"Here to There Life Coaching"

Delighted to be featured on “The Joyful Life” Blog today, the companion blog to “The Joyful Life Magazine,” a quarterly lifestyle print publication for Christian Women seeking the JOY found by inviting Jesus into our everyday lives.”

Please join me today as I share my story of finding freedom not from pain, but in the midst of it, as I surrender to God’s abundant GRACE.......

 

I don't like to suffer. I never have. I never will. I am, however, intimately acquainted with pain. God in His sovereignty introduced the two of us long ago. To continue reading click here. 

 

   It began harmlessly at first, a chance encounter at a local nursery that awakened in me a desire that continues to call my name to this day. In my mind's eye I can still see its small cluster of delicate pink buds, dancing wildly as the wind and the rain pummeled the delicate stalks of the Souvenir de la  Malmaison rosebush. I knew then I had to have it - this absolutely perfect gift of beauty - for our garden.My husband and I were in the final stages of designing and building our dream - a lovely Bed and Breakfast...

It has been a strange kind of day. I had lunched earlier with a dear friend, who no longer lived close by, so I cherished our get togethers all the more. While at lunch, we were discussing how neither of us really wanted to serve "inside" the church anymore, but wanted to go "outside" its' walls to reach the lost and hurting with the love of Christ.

Later that evening, my husband and I were sitting in our living room eating dinner, while watching the evening news. We heard someone shouting outside and at first we ignored it, thinking it was just a neighborhood kid playing around. When the shouting got louder and more insistent, we went to the window to see what was going on. We saw a woman standing outside our gate, yelling and waving a flashlight. My husband went outside first and I followed behind.

I’be been thinking a lot about words lately and the mystery of them.

Both the spoken word and the written word have always intrigued me.

I still stand in awe of the way a young child learns to speak the language of his or her parents. The way that language just seems to be absorbed as if by osmosis, the way one wondrous day a word comes forth, and then another and another, finally to be followed by a sentence and before long a conversation.

Each Mother's Day I like to remind each of my three (now-grown) children of the sacrifices I've made as a mother, both as they came into this world, and as I raised them to be the fine young men and women they have become.