The Wurglers

Before becoming a parent, I never once thought about how the Lord might use it to refine me and teach me about Himself. Here's a glimpse of that on a couple levels. Last week on Easter Sunday, I was eagerly anticipating celebrating the resurrection of Jesus with friends and family. We had all kinds of plans arranged and I was personally even looking forward to getting time to myself during naps to think on arguably (but not THAT arguable) the greatest event in history. But things quickly fell apart and early on I began to realize that day might not turn out exactly how I had planned it in my head. For me, unmet expectations are the only ingredient needed to make a hearty dose of realized sin. At one point, I had completely lost it and was literally pinning Evie down in her bed during nap, which she adamantly refused to partake in. I stormed out of her room screaming at her and smashed my fist into the couch on the way out. I had no grace. Patience was long gone. All that remain...

"There are two things in the world that can't be joked: 1. marriage 2. potato"  Truth

[Continued from last post] "I felt like a kid whose dad asks him to come to the garage knowing each time before he has asked him and the kid has gone that the dad just smacks him across the face for no reason. But he goes this time because he has a glimmer, albeit a small flicker, of hope that his dad won't smack him in the face but instead ask him to play a game of basketball or something fun. So, the kid goes, only to receive aforementioned smack, leaving the boy feeling rejected, unloved and even less sure that his dad has good intentions towards him at all. This is where I'm at. I hear Your Word regarding this and it speaks to me, to my mind. But my heart isn't there. My heart screams injustice, sobs due to alleged maltreatment and begs for mercy. My head knows better. My heart wishes I could fight back, and is prideful enough to believe I could even make it in the ring past the first bell. My head hears promises that this is for my good. My heart doesn't bel...

I feel like I have been going through the ringer these days. The Lord has brought me to such a unique place in my own walk with Him lately that I can accurately say I've never experienced this mix of physical, emotional and spiritual feelings before. This past year has been really hard: leaving everything and everyone we love back in the States to move to a new home, a new culture, a new language, a new society with new laws, seeing new faces and eating new food. It almost feels like being born all over again (not that I remember what that is like), learning everything necessary for survival. There have been some really hard trials I have gone through that seem a touch trivial now that I look back on them. But you know those moments when it seems like the walls are closing in, that there is no escape from the situation, that all hope is lost? The loss of a loved one, losing a job in a tough economy or lets be honest, the flu. Who has had the flu for an extended time or to a se...

A dish in a menu here. "ENHANCED DESERT SAND BLOWN BY WIND WING"

This is a toy that our friends' kids have here. There may not necessarily be a Lost in Translation factor here, but the 3rd item, the white sticker above the #1, must say something about some kind of difference. Enjoy

The other night some friends of ours here in the city offered to watch all 3 of our kids so that Sara and I could have an overnight date night. We had told them how little sleep we had been getting lately and they took it upon themselves to add our 3 kiddos to their already well formed brood of 4 kids under 5. We have no idea how they pulled it off, but they did. We went out to dinner together at the place we had our very first date ever, saw some parts of the city we were in together 6 years ago and saw a part of the city that gets decked out in Christmas lights every year. We had an amazing time. But perhaps the most amazing part was when we read and shared thoughts on 2 Corinthians chapter 4. It was one of those times where we had read these specific verses before but that day the Lord seemed to pull back the curtain and open our eyes to understand it in a new way. The Lord used that passage to encourage us and affirm us. -A major question brought to mind was "Do I view this ...