Minivan Moments

Up until recently, i surveyed my life from a very stagnant point of view. It was the same old, same one, new day, same schedule of events. Over the past week, however, i have been taught not to take anything for granted. Everything can change in the blink of an eye, and all you have thought about your future can be questioned. So i am embarking on a new journey: Daily Appreciation of Life as it Happens. To do this, i am going to be blogging about our day and what i appreciated about it. This is going to have the side benefit of being something my children and i can look back on for years to come, a reminder of life as we experienced it... the life that was well-lived and not taken for granted. Today, we began a project with recyclables, little historical action figures, some craft supplies, the woodworking tools, and some fake snow. This project grew in detail over the course of my children's imaginings, so it will likely be days-long. I promise to post pictures. That will he...

I've understood that i live within the gray areas of life for some time now. I've even begun to say that out loud in several circumstances. And today, as i am emotionally dealing with a lot of things in my life, i am aware of yet another way i live within the gray: my sick kids. Okay, so my children don't have cancer. Or leukemia. Or diabetes. Or autism. Or cerebral palsy. And for that, i truly am thankful. However, my children (and i) are still sick. We are just not overtly sick. We live with inflammation, headaches, nausea, bloody stools, hyperactivity, vaccine intolerance, behavioral problems, and learning disabilities. My kids live with food sensitivities, dietary restrictions, and many issues surrounding food. (And in case you haven't noticed, you can't really cut food out of your life.) So, while i am not the least bit sad that we are not facing some terminal illness like cancer or some debilitating condition like cerebral palsy, it is sometimes frustrat...

As a member of BookSneeze, I received a copy of Free Book , written by Brian Tome, to read and review. I liked the idea of the book because I believe we Americans have a lot of freedoms other countries don't, and I also believe that we Christians are free from things other religions are not... yet we too often live as if we are bound by rules and stipulations rather than free in Christ. Overall, I must proclaim that Christ came to set us free, and that is definitely Tome's point. He starts by breaking the ties to "religion" and establishing our "New Identity" in Christ Jesus. With that out of the way, he proceeds through a couple of things that might be hurdles to feeling free: forgiveness and strongholds. These issues are bigger than most people understand fully, even in the Christian world, and he does a good job of breaking them down. Then he proceeds into the spirit realm, and he talks about all the ways we allow the enemy to muddle our thoughts and ...