Mother's Day

There's nothing like your own kid for making you feel special. I wrestled with myself long and hard before saying I'd start up at Fidget's karate dojo. And half the time I still feel like a geek out on the mat. But it looks like she doesn't see that at all. I like that  in the card she's made me look slightly malicious, as if I could really put the hurtin' to a bad guy. Maybe I could by now! After all I've been in karate for about 6 months now. But karate kickin' mama or no, it looks like Fidget loves me anyway. I think getting her perspective of me now and then is refreshing. How much better if I saw myself as Jesus sees me, every day. 

I am so blessed to be my little kid's mama, but I was blessed way before that: Jesus saved me from countless hurtful things and dangerous situations when I was young, just so He could bring me to a saving faith. Then He gave me a husband and a whole new life. Being a mom is just the icing on the cake. But the icing is oh so good!

Thanks, Lord Jesus, for making me a new creation, set apart to be conformed to your likeness, no matter how long it takes.

Comfort

Grey skies, rain and grieving here today. I was reminded last week that the tough questions, the unsolved hurts, are times we must choose to draw near to God. We can trust even when we don't understand, and God will bring redemption of even those things that we cannot reconcile. We continue to unpack. Here is a little quilt that gets broken every time we move. I am finally making a new little clay figure, a little Fidget swinging high and carefree, that I made from one of my favorite old photos of her. The quilt isn't ruined if I determine to make it better as I refashion it. Just as the hard things don't break us, but increase our faith as we offer them back to God.

I love how this little baby kimono is coming out. I just bound off the bottom and need to get a little bit of elastic for the bottom and then knit the sleeves.

Just over a year ago I expected to be making tiny clothes for my own coming little one. But it was not to be. This week at Bible study we had a healing conversation about miscarriage and how God ministered to us through others during our trials. 

I am finding a lot of satisfaction in knitting for someone else's baby right now. It is surprising how God blesses us when we reach out to others; my own neediness is forgotten as I think about someone else's needs or what I can do to minister to loved ones. 

This week at another meeting of women I got to share my testimony; how God reached into my young, dark life and traded me a heart of flesh for my heart of stone. Reaching out to others, whether sharing my testimony or ministering to a new friend mourning her miscarriage, as I also was privileged to do this week, is humbling. Jesus laying down His life for me compels me to give where I can. The richness of the blessings I receive from this small giving are so great as to be incomprehensible. God is so good. 

At this my soul cries, This is what I was made for! 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Yes, Yes, and Yes

I was reading Psalm 16 this morning, where the psalmist says, "The boundary lines for me have fallen in pleasant places." and in 2 Corinthians 1 it says that all things are Yes in Christ. Even when I don't get my way, or when no matter which way I turn there doesn't seem to be a good choice, it is a relief to know that God's choices, the boundary lines, fall where he wants them. And that in them there is a Yes. Even when it doesn't feel like it. Even when we don't see it. Christ is redeeming all of it.


Here is my little Rose Tree Cottage quilt. When we moved into that house, it was just a house. But somewhere along the lines, while we were doing a lot of physical work on it (the Pres more than me), God changed my heart about the house, and it became a thing of beauty. Looking back on it reminds me this is just a small picture of what God can do with anything. He can change any heart. From weeping to rejoicing, all in His time.