Blessings and Raindrops

seeking joy in the midst of the ordinary

Archives for April 2017

the raging storm.

The storm raged under the cover of night. We awoke to hail battering the glass window panes, gusts of wind howling and the violent clapping of thunder. Dave leapt out of bed and turned on the porch light, surveying the storm. I reached for my phone on the nightstand and flipped through my tornado warning and weather apps – eyes peeled for tornado threats. The radar was clear of any turbulent activity, other than the raucous storm outside. No tornado watches or warnings. No sirens.

We said a prayer for protection and drifted back to sleep under the illusion of safety.

I was awoken again an hour or so later to the sound of a baby crying out. A baby lamb, mind you. Dora, our lab, had managed to open the garage door where Trixie was tucked away from the storm and let her inside the house. Trixie must have followed Dora upstairs once she came in. I found her at the top of the staircase, crying loudly. She was stuck, unable to descend the stairs. After moving her safely back to her improvised bed in the garage and checking the radar once more, I dozed off again.

The storm continued to rage outside.

We awoke to find dozens of huge trees ripped, twisted, and uprooted. The fence around the cow pasture, destroyed. Debris, wet leaves, pots, fallen limbs scattered everywhere we looked. Dazed, we walked the property as the steady patter of rain continued.

The path of the storm was clear cut – a straight line of torn down trees and ripped apart branches. Although we received no warning, we are fairly certain a tornado hit our property. We praised our Father for His protective covering over our home, and most importantly, our four precious treasures inside.

If the cyclone had moved a mere 25-30 feet to the left, it would have passed right over our home. We have no doubt that it would’ve ripped the roof off. The roof covering our babies, sleeping soundly in their beds on the second story.

“What if.” I’ve grappled with this for nine hours now and my breath still catches when I go there. I can hardly praise God enough for the way He protected my loves. I have no doubt His hand was over our family last night.

I’m reminded of the story of Elisha. Of the mountainside full of horses and chariots of fire, of angelic hosts surrounding and protecting the city.

Early in the morning a servant of the Holy Man got up and went out. Surprise! Horses and chariots surrounding the city! The young man exclaimed, “Oh, master! What shall we do?”

He said, “Don’t worry about it—there are more on our side than on their side.”

Then Elisha prayed, “O God, open his eyes and let him see.”

The eyes of the young man were opened and he saw. A wonder! The whole mountainside full of horses and chariots of fire surrounding Elisha!  {2 Kings 6:15-17, MSG}

As the storm raged and winds shrieked outside in the wee morning hours, angelic hosts surrounded and protected our family.

I am not light-heartedly sharing these words, I realize many reading are walking seasons of grief and hurting or are in the valley of waiting. Waiting for healing, waiting for a child, waiting for redemption.

I know that bad things happen all the time. Scrolling my newsfeed, I am continually assaulted with the reality of evil as well as stories of horrific tragedies happening to good people. God’s own. I don’t understand why bad things happen or why we were tucked safely under the hedge of protection last night. I only know God is mysterious and only good.  And all I can offer in response, is my humble, wholehearted, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’

meet Trixie.

I have a history of visiting our neighbor’s sheep and bottle feeding the babies. I think he finally tired of my littles and I dropping by every time babies were born and asked yesterday if we would care for one of the orphaned lambs.

In a moment of temporary delusion, I quickly, enthusiastically said YES! — I’m now bottle feeding this sweet thing every few hours, forgoing sleep and holding her in my lap while she sleeps {otherwise, she cries and cries…}. I’m trying to determine how strange it would be to bring a lamb on a leash to the boy’s soccer game tonight. Otherwise, we’ll miss a feeding. I’m seriously considering this, you guys. Bless.

What a sweet, tangible visual ‘Trixie’ will be for our family this Holy Week.

Your God is coming! Yes, the Sovereign LORD is coming in all his glorious power. He will rule with awesome strength. See, he brings his reward with him as he comes. He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in his arms, holding them close to his heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young. {Isaiah 40: 10-11}

Come, let us worship and bow down. 

Let us kneel before the Lord our maker,

for he is our God.

We are the people he watches over,

the sheep under his care. 

{Psalm 95: 6-7}


“‘God, the Master, says: From now on, I myself am the shepherd. I’m going looking for them. As shepherds go after their flocks when they get scattered, I’m going after my sheep. I’ll rescue them from all the places they’ve been scattered to in the storms. I’ll bring them back from foreign peoples, gather them from foreign countries, and bring them back to their home country. I’ll feed them on the mountains of Israel, along the streams, among their own people. I’ll lead them into lush pasture so they can roam the mountain pastures of Israel, graze at leisure, feed in the rich pastures on the mountains of Israel. And I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. I myself will make sure they get plenty of rest. I’ll go after the lost, I’ll collect the strays, I’ll doctor the injured, I’ll build up the weak ones and oversee the strong ones so they’re not exploited. {Ezekiel 34:11-16 MSG}

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. {Luke 12:32 ESV}


“I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them, too. They’ll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father.”. {John 10:14-18, MSG}

As I care for this innocent, fragile little lamb, I’m reminded of words I wrote three years ago after a weekend sitting under the rich teaching of Beth Guckenberger:

“God will always provide. Strength. Peace. Joy. One moment, one step, one day at a time.

Like a Good Shepherd leading his sheep, we can trust that He will guide us to green pastures. We can keep our ears tilted toward Him, listening for the next place to place our feet. The next stop. The next fork in the road. Ours is meant to be a position of dependance on Him.”

Time to Linger.

 “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
– Margaret Atwood. 

Rather unexpectedly, I am now proudly wearing the battle-worn badge of homeschooling momma.

After our month away in January, the boys lost their spots at their public elementary school. We were faced with a choice: an overflow school for the last four months of the year or I could homeschool them. I decided to suck it up and do it. How hard could it be to teach first grade? (Sarcasm, people. That is sarcasm).

For the sake of remembering this wild season of life, let’s review the highs and lows of homeschooling first graders for the past two months with zero curriculum pre-planning, or, let’s be honest here, the faintest clue of what I am doing.

The obvious takeaway: This is Hard. 

Mornings are slow, which I adore, yet, they tend to be flanked with whining, groaning, and debating the need to do anything involving a pen, workbook or, goodness forbid, the empty-paged journal. {The horror!}

I begin patiently, resolved to approach the day with gentle words and a calm demeanor.

I pour my coffee.

Resolute, I encourage my offspring to open their journals. In a sweet Mother Teresa-esque voice, I gently remind my pupils of the importance of proper sentence structure. “Poop” may inspire laughter from your brother, however, it is not a complete sentence.

I pour more coffee.

And, thus, our daily rhythm ensues. Groans and dramatic full body flails, followed closely by excitement over a new skill mastered (!), then, more complaints and utter despair when confronted with yet another subject matter – it appears thirty minutes should suffice for a full day of learning.

I pour more coffee.

In the midst of all of the coffee and the complaints and the surprisingly sweet moments interwoven throughout the morning, I’m also wiping my newly potty-trained toddler’s bum {isn’t bum the cutest word? Note to self: use it more often}, washing dishes {apparently sitting at the kitchen table produces ravenous little people all.morning.long}, never-ending piles of laundry and mopping up the dog water spills and all the things.

Unavoidably, I am no longer speaking in a Mother Teresa-esque tone by the end of the day.

The other obvious takeaway: I cannot do it all. 

Alas, the balls I am attempting to precariously balance in the air are dropping left and right. Rapidly. I am behind on returning phone calls, paying bills, responding to emails, writing deadlines, photo organization {my favorite photo album printer – MyPublisher – is closing it’s doors at the beginning of May and I have two years worth of photo books to organize, upload and print. The clock is ticking, people}, event planning {we had to cancel an event tonight, in fact. Not actually my fault but I still feel like I let a whole slew of people down with my inability to manage small details at the moment}.

I’ve had a cathartic ugly cry and am accepting my limitations.

I don’t like feeling inept.

Yet, I’m leaning into the crazy idea Jesus presented that in my weakness, His strength is magnified. I am trusting that, somehow, He will use my inability, my unpreparedness, my lack for His glory. 

The not-so-obvious takeaway: Lingering is a lost art.

Because we have temporarily stepped off the treadmill and checked ourselves out of the race for a season, we have this glorious opportunity to create whitespace in our days. Unplanned, unhurried, unscheduled minutes and hours set aside simply to linger.

To stoop down and scoop up a handful of freshly sprouted spring flowers. To roam freely outdoors – awakening imaginations and senses gone dormant under academic and time-constrained pressure.

To linger over a new book from the library, saying yes to the enthusiastic request for one more chapter.

To linger after dinner, on a long walk, without the incessant pull to rush back home and complete the bedtime routine in preparation for another early morning.

To indulge the endless stream of  “why”… to pause our schedule for an impromptu shoe-tying lesson… to play games and dump piggy bank contents onto the table for a math lesson…to build forts and plan out April Fool’s tricks {per our plan, Nate hid all of the spoons this morning and CRACKED UP when Dave opened the drawer in search of a cereal spoon}…

In my exhaustion and inaptitude, I’ve been given the chance to step back and evaluate what matters most to me as a mother. If I imagine my grown children in twenty years, sitting around a table with their friends, how do I want them to describe their childhood?

I know I want them to have warm, fond memories of long days outside. I want them to remember dirt under their fingernails and laughter on their lips. I want them to remember the sensation of sunshine on their faces. I want them to remember the affection and responsibility they gleaned from caring for animals. I want them to remember a home with vases full of handpicked wildflowers on every surface and refrigerator doors covered in homemade Picasso’s. I want them to remember a childhood framed with sweet, content moments of lingering…