Sunday, August 31, 2008

Women of Faith and Grace

A couple of weekends ago, I had the opportunity to experience God's amazing love and grace through the Women of Faith conference. I had always heard about it but it was my very first time to attend. There are so many things that encouraged me and warmed my heart. It is so hard to pick just one thing that stood out. Patsy Clairmont completely blew me away with her firecracker personality, her wonderful humor, and great insight to God's word and to what is relevant to women today. She spoke of the woman in the Bible that had been stooped over, crippled for many years. ( see Luke 13: 10-17) She related to us as women we sometimes live our life like that. We live stooped over lives; carrying our burdens as wives, mothers, sisters, and friends. We finally come to the point where we meet Jesus and He heals us of being 'crippled' and we have the opportunity to stand up and shout and thank Him for what He has done and what do we do? We continue to live stooped over and unthankful. What words of wisdom and relativety to my own life.

Another aspect of the weekend was the wonderful music. I would go back just for that. I am a singer just waiting to come out any chance I can get so it was such a blessing to hear these women praise God with their voices. Natalie Grant, Sandi Patty, and Nicole C. Mullen each spoke of the grace of God in their own lives. What inspiring words. As I attended the conference, I had been carrying in the back of my mind some words from our worship leader that really struck a chord with me. He had said that the more you and I are around the Word, the more 'churched' we are, the less aware we become of how God's grace touched our lives. We lose that excitement and wonder at God's grace that was once there when we first came to know Him. As I thought of his words and experienced God's grace, I was very humbled. I do not ever want to take that for granted. I want to always remember what God's grace looks like in my life. Nicole spoke of the woman in the Bible who was bleeding and she wanted to just touch Jesus. To be made whole. I want to daily remember when I was first touched by Jesus and my life was made whole.

This weekend encouraged me in ways that I never thought possible. To God be the glory!

the concert





Those who know me know that I am a huge Keith Urban fan to the very core. Tim's cousins wives (my cousin-in-laws, I guess that is what you call them!) and I went to a Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban concert. What a fun time! We got to know a little more about each other and enjoy some great music...not to mention great seats! I would not trade it for the world. I had a blast and realized these women are not just family, they are my friends.
p.s. more pics of Kenny to follow :)

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

A Lesson

Have you ever had one of those weeks that you feel completely overwhelmed and such a mess? Well...it happened to me a couple weeks ago. It started off great. A wonderful and beautiful time spent with my sister and her family. A time of connecting and sharing. Another beautiful moment happened that monday night at a restaurant in Ft.Worth. Moments shared. Experiences heard. Wisdom given. Then...all of sudden it happened. The moment where I could not breathe and everything started staring me in the face. As I took a breath and started to make sense of it all, the tears started to come . In that moment of despair I realized that the peace, the peace that I have spoken about before, was becoming more real to me. This had been a hard week for me yet I finally caught a glimpse of the here and now and knew that God was growing me to be more like Him. Each day I am learning this...one breath at a time.

the beach



We had a lot of fun at the beach this year. William had an amazing time- boogie boarding, body surfing, and jumping off a 15ft. diving platform into a spring that is 68 degrees year round. There were lots of firsts for this trip to Florida and we look forward to many more!