I don’t want to be someone who is ruled by a to-do list or who is a slave to the calendar on their phone. I don’t want the ding of a text message or email alert to set the pace of my day, not do I want to measure a successful day by how much I got done. I want the success of my day to be measured by how well I loved God and how well I loved the people He’s placed in my path.

I’ve always been a little wild and restless. I didn’t know the unforced rhythms of grace either. But as I’ve grown up in the faith some, I realized that there are patterns I can build into my life that help me to settle into life as a beloved daughter of the King. I’ve learned there are rhythms that can help me to stay deeply connected into the family of God.

He wants me to be transformed into someone who lives and loves like Jesus just as much as I want that for myself, more, in fact. But he knows my humanity and He’s aware of my struggles. And He has a plan and a purpose for me, even if I sometimes struggle to follow it as well as I wish I did.

That old rugged cross really is an emblem of suffering and shame. It was the most disgraceful, painful way to be executed and it was reserved for the worst of the worst. But the dearest and best, the King of King and Lord of Lords, chose to take the sin of the world on his innocent shoulders. As a sacrificial act of love, he allowed himself to be brutally slain.

I’ve been trying to carve out a little more time each morning to sit with Jesus and to really enter in to the work I believe He is trying to do as He transforms my heart and my life. This is the daily template or pattern that I’ve been using in my journal each morning as I come to spend time with Him

And I ran triumphantly, and a little wearily, to the tree line. BUT THE WIND STILL BLEW. I wasn’t shielded or protected from it at all. Things were not instantly easier. There was no rest or refreshment, just more of the same wind. And that’s when my personal theology collided with the real world.

The same God who clothed the flowers of the field, sprinkled the stars in the sky, drew boundaries for the seas, and breathed life into dust chooses to make His home in us.

God doesn’t need us, but He chooses to call us out of the mundane into the extraordinary work of the Gospel.

I remember really hearing the truth about Jesus for the first time as an almost twenty one year old broken, mess of a girl. While I had occasionally heard mention of a wrathful, angry, judgmental God in my younger years, I don’t ever remember being introduced to the God I now know.

Retirement may seem a long way off, but it’s never too soon to begin saving. Let us talk you through the available options.