considerable grace

Barbara Curtis (MommyLife.net) just posted a GREAT link to sing-along songs for children:

Young and Young at Heart

I can’t wait to go through them all with Sophia. We sing CONSTANTLY around here and we LOVE the “oldies but goodies.”

Hope you enjoy!

And hope your Sunday is going well–

Yours,
Tara B.

An email/blog/becoming “real life” friend signed off a recent email with this line:

"Remember that God delights in you, is the one who fights your battles, and to speak kindly to yourself in the midst of this difficult time ..."

Good advice, eh? To speak kindly to myself. 'Twould be a grace.

(Thanks, Amy.)

Yours,
Tara B.

Did I mention back in June that my doctor was one step away from putting me on MEDS for my ever-increasing triglyceride count?

Every blood relative I know of (other than Sophie) is already on such meds ... but I really did NOT want to have to go on them. So in addition to the spiritual battle re: my heart and the lifestyle goals of longing for more energy / better sleep / a stronger and more healthful body, I was also motivated this summer to really try again re: food/exercise because I wanted to get that triglyceride count DOWN.

And guess what?
Great news!

I found out today that since June (in only three months!) I dropped my triglyceride count from 279 to 158. That’s ALMOST in the normal range and (I’m hoping!) well out of the “you’re one step away from meds” range. Hooray! Hooray! It was the one piece of good news in an otherwise troubled and troubling day.

(Major stuff brewing. Again. Blergh!)

I continue to pray for faith to believe God! And for a heart that worships God rightly. I’m often SUCH a wreck. But hey! At least I’m a wreck with slightly better heart-disease-numbers.

Sending you love–

Yours,
Tara B.

Thanks so much for the kind thoughts and prayers! I’m still not feeling well–but I’m not in the imminent path of a (literal) hurricane, so I need to count my blessings, eh? (Praying for you, Nancy, and everyone on our southern coastline!)

I’m grateful that Sophie and I were able to sleep last night. (Did I mention that she’s sick too?) Often, congestion + kids = a sleepless night for Momma. But we slept well, so that’s a grace.

I did wake up with my heart deep IN THE BATTLE, though. It has to do with a relationship (of course–if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know it’s either a relationship or FOOD with me!) ...

It’s hard to persevere and I am praying for faith to love well and do well and LIVE well.

Reviewed some of C. Plantinga’s (AMAZING!) book, Not The Way It’s Supposed to Be–A Breviary of Sin this morning to remind me of Truth:

"We keep company with God only by adopting God’s purposes for us and following through on them even when it is difficult or initially painful to do so ...

None of our lives is an accident.
We have been called into existence, expected, awaited, equipped, and assigned.

We have been called to undertake the stewardship of a good creation, to create sturdy and buoyant families that pulse with the glad give-and-take of the generations.

By the sins of attack, we vandalize shalom.
By the sins of flight we abandon it.

When we flee responsibility, we turn our backs on God’s presence and blessing and begin the slow process of converting ourselves into derelicts.

We “hate the light and do not come to the light” (John 3:20)

[BUT!] Don’t forget the resolve of God!

God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back.

Human sin is stubborn but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way."

Banking on the resolve of God–

Yours feveredly,
Tara B.

What a happy title for a blog!

But it accurate ... I am stressed, sick, and tired.

Stressed because of something challenging that happened yesterday that our family has to keep addressing this morning. (Very hard!)

Sick because, well, apparently some little virus or bug is having a happy time inside of me–but it’s making all of the normal sick symptoms fuzz up my brain and knock my energy level down to zilch.

Which leads me right to TIRED.

Oh well! Every day isn’t like this, right?
Makes me appreciate the days I wake up before the alarm and happily head out the door to walk Lilikoi.

Hope you’re feeling better than me!
And that your day is a blessed one.

I’ll close with another thought from Ajith Fernando ...

Blessings to you!
– Tara B.

PAIN DOES ITS WORK, AND GRACE TAKES OVER
Written by Ajith Fernando while traveling abroad

I left home on a trip abroad feeling very discouraged and hurt because of some problems. This is normal in the Christian life, and these are emotions I must not deny. Sorrow and pain must be permitted to do their work. They

- deepen our commitment and mould our character, especially teaching us patience;
- lead us to confess sin and show the fruit of repentance;
- prepare us to face greater suffering;
- bring us closer to suffering humanity;
- make us more effective ministers; and
- increase our joy by causing us to depend more on God and his grace than on earthly things and ourselves.

But we cannot go on living life overwhelmed by our problems. Once discouragement and hurt have done their work we must return to the normal Christian life which I like to define as “being overwhelmed by grace."

... One of the things which help us to return to the attitude of being overwhelmed by grace is exposure to the simple, but beautifully profound, truths of Christianity. God did that to me during my retreat through the book, Out of my Mind, by Joseph Bayly (Zondervan). He had a column by the same name in the now defunct Eternity Magazine. It was my favourite monthly reading in my early years in the ministry. Three of Bayly’s sons died aged four years, three weeks and eighteen years. Each of his other four children ended up in ministry. He was known as a prophet to our generation, but his writing oozes with the deep grace of God learned through suffering.

Bayly reminded me that, in the life made beautiful by grace, there are some things which are normal but which the world despises. We must accept these things as basic to the Christian life and not be overly upset by the more negative ones among them. Here are some of those things:

- a simple trust in Christ and an enjoyment of his love which causes us to be thrilled with life;
- sacrificial love for others including our family members;
- suffering for our principles;
- following the way of the cross even though the world sees it as going down on the status scale;
- proactively seeking to bring people to faith in Christ because that is their only hope for escaping eternal damnation and finding eternal salvation;
- accepting every disappointment and hurt as a means used by God to bless us;
- opposing wrong, however out of step we may seem with the rest of society;
- studying the challenges to Christian thinking in contemporary society and formulating responses to them so that Christians will be warned and armed to face them and non-Christians will be challenged to change their minds;
- refusing to allow the sham values of our superficial, media-dominated society to influence our values, lifestyle and methods.

... God made us humans with eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11). We are too exalted to be satisfied with mere earthly honour. Only the joy and peace of the eternal God can truly satisfy our souls. John Wesley said, “O what a pearl of what great a price is the lowest degree of the peace of God.” It is a treasure so valuable that it is worthwhile sacrificing everything in order to obtain it.

Woke up with a fever of 101.5 and it’s only been going up up up and since then.

Amazed at God’s grace in helping me to get Sophie through ALL of her lessons first thing this morning (even with me lying prone because the room was spinning and I moved into “grab a bucket” mode–ick!) ... and then that our dear friend would call RIGHT THEN and say, “Let me swing by and take Sophie for a playdate so you can sleep!” What grace.

Now I’m trying to return the most urgent emails and GET TO SLEEP.

But I saw this great post over at TheResurgence and wanted to be sure to share it with you before I climb back into bed:

Six Study Essentials

Hope you’re not sick too!

Happy Thursday–

Love,
Tara B.

HT to Randy Alcorn for this great video:



And to our dear friend, Melodie, for reminding us of the WONDER of Team Hoyt during her leadership of the Peacemaker devotions this morning!



Oh oh oh! Thank You God, for these glimpses of grace.

We’re off to bed now–
Hope you are too! (Unless you are one of my Australia / New Zealand gals–then, “Good Morning to you!”

Yours,
Tara B.

Oh, how SWEET grace is!

For me? Today? It came pouring over me when I tried to tackle my cooking fears. Again.

The recipe was something that my sweet friend typed up for me as only a real friend would do because it was just so SIMPLE. Chicken that had been marinated. A pasta salad with vegis and an Italian dressing. A cole-slaw salad. The kind of thing that you REAL cooks just “TOSS TOGETHER.”

We had eaten it last weekend at these friends' home and it was SO delicious that I asked my friend if a) she thought I might be able to do it (she knows that cooking gives me anxiety attacks!); and b) if so, if she might please give me the recipes.

She happily typed up the recipes (with special “Tara-necessary” instructions) and gradually, over the last few days, I’ve been trying them all:

1. Thanks to her instructions, I discovered that the grocery store has REALLY COOL little marinade packages that you can mix up with just oil and vinegar and water and make delicious meat dishes ("Baja Lime"–YUM!). I never saw them in the grocery store until my friend told me about them.

2. I can make bow-tie pasta! AND chop up vegis, put them on top of the steaming pasta (to “lightly steam” them) AND add super-cool (feels like we’re eating in a restaurant!) Feta cheese and fresh Italian dressing. It didn’t even hurt!

3. Costco sells a DELICIOUS ginger-soy dressing that, again, I never even knew existed.

4. I can make that crunchy cabbage roasted almond salad thingy that I love at church potlucks! Hooray!

But then it came time to marinate the meat. My friend’s note said that she uses the Ginger Soy from Costco and one of those “Baja Lime” packets.

There I sat. I had the packet. I had the ginger-soy. My chicken was thawed and I was psychologically prepared to touch raw chicken (BLECH! NOT MY FAVORITE PART OF COOKING!). But I just had NO IDEA how MUCH of each I should combine for the marinade. I looked at the packet. I looked at the ginger soy. I looked at the chicken. I looked BACK at what my friend wrote and I knew I would have to do the thing that I really didn’t want to have to do ... CALL MY FRIEND AND ASK FOR HELP.

So I did.

The grace was that she was 100% encouraging, cheering me on, proud of me for trying, CONFIDENT it was going to taste great, “You can do it, Tara! You can do it! Rah rah rah!” And here is the clarification you need to know:

There are TWO chickens. ONE has the ginger soy dressing and the OTHER has the Baja Lime.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh! That makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE!!!!!!! So it was OK that I called rather than listening to that teeny little trying to condemn me voice inside saying, “I can’t believe you can’t just put a little of each in until it FEELS right! That’s what a REAL COOK would do!” By calling, I learned that they are SEPARATE marinades and I should NOT combine them. Ah. Makes perfect sense now.



And you know the nicest, most gracious part of this call is that my friend didn’t make me feel a burden. She didn’t mock my stupidity or question “what kind of a stay at home wife and mother ARE YOU?!?” Nope. Instead she said, “Oh, Tara! Call me ANYTIME. It is my PLEASURE to help you because the truth is, if women in the church hadn’t taught ME these things over the years, I would not know how to do them either. So please call ANY time. We love you!”

Now that’s grace. And I’m grateful.

Hope your day had moments of sweet encouragement too!

Trying to get back to sleep (pulling a little 4AM-6AM shift here b/c of knee pain waking me up)–

Yours,
Tara B.

Joe Adams made me laugh (again) by posting a great “1950’s Yearbook” photo of himself on his blog, so I ran over to YearbookYourself.com and made photos of myself from the 1960's:



And one from the 1990’s that Fred would probably identify as looking (scarily) just like the version of me that he met in 1993:



So what would YOU look like in the 50’s, 60', or 70’s?



Smilingly,
Tara B.

Way back when (mid 70’s?) in the thriving metropolis of German Valley, Illinois (population right around 400), a sweet pastor’s wife by the name of Ruthann Poppen taught FTY ("Fred the Youngest" of the five Barthel brothers) a little song to memorize the order of the books of the Bible.

Thirty years later, Fred taught Sophie and me the song–and now we’re teaching it to the children in our church’s co-op.

I just You-Tubed a video of Soph singing it so that if the kids want to practice during the week they can–and I thought you might enjoy it too:



Hope you’re enjoying your Labor Day! We slept late, Lili and I took a long walk in misty rain (nice! we hardly EVER get rain around here!), did a puzzle, played a little violin, and now we’re all relaxing and enjoying a quiet afternoon.

Blessings to you & yours!
– Tara B.

Our family started reading the C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia books today and when Tumnus (the faun / half man-half goat) was introduced, Sophie said:

“That’s like a Sphinx! Half-man / half-lion!”

I totally chuckled that she would draw that analogy because until I Googled it, I wasn’t even sure exactly what a Sphinx was. Ahhhh–just one of a million things that Sophie will teach me in life, I am sure.

Right now Fred and Sophie are knocking on all of the backs of all of our closets just in case.

Happily yours,
Tara B.

We’re still loving doing the First Catechism with Sophia every day. (Although I’m starting to seek counsel as to what we should have her work on memorizing next, since it seems as though she might be done with all 150 questions in the next few months. We already do other Bible memory verses and we started memorizing a poem a week too–but I was thinking of something LONG and EXTENDED so that we have to really work at it. Maybe an entire BOOK of the Bible? Hmmmmmmmmmm .... Please let me know if you have any ideas!)

ANYWAY ...

What made me think of the Catechism was the fact that this morning as I walked Lili, I was thinking about:

Q. 94: How should you keep the Lord’s Day?
A. I should rest from my daily work and faithfully worship God.

And I was further reflecting on how pleasant it will be to actually get to REST today because Fred (WISELY!) helped me to be diligent yesterday after we got home from our long family bike ride. All I wanted to do was RELAX but he encouraged me to work hard and THEN relax. He reminded me that I will enjoy the Sabbath even more if I am diligent with my duties today. And he was RIGHT. I worked for HOURS to do laundry, scrub bathrooms, remake beds, dust, wipe, swiffer, pay bills, reconcile off our month on Quicken, etc. etc. And today will be so much more RESTFUL (and pleasant!) as a result.

Another thing I was grateful for this morning was that I didn’t lose my second Golden Retriever this week! I could have, though, very easily because one of the mornings when Lili and I took orders to the post office on our morning walk, I THOUGHT I had looped her leash through the bike rack (like usual)–but when I came out (cars zipping in and out, people everywhere, two VERY busy streets RIGHT THERE) ... she was sitting right next to the bike rack WITH HER LEASH ATTACHED TO NOTHING. I must’ve looped it into AIR–but there she sat. OH! I know that really smart dogs do this every day–but we didn’t choose Lilikoi for her brains and I was SHOCKED that she was just sitting there, safe and sound. What a grace.

Of course, the thing I’m looking forward to the most today is gathering corporately and hear God’s Word preached by our wonderful intern, Bryce Waller, and to worship and pray with our church family! What a gift of God’s mercy that we have the freedom and privilege to worship publicly. This freedom was bought at a great price, as I was reminded of again yesterday when I was at my friends' home and saw their son’s Purple Heart framed with the photo of him being treated on the battlefield, his fellow soldiers encircling him and the medic, still firing away at the enemy around them.

This is the psalm that is framed with the photo and the Purple Heart:

"For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways." Psalm 91:11

Sophie said that God kept that bullet from doing even more damage and of course she is right. But oh oh oh. I just don’t have words to say.

And so I’ll stop! Time to get our family out the door to church–

Enjoy your Sabbath!

Yours,
Tara B.

One of my favorite people in the world is Ajith Fernando. This quiet, gentle, giant of a man of faith serves Youth for Christ with passion, brilliance, and faithful, humble, love. I never fail to learn when I read anything he writes–and I am always drawn to worship Christ.

I think I may have posted this essay he wrote on "Leaders as In-House Peacemakers" a few years back (can you believe I’ve blogged over 1,200 posts?!)–but it’s so good that I wanted to share it again. (Please note that the bolded sections are my emphases, not Pastor Fernando’s.)

Hope your weekend is restful and enjoyable!

Yours,
Tara B.

LEADERS AS IN-HOUSE PEACEMAKERS
by Ajith Fernando

I have found that one of the most important roles of leaders is to be “in-house peacemakers,” that is, to lead in solving unity problems within the group they lead. This priority is seen in the high priestly prayer of Jesus when he prayed asking that his disciples be one so that the world may believe (John 17:11, 22). Paul also expressed this priority when he said, “complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (Philip. 2:2). Something of his joy was gone when believers did not dwell in unity. So he urges them to become one again. Later, using emphatic language this time, he says, “I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord” (Philip. 4.2)

WHY THIS IS SO IMPORTANT FOR LEADERS
I can say that in my over twenty-six at my job, maintaining unity among the YFC leaders has been the most demanding challenge I have had. A dear friend of mine, who is both the CEO of a bank and an Assembly of God pastor, once told me, “The most important task of a leader is to keep the team united.”

Leaders are essentially enablers: they enable others to do the work that takes their group/church forward. Few things hinder the forward march of a group as much as disunity within the group. It causes emotional and spiritual exhaustion. Despite its great cost Christian ministry is a gloriously exciting work that thrills the heart of the minister. What more exciting thing could one do than to be carried along by the fresh wind of the Spirit. But disunity grieves and quenches the Spirit. Rather than being joyously carried along by God’s Spirit, we have to grind out our work through sheer human effort. That is exhausting. And, working without joy, we become irritable and lash out at people, especially those who we think are not working as hard as we are. Through that we lose our spiritual credibility and also struggle with the guilt that accompanies these outbursts. Toil, guilt and anger with colleagues are a sure formula for burn-out.

So disunity must be confronted the moment it emerges and dealt with as a matter of urgency. I think this is one reason why we leaders end up so tired (smile)! Disunity has a nasty way of surfacing when we are most busy! We could lay aside the peacemaking role by saying that we are too busy and tired. That is what many of us do, but the consequences of this neglect are terrible. Like Jesus and Paul, leaders must take the first steps in initiating a discussion when even a hint of disunity is sensed. We may end up tired, but the unity that results gives us the freedom of the Spirit. I would any day take on tiredness in exchange for this loss of the freedom of the Spirit. When we are free, we are joyful, and joy is perhaps the most wonderful treasure one can have on earth. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” (Psalm 133:1).

Of course, we must try and catch up on the rest we lost as a result of the peacemaking effort (This is what I will try to do in a few minutes!). When we neglect rest we break a law of God and therefore that neglect should be classed as a sin.

Doing my part to foster unity in YFC is an area in which I have failed often. And most often the reason for my failure has been that I have not considered a problem that surfaced as urgent when it really was urgent. The reason for my neglect is that when I find out about the problem I think, “That is a minor matter,” and because I am very busy and terribly absent minded, it just slips out of my mind. A few days (and sometimes weeks) later I find that the hurt person is still hurt over the problem and is now also hurt with me because I have not done anything about it even though I knew about it. If something we consider a minor matter causes a member to be hurt, and thus jeopardises the unity of the group, that issue immediately becomes a major matter. After so many years of ministry I still keep making this error regularly. In fact, that is what prompted me to write this article! (By reading this you have become privy to a confession!!).

WHEN MEMBERS LEAVE US
Let me also say that I think one of the hardest times in the life of a leader is when a member of our group leaves unhappily. Actually it is one of the hardest times for the whole group-the potential for the rest of the team to become demotivated and discouraged and discouraged at such a time is immense. We may think that this person is totally wrong in his or her attitude. But we are leaders, and that means that when these angry people came to work for us we took on the responsibility of shepherding them-of looking after them. The fact that they are now mad at us does not take away our shepherding responsibility. In fact, it shows that this project of looking after this particular member has seen some failure.

We must do all we can to salvage the situation. And one of the things we can do is to ensure that the one leaving us is on the path to healing from the pain resulting from involvement with us. One key to healing is telling us what they feel. They had spent their years and their energy working with us, and now it is very hard for them to leave unhappily. They should be given the opportunity of telling the full story of why they are leaving. If we have strong personalities we could overwhelm the sharing persons by responding to their accusations so strongly that they are at a loss for words. We can avoid an embarrassing and humiliating situation that way, but we don’t help to heal this person’s wounds. We have acted selfishly.

The commercial world has recently discovered the value of the “exit interview.” It is a pity that the church has not caught on to that yet. If they have not had an opportunity to unburden themselves by telling us what is on their mind, those things will remain as a festering wound that could cause severe bitterness and severe spiritual and ministerial crippling.

They will go to their next group with unhealed wounds which will erupt when touched. Often the result is that very soon they leave their new group too. They become “evangelical grasshoppers”-and what a common phenomenon that is today!

I can tell you that these exit interviews can be devastating to the leader. Perhaps you have tried hard to be fair, but this person views you as having acted very unfairly. But if it helps in the recovery of the angry member, then it is our duty to take on the devastation in love. After all, that person’s vulnerability and uncertainty, as he or she goes in search of a new group, is often more serious than our pain. Besides, does not the good shepherd lay down his life for the sheep (John 10:11)? Dying-experiencing pain, inconvenience, tiredness on behalf of those we lead-is one of the primary callings of Christian ministry.

THEOLOGY-DRIVEN PEACEMAKING
Through these many years I have had numerous conflict situations both in family life and in the ministry. During those times there have been three important theological principles that have given me hope and encouraged me to persevere, even when the going has been really tough. It is our theology that gives us the courage to do the tough things that the biblical lifestyle demands of us, even though emotionally we may not be inclined towards doing them.

This is a key point, because our so-called post-modern generation has been described “as an instinctually stimulated generation where people prefer to feel than to think” (Laurence Wood). Now this feature of society may influence our evangelistic styles, but our lifestyle and decision-making must always be theologically (that is, biblically) driven. Some are saying today that this “Biblicism” is simply a part of the evangelical heritage from the so-called modern era and that it can therefore be modified. We cannot do that because this is the way of life that God’s Word prescribes for us (2 Tim. 3:16-17). So this is an area where we Evangelicals must be counter-cultural. Not to be Bible driven in our decision-making is to be syncretistic.

It looks like I have got caught up in a digression, but it is an intentional one. I believe the reason why the Evangelical church today is lazy about striving for peace (Eph. 4:3) is that she is not skilled in the art of having the Bible overcome natural fleshly inclinations such as the inclination is to avoid the unpleasantness of confronting disunity.

Here then are the three theological principles.

1. What unites us as members of the body of Christ is much, much more powerful and influential in determining our actions than what divides us. Ephesians 4:4-6 says that what unites us is the motivation to being eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit (4:3). This theological motivation causes us to approach the problem with confidence even though the conflict may be huge.

2. Because God is sovereign over the affairs of this world, however serious the problem, he is able to turn it to good if we let him. So we work with believing that good will come out of this if we are obedient. Because unity is the will of God, it should come into our reckoning when we think of the goodness that will come out of the conflict.

3. However deep the hurt, we know that God’s love is greater than that pain and than the unkindness that caused it. This gives us the courage to forgive those who have hurt us and to strive for reconciliation rather than to strive to win the immediate battle. We can win the battle to retrieve our wounded ego and lose the war for kingdom principles. True success is measured not from temporary triumphs in individual battles but from the triumph of the agenda of the kingdom. It is sobering to note that this agenda encompasses every member of the body of Christ, even the one who is now our enemy.

Are you a leader? Then devote yourself to in-house peacemaking. Be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephes. 4:3).

Strong language again from Paul! This is urgent business in the Pauline understanding of ministry.

Ajith Fernando
Youth for Christ, 129/1b High Level Road, Kirulapone, Colombo 5,
Sri Lanka

BTW–If you asked for one of my Free Favorite CCEF Booklets and haven’t yet received it, you should drop me an email and let me know. I sent them a long time ago and some of you didn’t confirm your address with me so I might not have had a current address for you.

(Hint, hint if your first initial is an “M” and you live in Texas because I just received your booklet back in the mail today as having a wrong address. Oops! Please email me your address and I’ll resend.)

Just as a little FYI–in general, I don’t track snail-mail addresses for y'all because I just can’t imagine our family having enough $$$ to ever do a “real mail” mailing. I just keep your email addresses in our little family address book (NEVER to be shared with ANYONE of course!) ... so even if I’ve sent you things in the past, if you want to actually receive something from me and I say, “Please make sure I have your mailing address,” I mean it.

Must scoot now! Big ol' writing project due today and there are only a few more hours in today left.

Blessings!
– Tara B.

What a week! Has yours been as full as mine? I feel like I haven’t had two consecutive minutes to just SIT and BE – but I’m sure that’s an exaggeration. My exhaustion level is undoubtedly compounded by a (hmmmm–how to phrase this delicately?) more challenging than usual certain time of the month. Blergh.

On my walk with Lili this morning, I was really praying for DILIGENCE today, this weekend ... really for the next ten days or so. I feel like if I could just make it over this hump of:

- Getting our school year started

- Reviewing, editing, and finalizing the Peacemaker version of my video series

- Helping Fred during a crazy-busy time at work that is compounded in its difficulty by one of his employees quitting last week

(Hey! Do you know any godly men or women with strong writing/marketing skills who would like to live in GORGEOUS Montana and work for the WORLD’S NICEST GUY at a cool peacemaking ministry?? Please let me know if you do! )

- Prepping to teach five workshops at the Peacemaker Conference

- Updating our estate planning documents (are yours current??)

- Getting our 2007 family scrapbook/photo album finalized (Ooh! I HATE it when I don’t have our family’s album done by June of the next year!)

... if I could just get through this “stuff”, then maybe my daily normal challenges (mommy-hood; wife-hood; being an encouraging and helpful friend, church member, and family member; continuing to work on my health goals and spiritual disciplines; serving my community, etc. etc. etc.) MIGHT be doable.

But the truth is that this huge big ol' pile of GRAYNESS/STUFF that needs my attention really tempts me to SLACK OFF AND HIDE AWAY. Veg out. (Really honestly? EAT.)

'Course, at the end of that lazy, gluttonous, slothful day, ALL OF MY TO-DO’S WOULD REMAIN. I would just feel MORE burdened because of my legitimate GUILT and I’d have less energy to tackle my duties because I would be out of shape and unhealthy.

AND SO ...

Today I am praying for the grace to worship Jesus and trust in His grace.

- To love my husband and children–and NOT view them as “to-do-items” to check off of my list.
- For diligence–but not crazy-Tara-running-around-ness.
- For wisdom to know what redemptive, God-honoring REST looks like for me. (Not escapism. Just godly rest.)

Hope your Friday is a good one!

Sending you love–
Tara B.