In the meantime

The Psalms continue to produce timeless encouragement.  Over and over, they remind the reader to lift up his eyes to the Savior, back to the One who made us and loves us, and Whose everlasting character is the very reason we cry out to Him. Reading Psalm 25 this morning was a good reminder of this.  This particular Psalm is pretty easily broken down into " God, this is Who You are.  Because of Your character, hear this pitiful cry of mine.  It is about You, not me."   Verse 2-3 -- Let me not be put to shame...                     ...because I trust in You and wait for You. Verse 5 -- Lead me in Your truth...                 Teach me...                     ...because You are the God of my salvation. Verse 6 --    ... Remember Your mercy                    ...

After the project sat on my kitchen table for a week or two, it is finally finished!   Yes, I filled  the journal that I made  a year and a half ago and decided it was way more fun to make another one than to just go out and buy one!   Here are the two together -- the one one the top has held up pretty well for being well-loved for   1 1/2 years  now!   I wanted to go with a burlap cover this time...we'll see how if it holds up as well as the other cover.  It took a little trial and error to figure out how to make the cover, but in the end, it worked out well! This new journal ended up having twice as many pages as the last one, so time will tell how well this cover holds up! I also decided to connect the front and back covers with some cloth for a bit of color and girliness.  It added a little more of a challenge to the book-binding process...it's not perfect, but it's not bad for a beginner!  And...

Since I'm on a posting spree here... here's the latest at the Stanleys!  We are incredibly excited, thankful, scared, and [lots of other emotions!] But super thankful that God, the Father of lights, Who only ever gives good gifts, has seen fit to give us this good gift. We love our precious Little One.

If you read any blogs, you’ve probably seen a number of posts over the past few weeks that were along the lines of “Top 10 Books for 2016” or “Top 10 Posts of the Year.”  Well, you won’t get posts like that here…because I don’t think I’ve even read ten complete books this year, or had enough of a blog-audience to have a list of the ten most-read posts on this blog. Haha… Instead, I thought it would be fun to do a  slight variation: The Books I Wish I’d Read (or finished) in 2016 and The Posts I Would Liked to Have Posted in 2016.   So here goes… 8 Books I Wish I’d Read (or finished) in 2016: 1.  None Like Him, by Jen Wilkin (On the attributes of God.  Really good—at least the few chapters that I’ve read so far!)  2.  Future Grace , by John Piper (About sanctification...got about halfway through...and then got distracted.  Again, really good so far!) 3.  A Peculiar Glory, by John Piper (Why we believe the Bible is the Word ...

So I wrote this post back when it was still fall...not early 2017 with piles of snow everywhere. Haha... ********** Fall is totally my favorite time of the year—the weather, the colors, the food.  It’s the best!  Because of all the great sales at the grocery stores lately, there have been lots of apples around our place lately, and now sweet potatoes (or yams) are coming around as well!   I have enjoyed the opportunity to make some yummy apple and sweet potato dishes. Some of my favorites have been sweet potato french fries baked in the oven with a little coconut oil and seasoned salt...mmm, I could eat a whole pan of them! Sliced sweet potatoes fried in a skillet with  olive oil and salt are just as good—even though they have a slightly different shape. (And every. single. time I make this dish, I almost have to physically restrain myself from adding more seasonings to it, but you really only need the olive oil and salt with these potatoes!) And t...

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...