I have this beautiful sign on our mantle - it’s been a favorite of mine for years.  And now, I love it even more, because God used it to correct me this week. It’s a lesson I’ll never forget.

As I was praying recently, the Lord drew my attention to this sign and He asked me to read it,

“Yes Lord, I know it well.  It says, ‘walk by faith, not by sight’”

“That’s right, daughter.  Tell me....What are some of the things you have faith for?”

“Well you know my heart, Lord.  You want me to actually list them?”

“Yes” (I could sense a patient and mischievous smile on His face)

“Ok, well…this might take a while!  I have faith for lots of things!  I have faith that I am loved and saved.  I have faith that You are with me.  I have faith that the Holy Spirit is working even today as He did in the time of the Bible.  I have faith that you can and do physically heal people today.  I have faith that you deliver your people from the bondage of the enemy.  I have faith that you are Provider. I have faith that you speak to your people and we can actually hear your voice. You guide us daily. I could go on.  Do you want me to keep going?”

“No, that will do just fine.  Are you ready for the Truth?  Really ready?”

“Of course, Lord.  What am I missing?  Please be gentle!”

“Here’s the Truth:  you have faith for NONE of those things.”

“But I do!  I really do!”

“I know you think you do, but you are mistaken.  You misunderstand faith.  Remember what my Word says about faith?  What is faith?”

A verse flits through my mind, and I go to my Bible to pull it up…

“Ok, this is what it says in Hebrews:  ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’”

“Correct, daughter.  What stands out to you about that verse AND about the Truth on your sign?”

“Ummm…I’m not sure…something about ‘seen’ and ‘sight’?”

“Yes!  Now do you understand?”

“Well…no.  Help me out, Lord.”

He blew my mind and stunned me to silence with such simple words:  “All of the things you said that you have faith for, you’ve literally seen happen with your own eyes.  That’s not faith.  Faith is believing for things you haven’t seen yet.  You have not been walking by faith…you have been walking by sight!”

I sat in silence and waited for the quaking of my world to settle down and re-establish itself on the foundation of His Truth.  I couldn’t tell if I wanted to weep or laugh!  To be honest, I did a little of both.

All this while, I could sense Him with me.  I could feel His tenderness and patience. 

And finally, He said, “Are you ready?  Are you ready to believe what I’ve promised even though you haven’t seen it yet? Are you ready to really walk by faith?”


🔥 Oh Lord, please give me faith for things unseen.  I surrender my “logical” and “reasonable” thinking to You.  Please take my mind and transform it according to Your Truth. Your Word is TRUTH.  Help me to fully embrace and believe it.

My doubts and fears are in contradiction to Your Truth, therefore my doubts are LIES. Deliver me, oh Lord, from the lies of the enemy and of my own small understanding.

Help me to “walk by FAITH, and not by sight!

Amen

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Radical Obedience & an "Uber" MIRACLE

I STILL can't believe this happened.  It is one of the most outrageous miracles that I've ever experienced.  There's NO explanation outside of God Almighty moving in a miraculous way.

It happened several years ago (2018), so I've had a chance to process a bit.  My educational background is in engineering so I tend to be a logical problem solver type of thinker.  I've approached this experience from every angle I can think of...nothing from the purely human realm makes sense.  Like...not even a little.  

The very first part of this story starts strangely.  I was as a business convention in NOLA.  I was alone (my husband would normally come with me, but he couldn't make it).  I was stressed.  I was in a bit of pain after having recent surgery.  All in all, it was just feeling like this trip was a terrible idea.

And it was HOT.  It was all-the-windows-are-covered-in-condensation hot.  Sticky humidity felt absolutely suffocating.  I am my most grumpy in heat and humidity lol!

One afternoon I was meeting with some friends at their Air BnB.  I vividly remember sitting in the blissfully air-conditioned lobby of my hotel and pulling up the Uber app on my phone to get a ride to their place.

I'd done this a million times before, and I was about to click the "request car" button, when I sensed the Holy Spirit say "order the XL car".  I paused while my finger hovered over the button and while logic and reason spun through my brain.  I'm traveling alone.  I have one purse.  I don't need an XL.  Why would I spend more on the XL ride?  

I was about to click the button, when "order the XL car" rang in my spirit again.

What the heck?  Why would God care which size of a car I would ride in?

I had a thought that maybe I was about to be in a car accident and He was positioning me for protection in a bigger car?

My logical (and frugal) brain was grumpy...but I was certain that I heard correctly.  

I clicked the "order XL" button and waited for my driver.

Aaaand...let the embarrassment begin haha

My driver pulled up in his big SUV, and it was clear that he was expecting a crowd because he hustled around the vehicle to open all the doors and the back hatch for a load of bags.

I walked up holding my little handbag and said hello.

He smiled, said hello, and looked around for the rest of the passengers.

"It's just me", I said.

There was an awkward pause...a "pregnant pause" some might call it...as he looked at me and must have been thinking "this woman is not from around here".  He might also have been thinking I was wasting his time.

He walked around the car and closed all doors but one.  I sheepishly climbed in, and the small talk began.  

I was tense.  Not only do I *detest* small talk, but I found myself braced for some sort of crash that God was surely protecting me from.  

The journey to my friends' place seemed to take forever.  I eventually settled in and relaxed.  We chatted about the weather, the conference I was in town for, and about his journey as an Uber driver.  It turned into a friendly and enjoyable drive.

Alright - that's the setup.  It was important to share because it felt sort of mysterious.  Why would God want me to spend extra money on an XL car that I didn't need?  

You're about to find out.

First - I want you to consider some odds.  I want you to REALLY grasp the magnitude and impossibility of this happening.

• How many various sounds do you suppose can come from the human mouth?  Consider all the world’s languages, dialects, and  intonations. Thousands?  Millions?  Billions?  I think we can agree on a LOT.

• If someone began to just let their mouth go…making random babbling sounds that mean nothing to the speaker…what do you think the odds are that legible words would come from that person’s mouth, just by sheer chance or luck?  Pretty slim, right?  But, not impossible considering all the options available in all of human language over time.  The speaker might land on a few sounds that are very similar to a word, or maybe even an actual word.  Especially when you consider very simple words like “a” or “the” or “and” and all the translations into other languages.  Simple words, simple sounds = pretty decent odds that at least one of those simple words could be uttered by accident.

• What about the more complicated words?  They’re maybe longer or more complex, but still, it’s not impossible to think that an actual meaningful word with heavier meaning or implication could be spoken by accident.

• Ok - if that same person who is just randomly uttering sounds - just any sound that rolls off their tongue keeps talking, what are the chances that several words with meaning would be spoken all together.  I’m talking about a short phase or sentence.  Even just a part of a sentence or the beginning of an idea.  Remember, to the speaker, these sounds mean absolutely nothing.  They’re gibberish.  There’s no effort of the speaker’s mind happening here…no trying to “make sense” of the sounds coming out of their mouth.  Think about it — to get words to work together in order - those odds are pretty slim.  It takes a human years to learn how do do that in meaningful ways.  “Mama, book?”  “Milk please” “No, sleep!”  are all phrases common to a toddler learning to speak their mind, and they typically mispronounce simple words for months or years until they get a firmer grasp on the language.

• Next, before we go deeper, let’s consider the background of the speaker.  Basic American education.  Caucasian woman.  College degree in sciences.  Some German language training in high school, but nothing that really stuck.  No worldly travel experience (went to English speaking Canada a few times).  English was the only language spoken while growing up and going to school.  Not exactly a “worldly” or “diverse” background or training.

• Back to the statistics.  Sounds…words…meaningful phrases.  Still with me?  Our odds are getting slimmer by the minute.  

• Ok, so our speaker is just babbling away.  No meaning to the speaker at all.  Truth be told, this woman is feeling slightly crazy!  What do you suppose the odds would be for this babbling to be not only words, but meaningful words…meaningful worlds that are occurring in order to create meaningful phrases…meaningful phrases that are a coherent and applicable response to a conversation with someone else.  Think about that.  If someone asked you a question in a language you DON’T know…let’s say Japanese…what are the odd that you could randomly babble your way to a logical and meaningful answer to their question?  In ANY language?  Even MORE slim, right?  The odds are getting pretty crazy that something like this could happen.

• Ok, not say your meaningful answer to their question is in that person’s native language of Japanese??  Ridiculous to even consider, right?  

sounds into words

words into phrases

phrases that are a meaningful response (context)

meaningful response in the proper language to the listener

It would be like a 2 month old baby making random noises with their mouth only to "accidentally" make sounds that turn into saying "Hi mom, I'm feeling a bit hungry now.  Would you feed me please?"

Right?  It DOESN'T happen.  

If this happened, you’d say it’s a MIRACLE, right?  If you’re like me, you’d begin to think “how did this happen outside of some move of an intelligent God?”  The odds of it happening by “chance” are just too astronomical to even comprehend.  

Well buckle up, friend.  

I am that speaker.  

This happened to me. 

The short story is this:

I was riding in that XL Uber I told you about.  The driver and I chatted in a friendly way as he drove me to my destination about 30 minutes away.  As he dropped me off, he said “good luck!” (the area he was dropping me in seemed a bit scary haha). I responded without thinking (and rather embarrassingly) “I don’t need luck, I’ve got Jesus”….honestly, how cheesy is that?  I’d never said such a dorky thing, and I was instantly surprised by my words and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment!

As I walked to the building, he rolled down his window and said, “Wait!  Did you say you know Jesus?  Will you come back and tell me about this Jesus?”

I was floored!  I walked back and got in the car to talk to the man.

He asked me what I knew about Jesus, so I gave him the 30 second Gospel message.  He proceeded to tell me that I was wrong, and about how many Christians he’d converted to Islam over the years. He was quite the Muslim apologetics expert!  He didn’t actually want to know about Jesus from me…he wanted to convert me to Islam.

We were disagreeing wholeheartedly, but it was very friendly and loving.  We eventually agreed to disagree.  

Before I left, I felt a prompting to find a way to stay in touch with him so I asked him if I could get his cell phone number so we could stay in touch - believe me, I’d NEVER done that before!  He agreed, with the caveat that he’d never shared his personal cell with a customer.  We were both feeling strange about it, but agreed to stay in touch.

The next morning, I was awakened with a clear message from the Holy Spirit: “Daiquiri, share your prayer language with him”

I was appalled.

APPALLED

My prayer language/“praying in tongues” was a very delicate and new thing for me.  Not to mention exceedingly private.  I hadn’t shared it with ANYONE, and frankly, I was thinking of giving up on it because I though for sure that I was just making it up. 

I was especially frustrated that since I’d begun praying in tongues, the SAME sounds kept coming out of my mouth on repeat.  I thought for SURE that I was just all in my head with it, and it was nothing but gibberish.  Like a meaningless tune that I couldn’t get out of my head, but that didn’t have any actual words or meaning. 

So yeah…to share with a random Uber driver?  I was horrified by the idea!

I said an absolute and immediate "NO WAY" to that prompt, but He would just not leave me alone about it.  I'd love to say that I trusted His voice and obeyed, but the truth is that I knew this prompt would not leave my mind at peace until I obeyed.

So, after about 30 minutes of fruitless negotiations with God to send someone else on this assignment, I obeyed.  And do you know what happened?

The random sounds that came out of my mouth made actual words.

Meaningful words.

Stitched into a meaningful phrase.

A phrase in the Uber driver’s primary language.

And not just any phrase, a prayer to God Almighty, no less.

Now you tell me…WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

God is real, friends.  

God is alive.

God did NOT stop speaking once the Bible was written.  

He did not stop moving through His people.

He even used a midwestern housewife and mom to grab the heart of a die-hard Muslim.
God is alive and moving and working to capture hearts, and His gospel is still sometimes delivered with the backing of miracles that no one can explain unless coming to the conclusion that God is real and the Gospel of Jesus is Truth.

Be encouraged, brothers and sisters - believe for big things from our living God - and keep spreading the Word!  

And take it from me...be RADICALLY OBEDIENT.  It seems that the most outrageous marching orders tend to result in the most miraculous outcomes.

Personally, I think God loves to set us up for miracles.  He loves to "show off"...not in a braggadocios way (although He's certainly the only One with a right to do so)...but in a "I'm here, I'm working, I love you" kind of way.  Maybe it's less of "showing off" that He's so good at...and more of SHOWING UP.  

He wants us to know it's HIM.

And friend, if you have doubt about God and the Gospel of Jesus…please get alone and do your best to talk to God.  Your prayer can be utterly weak and ugly…just make it REAL.  He stands at the door of your heart and knocks - let Him in!  He is trustworthy and so very good. 

* You can see a bit of our text conversation below in the screenshots I saved.  

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Love Math & Why There's Always Enough

I was pregnant...AGAIN!

I was giddy.

I was shocked.

I was terrified!

Raise your hand if you've been there haha!  I hear it all the time... the greatest fear of a mom's heart when she's expecting another baby...

"I don't know if I have enough love for another baby!"

"HOW could I POSSIBLY love another person like I love my first child?"

"What if I'm just not cut out for loving another child?"

"What if this new baby somehow takes AWAY from the love I'm giving the child I already have?"

That's it right there, isn't it?  That's where the issue lies.  Or should I say, that's where the LIE lies?

Fiends....here's what I've discovered....

We've been doing the math wrong!

We look in the mirror and we see the shape of our body....the edges of the shell in which we live, and we see limits.  We see boundaries.  We see "only so much" and we assume that our love must be DIVIDED into the number of people we've been tasked with caring for.

We tell ourselves that "Right now I love as much as I can, so that must be my limit.  This max that I have to offer has to be DIVIDED and portioned out to all these people."

The natural world confirms this math, right?

There's only so much time.  Only so much money.  Only so much space.  Only so much energy.  Only so much...everything!  In the natural, we have to divide it up fairly and distribute it so everyone gets what they need...and boy, we do a lousy job of this in so many areas don't we?  So we see LACK.  We see "not enough".  We see limits.

But LOVE MATH is different....because love is not a limited "natural" resource!

Love is not a limited resource because it's fed by an unlimited Source, so there's always MORE to be had.

More than the sands on the shore.

More than the depth of the sea.

More than the stars in the sky.

And even those examples fall short because there is a measurable number of sands on the shore...there is a finite depth of the sea...there are only so many stars in the sky.  

Compared to the love that God can fill us with, the number of sands fall short...the sea is far too shallow...the stars too finite.  They are not only weak examples....they are infinitely inadequate examples.  Breathtaking, isn't it?

So rest easy, mama.  If you've been wrestling with thoughts of "I don't have enough love in me to offer another person"....start thinking in terms of multiplication instead of division!  Your Source of love is not yourself....it is God - He IS Love, and He is always MORE than enough!

"We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him." 1 John 4:16

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God." 1 John 4:7

Lord, thank you for supplying me with even more than I need!  Sometimes I feel limited and like I'm just not enough....thank you for the reminder that I am not to trust my feelings because they shift and change by the minute.  YOU are true.  YOU are enough.  YOU are love.  YOU never change.  And, glory upon glory, it is YOU who lives in me!  I trust you, Lord.  Please reveal the areas of my life where I need to trust you more, so that I can earnestly surrender those areas and live in full alignment and submission to you.  Thank you for being strong in my weaknesses....may I be utterly weak in all areas so your strength shines through to the world!  For the building of your Kingdom and that all the world sees and knows your amazing love and grace, Lord Jesus. oxox

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Working From Home While Kids On Summer Break!

Download my "Summer Printable for Work From Home Moms" here:  Summer Printable

Summer is here!!  I'm not new to this rodeo, so I know from personal experience that if I don't put a little planning and structure around the next few months with my kids home from school and my husband and I being self-employed entrepreneurs, it won't be pretty.

The kids will wander around with popsicles in their hands and a big wide open beautiful yard...and they'll ask me 4,377 times each hour "mom, what should I DO?", and when I make a suggestion they'll say, "Noooo, I want to do something FUN, what ELSE should I do?"

Cue my eyes rolling back into my head, a deeply frustrated moan escaping my lips, and the top of my head exploding with the (self imposed) pressure of making their summer vacation magical and memorable!

The two oldest are teenagers who can simply hop in the car and go catch a movie with their friends, so I'm not feeling any sort of responsibility for them having fun.  My biggest thing for them is making sure they stay safe, get enough sleep, hug their mama each day, and do some chores from time to time.

This is also our last summer with our oldest before he's a college student (gasp hic sob)....so some good quality family time with him is also a top priority for me (seriously, I can't think about it).

With THAT in mind, I want to remember that time with these amazing babies of mine is SHORT.  It doesn't need to be *magical*....but I also don't want it to just slip away every day.

I don't want to just get through the summer with them, I want to really ENJOY good time with them.

AND... mama needs to keep the business going too ;-)

Working from home is a true gift of time freedom....but I still haven't found the magic pixie dust that requires nothing more than wishing real hard and seeing business suddenly explode - WORKING from home is actually WORK.

(if anyone tries to tell you things like "it's easy" or "I just wash my face/take my supplements/clean with special products and talk about it" or "the product sells itself" they are LYING TO YOUR FACE haha! That's a convo for another day...)

So I decided to sit down today and come up with a printable that contains 3 things:
1.  A basic list of daily stuff for our summer days....a loose "schedule" without times attached to allow for sleeping in

2. A list of "stuff to do for fun"...everything from going to the zoo and painting rocks...if they can't come up with something to do on their own or with this list, then truly...all hope is lost haha

3.  MY FAVORITE...my "Mind, Body, Soul, Space" list...I want my kids to do at least ONE thing from each of those categories each day.  Something for their mind (workbook, reading, etc), something for their body (brush teeth and take a walk would be good), something for their soul (connect with God in prayer, worship, journal, etc), and something to take care of our shared space (make their bed, mow the lawn, empty the dishwasher)...at a bare minimum, they'll be mostly healthy and whole by the end of the summer instead of their brains and bodies turning to mush ;-)

So here you go, friend. No opting in, no email exchange, no phone number or name required...simply click, download, and print it up!

Personally, I've got this on my fridge for easy reference for when my kids hit me tomorrow with "I'm bored!" ;-)   Have a fun, relaxing, and productive time with those kids, mama!

Download my "Summer Printable for Work From Home Moms" here:  Summer Printable

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Unbecoming

There's lots of talk about growth, personal development, "becoming your best self", etc.

What there's NOT a lot of talk about is what must happen before all that good growth can happen...the unraveling....the undoing...the UNBECOMING.

This thought of unbecoming hit my brain like a flash of light today as I sat down to do some learning.

I queued up the webinar, grabbed my crochet project (I can't just SIT and watch....gotta have something going on with my hands...raise your hand if you're a fidgeter too), pressed 'play', and searched my sewing project for the spot I'd left off.

It had been a while since I'd worked on this project, so it took a minute for me to re-familiarize myself with the stitch I'd been using on it.  As I laid it out flat to get a good look, I realized that it was TERRIBLE haha!

The hook I'd been using was too big for this type of material, so it was a sloppy mess.  I think I might have mixed up stitches a time or two.  And the edges....it couldn't, even with liberal application of imagination, be called anything close to a rectangular shape.

It was a sloppy, mixed up, mis-shaped MESS! haha!

For a moment, I thought of snipping it with some scissors and just starting again.  But no....I love this "velvet" yarn and didn't want to waste it.

I pulled and pressed for a while, trying to convince myself that it was salvageable.  But no...something radical definitely needed to happen if this was to be of any use someday.

Finally, I made the painful decision to pull it.  I removed the hook and started pulling on the loose end of the yarn.  I started slowly because it was PAINFUL to see hours and hours of work simply falling away to nothing.  As I pulled the stitches out, my brain seemed to spin with ways I could salvage it.

Eventually, I was fully invested in the destruction.  I simply pulled as fast as I could so I could get to the more fun work of starting the sewing process again.

I didn't just jump right back into sewing though....I pulled out an old crochet book and figured out what I'd been doing wrong.  What size needle should I use?  Which stitch would result in the finished work I envisioned?  How do I handle the trickier turns at the edges so that I get a straight piece?

This is life, isn't it?

One day, we grab the piece we're working on and we realize "wow, I thought this was good, but it's pretty much a disaster!"

And then what do we do?

We justify.

We make excuses.

After all, "I'm a good person and I did my best."

We push and pull and try to press it into a useful shape....into the shape we envision.

Sometimes we even consider cutting off a bunch of work and just tossing it into the garbage!  But no....the material is too valuable and precious for that.  There's potential for good here, we just know it.

Sometimes the only thing left to do is to pull on the loose end of the mess and watch as it unravels.

In the beginning, we might pull slowly because the thought of how much time and effort it took to get there....it's painful to see it destroyed!

✖️The religion must go...."but it feels so safe!"

✖️The striving must go... "but I feel better about myself when I'm earning it!"

✖️The guilt must go... "but this feeling of inadequacy has become part of my identity!"

✖️The shame must go... "but oh, I've messed up so badly and I feel terrible!"

✖️Some people must go... "but I'll be all alone!"

✖️The fear must go... "but the world tells me you're out to get me!"

✖️The disbelief must go... "but if I call this miraculous and I tell of your works, people will think I'm crazy!"

It's the pain of unbecoming that reminds us that we need to do it differently this time.

We consult the Expert.  What needs to stay?  What needs to go?  How should I have handled that tricky part differently?  What does it practically look like to weave a life that is pleasing to Your eye?

And then, careful stitch by careful stitch, I start to build again.

Maybe more slowly.

Always consulting Wisdom.

Reminding myself of the Father's tender grace when I have to stop and pull a few stitches (It's a process).

Keeping my eye on the One who made it possible for me to be working on this project with His direction in the first place.

Eventually, the piece starts to take shape, and it's BEAUTIFUL.

I'm delighted to realize that the pain of the unbecoming....the undoing....the unraveling -- that pain is a distant memory as I smile at the new piece that's just as it should be.

But the biggest surprise of all?

This isn't the piece I'd envisioned at all!

I realize that as I step through each step, keeping an eye on that Master Creator, it's HIS blueprint I've been following, not mine.

And wow.  Just....wow.  It's far more intricate, far more detailed, far more rich than I could have imagined.

I'm humbled by the new work that's been done.

I'm in awe of His creativity and generosity.

And I'm filled with gratitude for the Unbecoming.


Thank you, Lord. Thank you for the work you're doing in me. Thank you for seeing me and loving me. Thank you for taking the meticulous time to pull out each disastrous stitch so it could be replaced with your vision for me. Let my life be a work of Your hand. Let it be pleasing to You. Thank you for taking the most painful pieces and weaving them anew into the most beautiful pieces of this tapestry. Careful stitch by careful stitch....I surrender it to you and can hardly wait to know as I am known! To the glory of Your Kingdom, Father. Amen.

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