Fingerprint Friday: Courage and Loose Teeth

By MAD21

My oldest has had a loose tooth for what seems like forever. It's been a month or two. This is her first loose tooth. Well, technically it's her second, but the first one isn't even close to coming out yet.

She's been working for weeks wiggling and wiggling trying to get this tooth to come out. So excited, though I'm not sure exactly what she was excited for. Some of it, I think, is that all of her classmates have lost at least one tooth, some are on their third or fourth.

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Fingerprint Friday: Daddy's Love

By MAD21

It's not the best picture, but you get the idea... The man is clearly covered with the fingerprints of God.

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Fingerprint Friday: Time With My Children

By MAD21

I am so blessed to be able to stay home with my kids. I love every minute of it. Yes, we have bad days just like everyone else, but I'm glad to have those, too. I'm glad that I am the one who gets to see most of the "firsts," go to the playground whenever we can get it into the schedule, and I get to be a major influence in their little lives and not another caregiver (not sure if that's always a good thing for them!).

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Love Songs

By Sarah (Living Between the Lines)

In life, there are these rare but brilliant moments in time when you know that you have experienced something special and unspeakable…  Sitting on the porch of a cabin in the woods, listening to the raindrops slapping the leaves.  Watching snow fall during the quiet dark of the middle of the night.  Swinging in a hammock with your eyes closed, feeling the hot breeze move across your face while the crickets and frogs screech and scream at each other…

One day last August, I came home from work at the end of one of the hottest days of the year in Eastern North Carolina. It was the kind of heat that could almost melt your tractor tires, but the local farmers had spent the day harvesting and so I could see the dust lingering in the almost-breezeless air.  As I pulled into my driveway, the sun sank behind the trees, leaving behind only a faint puff of pink afterglow.  I sat behind my steering wheel, watching the pink fade to dark and I felt like a child who had been told a secret.  But what was the secret?  It was at the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t quite reach it. 

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One Word At A Time: Love

By MAD21

I read a book a long time ago called Love is a Decision. It had a significant impact on me at the time, and many of it's lessons still stick with me today. I highly recommend the book for everyone, married or not.

It's most important lesson, I believe, is in its title. That love is a decision. Not always a feeling. Many of us have people in our lives that are difficult to have relationships with, but it's important that we get along. Whether they are family, spouses of good friends, people we serve in ministry with, or people we work with, we have to choose to behave lovingly toward them all. Why? Because that's what God does for us. Even with all of our bad choices and behavior, he still chooses to love us. And we must live by his example the best we can.

Sometimes I think the hardest time to make this decision for love is when it's your immediate family. The ones you interact with everyday. I think we have different expectations for them. Emotions run strong in a home, deep love, or deep hurt. Spike Jones once sang, "You always hurt the one you love." Why is that, do you ever wonder? There are things I see my family doing to each other that they'd never do to a co-worker or classmate. Why does it seem to be ok to treat each other so poorly sometimes?

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