Life Unexpected

A blog post from my hotel room last night... Confidence has never been my strong suit.  As a teenager, I was never the best athlete, never the prettiest girl in my class, and never the top in my class.  In fact, in high school, I would have described myself as a pretty average person (15+ years later, I would still describe myself that way).  When I was about 14 years old, God began stirring something in the depths of my soul.  I was at teen camp that summer, listening to a speaker speak about something (that to this day I totally do not remember), when I felt it.  It was that feeling you get when you know your life is going to change and you are scared to death.  It was that feeling you get when your head and your heart have a full on battle with each other.  It was God calling me to ministry.  I could feel it in the depths of my soul…that unshakable feeling that once you felt it, you knew that you could never go back to living in the same m...

Happy One Year and One Day Referral-Aversary!!!  Let's just be honest, this post should have been written yesterday, but life is a little crazy these days.  Even as I write tonight, I am still in awe that a year ago (yesterday), I was in Florida with my Mom on vacation, when I received a call that would change the course of my life.  Nate called me, asked me if I was sitting down, and then the next several moments became a blur, because what we had been waiting for so long for had finally happened.  We had been matched with the cutest baby boy this world has ever seen (and yes, I am biased).  I remember trying to calm my mom down, who was beyond screaming at the top of her lungs, trying to keep myself from shaking so that I could bring up my email with the picture of the little guy that we would one day call our son, and continuing to pinch myself to make sure it was all real...all at the same time.  When I pulled up that picture, I immediately fell in ...

The past two weeks have been a little crazy in this house.  Between fighting off sickness (which Biruk and I seem to be passing back and forth like it's something we actually want), traveling to Maine for 5 days to speak at a youth retreat (which included much needed time for Biruk to spend with his Nan), and planning and having our youth group 30 Hour Famine (not eating+lack of sleep+lots of teens=tiredness you can't describe), I have struggled to find any down time.  There have been so many times throughout this month I have wanted to blog and share what God is teaching me and I have struggled to find the time.  I know what most people are thinking..."welcome to parenthood!" This is the second month of my experiment "7," and it has flown by.  At the start of February, when choosing my seven articles of clothing, I was a bit panicked.  It took me forever to decide on seven articles of clothing, because I had over 250 articles to choose from.  That fa...