How I’m Learning to Not Be Like My Puppy

Our puppy, Everest, has finished her training with our wonderful trainer, and she’s honestly made a lot of progress. She is still disobedient sometimes (much to my dismay), but she’s made leaps and bounds. Where she used to try to run after every motorcycle within 100 yards of her, she now ignores them unless they […]

Friends like Jonadab

The Biblical passage spanning the details of Amnon and Tamar (and Absalom and David…) is a heart-wrenching story. I have to mentally prepare myself before reading it, to be honest. As I read through it this time, I paid more attention to a “supporting actor,” as it were: Jonadab. Both Amnon’s friend and cousin (2 […]

Just Because

I think I first saw the idea from Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts. This first book centers on listing things you’re thankful for as an expression of praise and a focus of the mind on those things. I appreciated her focus on specificity: zoom in on the details of what you’re thankful for, […]

Lessons from David

Just a few days ago, my favorite human had a birthday. Though he seems desperate to say that we’re “basically 30” now, we are decidedly not 30 yet. Almost. But not yet! It’s the second time we’ve celebrated his birthday as a married couple, and I’ve gotta say that I’m just as obsessed with him as […]

Emotions & Prayer

Yesterday was a really bad day. It might have been a combination of different factors (little sleep, lots of projects), but even the culmination of everything I can think of doesn’t usually hit me so hard. Such is the mystery of anxiety I suppose. Through the gritted teeth and scattered tears, I still prayed. I […]

Not in Charge

We’d been talking about it throughout our time in the US. Distance helped us think about it slightly more objectively. It would be an investment to be sure, and we were slightly worried it wouldn’t work. But other people had had so much success with it, didn’t it have to work? We were both even getting ads for it.

Drought

I’d been feeling off for, I don’t know, a week or three? It was a familiar patterned progression, but it didn’t diminish the discomfort or the oppressive weight of it. There was a lot going on — with family, work, and school. I’d dealt with worse, though, so what was going on? I knew before […]

What We Learned from Hiking a (not) Mountain

One of my favorite hikes is a mere 40 minute drive from my dad’s house. I was fortunate to do it twice when recently visiting family, although I still dream of doing it once a week. The one, the only, the Billy Goat Trail. Reminiscent of musings from an Old Rag hike about three years […]

In Which I Avoid Asking for Help

A few weeks ago, I was preparing to speak for a Study Week at my software engineering school. For those of you who know my word of the year, this was a commitment I made before the new year : ) I was thankful to be able to take part. But I was struggling. I’d […]

What to Do After Messing Up

When we mess up, come back to the Lord with your whole heart. He is the only safe place; and His arms are always open to His children, even right after a huge mistake.