A Word from the Lord

Tons of things are going on in my life right now. Most of it is good; I have food to eat, clothes to wear, clean water to drink, and my family is healthy and well. But there are several stressful things going on (I won't elaborate) and sometimes it all feels overwhelming. Monday morning I picked up my Bible, and it fell open to this:

I called on Your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit.

You heard my plea: "Do not close Your ears to my cry for relief."

You came near when I called You,

and You said,

"Do not fear."

~ Lamentations 3:35 - 37

Just what I needed to hear.

Renovating

I loved my old template with the beautiful hummingbird! However, the template was written in another language and I had tons of trouble trying to customize it. Blogger has made it easier to add new elements to my blog page, so I'm revamping. Bear with me. I really want to get back to more blogging. Maybe being easier will motivate me.

Daytona

I wish I had time to share all about our amazing trip with the youth to Daytona Beach, Florida for Student Life. If I tell you the speaker was Louie Giglio and the worship leader was Chris Tomlin can you imagine how awesomely incredible the week was? And to have such an awesome worship time at the beach! Then it was nearly perfect. (Only heaven is totatlly perfect.) I haven't been to the Atlantic coast since I was about 7 or 8. I'm 44 now! It was exhilerating to put my toes in the water and then jump the waves.

(This picture crackes me up....just when I started to snap the picture, the water came up around the the kids' feet. The water was cold!)

(Here they've regained their composure.)

Candace and I walked down to the beach one morning and picked up some shells. One night our group had its own worship time on the beach. That was incredible too.

Even though the event was for students, everything said spoke to my heart too...basically, it was a challenge to live a life of significance, not a life of normalacy. I think even 44 year olds need to hear that every now and then.

Yesterday Candace and I went to my parents house and put up 34 pints of butterbeans. If you've ever put fresh butterbeans in the freezer then you know what a job that was. If you haven't, you'll totally miss how impressive that is. Let's just say four of us worked on them from 9:00 am until 10:30 pm with only a few breaks in between. But, oh, those will sure taste good this winter!

Later this week our family will go to North Mississippi to spend time with our third family. (My family is one, Raymond's is two, and the Rices are three.) They take such good care of us!

Be blessed everyone!