In the meantime

The ladies' Sunday School class at church just finished going through Women of the Word , by Jen Wilkin.    While I had read it once before, it was a blessing to go through it again! Yes, I am a slow learner and need to have things repeated over and over again . It was an incredibly helpful book for learning how to approach God’s Word for myself in order to clearly understand what it is saying.  In several ways, this book has helped me to put together some pieces of the “Bible study methods” puzzle that before seemed obscure and vague, without a clear fit into the picture. In my understanding of the big picture of how to study the Bible for myself, Women of the Word contributed one significant piece: that piece was a grid for approaching the passage and determining how that affects my life.  This is most easily summed up into three main questions: What does this passage teach me about God?  How does this aspect of God’s character change my view of self?...

The day I turned ten stands out in my mind, for several reasons: we were in the United States, which meant I got to celebrate my birthday with my cousins, aunt and uncle, and my grandma.  That wasn’t something we got to do very often.  In fact, that was one of maybe two birthdays that I remember celebrating with them.  Anyway, the year I turned ten, I also got some glittery butterfly clippies that I had been eyeing in the store for weeks--you know, those clips that were all the rage, that worked perfectly to make cornrows in my hair.  Yeah…those clips were the best!  And then, the main reason I remember that birthday:  my family and I went to the apple orchard for the morning. Let me explain why this was such a big deal:  I hated apples.  I would eat them in something (like apple crisp or apple muffins, and perhaps apple pie, but I doubt I’d ever even eaten apple pie back then.)  But to eat them plain, no way.  It’s not that I real...

Isaac and I recently had  a conversation about having to trust God, even when we don’t fully understand everything about His Word or His ways. Sometimes there are gaps in our understanding of how God works and carries out His plan; often these gaps leave us baffled.  How can “A+B” equal “C” in God’s mind, when, in our minds, there is no way that “A+B=C”?  “C”, in our mind, equals something that we parallel with unfairness and unjustness on God’s part.   How can that be what the Bible teaches?  Surely there’s another answer that makes more sense. And so we often do come up with another answer—one that fits the “A+B=C” equation in our mind.  Yet, this answer is often based not so much on God’s Word as it is on what we want God’s Word to say. Struggling with these doctrinal gaps in our understanding of how an infinitely good God could act in a way that seems infinitely wrong is hard, sometimes even gut-wrenching...

The chronological through-the-Bible reading scheduling I’m going through has me in the Major and Minor Prophet books right now.  I just finished up  Ezekiel and Joel, and am in the middle of the book of Daniel.  Throughout Ezekiel and Joel, one particular theme kept jumping out at me: over and over again, God declares that “ you will know that I am the LORD .”  In its most basic form, this statement reminds us that, whatever He does, God is going to act in such a way that all who see it—whether the children of Israel, the pagan nations around them, or even those of us who now hold the book in our hands and read about it—will know who the Lord is!  Now that I’m in the book of Daniel, the theme seems to continue.  The book of Daniel is filled with stories that were some of my favorites in Sunday school: the golden image and Daniel’s three friends thrown into the smokin’ hot furnace, Daniel interpreting the king’s dreams about the t...

 “[God’s unfailing love] is true whether we believe it or not.  Our doubts do not destroy God’s love, nor does our faith create it.  It originates in the very nature of  God, who is love, and it flows to us through our union with His Beloved Son.  “But the experience of that love and the comfort it is intended to bring is dependent upon our believing the truth about God’s love as it is revealed to us in the Scriptures…” “The only way in which the sufferings of the present time may seem to come between the Christian and the love of God and Christ, is when he falls before them as a temptation or in unbelief sinks under them.  Then a cloud comes between him and the light of his Father’s countenance.  But the cloud is not the affliction, but the sin, and it is a merciful arrangement that it is so.  The want of comfort tells him that something is wrong.” ~John Brown From Trusting God , by Jerry Bridges, page 167.

Here are some new recipes that I’ve tried lately and I think they are well on their way to being made quite often around here! 1.  Curried Chicken Apple Salad I love. love. love the curry twist to your normal grilled chicken salad! Don’t let the curry scare you off!  And then having chunks of apple (I used Granny Smith apples) made it even better!  I’m finding that even if I don’t make this whole recipe (with the fruit and nuts and dressing) I like having the curry flavor on the chicken to dress up a regular lettuce salad. 2.  Pumpkin Granola  Isaac calls this "ludicrously good!"  Can you ever go wrong with pumpkin?  I don’t think so.  Haha… Anyway, I should warn you before you even look at the recipe: this isn’t your average bowl of healthy-oatmeal-granola-for-breakfast. In fact, you might find out that you have a selfish-streak in you (which of course we all have, unfortuniately), and you just might be tempted to eat it all befor...

We had the opportunity to go out to California for two weeks this summer.  While I didn't get any pictures from the week of camp that we helped with, I do have some from our trip up Highway 1! A stop along the way to look out over the rocky edge at the ocean.  This swirling pool of water is soo cool!  Ok, confession: I think I'm starting to fall in love with succulent plants.  Why does California get to have to them growing everywhere?     I had the most handsome breakfast date ever...at the cutest little Victorian-house-cafe ever!  Out on Lover's Point :)   The aquarium in Monterey.   Someday, Isaac wants to go to the big one in Atlanta (I think that's where it is.) Have a great weekend!   Tomorrow is the day we get to gather with the Body of Christ to worship God through music and the preaching of the Word!  I love our church.  

I don't usually do this {post two YouTube videos in a row}, but I just had to share this one. We sang this song at church yesterday.  I  love the simplicity in how it states so many truths that every believer needs to be reminded of so often.   Listen to it and let your soul bask in the joy of the promise that once we are a child of God, we are always a child of God!

Been listening to this song a lot lately.  It's such a good one!

I am back from the conference!  It really was a huge blessing.  I may write more about it in the future, but for now,  here's a link to ALL the sessions!!!    Hope they are a blessing to you! The best sessions definitely were the main sessions on 1 Peter (They were all really good, but I think my favorite session speakers were Jen Wilkin, Carrie Sandom, D. A. Carson, and John Piper.)  Oh...and having the Gettys do the bulk of the  music was amazing!!  (Yes, I like them and I am chomping at the bit to get their new CD that was released during the conference!)  

Tomorrow I set out for  The Gospel Coalition's National Women's Conference!!   Ahhh...I am so excited to have this opportunity to hear godly women (and a few men!) share from 1 Peter on A Resurrection life in a World of Suffering!    If you're interested, you should be able to watch the main sessions that will be live-streamed (I believe you should be able to find it somewhere on the link above!)

Growing up, my aunt would often send random notes or small gifts with the label “a smiler.” Usually it was something that, in some way, would bring back a memory, have someone’s name “written all over it”, or somehow or another make us smile "just because." That’s kind of what these posts are about. In case you haven’t already figured it out, these Saturday Smiles posts are becoming my “thankful for the simple things” posts: noticing and finding joy in the ordinary and everyday things of life.  These posts probably won’t happen on a weekly basis, but hopefully they will show up often! This week, I got into a really adventurous mood, which, if you know me, that doesn’t happen very often at all.  Like hardly ever. While Isaac and I are very different in many ways, if there’s one way that we’re alot alike it is that both of us can be completely happy doing the same thing week after week, all the time.  We can get stuck in a terrible rut…and neither of us real...

Ok, I already posted pictures of us as a couple in my last post... And while our anniversary was three days ago, we still are kind of "celebrating" with a few other things:  I think I got this from my parents: every year on their anniversary, they would make carrot cake to celebrate, since carrot cake was what they had at their wedding.  Soo...I made some lemon meringue pie to celebrate our anniversary!  Lemon Meringue isn't your hearty eat-with-ice-cream-and-fill-you-up kind of pie like apple pie is, but there's something about lemon meringue that just hits the spot...almost like comfort food. Especially with a cup of coffee.  (And when there is only two of us to eat it, a whole pie lasts us several days!)  Isaac brought home this gorgeous hanging pot of flowers!  I don't know the name of it, but I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it!  Here's a close up of one of the blooms starting to open.... And a fully-o...

...since the BEST DAY EVER and I hope there will be many, many more years! Christmas 2013 Anniversary #1! (June 2014) Brazil 2014 Brazil 2014 Anniversary # 2! (2015) {Practically} Anniversary # 3! (May 2016) I love my husband.  <3

So...we finally have a camera!  Yay! :)   Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks that make me smile. One of my favorite parts of our house: Our wedding picture, some dried roses from special occasions, and a reminder to trust God's sovereign ways.  My husband has this thing about cute little animals (as long as they don't eat food and poop it out.)  Doesn't this little guy just make you smile?   I absolute cannot  wait to plant these! Have always wanted to plant bulb-flowers!  They're supposed to come up late summer, so I better get them planted soon! My kitchen window.   Isaac is very practical--wooden flowers for Valentine's day last sooo much longer than real flowers!  Plus..they're in a yellow jar (I love yellow) and the "cherish" on the side makes it even better!  I think he knows me!  <3 My favorite guy ever. <3 My mother-in-law showed me how to focus on one th...