Several years ago, my sister-friend Lindsey and I took a kickboxing class. It was fantastic! I felt so empowered from taking this class. My confidence level grew so much and I felt so much stronger. Not that I would ever walk down a dark alley at night anyway, but if I ever have to, because of kickboxing, I feel like I can defend myself.

Kickboxing was a tough class. Our instructor April was this tiny woman who was unbelievably fierce. “Harder, faster!” she would shout as she walked around the classroom. I have to tell you, there is something extraordinarily freeing about punching a paddle and hearing it, POP! Or kicking it in the right spot and hearing the same, satisfactory clap of the paddle.

After moving, I stopped taking kickboxing. But I still did a lot of the exercises April taught us. Lunges and squats are something I have done for years, but April had “add ons” to each exercise.

Lunges and squats for leg day are not the first thing I think about in the mornings when I think, “What all am I going to do today?”

I used to hate leg day. Lunges and squats? Ugh. No thank you. However, over the years I have grown (leg and butt pun intended) to actually enjoy leg day. It’s good for me and I need it. I am still not a fan of deadlift day. Terry even bought a pink deadlift bar for me. Bless his heart, I think

Michala’s pastor’s precious wife sent a video link to Michala, who in turn watched it and sent it to me. The video is of Ed Cash and Steven Taylor who invited Kari Jobe, Cory Asbury, Jonathan and Melissa Helser and Brian and Jenn Johnson of Bethel Music. This video was created April 13, 2020. It is, I guess, a Zoom type call; they’re all talking from their separate homes.

The topic of this video is Heart of the Album | Peace. It’s about 23 minutes long, and it drew me in, from the get go. Ed Cash talks about the idea of the album being something calming; taking many of our favorite worship songs and scaling them back and slowing them down to where even babies and children could fall asleep to the music.

But Jonathan Helser got me. He said when Ed first approached him about the idea of the album and being part of it, he remembered a particular scripture in the Bible he read when he was younger. He remembered when Saul was being tormented by an evil spirit and overwhelmed with anxiety

I’m not going to lie. I have felt like I’m barely keeping my head above water, lately. Between the coronavirus and some other stuff, Terry and I keep looking at each other like, “Is this for real? Are we living in the Twilight Zone?” Some mornings I wake up and replay things in my mind, trying to figure out if I had a bad dream or if this is reality.

I bet you feel something similar.

The enemy wants to isolate us during these times and whisper, “You’re alone. No one else has ever been through this. No one knows how you feel. No one cares.”

Friend, the enemy is a big, fat, ugly liar.

Jesus is with you, so you are not alone. Jesus has been through it. Jesus knows how you feel. Jesus cares.

Sometimes when I really love a verse, I’ll dig deep and look into other translations of it. My Bible is the NIV. (New International Version) So most scriptures I have memorized, I have

I ran a state level campaign years ago for a candidate who was the most difficult candidate with whom I ever worked. This candidate had a full blown, high maintenance/diva personality, and really needed to tone it down. The job I was hired to do was to teach this candidate how to be a candidate. I was not only the campaign manager, you could somewhat say I was a babysitter. The race was considered a “shoe in” win. It was a 97% Republican district so there was no way this candidate could lose. My job was to teach the candidate how to campaign, how to fundraise, how to interact with people, and how to prepare for office, as well as learning the ins and outs of campaigning for the “bigger” seat the party had in mind for this particular candidate, down the road.

When I was first called to meet the candidate at the party headquarters, I did not want to do it. Not even a little. This candidate was obstinate, arrogant, combative and I did not see any good out of my running the campaign, so I turned it down.

Twice.

But the third time, the

We get to stay home to save lives. I get to be with Terry 24/7. I know not everyone is happy about being stuck at home during this time, but I am. We enjoy it.

You see, for so many years, my prayers were for change. My prayers were for protection. My prayers were for deliverance. My prayers were for peace. My prayers were for happiness.

It took a lot of years of praying, but the light at the end of the tunnel was sunshine, not a train coming toward me.

Keep walking through your tunnels. God is listening. Follow His voice which you will find in scripture, and look for the light.

That’s where you’ll find Jesus.

My sister-friend Jessica shared something with me the other night that really helped me. She said, “When I can’t get something out of my head, I close my eyes and visualize physically holding the situation and putting it at Jesus’s feet. Like I walk through the whole scenario - like what I’m wearing and what it feels like and what the room looks like and how I walk and everything.”

I have such comfort knowing my precious sister-friends to whom I turn when I need wise counsel or prayers, have sweet nuggets like this to share with me.

“Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” - Matthew 11:28 (NLT)

Jesus meant those words. Jessica painted the word picture for me. Sometimes it helps to visualize handing over whatever it is weighing us down, and placing it at Jesus’ feet. The night Jessica said that to me, I went into our bedroom, sat on the edge of our bed

Every single time I open social media, I see someone writing about their fears and anxiety. I see people "tired of this," and "ready to get back out there." Some are writing, "What's life going to be and look like now? Will it ever be the same, or are the good days gone and soon forgotten?"

I understand those feelings, I really do, and I cannot predict what the coming weeks, months and years will look like. I have a feeling things will be very different. Permanently? I do not know. But things will certainly be different for a while.

Here's what I do know and claim tightly to during all of this:

"Yet I am confident I will still see the Lord's goodness while

I woke up one morning with such a sense of heaviness. I had a dream about my grandmother and it was just so real. I dreamed I got up and when I walked into the living room, she was sitting there in a recliner (a recliner we don’t have) rocking and I stopped in my tracks. She smiled at me and said, “Well aren’t you going to come give me a hug?”

I could feel her in my dream. I could feel her soft sweat jacket she loved to wear. I could smell her perfume. I could feel the way her hands felt as she held my hands and looked in my eyes. She said to me, “Baby, I want you to remember everything I ever told you. Okay? Remember what I would always say.”

She started to get up and in my dream, I knew she was dead, yet I couldn’t let her go. I kept trying to pull her back toward me, and she turned around still holding my hand, smiled so big and said, “Just remember what I would always say, okay?” And she put her hands on my face and then was gone.

As Terry and I were sipping our coffee, I told him about

When I was little, my mom used to tell me, “If you can go to bed every night having learned at least one thing, then it was a good day.” The importance of learning was crucial in our home. When my brother and I got in any sort of trouble, we had unique punishments. Dad would give us a topic and we would have to write an essay (he determined the number of words) on said topic, and we had to use the Encyclopedia Britannica as our source. We were also grounded, mind you, and for me, I was often grounded from using the phone. This was torture, late 80s and early 90s style.

I can look back now and see Dad played a very big role in my becoming a writer.

I got into a lot of trouble growing up. Mainly for t

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” - C.S. Lewis

This is one of those phrases to stick with me the way oatmeal sticks with you on a cold day. Sometimes we just need the reminder we can get over painful experiences. We just need to picture ourselves crossing monkey bars. You let go at some point and grab onto the next one. And then you do the same thing, over and over until you reach the end. By this point, you can jump off and go over to the swings or the slide.

The letting go part is hard. I know. I have a tendency to want to hold onto things for far too long. Pain, grudges, victories, memories, celebrations, you name it … I probably have a tight

It’s Holy Saturday. Can you fathom what the first Holy Saturday felt like? Miserable. Aching. Full of grief and despair. Broken. Agonizing. Desperate. Full of questions and doubt. Confusing. Dark.

Quiet.

But when I reflect on the deepest meaning of my walk with Jesus, today is a beautiful summary. We wait for the hope we are promised while we wander our way through the darkness. We are still when we since God is listening, and we desperately await His response. We are quizzical and search for His truth amidst the enemy’s doubt. We wonder why God is so silent when we are pouring out our hearts to Him?

Is He there? Is He listening?

The answer is always Yes! God’s silence does not equal God’s disappearance.

Friend, I have been there. I have been in the dark, lonely, painful, wrecked

Today is Good Friday. There is so very much to be said about this day.

As a writer, I love analogies. I love symbolism. I love to look at oxymorons and say out loud, “Ha! That’s an oxymoron!” My sweet Terry is so tolerant of my nerdiness. Anyway, we could easily look at, “Good Friday” and say, “It is an oxymoron. It is not good what they did to our Savior.”

And yet, Jesus knew His death was always part of the plan from His Father.

Last summer, our precious pastor, Steve Lawes shared with us, “Jesus knew who He was, and unless we are settled in who we are and whose we are, we won’t become a servant. Jesus took off the garment of Deity and put on the towel as a servant.” He was explaining this to us based on Jesus washing His Disciples’ feet. As I am reading this passage now and writing today’s devotion, I can’t help but sit here and cry. I am always amazed at what our Savior

"I’m spare change in God’s pocket. He can spend me any way He wants.” - John Wimber

Our pastor, Steve Lawes, has shared this quote with us several times. I love the image. I have to admit, though, I don’t often love the process, though. When God spends me any way He wants, it is often uncomfortable. God sometimes nudges me to do things I do not like doing, or things I feel are exceptionally difficult.

But with His strength, you see, we can do anything.

Take dealing with difficult people, for example. Most of us are well versed in sarcasm, and we like to show off just how fluent we are and how well we have mastered the language … especially when we are dealing with difficult/toxic people. “Flip a coin,” comes to mind when it comes to a snarky reply. Heads, I go full speed ahead with my sarcasm. Tails, I sit back and keep my mouth shut.

Want to know something? If we were to make it a game and flip a coin with the Holy Spirit, it would be tails, every single time.

Every. Single. Time.

Why?

The Holy Spirit does not jive with sarcasm.

When I align myself with

My sweet Terry has discovered through this quarantine life, he can, in fact, enjoy leftovers!

I have been cooking a one pound bag of pinto beans, then using the leftovers for taquitos!

I cooked 1 pound of ground turkey and added chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper. To this mixture, I added a can of chipotle salsa. This has a bit of a

In the 90s, a new name made the rounds in political settings. “RINO.” It stands for, “Republican In Name Only.” The phrase caught on, and people use it without batting an eye now, especially in campaigns. During the 2016 election, my friend Lauren and I were on the phone one day for about two hours. We talked about how much politics had changed since the 2002 campaign where she and I met. We also laughed about the term, RINO, and how weirdly accurate it is for some people.

I was thinking about my friend Lauren this morning. Lauren died last August, and we all miss her, terribly. Early last summer, I sent a link to a dress I liked and asked Lauren, “Could I pull this off?” She said, “Yes. If you were a foot taller. Sleeves like that will just look like you need a running start and a runway to takeoff!” Lauren had a wicked sense of humor, and she also had an incredibly big heart. She loved others with every ounce in her. She didn’t hold back on her funny, quick wit, and she didn’t hold back on her love, either.

As I sat there thinking about her this morning, I smiled. You just can’t think of anything bad to say about Lauren. If there was something bad, it would be something humorous, and she would have laughed at it. Lauren was funny but she was never mean.

I then found myself wondering what people will say about me when I die? Obviously, they will all laugh and talk about how hilarious I am. I mean, come on, how could they not? I’m sure there will be the circulating photo of the now infamous $8 gladiator sandals

Every hour when our prayer alarm goes off, Terry and I have been praying together. This is such an unbelievable time in which we are all living. I keep thinking it is a nightmare and we will wake up soon. As we go through each day, though, I am truly learning to pray the words of James: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.” - James 1:2-8 (NIV)

I have a note in the margin of my Bible next to this passage where Pastor Steve

In the South, Easter is a really big deal. We bring out the white shoes, the white pants, the white skirts; we don hats and new dresses. We color our deviled eggs, we make Resurrection cookies, we make the 5-day coconut cakes, we baste the ham and roll out all the stops for the scalloped potatoes, the hashbrown casserole, the sweet potato casserole, because let’s face it: you simply cannot have too many potatoes on your table at any given time in the South. We host Easter egg hunts and fill baskets with chocolate and Peeps.

But more than anything clothing and food related, we as believers want to tell the world, “This is what it’s all about! This day is our very reason for living! Get excited! Easter is what saved us!”

More people attend church services on Easter and Christmas/Christmas Eve than any other time throughout the year. And I’m okay with this statistic. If we can

I think we often mistake having a peace for what it often is: desire. Have you ever been guilty of this? I sure have been. New Year’s Eve, 2018, Terry, Michala and I got to spend the night by the water. I went out early and sat by the water, praying. I prayed specifically about something Terry and I were facing; a decision we knew we might be forced into making, and a decision we did not want to face. So I prayed, “Please show us a sign, Papa. Show us if you want x, y, z to happen.” While I won’t go into what x,y,z was just yet, it was something Terry and I both wanted, badly. We wanted it so much we could taste it.

Terry and I decided to pray specifically for God to give us a peace about what we needed to do. We knew what we wanted to do, but we were not sure about what we needed to do. Our desire filled our hearts and minds with ideas on how to achieve what we wanted. But was it what God wanted for us? This was where we struggled, because we desperately wanted to be in the Will of God.

So on New Year’s Eve, 2018, I sat by the water and begged

I was at a dinner party one night when we had to be around a person who seems to be mean, for sport. I bent over backwards trying to be nice and kind to this person to no avail. “This person desperately needs Jesus, and it shows,” I told myself.

As the night began to unfold, there were continued jabs directed at me. It was such a crappy thing for this person to be so nasty and I wanted so badly to retaliate with a quick, snarky comeback. This was the night I invented the game, “Let’s invite Jesus to play.” I realized I needed a way to not focus on what the enemy was stirring up, but rather what God’s message to me was.

I knew God prepared my place at His table the moment I accepted Jesus

Several weeks ago, one of Michala’s precious friends from high school, who is one year older than she is, was working near us during her spring break. Sam is studying to become a Physician’s Assistant and had the opportunity to shadow a PA. So what does this precious girl decide to do during her spring break? She decided to work.

She signed up to shadow a PA located not too far from us, for her spring break. Sam texted me and asked if we would be around the next week (this was in February) and would want to meet up for lunch? In a heartbeat, I replied yes and yes!

Sam is an absolute hoot. I love her to pieces. She and Michala would hang out at our house a lot during summer and Christmas breaks, and much to my eye rolling, they would watch The Bachelor or The Bachelorette; whatever was airing at the time, in our living room. Terry and I would