HIS FINEST WHISPERS

  "Goodnight, you old bad guy."  Not only did I cringe when I heard it, I corrected him. “Goodnight, you old bad guy” is what my 4 year old son said to a good family friend of ours, Alex, a young man who frequently visits my parents home. Instantly I said, “Wesley, that is disrespectful language. You say, ‘goodnight Alex’.” I could see both a bit of embarrassment and confusion on his face and I remember thinking, “I feel like I just hurt his feelings.” I hate that feeling. I hate feeling as if I’ve hurt my child…I think all moms do. He looked over at me sort of puzzled as to why he was being corrected and I too felt a little awkward. I mean after all, he had just spent the last 15 minutes playing with Mr. Alex in a game of “Let’s capture him! Yes, let’s get the bad guys. You go over there and I’ll go over here. I’ll get you, bad guy!” He was simply saying goodnight to his pal who had been playing the “bad guy”. For Wes, “goodnight you old bad guy” was in no way...

My child will never know the “normal” family. He will never grow up in God’s biblical family design.   As a single mom of a 3 year old, this is something that I have grieved over. I grew up with 2 godly parents who have been faithful to each other all of their lives.   They taught my brother and me about the Lord and the Word every day as we grew up. Even now, they continue to pour Truth into their 3 grandchildren, my son and his 2 cousins. Growing up, I never thought to myself, “I really hope I have a baby out of wedlock so that my child will miss out on all that I had growing up.” Um, no, that's absurd. I didn’t fantasize much about having a family as a young girl, but in the back of my mind, I always just assumed that I would and it always looked similar to the way I had it. I mean, that is what my brother did. He married a godly woman, they faithfully prayed and had 2 beautiful kids. This was what my family did. This is how we were raised. This is who we...

  The kingdom belongs to such as these. My kid is 3 ½ and he loves music. I mean, he really loves music. Right now, peeking into his playroom, he has 2 ukeleles, 1 acoustic guitar, 1 electric guitar, a piano, a keyboard, a drum set and a percussion set. You would think he would get tired of it, but nope…around our house the theme is consistently, “Keep Calm and Play Music”. That is what he does. At Christmas 2 years ago, my sweet parents had driven 3 hours from their home to have Christmas up in the Dallas/Fort Worth area with all of us. My brother, sister in law and I live near each other, so we had all gathered together at my brother’s house to celebrate Christmas. My parents, as generous as they are, had brought many different presents for Wes to open on Christmas Eve. Everyone had their presents lined up in front of them. As we began taking turns opening them one at a time, Wesley had his turn. He opened up his first present to find a large fire truck puzzle. He l...

To Lady A, the mom who forgave my kid today, a thank you doesn’t seem sufficient. My kid has inherited his fiery temper from me.   I would love to pass the buck here and blame this fit throwing behavior on to his father, but in fact his dad is even, slow to anger and even when he’s angry, he doesn’t lose it, so I only have the mirror to look into to find where this outrageous behavior comes from. Today you were CALM . Our two sons were playing tug of war with a belt and eventually the fun ended and when my kid couldn’t get the belt back, he resorted to his sinful nature and hit your sweet son. I could see you in the corner of my eye and you stood there quiet and calm. I am well aware that inside every mama is a bear, so while I’m not sure what level your bear was at when this incident occurred, you set your claws aside and stayed calm. Thank you. Today you were GRACIOUS . I went over to get my adorable perpetrator and had him apologize to your little one immediat...

I don’t think there is anything in the world more thrilling than seeing God. Though He might not make himself visible to the eye, He unquestionably shows His hand through circumstances. I have a friend whose name is Barbara. She is one of the neatest ladies I know, and when I think about the reason I love to be around her, one main thing comes to mind. She always has the greatest stories to tell about the Lord. I used to think, ‘Wow, God speaks to her a lot…I wish He spoke to me that way.’ Years later, as I was struggling in my day-to-day job, I was encouraged by a friend to always look for my “God Moment” of the day. That way, I wouldn’t focus on the mundane things at work, but I would look for something God was doing. As I began to deliberately look for my ‘God Moments’, miraculously I began to find them. I realized later that THIS was indeed what my friend Barbara has always done. God doesn’t speak to her more than the rest of us, she just chooses to look for Him in the every...