“Somewhere living in New York there is a Jewish woman who is the best example of ministering to others I have ever known. I’ve never met her yet she ministers to me daily. She is my model of how I should be serving others.”
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Living a Christlike Life
God Doesn’t Always Send Healing
“The lame walk, the blind saw. The leper was healed, and the dead lived again. The New Testament is full of Christ’s miracles of healing. We read of great faith of many with and without names that are given.
Something the Bible doesn’t say?
It doesn’t say that every single person with an ailment was healed in Judea. It doesn’t say that every single person who had faith to be healed was healed. “
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Laughs From 2014 To Ring Out The Year
”In keeping with the tradition when I started this blog, here is a year’s worth of my children’s ”ism’s,” funny times and more.
The three Wisemen brought gold and Frankenstein right Mom?”
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Finding the Miracle
“I truly do believe in miracles and that we should expect them and strive for them more than we do. I believe that God can heal anyone or do anything he wants. Am I not good enough to have my prayers answered? Do I doubt too much?”
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Grief- It Takes Many Different Forms
“In the middle of your grief or theirs it can look to you like someone isn’t grieving enough, or someone is too involved with grief.
But this is the time to take a step back.”
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Keeping The Faith In the Face Of Seemingly Unanswered Prayers
“I used to pray as a child that my Grandmother would find her way back to church. But years came and went. For 60 years she kept away. For years my mother prayed that she would make her way back.” Read more. . .
Kneeling to pray
“A few nights ago as we knelt to say our family evening prayers, I started the prayer. I thanked God for all that we had. There was so much to be grateful for. God has answered a lot of our prayers of late and we are so grateful.”
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Finding Your Village In The Most Unexpected Places
We spent the entire month of August (and more) living in hotels as we waited to find and close on our home. I could give you a run down of where to stay and where not to stay in traveling across the U.S. and in the Memphis area. But that isn’t what this post is about.
The last hotel we ended up in for several weeks was Home 2 Suites by Hilton in Olive Branch Mississippi. Living in a hotel for weeks on end is hard in any circumstances. Add to it that you have 4 people and 2 dogs living in the same small room, and one of them has special needs. . . It has been an experience. My kids no longer think it would be fun to live in a hotel.
Through our house buying process we had several hiccups that were unusual and frustrating.
There were times where I was on the point of despair that we would be able to pull off buying a house.
And then came breakfast time at the hotel. Often, I would have the kids eat breakfast, take them to school and come back and have my own quiet breakfast. On one of those days when I despaired of being able to cross the next hurdle that had arisen. I was talking with one of the other guests and a staff member of the craziness and how I just couldn’t find a way through. The other guest said to me, “It’s already done Baby. You just got to believe.” That was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment to be able to press forward.
Our mornings as I have written about before are hard and exhausting. An employee of Home 2 Suites, Tonni Carter, made them immeasurably better.
There are a lot of us living in the hotel for an extended period. All for various reasons. Tonni greets each of us with a smile, asks us how we are and does her utmost to serve us. And by “serve us”, I don’t just mean serving us breakfast. She serves us all. Listening to our problems and heartbreaks. She tells our children to hurry themselves up or they are going to be late for school when you are busy getting your own meal. Tonni watches out for them and makes sure they behave. She greets us with a hug and treats us as her family. It’s not that she doesn’t have troubles of her own. She has a gift that I hope her place of employment appreciates. She makes living in a hotel more like home.
In the parenting world, we talk a lot about needing a village to raise a child. Yet often, we wonder, “Where is that village?” We can’t seem to find it.
I am walking away a changed person. I have seen my village and what I need to do to create it from the example set by this wonderful woman.
A hotel is not the place I expected to find my village. Yet it has been that. And in this difficult month of our lives, I am so grateful for the people like Tonni who have been my village. Who have cared for us, shined a light of hope and helped us hold on.
*I was not in any way compensated for this post. The opinions in it are my own.
Did I Deserve Better Treatment Than Homeless People?
“. . .this agency services people who are homeless, people who are drug addicts, people who can’t afford to get care any other way. That is not our story. It made me very uncomfortable as a woman, and a mother to take him into this environment, surrounded by these type of people.
I was explaining how uncomfortable to someone this situation made me. I didn’t feel very safe. I didn’t like exposing my son to these types of people. But as I was saying this, it suddenly struck me how elitist I sounded. It sounded like I felt I was better than these people and should be taken care of in a better environment than they were.
My heart convicted me.”
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When God Opens a Door- Get Out Of The Way
“For at the past two years I have been praying about our life in Washington State. It started when I learned that Washington state has a law that the age of consent for drug rehabilitation treatment and psychiatric treatment is 13. This means that at the age of 13, a child can get treatment without a parent’s knowledge. But it also means that they can refuse treatment that they need.” Read more. . .
