I got a new Camera!!!

~ Lil' Chris snuggling with mama~
So Chris and I will be celebrating our 7th anniversary this upcoming Monday, and I received an early gift from him!! I really didn't expect anything super special to be quite honest; a quiet dinner at one of our favorite restaurants or something . . . but no, I came home this evening to find a brand new digital camera with video waiting for ME!!!!! (Thank you Chris!!) I have been wanting a new camera for sooo long, because of my love for blogging. We were watching the new season of American Idol while fooling around with my new camera, so here they are, pics from my super cool 7.2 mega pixels, sony cyber shot with video!!

~ Me lounging around watching American Idol!! ~
~Joshie just doin' what he does best!!~

To love, or not to love . . .

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable" . . . .

~C.S. Lewis

The stepping stones of purpose

As I was reading a beautiful excerpt about purpose in my bible, I found a picture tucked away on this page. It was a picture of a young man named Riley, that my husband and I spent countless hours counseling over the phone and in person, to be there as a friends and to encourage him in his great times of need, desperation and loneiness. He was broken - hearted young man on a constant search for someone to love and accept him. Riley was also curious and loved to experiment with new things. One evening about six months ago, he experimented with this new "epidemic" sweeping among our youth today, where they tie a noose or a rope around their neck, to temporarily cut off their air supply. The result is that the lack of oxygen to the brain creates a "natural high" or feelings of sexual arousement. (Don't ask me how, and PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!) Needless to say, Riley couldn't get the noose free from his neck and he was strangled to death. His parents found him early the next morning, the noose still around his neck.

Chris and I were devastated when we received the call early that morning to hear the news. You see, Riley had tried to call us the evening that he died. It was after midnight, and my husband was so exhausted from working tireless hours at work, that he decided to let the phone go . He thought he could just call Riley back in the morning. We felt like, if only we would have answered the call maybe Riley would still be alive today. But after the grieving process, we realized that God has a rhyme and reason for everything that happens on this earth, and someday, we will find out His reasoning for Riley's death. But let this be a lesson to all of us - that for as long as we have been given this precious gift of life, air in our lungs to breathe, and most importantly, if we know the Creator of this universe, and have a deep understanding of His love for us as His sons and daughters, than we have the beauty within our hearts to encourage, inspire and give life every moment of every day that we are here on this earth.

Let us not waste the precious time that has been granted to us . . .

~Riley we loved you deeply from our hearts ~

I AM grateful, God, that I have finally come to realize your purpose for me. Just when or how this came about I can't say. It wasn't sudden and dramatic, the way it happened to Paul on the road to Damascus, or Peter Marshall with his experience on the Scottish moors.

There have been no visions, no voices, no letters written in fire upon a wall saying: "Do this." "Do that." "This is your reason for being."

No my search for you and for the meaning you had for my life has been uncertain, groping, erratic, filled with accidents, false goals. Sometimes I seemed to sense that purpose, clearly see it; but it vanished like a mirage in the harried, often cruel business of everyday.

Yet somehow you keep track of your floundering creatures. Maybe because life is so filled with defeat and heartbreak, we find ourselves turning to you, yielding ourselves to your will, fighting less furiously for selfish, often empty goals. And when this happens we find that you have turned our sufferings and our failures into little stepping - stones.

Looking back, we see them. These rocks which gradually, all unknown to us, you have been shaping to lead us toward our purpose . . . And we have been following! However blindly, however zigzag the course, yet we have been moving toward it.
And looking about, we see that there are results. There are signals, heartening little affirmations, unexpected proofs. However humble our circumstances or undramatic our talents, our true purpose has been revealed. We were meant to be this person at this time and place. Not only for ourselves, but for you and other people - we were meant to make this particular contribution to the world.

And so we must do it well. Do it with faith and patience, with all our strength and passion. And in so doing discover who we really are.

- Marjorie Holmes

"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
- John 15:13

Praying Blessings over my Allie

So I was at my friend's house the other evening, and as we sat on her bed in her room, we got into some pretty deep conversations about God. There was soft worship music playing in the background and the atmosphere was so serene. We started praying for different things and my daughter Allie kept running in and out of the room. She was just laying next to me on the bed as I prayed, and she at times seemed to be praying too. (I kept hearing her mumble words like "Dear Lord", "Oh Jesus", things like that, with her head buried in her hands!! How precious!) We didn't notice that our other friend, Kera, had come into the room while we were praying. She had her camera and started taking pictures of us while we prayed!! (How funny!)

At one point I started praying over my daughter, Allie, that the Lord would always keep her heart tender and pure before Him, that He would guide her footsteps all the days of her life, and that she would grow in beauty and grace to bring inspiration, and to reach out in love, compassion and comfort to the broken-hearted and poor in spirit in this world. (After all, she has quite a name to live up to, Alexandria Grace, means "Defender of man-kind, Gracious One"!) It was a beautiful time and I felt such a peace when we finished praying. I have been so caught up with the craziness of life that I haven't really had a "time - out" like this to just sit, meditate and pray. It was so refreshing and my daughter also sensed this; she wanted to sit with me the whole time and just "soak" it all in! It was also such a wonderful thing for my daughter to hear me praying and speaking blessings over her life. Though she may be young, her little spirit understands what I am saying, and she loved every minute of it!! After I was done praying for her, she looked up at me, grabbed my face and said, "Thank you mommy, I love you too!" Needless to say, I was cut to the heart by her words!!!


For those of you that have a child/children, I would greatly encourage and exhort you to make the time and sit with them for awhile - just start to encourage their little hearts by praying and pronouncing blessings over them; though they may not fully understand what you are doing, their spirit knows and when they are older, they will remember the intimate things that you so gently and dearly spoke into their hearts as a small child; these will be great treasures for your children and they will carry those words spoken over them in their hearts for the rest of their lives . . .