Slowing down sounds nice. It sounds better than nice doesn't it? It sounds right. It sounds freeing. It kind of sounds slightly impossible too. But like Matt says in the film, "This is how Jesus changed the world and is still changing me". Slowly. Maybe even as slow as 3 miles an hour.

Father, remind me often of the cross.
For when I think of it, I am comforted.  Why you love me, I will never truly grasp.
But you do. And I am humbly grateful.
Keep me focused on the cross.

I’m almost four months postpartum. My hair comes out by the handful in the shower, my eyes have darker, baggier circles under them than ever before, maternity jeans still fit better than ones with actual zippers and buttons, and swimsuit season is approaching at a terrifyingly fast pace. Will I ever look that pretty again? I ask myself this multiple times a day...

I come back to these thoughts, these questions often for what I think is a very good reason. They humanize Christ to me and I so need Him to be human. Sometimes, because I have never seen Him in the flesh, my idea of Him can be so extra terrestrial, quite vague, and, if I’m being honest, un-relatable. However, when I day dream about His birth and His boyhood, I am reminded that He was “God with skin on”.

For me, Lent isn't so much a season of saying 'no' to things in my life, but a season of saying 'yes' to the things that stir my affections for Christ. A season of abolishing the idols that have grown up in my heart and making room for Him. A season of choosing He who fills me up instead of things that drain me. A season of remembering my first love and cultivating that relationship because it is what sustains me. 1 Corinthians 10:23 says it best, "All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up."

Maybe you think I'm taking a hashtag too seriously, but I disagree. Everything we do in life matters, even our hashtags. If we aren't consciously making decisions about our actions, we will get swept along into the flow of the masses, into the crowd, when we, as Christ followers, should be different than the crowd (John 17:16).

The Good Place is more than a TV show. It's a mirror held up to humankind reflecting our true plight. We need Jesus because all those good works will never be enough. Too often we get caught up in calling out people's sins or we ourselves work extra hard to tame the sins in our own life. We make Christianity and following Christ all about following the "rules", being good, or killing the bad stuff in our lives that needs to die, and it does need to die, but that's really missing the mark. Sin is not a list of bad qualities or broken rules, it is an incurable disease that we have been born into. No matter how "good" or "bad" we are, we are all still sinners in the eyes of God. Jesus Christ is not.

Write here...

Our list of things we were believing God for was forgotten as soon as we checked into the hospital Wednesday night, but our hope in Him was never forgotten. His will is always what is ultimately best for us and we trusted Him with Benjamin's delivery and life even when the specifics we had handed to Him in faith didn't pan out. I hope that we have ample opportunities to share our story with people so that God can be glorified through the birth of our boy and I pray that the rest of his life will be lived for God's glory too. 

I've never really been a New Year's Resolution type person, but I firmly believe that if I walk through 2018 holding tightly to these questions, everything will be different.

Shalom Sisters will be taking a break until 2018! That's just two short months from now by the way! With our baby due pretty much any day now, it made sense to focus on our time as a family of 3 and to pick back up after the holidays. In this post you will find some fun things to tide you over until January when I return!