**Along with 500 other random thoughts I’m writing today, this is also the final call for the Swaziland trip. Come next week we are booking flights so we’ll be legit. If you are wanting to join our team the time has officially come. Speak now or forever hold your peace…or message me HERE
**I’ve been missing Florida and my Aunt Linda and Uncle Tom. It’s easy to let the world melt away when we’re in their home and our feet in the sand. Right before we left to drive home I noticed all our water bottles ready to go…I lined them up neatly. Being a family of 7 has been crazy amazing and crazy hard. Our time with our littlest is dwindling. Her parents are working so hard and their hard work and love are paying off. In one hand we hold joy for how God redeems & brings about hope and in the other hand we hold tears because we love this little girl and we love her family and it will all just be kind of hard. Sigh. We’re learning the ride of foster care.
**They received a prize at school for selling candy bars and then got it stuck in the corner of the wall. They sure do fight hard, but they sure can work together and love hard too. Being brothers and sisters is grand.
**Lots of sweet little boy pictures as of late. They are wild and crazy and sweet and fierce and kind. Geez.
**Order, orders and more orders. 4×12 canvas, name pillows, tooth pillows and key fobs, oh my!
**I visited Thistle Farms this week with a friend. It about cracked my whole heart right open. Love and community at it’s finest and rawest and realest. If you have never heard of Thistle Farms or Magdalene please, oh please check them out.
“Magdalene is a residential program for women who have survived lives of prostitution, trafficking, addiction and life on the streets. Thistle Farms is our social enterprise.”
We got to sit in on their mid-week meeting and then have a tour. It absolutely blew me away. Afterwards I was able to learn more about some needs, so April’s Bible journaling class fees will go towards purchasing items to assemble welcome basics for the women entering the Magdalene house. If you would like to attend the journaling class just send me a message HERE.
**And I have been ever so slowly making my way through Romans. It totally had me stumped big time…why so many confusing words and concepts in Romans?!?! I was limping my way through it at a snail pace…partly because I just didn’t understand like any of the words and the other part because after I realized I didn’t understand any of the words Satan used this to make me not want to open my Bible. I don’t like not understanding. I don’t like feeling intimidated or not good enough or not smart enough.
I have a lot of insecurities. Every day I battle so many of them…I don’t feel like enough. I feel left out and like an outsider. I feel like I’m too weird or quirky. I feel like I’m not pretty enough or how I think far too frequently about how my thighs smoosh together. I feel easily judged and I judge too easily. My house is dirty. I eat my emotions. My clothes are plain and simple. I haven’t had my hair done in, hmmmm, I might be closing in on a year. Geez. I’m not business savy enough and I can’t make pretty dinners. Most days I feel over my head…completely overwhelmed and unequipped…and full of anxiety. I’m this big sinner who just messes up all the time and honestly, some days I just feel like too much of an outsider.
While I was in Florida, I told my Aunt Linda how I just did not understand Romans. How I wasn’t getting it. She then pulled out this lovely Message Bible with commentary and light broke through. I loved every single bit of it. Right there on the beach my big take away was we’re all a bunch of misfits, none of us good enough on our own, but God, well He’s the God of the insiders and outsiders and He’s going to use us and be mighty in us no matter how unequipped or too messy we feel.
Pieces of Romans from The Message:
“…became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do, but on what God said he would do. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. The same gets said about us when we embrace and believe the one who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with Him.”
The hope in Christ is insanely wonderful. He takes me when all I feel like is an insecure misfit…an insufficient sinner and says, “Hold up. Wait a minute. I have a plan and it’s good and brings Me glory. I made a promise to finish you out to completion. I have set you right.”
On this Good Friday I am so grateful I can plunge deep into God’s promise and come up strong because of a risen Savior. God takes all my insecurities and makes me absolutely good enough, loved and cherished because of Jesus. This is hope at it’s finest.
Happy Friday.
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Laura, you could not be more perfectly you…which simply means you are exactly who God created you to be. It hurts my heart that society plants all these seeds of “perfection” around us then Satan uses these distortions to grow feelings of doubt and not-good-enough-ness. You are an inspiration to all of us who read every blog post, who aspire to create and study like you do, and who want to be as open to loving (“littles” and our community) as you are. Ignore Satan’s taunts and listen for God’s whispers.
I am a longtime blog reader; I find your honesty refreshing. Not very many us are able to voice our insecurities and self-doubts and put it out there for others to read. You are enough and you are exactly who God made you. I wish I lived closer and was able to attend one of your journaling classes or craft nights. Blessings to you!
Amen, and amen. I feel like an outsider, too, most often because no matter how hard I try to blend in (and oh-my-granola do I try!), I am an alien and just don’t fit. I am a square peg, and I struggle to see that as a good thing. At my weakest, I just want to hide and enjoy my donut….alone, thankyouverymuch! BUT…you are so kind to remind me that it only matters how God sees me, and he thinks I’m cool, square peg or not (or in my case, apple-shaped peg!).
Absolutely love this sweet post… My parents started fostering when I was one year old (I’m 33 now) and they just recently retired. It is a beautiful ministry that can be extremely challenging, kudos and prayers to your family. Your children will learn the love of Christ through your fostering. My husband got me a journaling bible for Christmas and for the first time in my life I can’t stop reading the word, I’m actually understanding it and light bulbs are turning on everywhere!! Yours was the first I’d ever heard of or seen so THANK YOU for posting. Thank you for your real-ness! You are perfect and LOVED!