You might be heading into this Autumn season full of joy and anticipation or you might find yourself still trying to catch your breath from a season that has felt like it sucked all the life out of you.

No matter where you find yourself in those scenarios. I want to remind you today that life is seasons. God is one that set seasons in motion and you and I are held in his hand and can trust him within any season we might find ourselves in.

Hi Friend,

Here we are the last day of July and Summer months are turning into Summer weeks + days.

I mentioned in today’s podcast episode that I will be taking a break from recording for the month of August. I’m looking forward to closing out the last weeks of Summer celebrating several family members' birthdays as well as devoting more time to a project that I’m praying will be a great resource for all of us.

Have a beautiful week!

It was interesting listening to a previous episode and hearing where I was in my health journey at that time. I have to admit I had a moment where I felt frustrated at myself for allowing life to knock me off course with things that give me life. I can beat myself up for feeling like I lost progress where I was feeling stronger. But instead of staying at my regret party, I chose to take those thoughts and replace them with truth. And the truth is I’ve been back to my daily rhythms for a while now and even though I’m not where I would love to be I’m not where I was when I stopped.

I’ve got a fun week ahead that I’m really excited about! For starters, I’m getting ready for a trip to Tennessee next week to spend some time with my Dad, and excited about seeing some other friends and family while there! But this week my husband Ron and I are hosting our first ‘Mimi + Papi’ camp for our granddaughters. This was something I knew I wanted to do years ago when my Mother started a Grandma and Grandpas camp years ago when my kids were small. It was a fun few days for all the cousins to gather at my parent's home and spend time together and have uninterrupted quality time with their grandparents as they cooked in the kitchen, played, and had devotions and times of prayer with them every day. So Ron and I are looking forward to creating some fun memories this week with our ‘grands’ and excited next year we will have a little boy addition to the girl gang of 4💛

Hi friends!

So glad you are here for our second week of Summer Rewind where I’m sharing previous episodes for the month of July. This week’s episode is one of my favorite topics to talk about and that is identity and purpose. It’s from a series of lives I did in our private group in 2020 where we are talking about the difference between identity and purpose. Which understand and recognizing the differences in our lives isn’t as easy as we might think and can easily cause us some unnecessarily suffering when we have a wrong view of either.

Speaking of our private group, if you receive emails from me, you’ve seen that I decided to pause the private group on FB and use it for any pop-up gatherings in the future. I find a much more natural connection with many of you in my dm’s on Instagram so for now that’s where I’m spending more of my time.

Hey friend! Happy July!! Hope you are doing well!

I mentioned in the last episode that we were going to be doing something we’ve never actually done before on the podcast and that is for the month of July I’m going to be sharing some previous episodes from the past few years.

And I didn’t purposefully look for the exact one I chose for today but when I listened to it I was like, perfect! The episode is from July 1, 2020, and I’m sharing about 3 tools that can help us hear God more clearly.

I think it will be encouraging to you in this summer journey of living freely and lightly.

Hope you enjoy it!

So I guess here’s the bottom line of what I want to remind you this week.

We can’t wait till every circumstance in our life is easy and enjoyable to live the abundant life we can experience no matter the circumstance.

The tendency to “wait” till a better day is such a lie.

The moment we are in is the moment we are in. live in it.

The season we are in is the season we are in. Live it to the full!!

I’m so grateful for you and my hope is that in some small way as I put my hand to what’s in my heart it will encourage you to do the same and in doing that beauty and order will replace chaos.

I had been on my knees for maybe a few minutes and I heard my bedroom door open and in walked my daughter Alexis who was around 3 or 4 at the time. She was holding a paper in her hand and I knew at that moment that what was on that paper was for me. As she handed it to me she said “ look, Mommy! I drew you a hand and a heart!”

It is only in and through him that we will find true rest and fulfillment and our true and deepest selves.

When we fully surrender to him we discover the place for which we have been subconsciously longing.

And it’s not in the striving that he’s found, but in the surrender.

I think most of you would agree that one of the things we think about when thinking about Summertime is water.

Nothing like cool, refreshing water on a hot summer day!

I can remember as a child learning how to float on my back in the water.

Floating is such an interesting thing. And I can remember the failure in attempts so many times as I tried to master this experience of floating.

The more I tried the more it didn’t work…

Until I realized I needed to stop trying

And just be.

Just be there in the water.

No striving.

No trying to stay above water.

Just complete surrender + trust that what I am putting my full weight on will hold when I let go of my effort and fear.

You can’t float till you let go.

Even though the official first day of Summer is still a few weeks away. For those of us in the US Memorial Day weekend typically kicks off summer for most people. So here we are summer of 2022. The world is as “not normal” as it ever or was or as I think we are all learning…any sense of so-called normal was just an illusion.

Navigating through these past few years has been different kinds of hard for each of us. Jobs have ended or changed, we’ve moved to different cities and states, we’ve grieved the loss of precious family members and friends, we’ve seen mass shootings and witnessed wars being waged…it’s a lot.

I believe you are good even when I struggle to see your goodness

I believe you are love when all I see is hate

I believe your heart is broken when evil appears to win

I believe you have the final say and how this all ends

I believe you are near even whenever I don’t recognize your presence

I believe your peace is neverending and available in my every moment

I believe you are for me even when it seems many are against me

I believe you are my strength and my shield

The lifter of my head

My source of life and hope

May I choose forgiveness and love for those who hurt me and those I love

Even when I don’t understand

I trust you.

I trust that you are good

Even when

I struggle to see your goodness.

I wish sometimes I could go back to those early years of marriage and raising kids and have the perspective that I do now. But that isn’t the way life works and I acknowledged the fact that the perspective I have now came from walking through those years.

So I guess what I want to remind you today is “don’t miss your moment”

The one that is right there in front of you.

In the first decade of Ron’s and I’s marriage, we were referred to as Ron and Susan and the girls. There was a 5 and ½ year gap before the girl streak was broken and proceeded to have 3 boys in the next 4 years!!

And I’m super excited to have my 2 daughters Erica and Alexis sit down with me for a conversation about Motherhood.

I was one of those girls that can’t ever remember not having the desire to have a family and be a mom to many :)

You and I were not created to consume but to create!

And so many of us miss this very integral part of who we are because we are living in the idea that to create and be creative is all about performing or fine arts when creating is simply that creating…

Bringing beauty and life in some form of expression that can look like a home-cooked meal for your family or an ordered meal that you take and present to yourself or others with such intention that it creates a beautiful sacred moment.

It can be the creative process of bringing order when your boss or co-worker hands you a stack of chaos. You are able to work through the messy process and bring order and clarity and that is beautiful work, my friend.

It can be the creative ability to step into someone’s life when it has seemingly fallen apart and fill in the needed gaps for them until they can catch their breath.

I truly believe that the God of the Universe that created us in his image put within each of us this desire to create beauty out of chaos.

And I can’t get away from how much the truths found in this story reveal truth about the human journey we each are on. We all have this deep longing for this life more abundantly, what we were created for…scripture tells us that eternity has been set in the human heart. This longing we have for perfect peace and home and abundant life is there because it’s what we were designed and made for. We get so caught up in the realm that we can see with our physical eyes which is not the whole picture. We are eternal souls that are distracted by the noisiness of our present-day lives.

I think for most of us our focus seems to be such a narrow view of our life and being. It takes effort and intention on our part to focus our heart and mind on what is true over what we are feeling and seeing around us.

This is why it’s called the fight of faith!

The definition of distraction is: a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else

I think we all know what a distraction is. And I would think for most of us when we hear that word or think about distractions in our lives we think of it as a negative thing…

And that’s the tricky thing because I think a lot of the things that distract us in our lives aren’t these big evil things that have glaring red flags warning us to beware…

No, I think most things are good things, just like the buildings going up that are blocking my view. Those buildings aren’t bad. They will provide housing for many people and businesses that will provide services and employ people.

And in order for those wonderful good things to happen, they have to take up space….lots of space.

It’s the same with you and me. Most of the things that are taking up space in our lives aren’t bad things…they’re just taking up a lot of space!

This greek word for workmanship is poiema (poy-ay-mah) which comes from the verb poieo “to make” and is compared to {poem + poetry}.

The word signifies something that is manufactured, a product, a design produced by an artisan. Poiema emphasizes God as the Master designer.

I love the notes in my bible around this scripture that talks about how…

Before our new life in Christ, our lives had no rhyme or reason.

Life in Christ brings balance, and order to our lives.

We are God’s poems, his work of art.

There have been several times where I have tried to unpack this issue and I honestly feel like I have gotten a lot better in the last several years about letting go of things…

But I’ve gotta tell ya…I bought the Marie Kondo book and I read it and I really struggle with the, ‘only keep it if it brings you joy concept.’ Because as I’m going through “all the things” and evaluate each item one by one. I feel joy rising up hahaha and it just all ends back up in the “to keep” pile.

And I’ve heard it said if EVERYTHING is important or special then nothing is. Struggle with one too haha

But seriously…I was thinking about this again as we are transitioning out of winter into spring and the idea of spring cleaning.

I started looking deeper into why it means so much to hold to a piece of paper or picture and 2 things came up for me…

One being control and 2 scarcity.

As much as I hate these unexpected moments I do believe that moments that make us question everything are needed.

I talk a lot about choosing not to live life on autopilot and as much as we can desire that and make choices towards that sometimes that’s not real easy when living within certain frameworks.

I’ve shared many times about situations that felt so crushing and so full of rejection that in time were clear redirection in my life. And that’s the chapter I’ve been living starting out this new year…(didn’t see that coming.)

Or did I?

At the start of this new year, I’m not feeling any pressure to set any new or lofty goals. Instead, these past few weeks I’ve found myself walking into 2022 slowly, purposefully + prayerfully.

In the slowness of the weeks following Christmas I’ve been reflecting on the stories we live and the stories we believe to be true.

Because the stories we believe to be true ARE the stories we live!

So me staying quiet to not add to the noise is me playing into a story that I tell myself that keeps me from sharing when an equally BIG part of me wants to share what often feels like “fire shut up in my bones”...

That’s an example of what I want to dive into today…