Bless Your Heart and Home

Come Kneel Before the Manger-King

December 17, 2015 by amanda Leave a Comment

Christmas is the most beautiful time of the year, but it’s also a very difficult season for many people. In all the hurry to hang the lights, trim the tree, and fill the stockings, the season knows how to draw out our deepest feelings of loneliness and sorrow.

If you’ll come aside with me for a few moments, my prayer is to point you to the Manger-King in such a way that your heart is filled with hope and peace as you’re reminded of Who this holy infant is. Come kneel beside the manger heavy-hearted, and hear the soul-lifting words of the Messiah….

Christ Removes the Curse of Criticism

December 15, 2015 by amanda 2 Comments

The greatest regret I have in my life is relationships broken by my poor handling of criticism. For many years, I felt unjustly accused and misunderstood by those close to me, and so, I was indignant and heartbroken by what I felt were unfair accusations.

With incredulity, I asked myself for years, How could they say those things or think that way about me?

But God has been relentlessly shattering my arrogant heart and puncturing every weeping wound with the beauty of his good news. The gospel breaks the chains of guilt and pride, enlightening dark and shadowy strongholds of self-righteousness and self-promotion.

The raw truth of the gospel — that Christ died for my sins, that he was buried, that he was raised for my justification, and that he always lives to make intercession for me — helps me to make sense of my violent reactions to criticism. It teaches me how to respond to criticism, whether or not I believe it’s warranted….

Glimpsing God’s Glory Makes Christmas Worth It

December 9, 2015 by amanda 8 Comments

A few months ago, my little pink bundle gasped in her first breath and screamed her first cry. With a warm blanket wrapped around us both, I patted her womb-wet hair and shoulders and murmured comfort to her as she laid her head upon my chest. I breathed in my beautiful fresh-birthed baby, and I saw her open her eyes to gaze at her daddy and me.

With the scent of baby awash in my heart this Christmas, I peer into the manger with new-mommy, sleep-deprived eyes. I see that soft-cheeked infant in the manger, fresh from the womb of his mother, Mary, and he’s opened His eyes to look upon His creation…his mother, her husband Joseph, camels and donkeys and cattle, shepherds and sheep.

My heart startles me these December days with unfounded fears that overwhelm and even disable me. All of my what-ifs topple good rationale, and I haunt the house when I should be sleeping, simply to confirm that latches are latched, locks are locked, and children breathe easy in their beds. It’s not just my eyes that are heavy this winter, for my anxious heart sifts worries, feeding schedules, and fevers, suddenly remembering I haven’t placed that Christmas gift order, and I guess we’ll just forgo mailing Christmas cards yet again this year.

Celebrating the Baby in the manger feels like just one more burden to add to my already full plate….

Christmas for the Bruised and Broken

December 3, 2015 by amanda 5 Comments

For several years, the Christmas season filled my heart with struggles more than any other time of the year. Holidays often seemed harder to bear when my husband and I were timing them around fertility medications and bloodwork. Then five years ago, we miscarried our first little baby at the end of December. And then the self-inflicted pressure I felt during the holidays only complicated my struggle to make it through the daily weight of depression and grief after we miscarried a second child.

Many people find the holiday season especially heart-wrenching. The empty seats around the dinner table and the absence of loved ones amplifies the pain that we may push away in our busyness for most of the year. At Christmastime we often feel especially barren. Especially broken. Especially empty….

We Don’t Get to Choose Our Ministry

October 25, 2015 by amanda 14 Comments

If you’ll wander with me down memory lane a bit, I’d like to introduce you to the 16-year-old-me. Of course, it goes without saying that I was younger then (and thinner), and it was a really exciting time of my life. I was “on fire” for the things of the Lord, I was disciplining myself spiritually and physically, and, as a side note, I knew how to parent everybody else’s kids (I wish the me-now could figure out where the me-then got all her answers…!). I was about to graduate high school, and I couldn’t wait to see what God had in store.

I wanted to peer excitedly just over the horizon to peek into what God was going to do with my budding talents and abilities. But I sure would have been surprised and confused had the 16-year-old-me been able to glimpse the calling that God was placing on my life.

The 16-year-old-me would never have pictured the path the Lord would direct for me in my twenties and now in my thirties. My twenties were hard years spiritually, full of questioning and frustration. My idea of how I would serve God and what that would look like was crumbling. I didn’t know I’d be such a mess, and I didn’t know that God was not going to use me in the ways I had thought that He would….

Making Sense of Romans 8:28 | the testimony of a bereaved mother

October 5, 2015 by amanda 11 Comments

What a privilege and blessing it is for me to offer to you these words of truth and life by one of my dearest friends, Daphne McKibben. On March 16, 2013, Daphne unexpectedly lost her almost 19-year-old son, Larry. Daphne shares hope and encouragement with us through her honesty in struggling with Romans 8:28, and she also introduces to you two ministries that are precious to her as a bereaved mother. I am praying with full confidence that God will use her words to comfort and strengthen your hearts. ♥ .. amanda
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28…

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