My little Elsie, in preparing for tomorrow's appointment, cover your tiny beautiful ears if you hear that you are called weak or lowly or sickly. YOU, my great treasure, are teaching people so very much about the Kingdom of God. I pray that you will LIVE on this earth to boast in the Lord because of his great great great love for you. This advice is more for me than it is for you because I feel quite confident that you are cozy as ever in this womb of mine. I'm slightly jealous. It's true.


1 Corinthians 1:26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

One of the best compliments I received when I was pregnant with Ellie (after I already knew) was when I was at work and a not-so-friendly employee looked at me in passing and said, "You smile way too much." They weren't joking and they probably expected me to shut off my smile and walk away swiftly. Instead, I said "Because of JESUS!" and they rolled their eyes and kept walking. If they had stopped I would have probably continued to talk about it until they shut me down, but hey, you can't win them all.

It's been weird not updating about Elsie in terms of her physical state because of the fact that we haven't been back to the doctor--but MAN is it refreshing. (Although not super helpful for those of you who like solid medical updates.) One good thing (?) about having already been through this (eek) is that I feel very confident and not in the dark at all about how to handle the medical aspects of this pregnancy.

For those wondering, we go back on the 1st--but not for testing or anything like that. Just to have a look at her and make sure I'm doing fine..which I am because I know my body super well. And my husband is a nurse! All great things to have on your side. For the record, I'm 27 weeks. I'm going to SEE if we can get by without going again after this. Y'all, I'm telling you, we never did anything ground breaking at any of my appointments with Ellie. They just told us she was going to die over and over and I peed in a cup and I already knew I was fine because I'm a healthy individual and I eat enough protein and I don't have gestational diabetes and EVERYTHING IS OKAY.

But..to put you at ease, there is an emergency room literally almost rock-throwing-distance from our apartment and if something freakish were to happen I'd be there in no time.

That being said, Elsie IS growing and moving (a lot..at night..please let your mommas sleep..just kidding I don't care) and her movements are so so different than Ellie's. It's amazing how different. We don't know at what RATE she is growing, but she is growing. She, like Ellie, loves prayer time because she's a treasure, and she always finds Chris' hand and presses her little booty (or back, or belly, who knows) up to his hand while we pray. She gets feisty and awesome during prayer time like Ellie did. As soon as we stop, she's back to normal. That's my girl.

People have been saying less dumb stuff to me the past few weeks because I don't talk about it as much with strangers or people I don't know well. We have found that we have our "safe" people who we can talk to about Elsie and beyond that it's just a good thing to protect our minds from people asking me stuff like if I'm going to actually be okay if Elsie would happen to live and need extra medical attention. Real life. I usually want to say, "God forbid she needs medical attention...no I'd totally rather her die" but instead I muster up the heart to say that I would literally sacrifice my life for Elsie to live in any fashion on this Earth. Because she is my actual child..she's not some half-human that may or may not really exist.

Speaking of, I came across a statistic recently that said that 95% percent of women in my position choose to abort their babies. I wonder if (and hope) that percentage is a little high, but I do know that it's the overwhelming majority. I can say that I know I know I KNOW that temptation well, because you would do anything to alleviate the heartache that comes with such devastating news. But when we begin to profess our faith in the author of LIFE, we too are obligated to choose life. It's not about taking the high road or the hard road or choosing to suffer, but I can guarantee you with all that I am that choosing death for Elsie would. not. bring. us. life. So we don't choose this out of empty obligation, we choose this because it's actually no longer an option. We, who have so much in the western world, SO desire the easy way out, and we desire comfort and safety, and most of all we desire control...but those things should fall away in the face of who Jesus is. This isn't a condemnation for those who have taken the other road--I'm just suggesting that we who are believers always choose to partner with life...no matter the cost.

So, anyway, back to what I was saying before- if you're ever going through a hard time in life, don't feel pressure to tell anyone you don't want to. Just find your safe and loving community and lean on them all the time! And read your bible a lot. And talk to God a lot. And listen to worship a lot. Or at least stream it in your house while you're doing stuff. This is what most of Chris' off days look like for us, and what most of my days look like while he's gone.

I, for one, am happy about fall time in Charleston--it's been a while since I've experienced it. I'll try to take more pictures..I've been so slack about that lately. I blame the iphone which actually has a really really great quality camera. Pretty remarkable!

Chris is doing great (well, not today..he's a little under the weather and sleeping) and Pax is...cat-like, and I am doing great, and Elsie is doing great...because God is greater than our circumstances, as cliche as that sounds. Tis true.

Love and blessings to all you people! Clemson folk-we're working on setting a date to come hug your faces. Stay tuned!

I want so badly to believe it's fall except it's not quite there yet and the humidity in Charleston is at four hundred percent so even on a nice 80 degree day it feels like the inside of a volcano. (My obsessive love for the ocean makes it all worth it.) But that will never stop me from loading up on pumpkin and jacking my AC up so I can drink a plethora of homemade pumpkin spice coffee drinks.

"If sickness, death, and paralysis were all to be accepted as the perfect will of God, then the work of Jesus in dealing with the sick would have to be accepted [by us] as an active opposition to the will of the Father. However, we know that Jesus neither did nor said a single thing that was not in accordance with the will of God. In the end, Jesus did submit himself to death, but only in order that death be rendered defeated. Never will that act have to be repeated by Him or by any one of us for the sake of life, for it is already finished."

Chris and I escaped to California for a much needed getaway and also to visit a church that we love called Bethel. Many of you may be familiar with the place, but for those that are not, all you need to know is that it is comprised of an amazing body of believers.

We stream their sermons and worship just about every week in our home because AMAZING. And we really just identify with them as a church because their priorities are as follows:

1. God (+Jesus+Spirit obviously..or maybe not super obviously since there are many churches that like to divorce certain aspects of the trinity. But that's a whooooole different ballgame.)

Yes. Their priority is God and all that he is and none of what he isn't. Their priority is the word and worship and community and prayer for people in their church and outside of their church and the nations and the sick and the poor and the every single thing you could possibly take to God in prayer. AKA-everything that occurs on this earth and within the hearts and bodies of people that are not as they are in the Kingdom.

We love that place.

People line up there literally up to an hour early on Sunday mornings just to get a seat or to wait in the front to worship. People literally wait in line and in the sanctuary as if their favorite band or performer was about to walk on in....which makes sense......because......Jesus. He's much better than any band or performer or teacher that you've ever waited in line to see. And he lives inside of us. And everyone there is very very very comfortable and familiar with that concept and they don't take it for granted and they don't quench the spirit and they let. him. do. His. thing. Open hearts and open minds. It's a beautiful thing what happens when that happens.

In case you're nervous about what "His thing" is..it's always good. The end.

It was impossible to walk into that place of worship and not feel compelled to smile. I encountered zero amounts of spiritual attack there. Zero distraction. Zero nightmares. Zero negative thoughts. If that isn't evidence of the fact that these people welcome God with open arms...I don't know what is. Darkness can not stand in the face of light. And that place is a super amazing testament to that fact.

We received tons of prayer (of course) and there were some definite highlights there. But mainly we just rested and soaked in truth. Mind blowing truth that comes in the form of great worship time and great teaching time and great prayer time.

Did we see people get healed? Sho' did. Did we hear truth? Sho' did. Did we have amazing worship time? Sho' did.

It's easy to come home and compare certain aspects of churches you love with others, and that's not what we're doing. We appreciate them and they are still a church made up of people who sin and struggle and certainly every church has flaws. But I think one of the main reasons they thrive (both as an inward church body and also (importantly) as a mission minded/outward focused body is that they are quick to believe what the bible says about who God is and who they are AND that knowledge of truth leads somewhere. It leads to transformation. It leads to mind renewal. It doesn't just sit unused in their brains. Again, they are so open to allowing truth to actually seep in and do something and take action.

Sometimes we have the tendency to wait on God and wait on God and wait on God to do something when he's instructed us that we are his hands and his feet and we have minds that he made and what are hands and feet good for? MOVEMENT! Taking physical steps forward. Getting out of this mental game where we pick apart the gospel with our brains and have philosophical debates and pray by ourselves and really we're supposed to do something. And that looks like a lot of different things...a lot of different things that that particular body of believers does really well. Because they let God take control. He's got the solutions, I tell ya.

It was inspiring.

We're back from our runaway trip to California and we had a blast. I haven't written in a while and plan to write about what we did there as soon as I'm able to process it all :)

Elsie must have loved that the time zone was different, that the humidity was next to nothing (compared to here), that we ate really good food, and that we got loads of prayer because she was a crazy little person all day err'day. I loved all of those things too, though, so I don't blame her.

We heard almost every person from there talk about how dang hot it was, but we were LOVING the weather. It appeared to be hot by the temperature listed--but totally didn't feel like it because the humidity was so much less. Even six month pregnant me didn't feel all that hot hiking a really awesome trail to a mountain peak. It was relatively toasty at the top but definitely bearable.

We drove by Chris' childhood house but didn't drive by mine because we would have had to backtrack, but we determined we lived about 20 minutes apart during our early years. How crazy is that!?

Anyway, we are home now and I have a head full of frizzy hair to prove it.

I'll write soon!

Something has been pressing on my heart lately and usually that means I am going to end up writing about it. Yet again, this is one of those posts that I was hesitant about..but after countless sleepless hours tossing and turning over it I finally decided to let it work it's way out of my head.

It's about God's will. And I'm just going to go ahead and put this disclaimer out there: I don't understand all of scripture and I am NOT a theologian, but I do know that I'm okay with not having it all figured out. I know the love and the voice of the Father and that is good enough for me. All I can do is keep digging and to give people a window into how certain life experiences change the way you think, and how certain life experiences force you to dig deeper into the heart of the Father.

It is my very very real belief that, as a believer, one of the very worst things you can say to someone who has just lost a child/found out they have cancer/lost a spouse/had a painful divorce/etc.....that it "must have been God's will."

We cannot attribute all of life's happenings to "God's will," because we know for a fact that we live in a world where sin and destruction and the reign of the enemy has entered in. If we want a look into God's heart for humanity--we already know the end result. (Rev. 21:4)

If we were to begin attributing things of death, destruction, and sin to "God's will," we would put ourselves in the sticky situation of deciding which belong to the hand of God and which do not. A bombing that kills innocent people? The death of a child? An abusive husband or father? Often when I'm perusing pinterest in the "everything" category, I see SO many quotes that say things like, "Sometimes we ask God to change our bad circumstances not realizing he put us in the circumstance to change us."

I cringe every time I see something like that. We are so quick to believe that God moves us around like chess pieces into less than favorable circumstances to "make us stronger," when in reality-some of our circumstances are based on choice and others are based on the fact that we have to live in a world where bad things happen and in the end God can always bring good out of it but that does not mean he caused it.

Let me give you an example:
My dad is an awesome dad.  He's always had my best interest in mind and he always had a desire to protect me and to have me experience all things good in my life. Despite the fact that I could have gone to my dad and gotten all the wisdom I needed to avoid this (and most) negative situation(s), I decided to be an independent individual and date someone who was not good for me. I was almost college aged and felt that I had a good handle on who I did and did not want to date. As the relationship began, my dad was able to point out red flags to me that he saw, and encourage me to think again, but ultimately I decided I was going to continue dating this fellow. So I did. And then he cheated on me multiple times. And I experienced some serious heartbreak. Now, this obviously is an example of a cause and effect circumstance, but there is a major difference between my dad allowing me to date this man versus going out and choosing him for me to date knowing that he would eventually hurt me. After the incident ended, my dad was there to comfort me and to offer his protection and also teach me about what kind of guys NOT to date, but he didn't ever look at me and say "I'm so glad you agreed to date him so I could teach you this lesson."

To reiterate: there is a major difference between God allowing pain and suffering to happen and causing pain and suffering to happen. The part I claim to not understand is not whether he caused the suffering, but rather what causes him to allow some and heal others..knowing that ALL of it can't be fixed right now...but that eventually all pain and suffering WILL be erased.

*When you tell someone that their baby died because it was "God's will," you are essentially saying that you believe in a Heavenly Father who kills babies for the greater good. For a greater purpose. That he is literally causing death to come upon an innocent child so that we will be made into stronger/more faithful/more mature individuals. Sounds intense, right? But this widely held belief is not supported in scripture. When Jesus taught us to pray "on Earth as it is in Heaven" he didn't include for us to pray "on Earth as it is in Heaven unless it's more beneficial for some of the crappy earth stuff to keep happening to make super strong believers!" 

I thought about inserting scripture verses here to help me make my point, but I urge you-if this idea is new to you, just open your bible and read an entire book at a time starting with the birth of Jesus. Jesus tells us that if we have seen him, we have seen the Father. There were some people that did not get healed by Jesus, but he never walked around "not healing some because it would teach them a lesson." And he certainly did not CAUSE death and illness to teach anybody anything. There are SO many verses taken out of context in regards to God "causing evil" so do your research when something pops up that seems contrary to all of this.

Do you see the difference? It may seem small, but it is the difference in believing in a loving father who helps you in hard times versus a father who calls illness and strife upon you to teach you a lesson.

I've mentioned this before, but one way to see into the heart of the Father is to look at the place where he currently resides. His kingdom is marked by full restoration/no suffering/no pain/no illness/no sadness and Jesus asked us to pray that His kingdom would break in where we are and that his will would be done on earth AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. This clues you in to the fact that where we are is not a place where his ultimate will is being realized at the moment.

Which also clues you in to the fact that babies dying and cancer happening and terrorist attacks and child abuse and all other horrible things that happen here are not the work of his hand but a condition of this earth and the enemy's reign.

If you LET him, he can take any bad circumstance you have faced bring good out of it, just as my earthly father did for me after my high school heart break (and countless other times.) But that does not mean that he caused it to lead you to a higher place.

 So, please. No matter what happens with Elsie, and no matter what happened with Ellie, and no matter what horrible thing your friends and family may be walking through or have walked through in the past--do not tell them it must be God's will. Instead, pray that God's heart and Kingdom would invade where they are now. This IS how Jesus taught us to pray.

And I'm not going to argue with Jesus.




Here's a nice little article with scripture references if you're looking for more.
http://www.greatbiblestudy.com/gods_will_on_earth.php