Parenting is a lot like gardening… The gardener tills the ground and plants a seed, within days a sprout pushes up through the soil and spreads two small leaves. The gardener waters it and the sun heats the soil. Soon blossoms appear followed by baby melons. It only takes ninety days to grow a melon. …
LOOKING FOR SURPRISES After years of witnessing God in action it no longer surprises me when I see Him in the details, neither has it become commonplace for me. Every time it happens my heart soars and often, like my mother before me, I burst out singing the Doxology. “Praise God from whom all blessings …
Garbage Exchanged for Feathers As a preteen, the annual fundraiser for our Pathfinder club was a garbathon. Even before the snow completely melted we began collecting pledges to pick up garbage along a four-mile stretch of road that connected our communities. Besides learning a lesson in hard work, you can be sure that not one of us …
Under the Radar I braced myself as we prepared to land on a small gravel runway. I was nineteen, in the Canadian arctic, beyond civilization, in a land inhabited by grizzly bears. The plan was that my eighteen-year-old pilot friend would return with his mother and then we would hike to the edge of the …
Thank Him Before It Happens Sometimes God lets us sink low to get our attention, then when the time is right picks us up, dusts us off, and lavishes us with His love. Both my husband I were discouraged. It had nearly been a year to the day since we felt God had told us …
Open Your Mouth Wide Our daughter was soon to be leaving for boarding academy. Like many of my stories this came at a time when again the local economy was in decline. Our sole income was from our cabinet shop, and it struggled to stay alive. It was one of those seasons in life where …
God is Good at Math! It was well past midnight, I was tired but couldn’t sleep. Like King Xerxes in the book of Ester I pulled out my dusty “historical records” (my journals) and read. There is a whole journal dedicated to a time when our children were toddlers and the area where we lived …
Tithe and Socks By my desk I have a large stack of journals. They contain my personal history of how God has kept me through trials and personally has taught me that He can be trusted. This morning I picked up the oldest of my journals. The starting date would have put me at age …
Childlike Faith Have you noticed that often the biggest answers to prayer are gifted to children? Our oldest daughter was nearly nine years of age. She and I took one of those precious Mommy and daughter days. We were headed to “town” with our box-van to pick up a load of plywood for our cabinet …
All is Well Eight years ago (in faith) we packed our cabinet shop equipment and what household belongings that would fit into our work truck and moved from Northern Canada to the United States where we purchased property and built a cabinet shop and a house. In faith we had sold our home and made …