For my dear, struggling, heart warrior-son:
Sometimes I don’t know how to help you but to put words down. God seems to talk to me through my fingers, charting a map through my fears, showing me the way home through this blog-tangle of words. Continue reading
Do feel trapped in a hopeless situation? Do you feel like there’s no way out, and God’s forgotten you? Do you wonder if there is any hope for your broken marriage, your upside down finances, your stalled career, your dissolved dreams? Well, come join me at the table, friend, and let’s reevaluate your position. From where I’m sitting, your story’s just starting to get good. Continue reading
Motherhood keeps surprising me. I just relaxed into the routine of summer with kids home full-time lolly gaggin’ around the house and whining bored. I just settled into morning snuggles and afternoon swims, grilled dinners on paper plates after the sun sets to our backs. Now it’s over. And this turning of the seasons from green grass to golden leaves always stings me just a bit. Why? It’s more than just summer being ended or school beginning; a whole season has packed up and left me. We’ve phased in seasons from summer to fall, but as a family, from babies to big boys. And this mama stares change in the face again, to find her way into a new season, to swim the current of motherhood’s phasing. Continue reading
Dear Samuel,
You turned five a few short weeks ago. Presenting yourself in my doorway wearing only your Monsters’ University tighty-whities and throwing your hands up in the doorway, you proclaimed, “It’s my berfday!” And, then, you put your hands on your hips and asked, very seriously, “It is my berfday, isn’t it, Mama?” I told you–finally–yes, it was your birthday, after at least 52 days of having to tell you it wasn’t. And I asked you to come crawl in my bed and pretend you were still sleeping, because you’d woken up before I had a chance to make up your customary birthday tray of doughnuts sparkling with birthday candles, a Star Wars birthday balloon, and a pile of tiny packages wrapped up in tiffany blue paper (because I ran out of birthday wrapping paper). You would have to wait patiently in my bed for your birthday breakfast. As I left you, tucked into my bed watching cartoons, and walked down the stairs to arrange your birthday breakfast, I wondered, with tears in my eyes, how we arrived at five years old. Continue reading
When life has been hard for a long time, it gets more and more difficult to believe that it can be better. But, we at Red Vine refuse to give into that notion. We believe in the God who brings us through the wilderness, providing all the way, into the Promised Land. We believe we serve a good Father, a Father who works all things together for our good. Our hope for a Promised Land life will not be in vain, and We will behold our Lord in the land of the living, yielding fruit for our labor and rest for our spirits. Continue reading
