{Holy Moments}

Moments that seem ordinary, but are so much more.


Moments that make this life beautiful.


For a long time I thought that holiness would only be found in a certain place, at a certain time, reserved for big moments in our lives.


But lately, I have come to see that holy moments can actually look very ordinary and sometimes come in the middle of our messiest, most simple every day lives.


It comes in that moment when the exhaustion of a long week cements you to the couch and the kids are going crazy...and then dad walks in the door {beyond all exhaustion himself} and everyone is back together again, hugs & giggles and lots of fast talking....a holy moment.


You stop. You take it all in, the laughing, the joy...a shared smile between two parents void of any energy, but full of a shared understanding of "this is why we do it."


It's the realizing that all the hard stuff accumulates to make up the good stuff.


This holy, sacredness of life bursting at the seams.


The quite bedtime stories with just your oldest.


The waiting up late for a husband just to simply see his face today, and it's enough.


The 2am snuggles from a teething toddler.


The way the sun spills in your bedroom every morning, a new day.


The pile of shoes scattered across your kitchen that says "life happens here."


The moments that literally make you stop {even for a second} and realize this is it, this is my life right here, right now and I am thankful.


Holy moments.


Because God is in the every day, this is where life happens in the big and the small.


Watch for those moments this week.


Happy Monday, friends.

{Beauty From These Ashes}

I don't understand a lot, especially when it comes to the pain and brokenness we all experience in this life. It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

When you are a kid the world seems so beautiful and dangerous. But as an adults we sometimes lose that wonder and  that fear. We forget how much we matter and how much those around us matter. We forget how fragile we are and we come face to face with really how short our lives are.

I am not too old, but sometimes I feel like most of my life has passed me by and I am running out of ground to cover before the race is done. I start to panic when stuff falls apart, when bad things happen to those I love, when my own brokenness hurts others, when nothing seems to work out like I thought it would...and all I see is a pile of ashes at my feet.

But isn't that the way it is in this life?

Isn't it a reminder of how messed up we are and all we can really create is mess after mess, turning our life and plans into a heap of burning ashes at our feet?

Dangerous.

We are destructive by nature, destined to mess it all up no matter how smart, or determined or well planned our dreams and life may be.

Things just fall apart. They rust and they rot and they leave us feeling empty and wondering how we ever got here.

But there is hope. There is always hope.

Something beautiful can come from the mess we have made.

Redemption.

Beauty from the ashes.

When our brokenness, our failures and our plans are contrasted with the sacred truth that we can absolutely not do this on our own, we find what it is all about.

We see meaning in the suffering, the pain and the heartache.

We see that we were never really meant to be here long and that our souls were not created for this world.

And then everything looks different.

The brokenness in our hearts reminds us of our humanity, of what we can do when we stop trying on our own.

When we lean on a strength and a love that is beyond us life starts to bloom up from the muck.

We get back to that place where life is beautiful and dangerous and hope filled again.

We get a little closer to heaven right here.

It doesn't mean life stops being hard or the ones we love stop getting hurt, it just means now we don't have to do this ourselves anymore, it's not all on our shoulders and we have nothing to prove.

It means in our ashes, in our most broken down place hope springs forth and we keep fighting the good fight, keep hoping for that day when all things will be made right. 

Because it is coming, sweet friend.

Beauty from the ashes.

{Life RIght Now}

It has been awhile since I have done an update, so I thought I would share a little about our life {right now}.

Judah is just over 3.5 years old already {tears}. He is becoming such a sweet little man. He still has his vibrant, joyful spirit and we are all learning how to embrace it a little more every day. He has an insane vocabulary and really seems to grasp concepts far beyond his years. We love to just listen to him share his thoughts and have a peek into his heart. I started to do preschool at home with him this fall because he is SO ready and just eager to learn. I found a great Christian based preschool program online that we are following, along with some of my own ideas. So far it is going really well, but it is a tricky balance with the twins being the super active toddlers that they are. Nap time is usually our only opportunity to tackle school stuff. Judah is such a social little guy too. He just LOVES to be with people. I have a hard time keeping him off the neighbor's porches :) We are so blessed to call this sweet boy our son. He teaches us so much.

{again, with the fuzzy iPad pics, but something better than nothing ;) }

{Big Bro}

Ryder & Will are 19 {almost 20 months} and ON.THE.MOVE! They are just little busy bees, soaking up everything they can {especially from their big bro}. While they are in very similar stages in a lot of ways, they are also extremely different.

 Ryder is very attached to me {FINALLY, a mama's guy!}, loves to snuggle, cautious about new experiences, passionate about what he wants/ doesn't want, LOVES kitties {not sure how he developed this affection because Andrew and I are anything but cat people!}, He is obsessed with all things Elmo, loves to just sit on his little frog potty and say "poo-poo!" and takes any opportunity he can to be outside {and get on Judah's bike}. He certainly is a blessing to our family.

{Ry may have taste tested the dirt...}

 Will is a pretty independent guy. He is our "wise old soul"- he just always has this intense, knowing look on his face, it cracks us up. He has a very complex vocabulary for his age and seems to really understand a lot more than we probably know. He loves books and will sit for a good 45 minutes just paging through his favorites. He is also very very opinionated about what he wants, which I think just comes with the toddler territory ;) He loves to putter around with little tiny toys and examine the smallest details of things. We just love this little bug to pieces.

{Will, showing off his sweet smile}

 Andrew is in the midst of grad school and working full time insanity. It's nuts. He is pretty much exhausted from the moment he wakes up until he eventually makes it to bed at night. Given all that he has on his plate he does SO much to take care of us all when he is home. We miss him a lot during the week and are really looking forward to this last semester being over! We are so proud of him!

{Andrew & Judah, Best Buddies}

 And me, I am in full blown mom mode 24/7. I give all the single moms out there SO much credit. It.Is.TOUGH. I have not had much time for anything outside of the kids and house stuff, so getting back into blogging is really a great outlet for me. I have met a few amazing moms in town recently, so it is has been great to build a little community of friends that are close by.

{Me and my 3 boys}

Life is good, crazy busy and stressful at times, but so so good.

{At The Core}

I am an extra sensitive soul.

My husband can verify that as well as my family and close friends.

And I am starting to see that, maybe that isn't such a bad thing.

As a child {and most of my adult life} I have seen it as weakness, a flaw in my code.

It has fed my tendency to give into fear. It has helped define the not-so-healthy "theme of my life" for many years.

There is always a reason behind a life theme & many times it isn't that it is a fault, but a gift or strong point that is simply misdirected.

Being sensitive can bring good or bad.

Being strong willed can bring good or bad.

Being passionate can bring good or bad.

It is a matter of how you use these gifts and a matter of how you view yourself in relation to the things that are so deeply ingrained in the person you are.

I believe that at the core of every person there is an undeniable goodness.

It is a reflection of where we come from, from the hands that shaped us from the very start, intended for beauty and purpose and light.

As I have been working over these things in my heart, once again I see in my children this very truth.

That we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

That when we look at ourselves and see fault it is a reminder to look deeper and see the goodness at the core of it, to always get back to the place where  beauty was intended to flow out and start there again.

When my son, Judah, whose name means "praise," is being loud and over the top wild I can choose to see it as him being disobedient and rude.

But, when I stop and look at the core of him, where I know I will find a soul bursting at the seams with joy, praise & exuberance for life I can remember that I need to help him cultivate that into something that brings goodness to those around him.

I don't want to squelch his joy, push it down back into him as a negative attribute, but give him the means and ability to use it to make the world a sweeter place to be.

And I need that same gentleness when dealing with myself- to see that there is a goodness in how I was created, that being sensitive means more than being afraid or being shy, it means more than being afraid to feel too much.

It means I have the ability to step into another person's pain. 

It means letting myself see beyond the hard exterior and into the real heart behind it.

It means giving my heart all the more and not sheltering it from pain.

It means expressing my sensitive soul in a way that brings truth and beauty to others.

It means loving and accepting who I am at the very core. Because it is there that I will find my deepest connection with the One who weaved it all together from the very start.

I hope that you too can look at yourself and see beyond the faults to a person who is deeply meaningful and needed by this world to the very core.

{Why Relationships Matter}

Every day our minds are burdened with all we need to do, places we need to go, things we have to accomplish.

I catch myself so often moving from one task to the next, our days laid out in a well organized sequence of things "to do."

I find myself saying "just a minute", and "in a second" or "just let me finish this one thing" too many times in a day.

A friend might call to visit, my 3 year old might ask to go to the park or my husband wants to just talk an catch up on our day....but, I am too busy.

And then there are times I long to see a friend I have not connected with in weeks or months or maybe I want to read a book with my 3 year old or talk to my husband and they are suddenly too busy.

We are all too busy. We are all distracted by things that fade away. We are lured by the immediate and forget the eternal, lasting things.

Our lists of things to do will never end, the distractions will never cease. But what will remain at the end of our lives? What will last?

Relationships.

We all have them, both good and bad. Shallow and deep. They exist and they matter, more so than anything on our "to do" lists.

I often ask my 3 year old when he is frustrated with his brothers or a friend "what is more important the person or the thing?" His answer is always "the person." He gets it.

Me? Not so much.

It seems so obvious, I know. Of course people matter more than things, most of us know this. But, are we truly grasping and living out this knowledge?

I think if we were, the world would be such a different place than it is now.

I have been struggling with this a lot lately, realizing how many of my relationships are on the back burner. And I see how deeply it alters me to the core when I put my "to do's" or my own needs before the people around me.

Instead of calling up a friend, I am cleaning the kitchen.

Instead of playing a game with Judah, I am shopping online for new shoes for him.

Instead of having a new neighbor over for dinner, I am stressing about how much work we need to do on our backyard landscaping.

Instead of late night talks with my husband, I am reorganizing the play room {again}.

I am trying to keep our life clean, organized and moving along. I am trying to find ways to make our life better or easier.

And in the process I am missing the main point of this life.

I am forgetting that none of this "stuff" really adds up to much in the end.

It's the people, the depth of my relationships that contain infinite value.

So tonight I am letting the laundry pile up more than normally "acceptable", I am putting away my list of things undone, letting the dust do it's own thing and embracing the sweet souls in front of me.

I hope your weekend is full of amazing moments with the ones you love and that maybe just this once nothing gets checked off the list but time together.

Days That Melt Away

The summer days have melted away faster than I thought they would, but the memories have left sticky little handprints all over my heart.

I've missed writing/blogging, but it was good to just be in those moments and let the memories be enough. 

I barely even clicked my shutter this summer. There are maybe a few hundred photos to document our many road trips, backyard campouts, visits with family and just the general day to day sweetness that was our summer.

With the pressure of needing to "capture" every moment, we sometimes forget to be in the moment.

As I sit and reflect on the memories of the summer, a few come to mind. Nothing extraordinary, but just a lot of every day ordinary, messy, {sometimes loud} and wonderful moments:

Late night drives to the lake {with soundly sleeping babes in the back} and long conversations for Andrew and I.

Hiking, exploring, diving off the old dock, rainy afternoon forts indoors, hot muggy nights spent in the screen tent waiting for a storm to break the heat, catching wiggly fish...

Road trips to see grandparents and extended family.

A special week with Uncle Jack {Andrew's brother through his birth Mom}

And then a week with Aunt Shaley & Ella {Andrew's sisters through his birth Dad}

Giant, sun ripened harvests from our garden

And many delicious meals from said ripe harvests :)

There were many games of peek-a-boo, hide and seek, Candyland, and Go Fish

And thankfully {for mama} there were plenty of nice, long afternoon naps

I hope your summer was just as packed with good memories!

I look forward to getting back to writing and reflecting on what I am learning on this crazy journey called life on my blog this fall.