Introverts, Wilderness, Faith

The Journey: Beauty from Ashes has a new look and a new home! Please join me over at thejourneybeautyfromashes.com and be sure to click the follow button to receive updates on blog posts! If you have "liked" or shared posts be sure to do so again! Thank you!

Just over four years ago God pulled me out of a city I loved living in and placed me into what I would describe as a hostile community. I use the term hostile in reference to a cold and unwelcoming community. One that has made it very clear that we do not fit with their culture and predetermined molds of what they feel people should be and do. Surviving here has been emotionally and spiritually challenging but at the same time I continually feel God tirelessly pulling me closer to Him. Living here has often made me wonder if this is how the Israelites felt wandering in the wilderness for forty years. Then again our entire time on this earth could be likened to the wilderness, as this most certainly isn’t the Promised Land. CONTINUE READING...

Jeremiah 29:11

The Journey: Beauty from Ashes has a new look and a new home! Please join me over at thejourneybeautyfromashes.com and be sure to click the follow button to receive updates on blog posts! If you have "liked" or shared posts be sure to do so again! Thank you!

Colossians 3:12&13

The Journey: Beauty from Ashes has a new look and a new home! Please join me over at thejourneybeautyfromashes.com and be sure to click the follow button to receive updates on blog posts! If you have "liked" or shared posts be sure to do so again! Thank you!

Super Fabulous Cranberry Sauce

The Journey: Beauty from Ashes has a new look and a new home! Please join me over at thejourneybeautyfromashes.com and be sure to click the follow button to receive updates on blog posts! If you have "liked" or shared posts be sure to do so again! Thank you!

This holiday season I beg of you to not serve canned cranberry sauce. I invite you to savor the full flavor in my personal cranberry sauce recipe. This sauce is so tasty and so simple to make you have no reason to open a can of jellied cranberry sauce.

I Call You Friend?

The Journey: Beauty from Ashes has a new look and a new home! Please join me over at thejourneybeautyfromashes.com and be sure to click the follow button to receive updates on blog posts! If you have "liked" or shared posts be sure to do so again! Thank you!

A False Comparison

The Journey: Beauty from Ashes has a new look and a new home! Please join me over at thejourneybeautyfromashes.com and be sure to click the follow button to receive updates on blog posts! If you have "liked" or shared posts be sure to do so again! Thank you!

I'm certain that I'm not alone in my desire to be a woman serving God well. Like many it is my desire to be the woman, wife, and mother that God created me to be. It is a daily struggle wrapped in joy and often dipped in pain and defeat.

All too often I find my head spinning and my heart aching with every sin and failure starring back at me when I see my reflection. I know who I want to be and no matter how hard I work I seem to constantly stumble and fall. I see so many seemingly well-equipped women standing before me; both in scripture and in my everyday.

Sticks and Stones

The Journey: Beauty from Ashes has a new look and a new home! Please join me over at thejourneybeautyfromashes.com and be sure to click the follow button to receive updates on blog posts! If you have "liked" or shared posts be sure to do so again! Thank you!

The day you were born was an important day so we celebrate your birthday. Birthdays happen everyday but we celebrate each birthday of those we know and love because each person is important and each person is loved by God.

The day your husband died of cancer was an important day so we grieve with you and pray with you. Death happens everyday but we recognize this is a particularly hard day for you and so we offer up our sympathies and comfort you any way we can because you are important, because we love you.

Just As I Have Loved You

The Journey: Beauty from Ashes has a new look and a new home! Please join me over at thejourneybeautyfromashes.com and be sure to click the follow button to receive updates on blog posts! If you have "liked" or shared posts be sure to do so again! Thank you!

We live in a broken and sinful world full of so much evil sometimes it’s hard to see or feel God and his love. I am frightened and grieved by my sin. How can I be so unloving to God by sinning against him? How is it he can in return still love me? Not only does he love me but even in the depths of my sin he loves me unconditionally. When I take pause and see my sin I am so disgusted. It can be a challenge not to get stuck there, looking inward, being self-condemning but that is where we look to the cross, that is where we see the gospel.