definitely something magical about running at Christmas. I loved running right at dusk and watching Christmas lights come on gradually throughout the neighborhood. Best of all, I finally achieved my goal of running 3 miles.

Springtime running may turn out to be the best. Every day that I run, I see new life popping out. It speaks so loudly of God and His creative power. I thought that today I would show you some favorite pieces of my run. So, ready, set, let's go.


These jonquils are the first sign of spring. When I was little girl they would start blooming across the yard right before the dogwood trees unfurled their beautiful colors. Seeing these today reminded me that there is always hope for the future, no matter how dry and brown and cold life becomes.


I was finally hitting my stride on my first running interval when I saw this tree. It was pruned back pretty hard because of so much deadness in the branches. As I passed it, I noticed the new growth. It reminded me that as God painfully prunes away deadness in my life and in my heart, He does so that I may experience new and beautiful growth.







As I was discussing the pain involved in this process with God, I saw something else that made me stop and think. Pruning and its subsequent growth can only occur as we are surrendered fully to the process. I probably struggle more with surrender than with any other issue in my walk with Christ. I love to try to boss God about how to best work in my life and in my future. I have to constantly be reminded that yielding is absolutely necessary to experience the best that God has for me.




This was my favorite moment today. I was rounding the corner, pushing hard to conquer the hill coming up, when I saw the sign. It's been there forever, but today I really saw it. Pushing up this hill is consistently one of the hardest, but favorite parts of my runs. I realized that many times God sends me in directions that look to be dead ends. A wise person might turn back and look for a different road, but it is in following God down some insanely crazy paths, that I have seen the greatest beauty in life. Seeing the dead end sign with the beautifully alive blooming tree behind it reminded me of all the times that I have found healing and and amazing new life when I when I've gone down what looked to be hopelessly dead ends. What looks crazy and impossible to me is often the very thing that God is planning to use to change my life the most.

Running today, God used things along the way to remind me that He is not finished in my life. That the areas of my life that seem the driest and deadest are the areas where He is getting ready to restore new life. The pruning that has to happen prior to new life can be painful, but it is necessary. The paths that God set before me that seem to be impossible dead ends are usually are the ways to new experiences that are beautiful and teach me so much about God and His love and His beauty.

Hope you enjoyed running with me today. It was a great one! Maybe next time you'll grab your sneakers and join me on the street.

Chaotic Cleaning

I am a chaotic cleaner. If I am organizing my closet, I drag everything out into the floor to begin. If I am sorting toys, I dump them all into a heaping mountain, and then put them back into the toybox as I go. I think this is pretty normal, but what makes my cleaning style even more chaotic is that I may go to the bathroom in the middle of closet organizing and get sidetracked into organizing the bathroom cabinets. Or I may move from the playroom into the kitchen for a snack and get sidetracked into cleaning the ovens. This translates into big messes everywhere while I am cleaning.

Currently, there are multiple mountains of stuff laying around my house. I am slowly but surely conquering the chaos. It is just insane while I am in the middle of the mess. I have basically conquered the bedrooms and kitchen and am now working on the garage. The stuff from the garage has taken over the house tonight.

Sitting in my living room tonight staring at boxes piled high with stuff to sort made me stop and think. In order to have a genuinely clean house, I have cleaned all the places that people see, but I have also organized closets, sorted drawers, and the scariest of all - cleaned under my bed. My chaotic cleaning reminded me of how God works on cleaning up sin in our life. He does not wave a magic wand and poof it all away automatically. I sure wish cleaning was that easy. But instead, God deals with me in small sections - just a closet or a drawer at a time. Sometimes there are seasons in my life that I am struggling with some difficulty that I just cannot seem to overcome (like the garage), and God temporarily moves on to something else more manageable for a short season - like washing dishes. Then He goes back to the garage again when I am more ready to obediently deal with the big issues.

So many times in my life, I feel like there is just absolute chaos inside of me as God is working a little bit here and little bit there. Sometimes He just drags all the really scary sin out from under the bed and leaves it sitting in a big pile for awhile, letting me trip all over it, until I am ready for Him to help me make it go away. The frustrating part has to be once we clean up an area of my life, and I move on, I have to make certain that I keep it clean. It doesn't matter if I wash all the dishes today, I still have to wash them all again tomorrow. If I let them go for a week then it becomes a very nasty horrible chore all over again. Taking care of sin is like that for me. If I will do it often, and be agreeable with God about the things I need to deal with, then it is a much easier, much less horrible event. It is when I leave my sin unattended and let it grow in dark places that it feels overwhelming to try to deal with it.

I don't know that I really have a concise point to make tonight. I guess, just as I was chaotically cleaning this week, it made me appreciate the cleaning that God has to continually do in my life a little bit more. I am glad that He doesn't ever give up, no matter how big the mess gets.

Throw down the weights

I have been lifting weights for about 8 weeks, and I hate it! It's tough, it's boring, it keeps me from doing all the fun stuff I'd rather be doing. When school starts back up next week, my schedule will be infinitely busier than it currently is, so yesterday I sat down and tried to condense my lifting time from an hour and 15 minutes to just 30 minutes. I had to carefully look at each exercise in my plan to decide which ones worked identical muscle groups and discard those. Then I still needed to trim off a few minutes, so I had to look at the exercises again to prioritize which ones work my worst areas. I was grumbly about having to mess with this at all. Why wasn't I born with great genetics?

As I was messing with and grumbling about my weights, God brought to mind Hebrews 12:1-3. "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." (King James)

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." (NIV)

In my weight lifting program, all of the exercises that I am doing are beneficial. They are all good things. But I can't fit them all into my schedule. I find that in life I carry too many weights. There are many good things in life that I participate in that because of the time commitment involved prevent me from doing what God has planned for me to do.

Weights can be too heavy to carry. I am very limited on the amount of weight I can lift. I am very excited when I can move the pin down a notch on my weight machine. Yesterday I was doing some leg presses with a heavy weight, but I forgot to change the setting before I did my butterflies. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the weights to even budge. There are burdens in my life like that. No matter how hard I try, I cannot carry them alone and they hinder me from serving Christ. I continually have to "check my setting" to make sure that I am not trying to lift burdens that Christ wants to carry for me.

I love the last part of the verse. Maybe because I love running. "let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Runners do not carry any extra weight. They wear very light clothing, some even shave their body hair to reduce their friction, and they run with empty hands. How silly would it be for an Olympic long distance runner to take off carrying heavy weights on his shoulders! He would be jeopardizing his chances for success. Yet I try to run my race with tons of extra stuff weighing me down. Is that not just as silly?

I am praying that God will keep my eyes open to be aware of things in my life that are too heavy for me to carry alone, as well as things that may not be bad, but are keeping me from doing the important things. I also like the perseverance part, or as another translation puts it, "keep running and don't give up." That's the secret to being a successful runner. When it becomes tough, the adrenaline rush is just about to happen. If I stop at that moment, then I am just defeated and tired. If I keep running, then I reach that supreme moment of adrenaline rush, and I build up my endurance. I am praying that God will give me the strength to run my race with endurance and to not give up.

God lessons in a Pilates workout

Stick with me here, I promise I have a spiritual point at the end.

I have been horribly discouraged about working out. It seems to be really hard work for such small results. Monday I did a step video that kicked my butt. It was my own fault. I used a much taller step to try to up the intensity. Boy, did it. About halfway through I was done. I was dripping sweat and gasping for air. And the girls on the video never stopped smiling. Girls with tans, tight ripped abs, beautiful hair, and big white teeth. They never grimaced as we pushed harder, they never dripped sweat while leaping repeatedly into the air, they just smiled. Like stepford wives. I got really angry that it was so easy for them and started yelling at the T.V. It didn't change anything, but at least I made it through the workout.

Yesterday was a weight day. For me weights are very boring. I am isolated in the playroom counting reps and listening to music. Every weight day I try to increase weight and/or reps on at least three exercises. It was a hard day. I cried about having to work out. How did I ever get fat? Then I had a temper tantrum about having to work out. Why is it easy for some people to stay shapely? NOT FAIR! Finally I resigned myself to the ugly truth that sometimes life sucks and started lifting. I survived, but grumpily.

Today I was desperate for something new. I was still very sore and moody and decided to look online for a pilates video. Pilates are ballet based exercises that are designed to increase tone, flexibility, strength, and relaxation. I downloaded the top rated pilates video from netflix and started. I made it through the first 10 minute segment just fine. Then the next segment was abs. It was at the moment when I was supposed to roll slowly up off the floor while keeping both feet completely vertically pointed up at the ceiling and touch my nose to my knees that I started laughing. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass doors of the fireplace. I was flopping like a fish out of water. Be glad to demonstrate this for anybody that needs a good laugh.

I listened to the instructor's calm, soothing, slightly sultry voice continue with instructions. (I can do a great impression if you want to hear it) "Now roll slowly back down to the floor. Bring those vertical legs further back until your toes rest gently on the floor next to your head. Now push yourself up off the floor so that your weight rests entirely on your upper back." Are you kidding me? This woman is laying on her neck with her legs touching the floor behind her! Who can do that? REALLY? I couldn't stop laughing. I made the attempt while watching my reflection. Can say that it's been a really long time since I have been so amused. I'm not sure that I will see the desired results since I was laying in the floor screeching with laughter. I was glad Shawn was not home. He would have hurt himself laughing at me.

Oh yeah, I was going to make a spiritual connection. During the video, the instructor would say in her soft, soothing, sultry voice crazy things like, "Now we are going to do 'shave the head' watch me and follow along." Then she said, "Next, let's do 'the saw' watch me first, then try the move." "Let's try 'hug a tree' be sure to watch how I do this move." I was laughing really hard at the crazy names for the exercises, but once she demonstrated I could follow along. Or at least make an attempt. (unless I was laughing too hard to move) I realized that as believers some of our lingo must be just as confusing to new Christians. "quiet time, spiritual gifts, surrendered, etc." I like the notion of saying, "watch me first, then you try it." Wouldn't it be great to live life that way? Where at any moment you could say, "Are you having a hard time figuring out this Christ following stuff? Watch me." There are too many times where watching me would get somebody off track. I am asking God that I would keep growing so that my life can be a guide for people who are confused about what it means to follow Christ.

The Gingerbread Man

Here's a quickie for the hard core addicts who freak when I'm off-line for long.

Read "The Gingerbread Man" to my students today. I had never paid attention to the stages of the poor cookie's demise. He's escaping danger, comes to a river and takes the easy way across - the fox. Could have run downstream till he found a bridge, hidden from the crowd following him, begged for mercy, climbed a tree ...but no.... he took the first solution available. He started out on the fox's tail - far away from the mouth. Just a tiny flirt with danger. Then afraid of getting wet, he moves to the fox's back. Then to the fox's head, then SNAP - right into the fox's mouth. Yummy! I also noticed that every step of the way, the fox coaxed him with false assurances of safety.

For me, this is typically how sin begins...I'm just riding on the tail....I usually know that it's a bad choice, but I fully plan to escape before I get consumed. But temptation is a tricky fox...it coaxes you into one small step at a time until you suddenly realize that you are in way over your head. This is why God warns us so often about avoiding temptation.

The easiest way to keep from getting eaten is to stay away from the fox.

God and Pajamas

Strange moment today. Jumping off into church planting has entailed some budget cuts at the Kemp's house. When the weather started getting cold this fall I realized that Abby did not own any pajamas. I began praying for God to meet this need since I really at that moment could not come up with any extra cash for clothes. Then, honestly I forgot about it and moved on with life.

Today I was sorting through her clothes, reorganizing, packing up what's too little, etc. It took most of the day since we were recently blessed with two big batches of hand-me-downs. I was grumbling about the big mess and the big job a bit when I started folding pajamas.

It was when I began putting away her pajamas and needed not one, but two drawers that I began to cry. You see, I had prayed for warm pajamas and then moved on with life. But my God who is faithful even in the small things of life blessed us with gifts from grandmas and hand-me-downs from friends so that we now have two drawers full of pajamas. My daughter is warm at night, and I had not even noticed that God had answered my prayer.

God is good...all the time....and all the time....God is good.

Thanks for the p.j.s!

sippee cups and God

I hate cleaning house. Detest. Despise. Dread. I don't have enough negative adjectives in my repertoire to adequately describe my nasty emotions about cleaning. I do it because it must be done and I do it as well as possible because that's the right way to do it. However, anytime that I am cleaning, I am battling a particularly foul attitude. It's just how I am and haven't been able to change it in spite of many attempts to view cleaning in a more positive light.

Because of the foul attitude, I spend a lot of time praying while I'm cleaning. To confess and try to overcome the guilt associated with the negative attitude. Because of all the time I spend praying while cleaning multiplied by all the cleaning time involved in showing a house, God often speaks to me through the mundane tasks.

This week it was a sippee cup. NO JOKE! I was washing dishes....which I hate less than I used to so I guess that's progress. I was dumping and rinsing sippee cups....no big deal and tossing them in the dishwasher. Then I came to a long lost sippee cup. You parents out there know what I found inside...chunky, stinky, white, moldy cheese. So then I had to hold my breath and work for quite some time on cleaning up the cup so that it could be usable. That's when God got my attention and taught me a little lesson about sin.

You see, daily confession is like washing the fresh dishes. We confess our sins, get rinsed off and are good to go. Very quick, easy, and fairly painless. But the sin that we allow to fester and grow and hide becomes the stinky cheese. It is harder to totally rinse away, and it is a chore to completely remove it and become usable again. God desires a daily confession and cleansing from us so that we are constantly yielded and usable. When we allow sin to overtake us, it is much harder for God to use us.

There it is....a lesson about sin from a nasty, stinky, gross sippee cup.

gift giving lessons from Abby

My two year old has been at it again. Showing me God's heart through her tiny life.

We celebrated my birthday a few days early with some friends on Tuesday night. Shawn made my favorite cake and a couple of friends brought gifts. Well, Abby saw my excitement about opening presents. (Yes, I'm really still just a kid about birthdays even though I try really hard to be cool and nonchalant about the whole thing) This afternoon she located a crumpled up piece of pink tissue and took off on a gift-giving spree.

First she wrapped up my favorite earrings and brought them to me. Jumping up and down with excitement and yelling, "Happy birthday." Then she brought me the nativity set, then a porcelain Santa, and the list goes on. With each delivery, she became more animated and more excited about me opening the gift. It was a fun game. She enjoyed giving, and I knew I would love what was in the package because it was already mine.

Then I started thinking about her little game and realized that maybe it had some God applications. You see, everything that I bring to God already belongs to him anyway. I am not bringing God anything new, or different that He has already received throughout the ages past. And yet, I'm pretty sure that when I am excited about sharing with God and bringing Him offerings that He enjoys it even more than I enjoyed the gift game with Abby.

The delight in Abby's game came from how much I love her and the beauty of seeing her learning how to love me. I think that's the delight that God feels as He loves us and watches us learning how to love Him.

Gold stars vs. gray dots

This week at school I had to teach a character education lesson about positive vs. negative words. I used a Max Lucado book for children, "You Are Special." In this book the people run around giving each other gold stars (good) or gray dots (bad). To condense a long story....Punchinello, the main character, is covered in gray dots and his maker, Eli, helps him discover how to find his worth in his maker instead of other people. When he no longer cares what other people say, the gray dots all fall off.

The kids and I talked about positive words (gold stars).....it took them a really long time to create a list of positive words. Then we created the list of negative words (gray dots). I have bright children this year with very extensive vocabularies so I had to do a lot of censoring. I have been baffled by their expertise and familiarity with insults. Typically 6 year olds are decently limited with their insulting ability...."I don't want to play with you" and "You're not my friend" are the two most common. However, this year I have learned a few new phrases and have seen and heard some pretty bad stuff coming out of my babies' mouths. Examples, "You are a big fat b......" and "I f.....g hate you" Very unusual for this age group to fluently use profanity.

As we talked today, they made me cry. I held it in until they left for recess. You see, we discussed not using "gray dots" in our classroom any more this year. Most of them agreed, but then said, "Mrs. Kemp, but it's okay to use 'gray dots' when you're a grown-up." I told them that it's not okay, but no one is perfect and even Mrs. Kemp sometimes slips up and says things that I later regret. That's when they began telling the horrible stories that made me cry as they looked up at me with their tiny hearts breaking.

"Mrs. Kemp, my daddy says those gray dot words to my mommy all the time. That's why she can't stop crying."

"Mrs. Kemp, my daddy says those gray dot words too, and my mommy says we are going to move out."

"Mrs. Kemp, my brother says those gray dot words to me, and I don't think he loves me."

"Mrs. Kemp, my mommy says those gray dot words to me, and she is mad at me all the time. I can't ever make her be happy."

The stories went on and on while I just sat - stunned - trying not to cry in front of my children. Most of my students live in good homes, but it was unreal how much they have noticed about the way their parents treat each other. I certainly better understood why I am having to work so hard to create an atmosphere of respect. I was heartbroken by how many children question the security of their environment.

Pray for me to have great wisdom this year. I have an unmeasurable amount of influence on these small children. Pray that I will use it well and wisely.

Being good and obedience are not the same thing

God used a kid in my classroom to talk to me today. This particular child is always in trouble for disobedience. Today for example: I say, "sit down, pick up your pencil, it's time for your spelling test." He cleans up the marker board center instead. Very nice....but not obedient. Another day he dawdled lining up for P.E. I finally left him since it is illegal to drag a child down the hall by his ear. When I came back, he had placed every student's backpack on their desk. Very kind thought....but not obedient. This is an eternal battle with this child.

So God said to me today, "Look at him. Being good and obedience are not the same thing." I thought about that long and hard. I think I often make good choices, seek to do nice things for other people, try to be righteous. But sometimes all the good that I'm doing keeps me from having the time and energy to be obedient. Sometimes God is asking me to do something and I am too busy doing a good thing to obey. So that's my thought for the day....I want to seek obedience more than goodness. Sometimes what I think is the best choice is not what God thinks is best.

Just for Rachel....toilets and sand writing

Just cause I love you, I'll do a second runner up to Reader's choice.

What does God have to say about toilets

Many years ago when I was a stay at home mom, I was on my knees scrubbing the toilet in the bathroom when God spoke to me. He did not often speak to me back then, and I was not sure it was really him at first. He said, "This is what I meant by washing each other's feet."

Me, "Huh?"

It took me weeks to ponder it all out...but basically I came to understand that when Jesus told the disciples to wash each other's feet he was telling them to dig in deep in relationships - into the nasty, dirty, stinky parts of life and to love people there. I came to understand it not through Jesus bending over my feet with a wash basin, but by bending over a toilet, scrubbing up after the kids. People need us to love them....even when it's all crap. That's where real love and ministry happen.