Clever Characters

I remember a conversation with my Life Coach about ten years ago. I was hurting. My heart was breaking. I truly thought it was more than I could bear. What he said was life changing. "Stop carrying this in your mind. Move it to your heart and let God carry it with you. Your mind was not made to carry this. God works in ways your mind cannot understand. But your heart was made to link with His. He wants to carry this." Fast forward 7 years. The amount of pain and disappointment we have walked through as a family makes the pain of ten years ago seem like a pinprick. Cancer, unemployment, death of a parent, miscarriage, more unemployment, difficult people, dementia, heath issues, car trouble and that is the stuff I can list in a public forum. The difficult path my family is on includes extended family members as well. About the time I think things are making a turn for the better there is more news to process and release to God. When sharing details with a friend she commented, ...

Tuesday night I went upstairs to get Katie Beth for dinner. I found her seated in the family room with her father deep in conversation. When KB turned around I could tell she had been crying. As Brad looked at me he said, "I think you should ask your mom about this too." And so she did. "Mom, why did Adam and Eve have to sin? What made them want to do things their way instead of God's way. Why didn't God stop them? And now look around at our world, so many people are hurting from sin." Tears ran down her face. I won't go into my response because I want to focus on her wisdom. At eight she knows that individual sin impacts generations. She knows sin is the choice of not yielding our will to God's desire. In short she understands the root of sin is self. AKA selfish, self-reliant, self serving... Sin, the decision to allow "my will" into the driver's seat instead of "God's will", separates me from God. Sometimes my driving ...

I took Katie Beth and two of her friends to the circus this summer. I jotted down the following observations while I was there. 1. People attending actually dress as clowns. WHOLE families showed up in clown attire. Which leads me to the obvious question: Why? It is 5 million degrees and the way your clown make up is running down your face scares me. 2. Watching the acrobats perform I was reminded of a fantastic book I read this summer. Think Differently, Live Differently by Bob Hamp. You should read it. 3. What leads one to the following declaration, " Mom when I grow up I want to train zebras." ? 4. When we were led in the National anthem I made the scientific discovery that by and large Texans can sing pretty darn good. 5. Not sure what this is about but I was very jealous of the sheen of the horses' hair. Seriously how do they get that beautiful shine? I think my hair is having a mid-life crisis. 6. Souvenirs: Boys want a sword. Girls want a stuffed animal. Hmmm, boy...

I have battled faulty thinking off and on my whole life. The flow goes like this. I believe God loves me BUT He HAS TO to love me for crying out loud by definition HE IS LOVE. Therefore God's love is all about HIM and not necessarily about ME. The thinking discounts His love for ME and makes me feel as if it is an obligation or chore to love me. The same thinking warps how I think Brad sees me. It goes like this. He has to love me because he is my husband. He promised God he always would. Deep sigh, but does he even like me? Separating my thinking from God's truth has been very difficult. One of the most comforting verses in the Bible for me is "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;" Proverbs 3:5. In my mind's eye I picture myself placing all my weight on a pile of words that explode. And then I hit the ground, HARD. As you can imagine this unbridled thinking is a far cry from the abundant life God wants for me. When I learn...

When Brad and I were first dating we had a conversation about money that we have referred back to many times. I was teaching kindergarten at the time and sharing my frustration about teaching the value of twenty-five cents. He pulls a coin out of his pocket and said,"Deana just hand them a quarter." I thanked him for the solution, pocketed the newly aquired quarter, rolled my eyes dramatically and said, "or 25 pennies, two dimes, and a nickel, fifteen pennies and a dime, there are many correct answers to this one question!" He grinned and playfully said, "I guess there is more to it than just a quarter. I'm glad I'm not the Kindergarten Teacher." To this day when we face a challenge and are getting frustrated during our brainstorming Brad will pop out the word, "Quarter" several times in a row and we will laugh. "Quarter,quarter" is an instant reminder that life's questions can have more than one right answer. Recently I hav...

I got a confirmation e-mail for my daughter's session to Horse Camp in Dallas. I looked through it and noticed the contact number is a 512 area code. That's Austin, I thought to myself. Must be her cell. When we moved from Dallas to Fort Worth I did not change my cell number. In fact the area codes listed in the title are friends of mine who no longer live in that area code but kept their number. We keep our numbers due to contractual obligations. Or we keep it to remain connected to our contacts. And of course convenience plays into this as well. It occurred to me that these 3 digits are part of our story. They tell where we are from. As a life coach I often hear the following. "These people knew me at this stage of my life but that is not me anymore. I have changed. I am afraid to reconnect with them. I hope they do not see me how I was." Their fear seems to stem from a moral failure,a dissolved marriage or the perception of unmet potential. The basic question is ...

On this particular Saturday I was downstairs in the office listening to a podcast. I thought I heard Brad and Katie Beth laughing really hard through the headphones. I WAS WRONG. Brad came down with a look on his face that is best described as terror. He needed me upstairs. Katie Beth had been crying really hard, not laughing. As he was blow drying her hair she leaned on a vase causing it to shatter. Her finger was split wide open. Blood was everywhere. Let me restate that A LOT OF BLOOD WAS EVERYWHERE!!! The floor, the sink, the counter, the mirror, their clothes...EVERYWHERE. I applied pressure to the cut. Eventually we determined that a trip to the E.R. was not necessary. Brad began cleaning up the blood and broken glass. Eventually the blood clotted and I sent Katie Beth to her room to recover. As we continued cleaning the mess Brad and I shared a tense conversation. He was angry because he had told her not to lean on the vase and she disobeyed. "Deana she could have..........