Taking Faithful Steps

      I've talked before about the mom guilt that I have carried around since our house fire. And, although I know that I didn't cause the fire, or the floods before the fire, we all also know that mom guilt is not rational. All we know as moms is that we love our kids and we want to protect them and keep them safe.     I get it- we can't protect them from every bad situation, and we can't keep them from feeling pain- these things are a part of life. And, they need to learn how to be resilient and deal with things that come their way. That's the goal, right? To raise adults who can functionin society.     After the fire, there were multiple issues with moving forward- selling our property, buying a house, etc. It started to feel like every time we saw a light at the end of the tunnel, something else happened that moved the goalpost. It wasn't just frustrating for me, it was frustrating for my husband and kids, too.      We were very bles...

      Did you know that there's a difference between healing and freedom? I didn't. Not until recently, anyway.     The thing is, I knew that there were a lot of things that I had received healing from. Things that  I had struggled with, old thought patterns, etc. And, i thought that meant that I had freedom also. Until our house fire happened.     When I was recovering from my surgery, i was intentional about spending time with God and really pressing in to him because I wanted to process everything and be able to move on. I didn't really allow myself that after our flood, and it all ended badly, so I wanted to make sure I was fully healing. I noticed that I had a lot of anxiety, which I'm sure was a PTSD response because of those past traumas and things that happened with those traumas. So, my brain kind of automatically went back to that place, running down every possible rabbit hole of every possible outcome. I realized at the time that some o...

      My friend Michelle is probably one of the smartest women I know. I'm not just talking about intelligent. She's street smart and wise. Especially when it comes to anything spiritual. We've been friends for 15 years and she always has great advice, even when she doesn't know she's advising. She's also a born encourager, especially of women. She always has something uplifting to say, and she'll always point your eyes back to the Lord.     Why am I bragging about my friend? I'm glad you asked!     Recently she was posting videos on Facebook and Instagram talking about comparison. She was discussing that we as women have a tendency to compare ourselves to others, but we don't always compare ourselves to people in the same phase of life. Single moms compare themselves to married moms, working moms compare themselves to stay home moms, women compare themselves to other women in general. And, the minute we do that we fall in to this mindset of "no...