• 10.11.2007 Stifled Sushi and the Sufficiency of Christ
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    My husband and I love sushi. If you are a sushi lover, you understand this amorous affair. Besides being the most fantastic combinations of flavor and texture, sushi is, in its own right, art. Each hand-crafted piece is meant to be savored. Sushi’s fragility requires that you simply place the entire piece in your mouth, but in no way must you feel rushed in the process. In fact, much of the pleasure in eating sushi comes from drawing out what may be the quantitative equivalent of a 6pc. chicken nuggets and fries combo as long as possible as to cause each contrasting flavor to take a spin in the spotlight. Yes, my husband and I love sushi. In fact, we love sushi so much that we ventured to take our three young children to our favorite sushi restaurant today while spending our last night in Durango. The tantalizing tango we […]

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  • 09.18.2007 Curtains
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    The drapes have been drawn around my heart lately. That’s what it feels like when I struggle with myself in not-so-pretty ways. Shutting others out; keeping everything in. Sometimes I feel as though I have sheer drapes hanging–some kind of guarded transparency. Who can I be real with? Who knows me for who I really am? Is there anyone who sees the Grace through all the griminess? Then I look to the Word, and I remember, once again, that His name is Jesus. I find the curtain not only torn altogether, but unnecessary in the temple of my heart. All the distance and formality created by my self-sufficiency is no longer there, as Christ Himself has made it possible for me to enter into the presence of a Holy God–no veil, no curtain, no guise. Thanks, Lord. Scripture is a never-failing treasury filled with boundless stores of grace. It is […]

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  • 09.13.2007 Guess How Much I Love You?
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    Don’t you love it when your kids say, “I love you.” Sometimes I want to record it and play it back to myself repeatedly when they are acting up! My kids enjoy the book, “Guess How Much I Love You.” The author uses everyday words and experiences to describe the love we feel for one another as parent and child, which often feels too vast for words. The little bunny in the story says, “I love you all the way to the moon,” signifying the furthest distance the child could possibly imagine. The big rabbit in the story then counters, “I love you all the way to the moon, and back.” Caleb, my eldest, soon started making up his own proclamations of love: “Mama, I love you all the way to Mars, and then to Sun and back.” “Wow, Caleb,” I’d say, “you love me that much? Well, I love […]

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  • 08.30.2007 Phonics, Distractions, and the Word of God
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    My eldest has a way with words. He says the funniest things…that seem so sophisticated for a five year old. He is an avid inquisitor and investigator of all things unexplainable, making him a studious but easily distracted homeschooler. The rule studied today in phonics was: “if there are two consonants preceding a suffix, the vowel is short; if there is one consonant preceding the suffix, the vowel is long.” It’s fascinating for me, as English is my second language and I really never learned any rules for English at all. Caleb is a good kid. He does what I ask, and for the most part, has a great attitude doing it. But phonics can be challenging–row upon row of words to practice reading followed by sentences to use them in. I’m the one that gets impatient at times: “rid-ding, not ri-ding.” It’s not enough for Caleb to just know […]

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  • 08.27.2007 Devotion and Discipline
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    My kids love family devotions. That is the time every morning after breakfast, when the family piles onto the couch with our Bibles and start our day praying and reading together. We usually begin with a story out of Liam’s Read And Learn Bible. Then we read out of Caleb’s The One Year Bible for Children (Tyndale Kids) and also a page out of A Faith to Grow On, which teaches through the fundamentals of our faith.  We talk about all that we have read, and usually the kids ask to sing a song. (And if you haven’t experienced what that is like, go to my video pod below, and click on “The Lord’s Prayer.”) Growing up family devotions often became a forced and unknowingly legalistic ritual. We could not miss a single day without feeling guilt and concern over our spiritual welfare. My parents were young Christians and did […]

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  • 08.24.2007 "The Unsearchable Riches of Christ"–Ephesians 3:8
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    Charles Spurgeon blows my mind. He puts into words the very thoughts I cannot form. I just had to share this with you–may it be a blessing and anchor for your day… “My Master has riches beyond the count of arithmetic, the measurement of reason, the dream of imagination, or the eloquence of words. They are unsearchable! You may look, and study, and weigh, but Jesus is a greater Saviour than you think Him to be when your thoughts are at the greatest. My Lord is more ready to pardon than you to sin, more able to forgive than you to transgress. My master is more willing to supply your wants than you are to confess them. Never tolerate low thoughts of my Lord Jesus. When you put the crown on His head, you will only crown Him with silver when He deserves gold.” –Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Based […]

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  • 08.19.2007 Married to a Preacher
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    Some would not envy my life as a pastor’s wife. Relationships, counseling, working weekends, spiritual warfare, expectations from others, expectations from yourself, expectations upon your children, around-the-clock ministry, receptivity to your husband’s preaching: these all come to anyone’s mind when I say that I’m married to a preacher. My husband, however, is not weighed down by any of these notions. He’s concerned, yes, for the needs of his family and for the church, but is consumed with only one burden: the humbling responsibility of the pulpit and his personal love affair with Christ. Today is Sunday, and I was glad to be at church this morning. I often wonder as I settle in to the worship service, what other pastor’s wives think about when they listen to their husbands preach the Word. Are they distracted by what they actually know of their spouses when not in the public eye? Or […]

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  • 08.03.2007 Good Thing It's Called GraceLaced…
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    Perhaps one of the best reasons to start a blog entitled GraceLaced is the constant reminder and accountabiity throughout the day that I’ve made it known to the world that I am an up and coming person of graciousness, that I desire to be a living testament to God’s Grace, that I hope to exude gracefulness in every aspect of my domestic life. There’s only one problem…I don’t always heed those reminders. “Gracious” is the last word one would use to describe my behavior yesterday afternoon. “Indignant,” “uncontrolled,” “rude,” “harsh,” “torrential,” “selfish”–these might do the job. The blame could be placed on fatigue, or disobedient children, or a messy house, or poopy diapers, or last minute dinner guests, or my husband Troy’s unavailability due to personal crisis, all of which were true…but ultimately, the simple, ugly, ungraceful truth is that I just let my selfishness get the better of me. […]

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