In the meantime

Happy Birthday! Thank you for teaching me more about politics. Thank you for teaching me about finances and frugal living.  Thank you for joining me in conversations about analyzing obituaries.  Thank you for wading through all those inheritance borders in the book of Joshua during our evening Bible reading. Thank you for going to work each day without complaining.  Thank you for loving our Little Girl.  Thank you for how your enthusiasm in reading is slowly rubbing off on me.  Thank you for being a shoulder to cry on.  Thank you for never even questioning whether or not we should go to church on Sunday. Thank you for loving the Body of Christ and for being committed to the local church.  Thank you for loving God and helping me learn to love Him more.  Thank you for being my incredibly quirky and goofy husband.  Thank you for encouraging me to keep studying God's Word.  Thank you for not beating around the bus...

Without warning, the painful memories flooded my mind. I thought this was all taken care of. Haven’t I already taken this to the Lord and laid it at His feet? Why does it have to hurt like it just happened yesterday?  As I lay in bed, my throat constricted and tears welled up in my eyes as my mind re-lived the hurt of days past. As the painful thoughts swirled around in my mind, other thoughts struggled to remind me of truth: Yes, I believe I have genuinely forgiven. But it still hurts...oh so much.  But Christ has called me to forgive. My pain is justified: I was wronged.  Christ has called me to forgive as He has forgiven. Lord, what does that even mean--“Forgive as Christ has forgiven me?” I may have forgiven in the past, but I need to forgive…again. But does that mean I just “let go” of the pain? I need to forgive again…and again…and again. I have to obey.  Forgiveness: It is so hard to do. Oh so incredibly hard. We’ve all struggled with it in ...

Unify : "to make things into one: to bring people or things together to form a single unit or entity". (1) Is that not exactly what Christ has done to every single individual who has placed their trust in Him? Think about it: if it weren't for the bond of Christ that we have a believers, would we naturally hang out with that person sitting across the aisle from us in church?  Probably not. Chances are that a lot of us would not naturally interact with many of the people we call brothers and sisters in Christ because outside of Christ, we wouldn't have much in common. We have different interests, lifestyles, backgrounds, careers, and so on. However, because we are in Christ, we have the most important thing about us in common!   It doesn't matter if I am a stay-at-home mom and you are the CEO of the company you built from the ground up: if we are both sinners washed in His blood, standing righteous before Him, that  is the most important fact...

I am surprising myself with how much I've been enjoying reading lately! (I'm blaming Mark Twain and his hilarious account of one particular boy's adventures that all started with whitewashing a fence for my renewed interest in reading. If I hadn't picked up that book earlier this summer, my life would continue to be as unaffected by books as it used to be! Haha!) Anyway...just finished the popular parenting book,  Shepherding a Child's Heart , by Tedd Tripp. I remember hearing my parents mention this book way back when I was a child, but I obviously never had an interest in reading it until now! This book is an outstanding resource for all parents who desire to "train up a child in the way he should go"!  Following are some quotes that stood out to me:  "...the heart attitudes direct behavior. This is always true. All behavior is linked to attitudes of the heart. Therefore, discipline must address attitudes of the heart. This understand...

 My sister-in-law Rachel Shively, a mutual friend Chrystal Stauffer, and I are excited to announce that we just started a joint-blog, Hearts Refreshed. This project started rolling when I asked Rachel several months ago if she wanted to do a joint-post with me here on In the Meantime.  Well, that particular post didn't materialized.  Instead, we started working on a slightly bigger project: getting Hearts Refreshed ready to launch! Yes, it finally just went public today! We are super excited! All three of us come from different backgrounds and are in different stages of the early years of marriage and motherhood. We desire to be learning what it means to be a godly wife, mother, and member of the Body of Christ. And we desire to serve other women through the specific avenue of the written word.  And that is why we are starting  Hearts Refreshed. You may be asking why we settled on the name  Hearts Refreshed. I think the d...

Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ, by Rosaria Butterfield. (Crown & Covenant Publications, 2014) After reading The Gospel Comes With a Housekey,  I was fascinated by Rosaria Butterfield's unique testimony, as well as her exceptional writing and thinking skills. In other words, I was curious about reading her other two books,  The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert  and Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ.  I just finished  Openness Unhindered. It is very different than what I expected it to be. Because of Butterfield's incredible testimony of how she came to Christ as a proclaimed lesbian, I began reading this book expecting it to be saturated with "how the Church should view and deal with the sexual identity crisis that is inundating today's culture." While she does dig deep into the sexual ident...

Within a few weeks, my world went from ecstatic joy at the news that we were expecting twins to devastating grief when the ultrasound technician said there were no heartbeats nor had there been any growth since our last ultrasound a few weeks earlier.  Is this really happening to us?  That evening, the awful event of miscarriage confirmed the technician‘s diagnosis. Our miscarriage was emotionally and spiritually crushing. Days turned into weeks, and then into months, and I was emotionally and spiritually lower than I had ever been in my life.  At times, t he grief practically choked me of the very air I breathed.  I was desperate for some form of comfort to revive my grief-stricken, joy-suffocated soul. “How in the world am I to deal with this?”    “Where do I turn for comfort ?” "How do I even move forward in life?" “Lord, help me!”  was my constant cry.  God heard my desperate pleas, and in His goodness ...

Guys, I am just finishing up reading  Knowing God , by J. I. Packer, and it is absolutely. fantastic. Similar to Knowledge of the Holy  by A. W. Tozer, this book will make you want to do just that: know God. Knowing God  deserves a more-detailed post in the near future, but for now, I'll leave you with a quote to make you want to read the book for yourself (because you can't just take my word for it!)   On the believer's  adoption  and being sons of God, Packer says:  "This free gift of acquittal and peace [justification] won for us at the cost of Calvary, is wonderful enough, in all conscience—but justification does not of itself imply any intimate or deep relationship with God the judge. In idea, at any rate, you could have the reality of justification without any close fellowship with God resulting.  "But contrast this, now, with adoption. Adoption is a family  idea, conceived in terms of love , and veiwing God as ...

Have you ever stopped to think about what it will be like to "stand in glory and see His face?"   1 John 3:2 says that when we are in His presence, we will see Him as He is. We will see Him in all of His glory, beauty, and holiness.  I can't think of anything more precious, glorious, and indescribable to fill my sight.  Gold streets and private mansions are for later...much, much later.   That moment when our faith will be sight, when we see Him face to face, the God in whose name we, by faith, have trusted in, declared, suffered for, and worshiped — oh, it will be indescribably and unfathomably glorious. There will be no more need for the purifying hope of being in His presence: we will be in His presence.   And we will be forevermore. Can you even begin to wrap your mind around what it will be like to be in His very presence ? What will it be like to worship Almighty God for all of eternity?  I think we may sta...

God is trustworthy.  This begs us to ask questions such as "Why do we trust God?" "Why should we trust God?" "Is He really altogether worthy of our complete trust?" "Is trusting Him a crutch for our weaknesses?" "When we trust God, are we simply falling back on Him as our last resort?"  In light of these questions, here are a few thoughts about trusting God and His trustworthiness:   Consideration #1: If we are going to "trust God" we must understand the God in whom we're trusting.   In other words, if we're trusting God without knowing what He is like, we are blindly trusting Him, and I would suggest that such trust is not trust at all.  Take, for example, a chair.  If I trust in a chair, what does that mean?   It means that I know what a chair is.  I understand the purpose of the chair.  I understand the character of the chair to be such that it will hold me up. And because I trust the...

With Talitha growing more and more in her understanding of what we say and do, I have been looking for a good children's Story "Bible" read to her.  (I say "Bible" because these books are not literally what we would believe to be the inspired Word of God but rather illustrated books with the main stories of the Bible written for children.)    While I have not come across bad illustrated children's Bibles, there are, admittedly, some that are better than others. Gospel-centric children's Bibles, such as the Jesus Story Book Bible , that strive to focus on the Gospel-themes as portrayed throughout Scripture, are popular these days and are some of the best options out there!  However, I have had a hard time deciding which one I wanted to buy.    And then I read a review for The Beginner's Gospel Story Bible, by Jared Kennedy, published by New Growth Press in 2017. After about 5 minutes of "looking inside it" on Amazon, ...

Smoke billowed above the hill.  It got darker.  And then, as I watched from my kitchen window, some flames flickered over the top of the hill, as if to say "we're headed your way!" Fresh fear struck my heart. Life in the Black Hills has always presented some form of wildfire in the area, but this was the first time since I have been living here that a fire has ever come so close to town that homes were being evacuated. Some of our friends' homes were being evacuated. I texted them to let them know they could crash at our place for the night if they needed to. In the meantime, I started a pile of necessities in case we ourselves also had to evacuate. I nervously packed a couple changes of clothes into a suitcase, loaded essential documents and bedding into the car, and piled some snack food into a basket. And then, with the essentials taken care of, I started scanning the house for extra stuff we could take--items that weren't vita...