2020

There are some days, weeks, months, years when you feel like you have nothing to show for your hard work. And then there are months like June of 2019 when you put an entire second story on your house and all of that hard work suddenly becomes visible! This was our house in APRIL... just one story, pouring cement footers and creating a front entryway. And MAY... tearing out the old trusses and setting floor joists so we could put on a second story! During the first week of JUNE we put on the floor for the second story and Randy put in a staircase and started building walls! On June 13, we invited friends and family over to raise the exterior walls. (Thanks Tim, Darlene, Eric, and Dad!) And then we let our nieces put up the interior ones. (Thanks girls!) A week later the new trusses were delivered... (Thanks David!) And in a matter of 3 days we had all of them set in place too! (Thanks Dad!) Randy then framed out the bathroom (I can't be...

May was a really incredible month for us, filled with other peoples' overwhelming generosity. But before I fill you in on that, let me rewind a bit to last December. In December, Randy and I went to San Felipe. Our primary motivation was to spend Christmas with the kids at the orphanage. But we had a very important secondary motivation: to go to DIF (children's services) to inquire about adoption. While living at Sonshine Hacienda, Randy and I obviously grew very attached to the children. Over 40 kids were part of our lives while we lived in San Felipe. Some for just a few days. Others were there at the children's home when we first visited in 2016, and continue to live there today. They all made a lasting impact on us, but we connected with three boys in particular. So it was those three brothers that we asked about when we went to DIF (pronounced Deef). We were met with a familiar face when we arrived at the offices -- a woman we had worked with on numerous occas...

Lent -- the 40+ days leading up to Easter -- is a big deal to me. God always nudges me toward something that will draw me closer to Him and His will for my life. One year I read through the entire Bible in 40 days. Another year I walked across Spain, meeting and marrying my husband. Last year I donated $40 a day to 40 different organizations. And this year I felt God leading me to prayer. Because the theme is 40, I felt challenged to pray for 40 minutes a day for all 40 days. Confession: in every Lenten season I have fallen short of my goal. I did read the entire Bible, but it took me slightly longer than 40 days. I did walk across Spain, but again, it took more than the alloted 6 1/2 weeks. I did donate to 40 organizations, but I got derailed last year when my grandmother died, so those donations ended up being spread out over the course of several months. And this year? No exception. I started off strong. And so did God. I kept a notebook handy because he was so chatty. But the...

On March 1, while I was driving home from a church meeting, a black cat crossed my path. I wouldn't call myself superstituous, but I noticed the cat. I noted the color. And I wondered if, on some plane, it could be a bad omen. An hour later my dog got run over by a car. While driving to the veterinary hospital I told Randy: "I'm not saying it means anything, but a black cat ran in front of me while I was driving home earlier." Later I told a woman about the cat. "It's only bad luck if he is running from the right to the left." "He was," I said. "Oh," she replied, suddenly serious. We made more trips to the hospital -- both to the veterinary hospital and the human hospital -- in March of 2019 than we have in the entirety of our 5 years together. Cinnamon spent a week in the hospital, undergoing hernia surgery because her insides had more or less been torn in two. The week after she was released we were back at the h...

This month I had the opportunity to share a Sunday morning message with Dover Friends Church in Wilmington, Ohio. Actually they had invited me to share in January, but lucky for all of us we were snowed in that weekend and church was cancelled. I say *lucky* not because we got to stay home but because my message wasn't ready yet. It needed to--as my chef husband would say--simmer and season a bit more before it was truly ready to be consumed. The topic of my message was "rejection". Randy and I were blindsided by rejection during the last week of December, so it was very fresh on my heart in January. Too fresh. Too painful. If church hadn't been cancelled that Sunday I would have spoken specifically about the hurts we had experienced. The lies. The betrayals. And I would have shared this advice from Jesus: "Whatever village or town you enter, search for a godly man who will let you into his home until you leave for the next town. Once you enter a house, ...

Let me start by apologizing for leaving you hanging last year. Last I wrote we were being cast as characters in a Truman Capote novel, witnesses to the crime of the century in Kansas. That was "Leg 21." There were other legs. We went on to tour museums in Missouri and stay at an epic campground in Illinois and sleep in the Friends United Meeting parking lot in Indiana and eventually made it to Ohio, where we slept in the RV in a short-term parking lot at the Columbus airport waiting for Randy's daughter, Danielle, to arrive to retrieve Van. Once Van and Danielle were safely back in California, Randy and I hit the road again. We went to Toledo for hot dogs, slept in a Home Depot parking lot in Michigan, climbed sand dunes in Indiana and swam in Lake Michigan with my brother and his kids, played baseball on the Field of Dreams and attended my grandmother's memorial service in my second childhood home of Hubbard, Iowa. We broke into the home where my grandmot...

Hello faithful readers! It's been a minute... but I couldn't pass up sharing on #GivingTuesday. Giving is something I feel fiercely passionate about! After we've spent 18 billion dollars on Cyber Monday and Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, it's time to give to those who can't. This year, for Lent, God called me to donate $40 to 40 different ministries for the 40 days of Lent. It was an act of faith. Randy and I were missionaries in Baja California at the time, relying on donations for our own livelihoods, so giving $1,600 was more than a widow's mite. I made 39 donations (and I have the thanks-for-giving-here's-your-free-address-labels to prove it!). After moving to Ohio this summer and settling into a new neighborhood, God brought #40 into my life. Number 40 is included in this list, and it is one that I have not only given my money but also my time to, each and every week for the past two months. Today on #GivingTuesday, I challenge you t...