Pensive Procrastination

The idea of trust in God has continually been on my mind recently. The realization that there can be an incredible amount of peace that will consume my life if I can trust that God is good, that He will work in the ways that are in line with who He has shown himself to be throughout my life and throughout history. I am inconsistent with my devotional readings, however, whenever I have picked it up recently they have been talking about trust, specifically trusting God with my children.  However, some of them have just reminded me of the importance of trusting that the Holy Spirit can and will work in the lives of those I love. There was one from May 27th (the devotional is by Nancy Guthrie and it's called The One Year Praying Through the Bible For Your Kids) and this is what I underlined, "We are never meant to be the Holy Spirit to them. In fact, we can't be. Instead we are meant to trust that the Holy Spirit will do his work of comforting, convicting, teaching and guiding...

 Man, the levels of sleep deprivation we have experienced with our youngest has been just brutal. Every little milestone we hit we think, "Maybe this will be when she starts to sleep better? Maybe now she won't be awake multiple times a night or for hours in the middle of the night." And according to most recent research we're doing everything "spot on" so it can be incredibly frustrating to yet again hear her little voice call out at 11:00, 2:00am, 2:15am, 2:30am and 5:30am.  I started this post yesterday while in the pit of sleepless despair and wasn't able to finish it due to the lack of thinking that felt possible for me to have. This will be a bit of an all over post today but I'm hoping in the end to hit cohesive takeaway.  One thing that I have found consistently over the past...7 years (?) is that as soon as I sit down to start writing more consistently something comes up that kind of causes a wrench in that plan. After our eldest was born an...

 Rob (my husband) and I have recently been watching (very slowly) through the Harry Potter series. While watching the 5th movie (Hrry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) I found myself continually saying, " I feel like this is very different from the books..." So, after finishing the movie I picked up the book. I was right- a lot is different but that's not my purpose in writing today.  As I was reading I was reminded of something that's been impressed on me before and that's how powerfully fiction can speak truth about sometimes complicated human experiences. There are studies (like this one) that show that reading fiction can increase readers empathy when they have some sort of "emotional transportation" or connection to the story they are reading. Which, I think, is pretty awesome.  Near the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (in the books) there is a scene near the end just after the funeral of their beloved headmaster where Harry informs h...