Living on Coffee and Love

Today's devotional is about the courage of the Shunammite woman who has a pain and wound bigger than anything else- her desire for a child. The devotional says, "This wound is so painful that she dare not allow it to be uncovered." Oh, I feel that so bigly. Although I don't feel the pain of a woman unable to or trying to conceive, the pain in my heart does feel like a gaping wound that if I uncover it, surely will have the power to overtake me because it is so great and deep. Fear lives in that vulnerability and I've been asking God to heal my heart and let me receive love again. I feel that this wound of mine being covered and hidden, keeps me from hurting but also keeps me from feeling and receiving, believing in love. I know that fear is not from the Light. I know that fear is the opposite of faith. I wrestle with them both. I know and do not want to live a life in fear or because of fear. I want to live a life of faith. I know that we suffer because we love an...

 2/14/2025 Today the world seems to be on fire with love. Commercialized, dipped in chocolate, flowery, and fragrant love. Loud and noisy love. On fire love. Shiny. Polished. Expensive. Calculated.   I'm thankful for the love that is none of those things. Because I stopped settling for that top and most outer layer of it, the love from a distance kind of love.  Instead, I look to the love of the friends I'm so fortunate to have. The ones who show up for me when things are messy, emotional, tired, sweaty, stinky, sticky, unprepared, scared, and brave.  The friends who can get sassy and dressy and go out to a nice ticketed event but know the real me is happy in jeans and a t-shirt, with fake pearls and mismatched ribbon shoelaces. The ones who love me and show up for me despite what an inconvenience it is for them to do so. For friends who have shown me what it means to show up. To be present. The ones who make me feel like my broken heart is perfect in a world he...

2/12/2025 When I was 14, my mom made me volunteer all summer at the hospital. Most kids volunteered 1 day/week. We couldn't afford summer camp or family vacations and she worked all week. I was too young for a job. She signed me up to volunteer at the hospital 5 days/week all day. All summer long.  I delivered flowers and cards to patients. I sat with patients in the cancer center and kept them company while they were getting chemo. I helped people sit up to eat, and I took family members from the lobby to patient rooms and back again.  It was the summer between middle school and high school for me. I was overweight, lacked self-confidence, didn't play sports, read a lot of books, and spent a lot of time in my room by myself drawing, reading, listening to music, and dreaming.  I came home crying every day about the patients I saw. Every single day broke my heart. I will always remember what my mom said to me one day after being a little annoyed with me for crying again. S...

As you can tell, it's been so long since I've posted. For some reason, it always takes something pretty big or eye-opening to get me still enough to write. The stars all lined up tonight and I decided to login and post again. Have any of you started email accounts for your children? I have about 3 journals upstairs, tattered and torn, exhausted from moving around from box to box. In them, I have letters to the kids. I was really good about writing to the twins when I was pregnant with them. I wrote about the things that scared me and the things I hoped for them. I wrote about how I felt, what I ate, and even ordinary things that being pregnant with them changed. I told them about how it felt to tie my shoes sideways and how I required pretzel nests of pillows in order to sleep. I even kept up with writing to each of them for awhile after they were born. But, as luck and life would have it, sleep became harder and harder to come by and my priorities shifted. The other night, I...

So many things have been weighing on my shoulders lately. I've been soul-searching, praying, and keeping the faith. I've just been wishing a big neon sign would appear to let me know what to do, what to go for, where to go, where to put roots down. You know, just the BIGGIES. And, then this morning I thought to myself, maybe the big neon sign that I want is ...there is no big neon sign. And, I just need to be still. And, wait.  Anyone who knows me, knows that when I know what I want, I go after it with all the strength and determination I have. Lately, I have to admit that things in my life that have previously held so much weight and required so much strength have fallen by the wayside.  I have recognized over the last week or so that the everyday stresses of life coupled with the search for a home (in every sense of the word home) have really drained a lot of my joy, my sunshine.  And, quite frankly, I'm fed up with myself.  Many of you know that we were extr...

  When I picked up a copy of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" in the airport, I honestly don't know what I was expecting. I think I was hoping for words of advice for dealing with difficult people. I was looking for facts and suggestions for motivating others to work harder. I was looking for SOMEthing. I reached a certain part of the book that talks about "beginning with the end in mind." Basically, as morbid as it is, it encourages the reader to think about their funeral. Sick, right? Well, I had a few hours on the plane with no internet and nothing else to read so I kept reading. I started to think about the words I had read. I scribbled characteristics in the book (GASP, yes really.) that I would like to be remembered for when I die. Stay with me friends, stay with me.   I continued to read. The next part of the book encouraged the review of the previously scribbled characteristics. The book stated that, regardless of whether I was aware of it or ...