News — girls

"I'm not good at that." It started with small, little snippets of self-doubt.  I should have noticed.  I should have stopped it sooner.  I'm her mother, after all….unfortunately, I'm also really gifted in the art of negative self-talk.  Maybe I missed it because what should have been a red flag has been given a space on my shelf, a narrative I frequently read and accept as normal.    It took flares of anger, where self-hate spewed out of my sweet girl like a volcano I assumed was dormant.  I was shocked.  I argued back--NOTHING you are saying about yourself is...

What is the ace you keep up your sleeve?  What is the one thing (or is it even multiple things) you secretly hold on to?  Your safety net, your just in case?  I think there are many reasons we guard these pieces for ourselves. For me, I am facing the reality head on that I have spent years clinging to my ace because I am afraid that playing it will reveal that my hand isn’t actually good enough.

I was standing by her in church one Sunday, when I felt an urgency to pray for her during worship. You see, I knew what was going on in her life.  I knew how overwhelmed she was with anxiety and fear.  It had been a rough season...The lies of the enemy were loud, and she was believing them.  She was at the point where she just could not see truth for the fog.  It's so hard to watch the people you love suffer.  It's also hard to know when and how to speak truth to them, so I specifically started...

  This weekend, the plan was to rearrange our bedroom.  Friday, I accidentally went to Home Depot, bought some paint, and repainted the kitchen--surprising Brad when he came home from work.  Like..surprise!  you married an idiot!  For the next several days, our house was a complete disaster.  No room--honestly not many spaces were unaffected.  He married a creative, he knew what he was getting-ish. I literally didn't have a plan.  I just had a whim, and went for it.  As we lived around my great ideas for several days, we hashed out different ways we could shake things up and...

If you've been keeping up with my journal (aka blog) lately...you've hopefully seen my travel adventures which have been both amazing and tragic.  My birthday camping trip--turned soggy rain-fest found us scrambling for things we could do inside.  We originally went to Ellijay, GA for an apple picking festival.  When the rain came in like a wrecking ball, basically every single plan we had was under water (including our tent...)  We grabbed a deck of cards and a game of pick-up-sticks--{remember that game??  It was on clearance, and it's pretty fun actually} and headed off to a highly recommended winery. ...