Sweet Dreams

Seth remembers almost all of his dreams, not only the next morning, but the next year! I continue to be amazed by that fact, mostly because I, on the other hand, can't hardly even recall my dreams five minutes after I wake up. Beyond a vague recollection of hazy images and events, I've got nothing. I certainly don't remember my dreams six months later, with clarity!

I wonder if Juliette remembers her dreams?




Unless the LORD builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it . . .
It is vain for you to rise up early,
To retire late,
To eat the bread of painful labors;
For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep. (Excerpts from Ps. 127)

I love the idea the God takes care of His children, blessing them even as they sleep! I mean who could ask for a better excuse to take a nap?

So to the beloved: Sweet Dreams. Who cares whether we can remember them or not!

Ham, Cheese, Religion, and REAL

It's no secret, my daughter is a ham (I wonder where she got that from ?!?). Lately, whenever I get out the camera, she stops what she is doing and smiles for the camera. Of course, she also anticipates the flash, so I end up with a lot of pictures like this:





And while these pictures are awfully cute, they don't capture what I really want - the real her.

For instances, yesterday I was quite disappointed when my attempts to sneak up on her and film her dancing to a video were thwarted by the fact that she spied me and quickly stopped dancing to make a cheesy pose for the camera. Bummer!

I wonder if that is what God feels about my religiosity at times. I wonder if He doesn't sometimes think, "Nice try little lady, but that cheesy religion you have going on down there doesn't trick me at all. Besides, sweet girl, all I really want is the real you. So anytime you want to stop being a ham would be okay by me."

Here is how The Message puts it:

"Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding." (Matt. 6:1)


Let's face it - God already knows the real me, and He loves me anyhow. Just like I love my little girl – with or without her cheesy poses. So here's to less ham, less cheese, less religiosity, and more REAL.

Watermelon Crawl

We enjoyed a wonderful time with Seth's family over the Memorial Day Weekend. Here are some pictures of Juliette's first tastes of watermelon. Yummy!

Rub-A-Dub

Most say Juliette looks like her daddy, but I think that a bit of me rubbed off on her.




Don't you?

Be Reasonable?

It has been one of those mornings - which started with one of those nights. My husband got home too late, which meant that we went to bed way too late, and our daughter was up too many times in the night. My husband was too cheery this morning, and I was too tired to manage even a single kind word in response. At times likes these I am anything but reasonable.


But as I read Romans 12:1 this morning, this part jumped out:


"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies
as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your REASONABLE act of
worship."


I certainly felt like I had been sacrificed this morning. When I'm tired, nothing seems to make sense. But what can be reasonable about sacrifice? Since when did giving up my ways, my plans, my desires, my future, my LIFE make any sense?


When viewed through the muddled lens of my own self-focus, it certainly doesn't make any sense. But when viewed through Jesus' sacrifice, it is clearly defined. Jesus gave everything up for us though his sacrificial death, so being a living sacrifice is our only reasonable response. In “view of God’s mercy”, offering up everything that I am is the only sensible reaction. His life makes my daily efforts to live for Him something of value and worth – an act of worship.


Seth and I have been learning a lot about this lately. When God called us to move to the arid high plains, we trusted that He knew what He was doing, but I confess, we felt like He was being a bit unreasonable. This was not a place we would have chosen for ourselves. And it certainly wasn't a place that we were all that thrilled that God has chosen. It was one of those sacrifices that FELT like a sacrifice. But as the months go by, we are learning more and more about the reasons why He brought us here, and we are learning to trust in the plans He has for us. He has given us blessings beyond number here, and what we thought was really "big" of us has turned out to be yet just another way God is showing Himself to be faithful to us. How BIG of Him! We are learning that by giving up our rights, by learning to be living sacrifices, by giving up our desire for God to "reasonably" meet our expectations, we are free to worship Him - free to reasonably respond to His sacrifice with worshipful sacrifices of our own.


That's what I want to be, a reasonable, worshipful, pleasing, living sacrifice to God - albeit a very sleep-deprived one.