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A Lesson in Lunch Meat

 Today, I stood at the deli counter at our local Walmart. When the lady finally came over, I was sure I’d misheard the lady behind the counter. It was mid-afternoon and she told me she was closed, couldn’t cut me any meat because she was cleaning up before she left and they are short staffed. I was too tired to be at The Walmart.  I felt like someone had just stole my balloon.  I stood there in literal shock, I just wanted Nate’s 2 pounds of deli meat. My mind started spinning and I wasn’t thinking very clearly.  I just needed for Nate to be able to make 59 Dagwood sandwiches next week. He doesn’t eat at school. He runs and has soccer practice. He needs to be able to think and do pages of Pre-calculus homework and study for Chemistry .  I just wanted meat and to go home. Where is this all going to end? The whole world is short staffed.   I thought of my coworkers and I, we worked short staffed and overbooked this week as did many. I was tired. It was a long week. But, we kept cutting t
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My Ebenezers

 I love the hymn "Come thou Fount", it's one of my very favorites. Every time we sing this song as a church family or our own family worship, I am overcome with emotion as I ponder the words of the hymn.  I often have to stop singing.  However, I'm disappointed when some editors of hymnals have changed the words:  "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I'm come and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home".  Ebenezer is a big word and can leave some puzzled in it's meaning, we don't often use it in conversation.  It's worth recovering.  The line from the third verse "Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee" is often changed as well. Fetter is a “chain/shackle usually around the ankle to hold a prisoner”.  To be shackled to Him by His grace, what a beautiful picture... Ebenezer is a Hebrew word for "stone of help". In 1 Samuel 7:12, after being saved from an attack by the LORD&#

Lesson 599

Nothing really prepares you for this level of change. There are days it feels as if a part of my heart has been ripped from my chest. I am walking around wounded, unwhole, and incomplete.  There are moments that my breath is taken and the sobbing begins before the second hand has time to move. In the post office mailing care packages, standing in the checkout line buying Halloween candy, when a song comes on Pandora that she would have belted out singing, when I spot the dusty piano, when I realize this is the first sports season, ever, that she wasn’t there to see her brother score a goal, when I walk by her bedroom and see all the bits and pieces of the life she left behind, as I plan our first ever big family trip without her, as I think about navigating the holidays and know they will be different from now on. There are days I just want to go back to the moment she was born and do every single second over again, but I’m quickly reminded that’s not the way this works. There was

40 Days ‘til lift off

40 Days... she counted them up and is ticking them off. “40 days ‘til move in day!”, she announced with excitement and disbelief in her voice last night. 40 days, the biblical parallel did not escape me. 40 days in the desert that Jesus prepared for his public ministry, 40 days and nights that it rained and the flood waters rose, 40 days and nights that Elijah was given food, water and protection while he traveled to Horeb/Mt. Sinai... just a few that come to mind. 40 more sleeps, 40 more days of living, laughing, loving and her waking up under our roof every single morning. 40 days for me to get myself together and prepare for this next stage of parenting.  Moving on to the next stage has never before been so clearly defined. The lasts so clearly marked. We didn’t have much notice on the day that a lap baby became a walking/running toddler, a frustrated toddler finally spoke her first sentence, the last time we rocked that little blonde snugglebug in a rocking chair, the last time s

We come from the Mountains...

We are no strangers to mountaintops. We were raised in the mountain side hollers found during a curvy steep climb where trees meet and the sky disappears and you think the heaviness and darkness of the tree canopy may overtake you. Then suddenly you reach clearance and tree tops are below you and the crooked path ascnded is certain. You scan the steep drops and hairpin turns where the Lord protected you. We left our oldest on a Georgia mountaintop yesterday afternoon. There was foreshadowing as we came off the mountain back down into Tennessee. We looked up from our hotel and could see the lights of the high pinnacle of the great Carter Hall of Covenant College. Emily is here as a finalist for a full merit scholarship, The Maclellan scholarship. We’ve prayed for the Lord to lead, direct and allow her to interview and perform well. We prayed for sweet dorm hosts who would be what she needed. We prayed for her to have a taste of college life that would help her make decisions if the op
This article popped up in my facebook newsfeed this morning and brought back many memories.   It's hard, and although I never got a concussion wrestling my children, there were many moments of feeling as if I'd never again worship without MANY distractions or without worrying about disturbing EVERYONE around us. I'm not sure folks look at our kids now sitting (mostly) quiet and (mostly) involved in worship understand the consistent struggle of the early years. We learned not to sit near those adults/teens with ADD, who might turn around frequently as we wrestled in the pew with our kid, not to add to their distraction. We assumed the best intentions and understood they didn't despise our children but truly struggled to remain engaged in worship themselves. There were friends we learned not to sit near (our kids + their kids = total chaos).   We learned (slowly) to prepare our kids (and ourselves) for worship on Saturday.  We spent the time needed to look

Phone Call

I almost hung up the phone!  The recorded voice on the other end was making reality events that my mind is still struggling to wrap around. And my heart?  My heart constricts, contracts and dilates in ways that cause me to lose my breath for a moment and reach for my carotid artery to ensure that the rhythm returned.   When the dizziness subsided, I realize there are worse things to hear on the other end of a home phone call such as a police officer or sheriff's deputy, a hospital emergency room, a bill collector or even the Democratic Party. But there was no denying it, Chesterfield county public schools were sending us an automated message. Cheraw High School .  A message from the principal.  It's been awhile since a public school has called our house.  None of this was ever part of my plan. From the day I walked her into Sandhills Classical Christian School's Little Friends preschool at the age of four years old, my mind was set, my plan seemed best.  The school would