“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” -Isaiah 43:19 My son, Ezra, is 16 months old. So, this past year included a lot of “new things”. He crawled for the first time. Took his first steps. We celebrated his first birthday in August. He went to daycare and got sick for the first time. He’s also gotten lots of new teeth. I’ve noticed something about the big developments in Ezra’s life. Before each one he doesn’t sleep very well for a few days, he’s a little crankier than normal, and sometimes he doesn’t eat much. His body knows something new is happening. Isn’t that true with new things in our own lives? As we’re getting ready for a change—jobs, kids, marriage, a new phase of life—we feel the tension it. (Even if it’s a good thing.) We might experience lack of sleep and be a little crankier than normal as well! New I ...Read more »

Send this email. Make that phone call. Go to a meeting. Meet a deadline. Write a blog...So often, in the whirlwind of my day, I forget to slow down and ask God to guide me.

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Clarity comes to me when I’m running. I’m more of a slow jogger, if we’re being honest. But something about getting my body moving and not having any distractions (other than trying to breathe and make sure I don’t get run over by cars) brings clarity. I pray, think and talk to friends when I’m jogging. And so often God gives me clarity on a problem that I haven’t been able to solve or an answer to my prayers. In a TED Talk called “How boredom can lead to your most brilliant ideas”, Manoush Zomorodi says, “…in the default mode is when we connect disparate ideas, we solve some of our most nagging problems, and we do something called ’autobiographical planning.’ This is when we look back at our lives, we take note of the big moments, we create a personal narrative, and then we set goals and we figure out what steps we need to take to reach them.” Isn’t this an incredible thing that God has done i ...Read more »

My husband, Stanley, and I have big dreams. We go on “dream walks” (now fewer and farther between with a 1 year old in tow) and talk about how one day we want to own a coffee shop, open a hotel in India, write books…just to name a few. There are a lot more!

But, if I’m not careful I get frustrated that all of these dreams aren’t happening right now. I want to give up on them and write them off as impossible. Or I get paralyzed by the weight of the dreams.

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