Whole Heart Devotion

About a week ago, I shared with my husband that I didn't feel spiritually prepared for Easter. Though I do not religiously practice Lent with the same fervency that some communities of faith do, I typically use those forty days as a time of mental preparation to fix my focus on the incalculable brutality of the cross, the stillness of Saturday, and the magnitude of the resurrection. I try my best to feel and experience the realities of Easter before this sacred holiday becomes just another day gone-by on the calendar.  But I have felt mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ill-prepared this year.  I began to wonder what stole my attention from the one occasion that sets my faith apart from every other religion in the world. I could easily blame my failure to focus on a litany of things:  The ongoing journey of post-transplant life,  The never-ending COVID-19 pandemic that continues to affect us all,  Or the normal ups and downs of life, like shifting relationships, work stress, or

I can honestly say that I was dead wrong. I stated that the actual process of bone marrow transplant was expected to be uneventful and anti-climactic.  Let me stand corrected in saying that there is nothing anti-climactic about watching another person's cells being pushed through your child’s central line. Cells that are intended to train his body not to make leukemic cells anymore. Cells that could be accepted or rejected. Cells that were selflessly harvested from a complete stranger and shipped across the ocean. Cells that will become a part of his body and provide him with brand new DNA.  Nope. Nothing anti-climactic about that. In fact, I found myself moved to tears frequently throughout the day. I watched my child lie there with the energy to do nothing but receive. He received the gift that was being granted to him. He received the new cells, the new life.  Tears wou ld  flow for a mult itude of  reasons . From reports of a sweet 3rd grade student telling their teacher that e

If I’ve learned anything over the last few weeks of wearing masks when going out in public, it’s that wearing a mask makes it hard to breathe.   The trapped air recirculating in and out gets thick and burdensome. The same is true for the invisible mask I wear on the days that I’m trying to hide the reality of what’s going on below the surface.   There comes a point when the air that has gotten trapped between my invisible mask and my unfortunate reality gets so heavy that ripping it off and gasping for a dose of fresh, life-giving oxygen is the only remedy.   ( Cue the proverbial mask selfie that everyone has had to take during quarantine. ) I think many of us frequently wear a mask, intentionally or unintentionally, to hide the reality of what’s underneath. We mask up to present a façade. A watered-down version of the true us. A suffocating misrepresentation of our current existence.  We’re all guilty.  One of my favorite personalities in Scripture is

"Schoolhouse Rock" was one of mine and my husband's favorite educational past times.  Bob Dorough, writer for "Schoolhosue Rock," was a genius when he put educational factoids to quirky music and cute cartoons.  From the preamble to the Constitution, to parts of speech, multiplication facts, how electricity works, and much more, Mr. Dorough slyly disguised learning and actually made it fun! Like all good parents, we passed this educational relic on to our kids.  One of our favorite songs from "Schoolhouse Rock" is without a doubt " Conjunction Junction ."  Its jazzy rhythm easily gets stuck in your head for the rest of your day ( sorry in advance! ).  This song teaches how conjunctions mechanically work in a sentence and what their purpose is.  The conjunction 'BUT' is one that we use all the time to connect two sentences or a clause to a sentence. "I like pizza,  BUT  I don't like olives on it." "I want to

In high school and college, math was my preferred subject.  I loved statistics, solving equations, and seeing how math could be used in everyday facets of life.  As I entered the education field, it would be no surprise that I would geek out over math terminology being used to describe how young children interact and play with each other. The term "parallel play" describes a level of play where children play adjacent to one another, but rarely interact with each other.  You might see them glance at their peers, and their play activity might even be influenced by those around them, yet play is still approached from an independent standpoint.  This type of play is quite opposite of cooperative play where children choose to intersect with their peers by playing games or participating in dramatic play (housekeeping, playing school, etc.). As I think about my life and the relationships I am involved in, I am not that different than a child.  I am very selective about the

As I take the last bite of a pint of Blue Bell ice cream (which by the way was the best ice cream that ever landed in my mouth - see picture below for the flavor), so many thoughts about the past week flood my mind.  The first was rather insignificant -- I realized that I have never eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one sitting before tonight!  Ice cream is always my go-to comfort food, but I didn't realize how badly my body expected that physical treat during times of distress!  You never know how much you want something until you can't have it -- and ice cream clearly doesn't last when left in a freezer for five days without power. Perhaps my other ponderings will be more reflective and less  self-serving  . . . ~ The goodness and benevolence of people’s hearts is always a refreshing breath of fresh air during natural disasters. In our typical world of self-centeredness, times like these remind me that there is good in everyone.  From neighbors sharin