YL camp

It's true. I flew home from Colorado to get on a bus to come back to Colorado. For the best week of my life! Ahem, the best week of my high school friends lives!

I have a cabin full of the coolest girls you'd ever meet and we have endured a 30-hour bus trip and now we are at camp! 

It is so much fun to be here, you have no idea. Amazing meals, deep talks, laughing hard at things like misheard song lyrics, farting in public, getting the Snookie bump in your hair at 35---it might be the best week of my life after all. 

Also, I get to be in a cabin with Natalie Knauer. One of my best friends since I got married 13 years ago. 

It's going to be a great week. I love Crooked Creek and I'm so glad to show it to all of my friends! 

Why are we doing this? Read this quote below. It's a good summary:

"To worship God means to serve God. Basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for God that God needs to have do have done--run errands for God, carry messages for God, fight on Gods side, feed Gods lambs, and so on. The other way is to do things for God that you need to do-sing songs for God, create beautiful things for God, give things up for God, tell God what's on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice and make a fool of you yourself for God the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love." 

--Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words

Raising a Family

When working for a ministry, one of the things that many people give to you when you have kids...is children's Bibles.
When your kids start getting older, one of the things that you struggle to figure out-is how to actually READ those Bibles and to help make them relate to your children's current reality.
This is not unique to those of us in full-time ministry-this is all of us who love Jesus.
However, we have been given a multitude of Bibles. I would say, in quantities above the average family.

And yet, we like most families have struggled over the years to make reading the Bible with our kids a habit.

When Matt and I went to the Marriage Conference in March, there was a section of the conference dedicated to "parenting" and it was facilitated by David and Kelli Pritchard. It was absolutely fantastic.

One piece of real encouragement that they gave us was to make reading the Bible together as a family a daily habit.
In their family, they read five Psalms and a Proverb every morning before school with their school aged kids.

In our family, our kids are close in age and one has just started school.
So we opted to try reading the Jesus StoryBook Bible daily before school.

Have you read this Bible?
We were gifted it several years ago by our friend Luke Davis and it has been one of the greatest gifts to our family that we have received.

It is written from the perspective that God has written in our hearts the greatest Love Story of all time and it mirrors many children's books of the princess waiting for her prince to come and rescue her. Every story in this Bible points to the prince who is never stopping, never giving up, always and forever love. I choke up nearly every time I read it.

The illustrations really grab my kids attention and the perspective is so much fun. In different stories, you have to change the way you read the book from horizontal to vertical, which makes the Bible much more interactive than a typical children's book, let alone a Bible.

We love this Bible. 

Reading it daily with our kids has been a real gift to us and our kids. 

Now every morning, they ask: Can we read the Bible before we go to school? 

YES. 

It has become a treasured time. 

My favorite encouragement from the Pritchards on this topic was this:

I asked if we need to explain the Bible or lead a Bible study type of time with our kids. It was stressing me out. 

Kelli answered:

Let the Holy Spirit do the work in your kids. Your job is to place Scripture inside their hearts. 

His job is melt their hearts for his purposes. 

It has taken such a load off our shoulders to feel like we need to do "family devotions" on a daily basis. 

Not our jobs. We love our kids and lead them to the Lord in Scripture showing them what we think is truly important. 

We make this a priority now. I love that. 

You can get the Jesus StoryBook Bible here.

Baby Bird

Just over a week ago, we had a nesting bird hatch four baby birds on front porch in a very convenient location for us to watch the whole thing unfold.

It was very exciting and much anticipated. 

On Sunday, the baby birds were chirping super loud and the kids wanted to "take a peek" so we lifted them up to look inside the nest. The birds were so small and so cute.

We gave a stern warning about no touching and headed inside to get ready for the day.

That lasted approximately 30 minutes. 

While I was getting ready, Asher grabbed one his little chairs and headed onto the front porch for further investigation. 

He comes back inside with a big, triumphant smile on his face and declares, "I just touched the birds!"

The looks on our faces must have conveyed how displeased we were because immediately he started crying, followed by leading us to the scene of the crime. 

We had no idea what would happen to them. But had a pretty good idea. 

We left for a couple of hours only to return and find three featherless, baby birds gasping for breath on our front porch and sidewalk.

Awesome. 

Teachable moment #4056 of Asher's life.

I googled what to do and google said, put the birds back and leave the nest well alone. 

We all complied.

And have been nervously watching over the nest ever since and the Momma bird just resumed feeding the birds as if she hadn't given them the boot just hours before. 

And she feeds them all day every day ever since. I love watching it. 

So now, all day long-I hear the birds chirping, calling for their momma to come and feed them. Totally dependent on her for everything and it reminds me. 

It calls me.

It has set within me the reminder that this is how I am with God. I am dependent on him for my everything. Every bit wisdom. Every bit of depth, gentleness, goodness, self-control. Anything good or worthy has been hand-delivered to my soul by him. Through him. Through Jesus. On the cross. 

And he watches over me.

When I throw myself out of the nest, he lovingly puts me back.

And watches over me as I feed again.

As if nothing ever happened.

And get nourished.

And grow.

What a picture of grace. 

Easter Recap

The kids woke up to a beautiful Easter morning and we did a quick Easter Egg hunt outside.

Then we got all gussied up for a photo shoot. Look how well they cooperated!

Then we went to the Knauer's for a family feast time and Easter Egg Hunt. At the end of the day, Asher ate so much that he threw up and it was time to leave.
Throwing up ALWAYS means it's time to leave.

Sunday Morning Come On Down

My friend Heather had this video up on her Facebook wall and it made me laugh-so I thought I would repost it here.

This is sometimes what it looks like to run Bible study with high schoolers.
Their questions are only slightly more sophisticated than Ben's in the video, but no less rapid-fire. Oh and the polar bear question? I've definitely gone down that rabbit hole. And had girls crying over Jesus killing endangered animals. Definitely.

I have stepped away from most of my friends; high school and grown-up, in the last few weeks simply because I haven't had a lot to give away. I am doing my best to find time to be quiet and restore myself, but the discipline is difficult and I am still exhausted. The only good thing, is that I have found myself to be so totally emptied of myself that anything of substance that is "good" to come out of me is straight from God. He has to fill my tank because I am incapable of doing it myself.

Be with me when I am fearful
to make me faithful.
Be with me when I am faithful
to make me fruitful.
Be with me when I am fruitful
to make me humble.
For it is only by your grace
that I was chosen to serve you;
only by your strength
that I am even able to serve;
only by your faithfulness
that I am still serving you today...

-Ken Gire
Moments with the Savior

Isn't This What It's All About?

From the Cake Wrecks Blog

Sigh. Because conforming you is what we are all about.
See what we are up against people?

Best News Since He Was Born

Last night I was setting the kids down for bed and we were saying our prayers which included the high school kids that were at club listening to Mr. Frank talking about Jesus dying on the cross.

I was praying for them when Asher piped up,

"I have Jesus in my heart."
"You do?"
"Yes. He's right here."
"That's great news, do you love him?"
"I do. He's my friend."

All the while, Lucy is singing the song "Beautiful Scandalous Night" right next to me. (I can't make that up.)

After a few minutes, Matt came back to say good night and Asher told him the same thing. But he added,

"Jesus is in my heart Daddy. But you can't see him. He's inside, where you can't see...kind of near my belly."
"In your belly?"
"Yep, he's eating Dora Berries and Hot Dogs."

We hugged him all up and told him loved him and that was the greatest news we've ever heard and put him to sleep.

What a great way to end a tough week.