It's our 10th anniversary! Want to hear what happened right before the wedding?

One week prior to our big day, we were en route to a ministry retreat when rioting broke out in a community we were serving. From the road, we managed to have a Ugandan pastor moved from xenophobic uproar into the townhouse we would move into after our wedding.

We returned a few days later with massive sinus infections and discovered our pre-wedding housing would not have electricity for the week.

We used to sit next to Uncle Lindsey on the front row at church. He and my husband often huddled, head-to-head, in prayer. Every Sunday at church and Friday after the Call to Worship, Uncle Lindsey would tell me what he was going to do when he got out of his wheelchair. He couldn't wait to glorify the Lord with his healing. The man had a plan to dance, and no one doubted he would.

Uncle Lindsey shared his life story with me a few years ago...

As a child, I learned the stories of God on Sunday school flannelboards and the Word of God through songs. In high school, I was enveloped in a community of Godly families and a Methodist church youth group that showed me what God looks like. I went on mission trips, was introduced to Christian music, and learned to hear God's voice on a youth trip.

I'm compelled to reach out to those who sowed seeds in me that are now sprouting on foreign soil. Who could have known those first mission trips of sleeping in another church's fellowship hall and doing odd-jobs for community members would culminate as a lifetime of foreign missions?

If you were born in southern America in the 1980's, and if your parents took advantage of every summer Vacation Bible School in your hometown, you can probably finish the following lines without thinking twice:

"God is good..." (All the time!) "All the time..." (God is good!)

Merchant vessel, The Nantucket, rammed into steamship, The Monroe, near the Virginia coast on a foggy January night in 1914. In the trial that followed, Nantucket's captain, Osymn Berry, admitted to many negligent decisions and was arraigned accordingly. The cross-examination of Monroe's captain, Edward Johnson, revealed he navigated with a steering compass that deviated as much as 2° from the standard magnetic compass. The trial ended with two burly sea captains sobbing on each other's shoulders with the reckoning that their carelessness and misorientation cost 41 lives…

Our six-year olds's auto-immune condition has been flaring up. My nerves crackled and popped all night last Friday from the intensity of caring for him, and I couldn't sleep at all. On Saturday, we watched a medic team carry my oldest son off the rugby field on a stretcher. My three-year old and I rushed to the hospital to open his file while my husband rode in the ambulance with him.

You'll never believe what happened next... I LOCKED MY THREE-YEAR OLD IN MY VAN IN THE HOSPITAL PARKING LOT. My sleep-deprived, nerve-frazzled, broken heart was just about ready to stop beating at this point.

We are doing a lot of vocabulary shaping in our house right now as our youngest boys absorb the lingo of the world around them. I'm reminded of my oldest son coming home from primary school years ago, echoing his peers by starting every sentence with, "The problem is..."

“The problem is there’s not enough…” “The problem is that he always…” “The problem is we can’t….”

Yes; there's great value in identifying problems you're trying to solve. You end up with much bigger problems, however, if you stop there.

My neurodivergent six-year old is into creating nonsensical trivia. A recent car ride went something like this...

Him: "What color is an oval?"

Me: "Green."

Him: "NO! PINK! How many bricks are in a wall?"

Me: "Probably 96."

Him: "You were SO CLOSE. But sorry, it's 89."

I've been playing an old hymn on repeat. My younger children don't understand the 18th century lyrics, but we've worshiped wholeheartedly to "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". Something in that song is reaching something in us, so I did a little digging on the story behind it.

Robert Robinson lost his father as a young boy in the 1700's. He had to grow up fast, start working young, and ran the streets of London as a gangster…

Tension was palpable in the Upper Room. Jesus just rode into Jerusalem under palm leaves and cries for "Hosanna". Right after that, He announced His own death, and an audible voice spoke from heaven. (John 12) The disciples must have had endless questions for their teacher, who only seemed to speak in parables. What did it all mean? Would He save them? Was this all for naught?

They all wanted to be His favorite, wanted the seat closest to living hope. They were there to share an intimate meal, reclining at a low table. No dirty foot was washed after removing their sandals, and it was becoming obvious. You could literally smell the tension.

Pent-up energy is ricocheting off our walls during an extra long, extra loud, extra rainy school holiday. I'm giving my all, but my autistic son needs more than that. The rest of my family gets less of me, and my son still doesn't have enough. I start each new day already storm-battered.

I tiptoed to my Bible one morning while the house slept to see if Jesus was still in the storm-stilling business.

Imagine... Political chaos is on the rise. Justice is at an all-time low. You're hungry and crippled by a reckless kind of hurt - for your family, your future, and humanity itself. You don't see a way for things to be different.

You hear there's a man who performs miracles. The neighbors say He's heading to a desolate place. There's nothing there for anyone, but there's nothing to stay for either. Almost 20,000 people are already there when you arrive. You strain to see the man called Jesus from tiptoes in the back.

I remember what it felt like, years ago, when I first felt life inside of me. Every kick and hiccup of the child within re-proclaimed God's design for us as co-creators. I quickly realized both big and small decisions are weighed on different scales when you understand you are doing it with Christ.

Now, we are stepping into a new season of co-laboring with Christ. We are launching a new church in Cape Town! In some ways, I've felt the familiar weight of a new parent. We dream of a place for people to feel at home with Jesus and their neighbors, no matter where they've come from. We believe His House should be the safest place for a person to become their whole, dearly-loved self.

My husband and I went on an evening walk a while ago. We rehashed a painful season we'd traversed in the previous months and marked how God had used it for our good. The conversation went deeper as we turned a familiar corner in our neighborhood. Yes, we have successfully navigated external hardships... but what about the ones woven into our family DNA? My husband worried aloud,"Your personality has changed. You were so bubbly... laughing all the time.. and now I can see how heavy life is on you." I conceded that the relentless spiritual warfare, crippling corruption, decade of distance from family, and special needs parenting has dug deep, rugged trenches in my formerly light disposition.

Yesterday was my husband's 42nd birthday. The kids and I threw him a lemonade-themed birthday party at home. I set a beautiful table with a freshly-ironed tablecloth and a vase full of lemons. We had strawberry lemonade with dinner and went back for seconds of lemon cake and ice cream. He even had to hunt for his homemade gifts in a basket of lemons! It was silly and simple. We talked about the meaning behind our celebration during dinner between giggles and our toddler's frighteningly man-like belches.

Share Life. Find God. This is what it’s all about.

Watch this quick video for an encouraging story from this week.

AND MOMS! Search “Called to Worship” on the YouVersionApp’s Bible reading plans for a free 5-day devotional from me and Help Club for Moms!

We've been asking God for a particular miracle for a long time. Last week, another "not yet" hit hard, so I searched "miracle" on my old website. I borrowed hope from my own stories as I re-visited scenes where God met me. Today's call to worship is a miracle lesson I wrote to myself from the mission field in 2011.-----------

We started feeding orphaned and vulnerable children in a nearby community- a handful became hundreds in eighteen months. Last week, an unspeakable amount of hungry children came for hot food and hope...

Relevant Magazine recently reported "Christian music is finally having a real mainstream moment." For the first time in over a decade, two Christian songs made Billboard's "Hot 100" list simultaneously. "American Idol" aired a three-hour "Songs of Faith" special on Easter Sunday. Christian singer and songwriter, Brandon Lake performed "Hard-Fought Hallelujah" on Jimmy Kimmel Live and made a surprise appearance at Stagecoach Festival, co-leading 75,000 people from every walk of life in an incredibly relevant psalm.

I recently spent an afternoon with moms ahead of me in their special needs parenting journeys. A familiar knot twisted in my gut as they shared about unenrolling their children from school. My personal nightmare, one I push down deep, was tea time conversation. You see, statistics agree with every story I've heard. Children with my son's diagnosis are often unable to stay in school and endure so much just trying to grow up.

Have you ever read stories of the disciples and wondered, "How could you do that? Jesus is LITERALLY right there with you!" Luke 22 recounts Jesus telling Peter he would deny Him three times before the rooster's first morning crow. Despite the "warning", Peter fulfilled the prophesy that very same night.

Me too, Peter.