About Me

I'm a sinner saved by grace.  I write not because I have all the answers but because I have The Answer: Jesus. Actually, He has me. And although I fall short each moment of living for His glory, He calls me His own.  The greatest mystery is grace and I've been given it--as a gift, not of anything I have done including the act of receiving it. Even that was by grace.  If you follow this journey, you'll find that because of grace in our lives, the ordinary is made extraordinary and the mundane made divine. While dirty dishes and mounds of laundry are inevitable, my hope is that in the washing and the folding, that as Jonathon Edwards said about his wife Sarah that my:

"worldly business has been attended with great alacrity, as part of the service of God: the person declaring that, it being done thus, it was found to be as good as prayer."

Ah, that my dish-washing would be as good as prayer.  That it would be prayer. Gratitude for what I've been given.

I am married to a knight in shining armor plaid button-up shirts.  An energy engineer by day... and night.  He is an award-winning efficiency expert and this blog was his idea.  He thought it the most efficient way of communicating all I'm entrenched in from cloth diapers and gardening to prayer and sanctification.  (More on 'why I write' later.)  My knight is an old soul and much wiser than I; an answer to a lifelong prayer that I don't think I actually trusted God to answer.  Another way God has been faithful when I have not.  My knight and I laugh. A lot.  He thinks he's funny and I know I'm funny.  And we think we're funny.  Because well, we are.

By God's grace I am also the mother of three joy-bearing daughters who keep me on my toes and my knees.  There is much twirling, more singing and even more laughter in our home. We live in an alternate reality: part fairy tale, part musical.  My knight loves it. I promise. 


I love 
Jesus
Dirt between my toes
Old friends
New friends that feel like old friends
Deep thinking
Listening to my children pray
The wind on my face (either from horseback riding or sticking my head out the window while driving)
The flicker of candlelight
A crackling fire
Laughing so hard I cry
Bread rising
Chocolate so dark its bitter to most
Family
Red shoes with blue stitching
Music--all the time, any kind
The banjo and the mandolin    
Kindred Spirits
Feeding bellies and feeding souls --they're interdependent

I like 
My coffee strong and often
My wine red
My food real
My theology "semper reformanda"
My bookshelves overflowing
My passport stamped (well, in my pre-children life)

Miscellaneous
I'm a closet introvert. The kind that is socially capable so people don't know that I get nervous meeting or speaking in front of people.  There are pockets in my heart reserved for the streets of Manhattan, the pier in San Clemente, the sands of North Carolina, the big skies of Montana, the trees of Lookout Mountain.  We'd like to renovate an old hotel and fill it with orphans and by the grace of God, call them our own.  Someday.

I'm a homesteader on sabbatical. My heart aches for the country but for now we are called to the city and I know that because the city is precisely where I woke up this morning.  For years we attempted urban homesteading but for the past few years we've been resting in the suburbs with potted tomatoes and one basil plant.

Why I write
Like I said, this blog was my husband's idea at making me more efficient. Why write an email to 12 friends telling them about cloth diapers when I can write one blog post?  You may think he makes my life easier...I'll let you keep thinking that.

My writing has changed since the beginning. The more I write about the daily workings of our lives the more I realize God is here...in each plant sprouting, in each diaper I hang on the line, in each loaf of bread I watch rise, in each time I ask my children for forgiveness.  My writing is now more of a prayer, more of trying to journal my gratitude, the lessons I'm learning.  And more so today, I think about the legacy I leave for my children.  If tomorrow my Maker calls me home, will they remember?  I want them to. Most importantly I want them to have an account of the grace in our lives.  I write for the Lord, my husband, my children and for you.