The Titus 2:4 Project

One of my favorite creature comforts—one of the modern conveniences I truly appreciate—is our Roomba. I don’t enjoy vacuuming. I like to cook. I don’t mind doing laundry. I don’t even mind washing windows on occasion. But vacuuming? No, thank you. So when my husband agreed to buy a Roomba to chase away the dust bunnies in our home, I was elated. We call him Will . As in Will Smith… from the movie I, Robot. If you have a Roomba of your own, you know you named yours too. Just admit it. My husband is the boss of Will. He has the app on his phone. He set it up, controls the schedule, and manages the map. Will’s home base—his charger and bin—is near my desk, so I’m used to him running in and out of my office area throughout the day. He wakes up at 9 a.m. and goes to work, cleaning up after us. When he’s picked up all he can handle or starts running low on battery, he scurries back to his home to unload, rest, and recharge. Twice a day, he cleans up around the litter box, and three ti...

  I love that women today are feeling more empowered to do hard things. Whether it’s working toward a healthy lifestyle, seizing a career opportunity, facing parenting or relationship challenges, or even literally fighting for their very lives—women are stepping up to do the hard stuff. I also deeply appreciate how we are supporting and encouraging one another in these battles. There’s beauty in the way we rally together, lifting each other up in the fight. But I want to offer a loving word of caution to the many women I see standing confidently in their own strength:   Sister, you DON’T got this . As much as you might want to believe that you’re tough and can handle it all—you can’t. Not in your own strength. Not alone. Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” Apart from Him, we simply don’t have the strength we need to face the battles that inevitably come our way. So, while you’re gearing up to fight and your friends are cheering y...

In 2017, my husband surprised me with a fabulous trip to Europe for our 20th wedding anniversary. We spent three days in each, London, Paris and Germany, traveling between cities by rail. It was truly the trip of a lifetime and according to our fitness trackers, we walked more than 20 miles in those nine days.  Walking seemed safer for us. Maybe for everyone around us as well because most of the streets were narrow, cobblestone streets that often intersected with roundabouts. Roundabouts are helpful, I suppose. They mitigate stop lights and stop signs, but you have to be a confident driver to jump in or out when you have the opportunity...And we were not confident drivers in Europe. Street signs were a in foreign language and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car! These roundabouts were basically a free-for-all. No lines to mark lanes of traffic. No signs. Just say a prayer and hope for the best. The intersection at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris was the 'Mac Daddy' ...

Back in 1998 my husband and I started attending Northview Christian Life Church in Carmel, Indiana. We joined the adult Sunday school class for couples called "Home Improvement" led by Randy and Patty Reimersma. We made some great friends in that group that we still keep in touch with 26 years later - and Kim and Bob Johnson were part of that group. I have always loved Kim's spunk and sense of humor - and her heart for Jesus! She is one of the most down-to-earth Christian women I have ever met. I invited her to be a guest blogger here so you could meet her and love her like I do.  I grabbed this photo of Kim and Bob with their four beautiful girls - you'll see why when you read her story below.  💜    Be blessed! ___________________________________________   We just celebrated my 58th birthday & our 30th wedding anniversary this past October! We got married the day after my 28th birthday.  We always recall that October 15, 1994 was the most beautiful f...

I’m a Gen Xer.   Proudly. I’m not ashamed to share my age (55, in case you were wondering.) I have joined several Gen X Facebook groups and I enjoy seeing the posts of pictures of things I grew up with that today’s kiddos will never understand - like rotary phones and actual car keys - one for the trunk and one for the ignition…or World Book Encyclopedias. So many things feel unique to my generation.   Then some things are common to all of us - things keep coming back around. Especially fashion trends. I once read something about fashion trends: “if you wore it the first time, you probably won’t wear it when it comes back into style,” or something like that… for me - that’s jelly shoes.  Nope. Not falling for that again.   And then there are things that are unique to this generation - things that you would never have found in the Webster dictionary in 1987. Like ‘ doomscrolling ’. (I was surprised to find it is now included in the online dictionary app.) So that’s a ...

Thursday morning, after the hurricane, as the sun rose above the trees, we nervously stepped outside to assess the damage. Despite the winds that had howled all night long, our neighborhood was in surprisingly good shape.  As we surveyed our neighbor’s lots (neighbors who had not yet returned for “the season”) we began dragging big, green palm fronds to the street and loading them into the bed of our truck. First this lot. Then that lot. I snapped pictures and messaged friends to let them know if there was any visible damage to their property. T hey would reply with their gratitude and then ask “can you check lot ‘such and such for so and so’…” so we would. More clean up. More pictures. More messages. And our 8ft truck bed filled up fast. Very fast. Over and over. As the day wore on, my mind was filled with thoughts like, WOW! These palm fronds are heavy! I asked my husband how much he thought they weighed on average… he guessed about 25 pounds.  Lifting them over an...

Faith and trust go hand in hand.  Would you agree?  In my mind they are closer than cousins...perhaps more like Siamese twins.  It's difficult for me to imagine having one without the other...but I'm not here to debate the fact, or to convince you one way or another.  It's just my humble opinion.  Take it or leave it.  But have you ever thought about the amount of faith and trust it takes to get through a day??  Walk through a typical day with me:  I have faith that my alarm clock will go off.  Which means 1) I trust that the electrician properly wired my home to provide power to charge my phone, and 2) I trust that the folks in that factory in some distant land put all the pieces together properly when my phone and charger were assembled.  3) I trust the person who wrote the program that causes my phone to keep up with time accurately... Getting in the car and driving my child to school requires monumental faith!  I h...

Grocery shopping on a Friday afternoon (4:30!) is never a good idea.  I know this.  I've said it before.  But it didn't stop me.  I had at least 30 minutes to kill and nothing to cook for dinner.  The parking lot was ridiculously full.  In the 12 years I've been shopping at this store, I've never had to park so far away.  So, I thanked God for my health and hoofed it across the now seemingly gigantic lot.  Once inside the first set of doors, I'm shocked to see only five shopping carts and two of the wheelchair carts left sitting there.  Ok...the last time I saw this kind of madness there was a blizzard of epic proportions coming and everyone had to get their bread and milk.  (Seriously...what do people eat during a blizzard, that you only need bread and milk??)

I haven't posted in a few days.  If you know me very well, you might have wondered if everything was ok with me.  If you're one of the few who care about me, you might have actually worried a bit. What does silence sound like?  For me it's a ringing in my ears.  And the sound of the ringing gets louder and louder, until it becomes deafening. Many years ago, Randy and I went to Mammoth Cave National Park.   As we toured a huge cave, the guide shared a story about a man who had gotten separated from his group.  In the darkness as he crawled around in the cave, unable to see his own hand in front of his face, he found two rocks and began banging them together.   When the rescuers finally found him, they commended him for his brilliance in banging the rocks together so that they could find him.  He said, "I didn't bang the rocks together so you would find me.  I did it because the sound of silence was driving me crazy. " Indeed, sil...