Bless Your Heart and Home

The Secret to Becoming a Woman who Laughs

May 22, 2014 by amanda 23 Comments

My family recently buried the most beautiful, confident, and gracious woman I have ever known — my dear grandmother. She is my hero and role model, and I pray to have even a portion of the grace and honor and loving influence that she possessed. But, I know a little secret about her that the average friend in her sewing club, the neighbor who received her Morning Glory Muffins, and the visiting revival pastor might not have ever guessed: she laughed at the future.

My grandmother had known and tasted first hand the Valley of the Shadow. She knew God, and she knew grief. She knew that He was faithful and that His love and grace was enough.…

How Do You Serve Others when You Have Nothing Left to Give?

May 19, 2014 by amanda 7 Comments

You’ve been up all night nursing a sick baby, and the next morning a friend calls and needs someone in whom she can confide her struggles; you serve in the church in what seems every capacity that exists, and you just have nothing left to offer; a friend betrays you..again..and you’re ready to “can” the relationship; it’s 10 p.m. and you’re still cleaning up the kitchen. Your husband’s dress shirts are wrinkly-cold in the dryer, crumbs still cover the kitchen table, and you’ve got to get up and do it all over again tomorrow……

Celebrating Mother’s Day {when mother’s day is hard}

May 7, 2014 by amanda 10 Comments

Three very short years ago, I was a basketcase on Mother’s Day weekend. After several years of infertility, we had just lost our first child through an early miscarriage. Mother’s Day that year seemed especially cruel and agonizing to me — a childless mother.

Mother’s Day (well, all holidays, really) can be hard for those without a mother, those who want to be mothers, and even for those who struggle as a mother. But, just as any other day presents opportunity, Mother’s Day especially presents opportunity for us to offer thanks to God, offer petitions to and pour out our hearts to God, and pray for one another — even if our culture’s celebration of the day tends to remind us of what has been taken away rather than what we have been given.

After a particularly embarrassing Sunday one year where I was reduced to a sniveling mess in the middle of the pastor’s Mother’s Day sermon in 1 Samuel 1 about Hannah, I stopped going to church on Mother’s Day Sunday….

Creating Home {It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful}

May 1, 2014 by amanda 5 Comments

As a young wife, creating home initially seemed simple to me. I lived with my parents until I got married, where I lived in an 8 foot by 10 foot bedroom until I was whisked away on my honeymoon.

Upon settling into our newlywed little rental house, I quite simply unpacked my new wedding gifts, setting the decorative items around the house on rescued-from-the-curb end tables, brown particle board bookshelves, and a borrowed chest of drawers or two….

His Calling Is Your Calling, Too

April 29, 2014 by amanda 8 Comments

Wedding bells ring; congratulations, gifts, and honeymoon ensue; newlywed bliss begins. You are so excited about the new life you and your husband are beginning together. Today, I want to encourage you, young bride or bride-to-be, that your husband’s calling is your calling, too. Join him in that calling.

Wedding cards and love songs often offer words that conjure up an image of two young lovers on separate paths, but who, unbeknownst to them, have been headed in the same direction all their lives. Fate causes their paths to meet, they fall madly in love, and then this young, head-over-heels couple gets married.

In this scenario, the man and woman leave their original paths that brought them together, and the two of them begin a new path and a new life — their new life together.

Stop. News flash: You are not starting a new life from scratch with your husband. Wives, I want to offer to you what I believe is a more Biblical model than the one I gave to you above. A dear friend of ours shared this secret with me when I was a newlywed, and it has helped me many times since then….

Live like Yesterday Was Easter

April 21, 2014 by amanda 1 Comment

Just last week, the highly anticipated One, the Messiah and coming King plunged your life into a whirlwind nightmare that you never had anticipated. Sure, He had told you of His upcoming death and even of His resurrection, but you didn’t understand Him and even rebuked the Son of God (Mark 8:31-33; 9:31-32).

Just last weekend, you denied Him and just plain drifted off to sleep during His hour of agony.

But, you had come armed. You were ready to fight….and you came out swinging. You were going with Him to the death.

And then…He undid your work. He made new and healed the enemy you had attacked. He made you cease from your own kingdom-conquering, because it was HE who was conquering this kingdom. He was going to drink the full cup of the wrath of God that rested on your own head and that of all mankind. And He did.…

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