Originally Published 12/6/2012

I’m happy to say that this year (as opposed to most years), I’m nearly done my Christmas shopping already. I have a few things yet to pick up, but all the tricky ones are handled. I’m feeling on top of things there. Mostly. 😉 And as I talk with my kiddos about the real meaning of Christmas and all that fun stuff, I can’t help but think about the gifts I’m most grateful for.

I totally neglected to post on Thanksgiving (though I’d meant to, LOL), so I figured I’d take a few minutes now, halfway between the holidays, to give thanks for those gifts that make my life worth living.

Photo by Ann Danilina on Unsplash

Sometimes it just hits me anew how blessed I’ve been in my family life. God put me in a loving, amazing family growing up. One that protected without being overbearing. One that nurtured without stifling. One that provided fun as well as life-lessons to remember. My parents taught me to love God and follow Jesus, to chase after my dreams, and to always be myself. They somehow raised me to be secure in exactly who I was, so long as I was following the path the Lord wanted me on. I am so, so grateful for my family.

Then I happened to meet the man of my dreams at a very young age. Oh, that caused some nay-saying back then, to be sure. In this day and age, it just isn’t expected that you meet your soul mate at 15 and get married at 18 (by choice, not by shotgun, LOL). But David and I knew what we wanted and needed, and I don’t regret a moment of the last eleven and a half years of marriage. I am so, so blessed to have a husband who not only loves me but understands me. Who supports my every dream and encourages my every goal. No matter what comes and goes in this life, I know he’ll be beside me every moment he can be. And I am so grateful for that rare and precious gift.

And then the children God has given me! Goodness, I know most parents think the exact same thing, but these little people are just amazing. Sure, I get frustrated with them. But when I take a step back and really look at who they are, I can’t believe the sweet hearts they have, the Joy, the delight. They really are the lights in our lives, and I’m so, so proud of them. And grateful for every hug and cuddle, for every grin and giggle.

Photo by Ann Danilina on Unsplash

Then I look back over the years I’ve traveled to get to where I am, over the tears and letdowns in an attempt to build a career, and then at the place I’ve ended up. Not that I’m now a best-selling, raving success or anything, but I’m here. Where I’ve always wanted to be. I’m working with an editor who believes in me, with a house that believes in me, on projects that excite us all. I’m working as an editor with amazing authors whose stories leave me breathless. And I’m finally “supporting my habit,” as I call it. 😉

I have so much. So much to be grateful for, so many gifts that I’ve received, gifts that I never would have put on my list for Santa, but which far surpass that bike I had to have or the doll that was utterly necessary at age 7.

Don’t get me wrong, I love that new Dyson vacuum cleaner that just arrived yesterday, and all the other gifts my family blesses me with each year. 😉 But at the end of the day, when the new pots are in the cabinet and the new shirt is stained and worn, I can settle on my couch with the man I love and think, “Wow, Lord. You’ve given me love. You’ve given me family. You’ve given me my dreams. Please show me what I can give back to You to show You that Your love is what I prize above all.”

Post originally published 6/10/10

I’m writing a book right now that’s way more spiritually charged, spiritually involved than I imagined it would be. There are a lot of beyond-your-vision battles raging, and that means a lot of Roseanna praying before writing–I so don’t want to get this stuff wrong!

And then this weekend, we had the honor of hosting visitors (a couple and a good friend of theirs) from Ohio who offered to do a faith-building and healing service at our church. These people . . . they are so genuine. So humble. They just want to teach what they’ve learned and be the instruments of the Lord. And boy, did I need a good dose of the Spirit.

Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash

Ever since a revival swept through our town two years ago, I’ve been keenly aware of how different I am when in touch with the Spirit versus when I let life get in the way. And lately . . . life has been seriously in the way. Which made me not really enjoy the details of my life. My kids were getting on my nerves, I was constantly exhausted, and I couldn’t seem to find the quiet time I needed with God. So I went to this service knowing exactly what I needed from it.

After a while my wonderful hubby took the kids down to the nursery, which let me really listen, really feel. The teaching time ended, and the prayer began. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. Should I just charge to the front and say, “Pray with me please so I can get the kids home to bed?” No, they asked for someone with a specific issue . . . so I just closed my eyes, prayed, privately and determined to soak up the Spirit–not too hard, since he was saturating the room. And, I’ll admit it, thought, “Well, Lord, you might just have to send one of them back to me if this isn’t enough.”

Then the husband of the couple came over to me. He’d walked by several times, but this time he crouched down and asked, “Can I pray with you? I’m sensing you’re not here for healing but that you have something you need prayer for.”

!!!! I nodded as tears surged (I’m not a cry-er, FYI) and asked if he would pray for rejuvenation. That’s all I said–rejuvenation. But you could see the light go on inside him. He took my hands and prayed for rejuvenation, for rest, for exactly what I needed. And told me I needed to take the time to pray for that every morning, and pray every night for my rest to be sufficient.

Um, yes, teacher.

Seriously, ever since then . . . there’s a calm inside where irritation had been. There’s Joy again. And I am so, so grateful that the Spirit always knows exactly what we need and meets us there. There have been times over the years when he swept over me in my dreams and I wake up like this. This time, he came while his servants were here and used them to bless me.

Now I’m praying that my words (mostly thinking of those spiritually-charged chapters I’m writing) can somehow be used to bless others. There is so much to all this stuff, so much I can never quite get a hold on.

How awesome to know I don’t have to get a hold of it all–I just have to hold his hand. He’ll show me how to handle the rest.

Don’t miss out on my upcoming Tea Parties! Click the image for more details.

Original post published 2/7/2013

I want to be like a potato. Aside from the fact that they don’t have hourglass figures, that is. 😉 But every time I reach for one in dinner prep, it hits me anew.

I want to be able to sprout no matter where I am. No matter how unsuitable the “where” is to sprouting. That right there would be enough. If we could put out roots like a potato, then just think how secure we’d be in our lives, wherever we are. Whatever we’re doing.

I want to be long-lasting. No week-away expiration date. I want to be able to still go strong after weeks and months left sitting. Because sometimes there are periods of inaction in life. Of rest. If I were as long-lasting as a potato, those wouldn’t bother me a bit.

I want to be hearty. I want my work to stick to your bones, yes. But more, I want to know that I’m made of sterner stuff than fluff and nonsense. That I’ve got some starch to me. Maybe that gets potatoes a bad rap in this age of dieting, and maybe it gets people bad raps too sometimes. But that’s the stuff that energy is made of.

I want to be a chameleon, handy for any number of oh-so-different goals. Is there anything you can’t do with a potato? Slice them, fry them, boil them, bake them, mash them, make them a base for a soup…for a candy…for a bread. If I could just be half so useful in half so many ways…

I want to be full of good things. Starch aside, potatoes have nothing but goodness. Anything bad has to be put into them. Lord, make me so pure!

I want to be a staple. Cultures rise and fall around potatoes. I don’t profess that kind of hubris, LOL, but I want to be the kind of wife my husband builds his life around. The kind of mom that provides a life of stability and love for my kiddos. The kind of friend that can be depended on for anything. The kind of writer, the kind of editor, the kind of mentor that people come back to over and over.

I want to be a potato. Not that kind that sits on a couch and does nothing, but the kind that can do it all. The kind that’s just fine with waiting and doing nothing when it’s called for. The kind that can then be picked up and put to any number of uses. 

Lord, make me a potato. Sometimes I’m not so sure I have what it takes to be one of those lumpy brown legumes. But I pray I do. Help me to live up to their example. Help me to be a potato too.

8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), 10 finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. 11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. 14 Therefore He says:

“Awake, you who sleep,
Arise from the dead,
And Christ will give you light.”

15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

I read this section of Ephesians 5 over a week ago, for the umpteenth time. Before, it was those first verses that always struck me. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light…

Walk as children of light. What a command! I love the constant imagery in the New Testament of light versus darkness, of being the light, reflecting the light, living the light. (Y’all might remember my post on how we should shine…). It’s something I’ve thought about and talked about a lot because, well, it’s just so powerful. So deep. So thought-provoking. It’s always struck a chord.

But this last time when I read this chapter, it was verses 15 and 16 that slammed me. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

Did you catch that? That bit about redeeming the time? I never had. When I pondered redemption before, it was always as something we received, that beautiful gift of Christ. He redeemed us. That means he saved us from death. Literally purchased our life with his own. According to dictionary.com, this is the technical definition of “redeem”:

1. to buy or pay off; clear by payment: to redeem a mortgage.

2. to buy back, as after a tax sale or a mortgage foreclosure.

3. to recover (something pledged or mortgaged) by payment or other satisfaction: to redeem a pawned watch.

4. to exchange (bonds, trading stamps, etc.) for money or goods.

5. to convert (paper money) into specie.

Original post published 3/19/2015

I’ve always known there was a distinction between wisdom and knowledge. There is, after all, a reason they’re listed as two separate spiritual gifts. A reason they have two different words. And while I’ve long had a basic idea of that difference, I hadn’t fully thought it through until this past weekend.

It started when a list I belong to invited everyone to take a look at this blog, which claims that the church is largely anti-intellectual. The part I found most interesting was more than America as a whole can be anti-intellectual. By which I mean, we put great stock in experts, in facts, in hard knowledge…but not so much, anymore, in those who pursue knowledge for its own sake. That we love experts put pooh-pooh scholars.

I consider myself a scholar–I love learning, and I don’t love learning just a particular field for a particular purpose. I just love learning. I love the discovery process, I love the way new information makes me pause and think and reflect and reexamine all I once thought I knew. But that certainly isn’t the way most schools teach kids to think these days, and so it’s not where society’s focus has turned. We as a whole aren’t interested anymore in the what-ifs, we’re only interested in the Cold, Hard Facts.

But that’s what led me to this distinction–there’s no such thing as Cold, Hard Facts. Facts can change as knowledge grows. (Hello, eggs. Are you good for me this year or not?? And Pluto, I do so miss counting you as a planet…) As definitions change. As new information comes to light.

Knowledge is supposed to change as it grows. That’s the beauty of it. That because we can stand on the shoulders of those who came and discovered before, we can reach new heights. New understanding. We can challenge old “facts” and find new ones. In my sophomore year of college, we read a lot of Aristotle, and one of the translations of the Metaphysics that most stuck with me was by one of our tutors [professors], Joe Sachs. He translated a certain line as “All men by nature stretch themselves out toward knowing.”

That really hits the truth of the human condition, and it really captures what Aristotle was trying to say. It’s not that we all know. It’s not that we all reach toward knowledge. But we do all, naturally, stretch ourselves toward the process of figuring things out. But when society starts pooh-poohing the process and instead only emphasizes the “facts”…

It ain’t good, folks. Discovery grinds to a halt, and you end up with a generation of parrots, capable only of telling us what other people thought and unable to think for themselves.

So that’s knowledge. But wisdom…wisdom is something altogether different. Wisdom does not change with time. You can’t shed new light on moral Truths and have them change. Right is still right. Wrong is still wrong, even after millennia of changing facts.

Wisdom is what God most often supernaturally reveals to people. Oh, we see in Daniel where He gave him the gift of knowledge, and it’s listed in the New Testament among the gifts too. I think that’s really, incredibly awesome. But when we pray, it’s rare that God plops a new fact into our laps. What He does give us, regularly, is understanding of the human condition. Of moral truths. Of spiritual precepts.

This is wisdom. And this is deserving of all sorts of capital letters. Truth. Justice. Right. Wrong. Ideals. Principles.

But there’s a very real difference between biblical wisdom and worldly wisdom, which is addressed many times in the Bible. Worldly wisdom says, “Might equals right. If you suffer, you’re being punished. If you prosper, you must be just and good.” Godly wisdom says, “Even when my enemies have me hemmed in all about, even when my world crumbles around me, I’ll trust in my Salvation. I will follow His will, even when the world calls me a fool.”

Worldly wisdom says, “There is no Right and Wrong. There’s right for me, right for you…live and let live.” Godly wisdom says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

The Bible, beautifully, isn’t a treatise. It’s not filled with knowledge alone–if it was, it would expire. It would go out of date. It could be termed wrong. But it can’t, and it isn’t, because it deals with the unchanging and unchangeable.

Oh, the world tries to change that too. They try to claim that wisdom is like knowledge–mutable and shifting. And when the world tries to do that…

It really ain’t good folks.

But understanding the distinction is our first step toward preserving each in its rightful place. And hey, when we do that…we’ve all got a bit of the scholar going on. 😏