New Posts

For those of you who are visiting my site, please check my page links on a regular basis. When I make new posts to any of the pages, it will not show that a new post has been added. The only time a new post will show is when I add one to the homepage. I will do my best to let you know on the homepage when I'm adding a topic series to one of my pages so that you will know.  I'm currently working on a series for "heart helps," entitles Love Letters: Knowing God Through the Psalms (there are two posts right now, but several more will be added to this series). My goal is to have more content loaded to "home hints" by the end of next week. Today is the kids' last day of school, so we are headed out of town for the weekend to go visit our family and celebrate the 100 year anniversary of Tim's home church. It's always such a blessing to see family, as it rarely happens. Have a wonderful weekend and I'll be back to posting next week!

"Homemade Haven" How To

To make navigating around the site as simple as possible, I wanted to let you know how I'm doing my posts. As  I begin to load content, I will post under the subheadings of each page. So when you click on a page, such as "heart helps," the subheading and introduction will remain at the top (the writing that's in aqua). The posts will begin under the introduction, therefore you'll have to scroll down to see my posts. I apologize for the inconvenience of not having new posts be the first thing that you see. I chose to do them in this way so that new visitors to the site can easily find and read the explanation for each page. I am always open to suggestions and ideas for how to better navigate, so if you ever have a suggestion or idea please feel free to let me know! Thanks so much for stopping by!

Wholly Healthy

I think that as women, we fall into two different categories: either everything has to be perfectly perfect or we are just so scattered that we are kind of just "whatever." What I've learned over the past few years is that extremes aren't healthy, balance is. Our calling as daughters of God is to love the Lord wholly. The struggle is how to translate that into everyday life. Loving God wholly requires us to be wholly healthy; our hearts, our minds, our emotions, our relationships. Creating balance in our lives paves the way for us to have healthy lives which paves the way to love God wholly. Here is where we discover the delight of everyday life. For example, I'm in love with Pinterest, but I will be the first to admit that it can be useful or harmful to us and our expectations. It can either negatively feed our desire to create a perfectly perfect world or make us feel entirely defeated. On the other hand, there are some very useful ideas and resources. What I've learned to do is decide what is useful and what is unrealistic. There are some "mom" websites and blogs that I follow because I gain some very useful information and wisdom from them. However, I take what is useful and leave what is extreme because it seems as though their days can be extremely planned. The problem is that having an overly organized life is that there is no room for God to show up. My life as the wife of a Senior Pastor is a little different than many women. It is not unusual for me to receive a phone call that requires me to drop whatever I am doing at the drop of a hat. My personality is to be very structured and completely plan each day. However, I've had to let some of that go because it's not a reality of life and especially not for women who want to be available to minister to people. I don't have to accomplish a list of 25 things today to be worthwhile. I don't have to organize 5 areas of my home or cook 10 freezer meals a day so that I can feel like superwoman. What happens is that my day becomes focused on the tasks rather than the purpose behind the organization which is to care for and enjoy my family. Before those of you are are naturally unorganized started cheering and letting yourself off the hook, the other extreme causes the same problems!  When I'm all out of sorts and completely overwhelmed because I don't know which way is up, I'm not going to be able to wholly love God or minister His love to those around me either. There is a huge benefit to having even a small amount of organization. It calms me and clears the chaos so that I'm able to simply enjoy, so that I'm free to love my God and delight in this blessed life He's given me. My prayer for this blog is simply that you are encouraged in your life as a woman. We were created to be loved by God and to love Him wholly in our everyday life. The purpose for this blog is to provide practical tools that may help you create that balance and to encourage you in becoming wholly healthy.

Content Coming Soon!

I will be getting content posted over the next few days! Thank you for your patience!

Testing.....Testing.....

Just seeing what it is all going to look like.