My heart is at home
Packing up for a 9.5 hour drive to Normal, Illinois, to speak at Hearts at Home. I’m so excited. This is one of the best mom parties of the year. Great speakers. Amazing music. Encouragement. And lots of chocolate!
My good friend and Proverbs 31 Ministries team sister will also be there, which just makes it better.
I don’t normally drive, but I look forward to a time of just hanging out and praying and talking to God about the women I will meet.
The guy I love is climbing on a jet plane the day after I get home. He’s working on addtl. training for his job as a counselor with youth who struggle with addictions. It’s rare that I go very long without seeing him, and I know I’ll miss him like crazy, but I’m excited that he’s doing something he absolutely loves.
When I get home I plan to play in the dirt for three or four days and plant some bulbs. Sometimes we just need to take time to do nothing but enjoy the small things around us. I can’t remember the last time that happened, which can only mean it’s past due.
I hope you will pray with me as I connect with these beautiful moms, and new friends as I talk about the things I love most — faith and family.
Posted by Suzie @
7:35 pm |
Moms, you matter
I’m sitting in my “cave” at the library, the lights down low as the fluorescent lights shine brightly just a few feet away. I’m listening to a little country music on Pandora, not usually my style but it fits the rainy day outside.
My weekend was full. Speaking. A wedding. Friends and family.
Now I’m turning my focus to preparing for Hearts at Home. It’s an amazing conference for moms. Thousands of moms across the nation attend, but it was started by a mom who needed other people. A mom who hoped that her small Bible study might be successful. A mom that didn’t try to make her home perfect or even her life perfect before she opened her home to the women who were seeking the same thing she was — encouragement, friendship, support.
And now it’s an Intl. conference that pulls in women from all over the world, and it reaches outside of Normal, IL to Minnesota, California, Michigan women, but also to women in Budapest, Hungary, in Vienna, Austria, in Weisbaden, Germany.
How in the world does that happen? (more…)
Posted by Suzie @
12:12 pm |
it makes me happy
I saw them!
Green shoots pushing through the ground. Little buds of yellow peeking through. After one of the coldest winters Oklahoma has experienced in a while, it appears spring just might show up after all!
Some girls like diamonds. Others like shoes. I love flowers.
Not the kind that show up in a vase, but the ones that crop up in gardens, along the highway, and if I’m lucky in my own front yard.
I’m missing the feeling of dirt running through my fingers.
I’m missing sitting in the gentle spring sun and planting Impatiens and Gerber Daisies and a myriad of other species. I drove by an Atwoods today and saw naked trees in green pots, and I’m already thinking about where to place one.
For me, spring is life. It’s warmth. It’s joy.
It makes me happy.
Posted by Suzie @
12:15 pm |
a life of content
I’m speaking on Saturday to a group of women locally. It’s a conference on mind, body, and spirit, and I’m the “spirit” part. My topic is Living a Life of Content, and it’s a personal message that I have to keep close.
It’s challenging when you are a communicator and your passion for the topic fizzles.
Or worse, when you just keep on talking. . . (more…)
Posted by Suzie @
3:22 pm |
Think, Grow: Thin Places
Little Mary was in a thin place. Mom was broken. Daddy wasn’t daddy anymore, and the substitutes for daddy weren’t enough. The boys who picked her up at her babysitter’s house did bad things to her day after day, and she was too little, too powerless to make them stop.
Drugs. Alcohol. Addiction. All part of her world at no invitation of her own.
How does this shape the heart and mind of a little girl with no choices? And where is God?
Thin Places is the memoir of my friend, and author, Mary DeMuth. I know that Mary is an author to watch because her words make me forget that I know her. Instead, I am drawn into the portrait painted with powerful words and imagery and stark honesty in each of her books.
Her story is veiled in other books like Watching the Tree Limbs, the story of a little girl sexually abused under the massive branches and shade of an old tree near her home. But in Thin Places we meet Mary as that little girl, and her journey of faith toward a God she wasn’t sure she trusted, and her journey of intimacy with a man and with her family and friends, when her past taught her that people only wanted to harm her or abandon her.
Whether you’ve lived in those thin places or not, you know someone who is. You’ll never say again, “She should just forgive” or “Why can’t he just trust God?” when you walk in the shoes of a broken little girl grown into a woman of faith.
It’s a must read. For you to see another perspective. For me to once again thank God that He is a transforming God. For each of us to see grace and faith and healing in the Thin Places of life.
Posted by Suzie @
12:41 pm |
stop reading your Bible
Don’t you love it when Scripture comes to life? My friend, Lysa TerKeurst, shares how the Bible had become a duty in her book, Becoming More. She decided not to read her Bible anymore.
Huh?
She didn’t want to read it as a book, or mark it off on her to-do list. So she stopped reading it, and started seeing it as an opportunity to connect with God. She sat down and read maybe one Scripture, or perhaps that turned to much more. But her prayer was “show me how to live”.
And He did.
I’ve been studying Romans this week. Some mornings I talk to God about what I’ve learned through one scripture. At other times, I’m drawn into the story of Paul and his dialogue with skeptics.
His words are interesting because of his experience. Paul had arrived in Rome straight out of the crossroads, a place where he was in limbo for two years plus. Not free. Not totally imprisoned. Shipwrecked. Hurt by church people who once admired him. (more…)
Posted by Suzie @
10:49 am |
