Living Untethered: Relinquishing Control to God

On this Christmas Eve I bring you something a little different. Bethany Quinn is my baby-girl. Well she is a grown woman, but she will always be my baby. She works to feed people long after I am snug in my warm bed. After a long shift she is physically exhausted but often unable to go right to sleep when she finally gets home. One December night, in the wee hours of the morning, her mind was swirling with many thoughts about that first Christmas long ago, so she just started writing them down. The following blog is straight from her heart and she graciously gave me permission to share it with you. *           *          * 3 AM thoughts. Mary was a mother. So, she would feel mother type emotions, right? Well, I wrote it all down as it came to my brain. I couldn’t sleep if I had tried to, so here it is. Thinking of Mary as a Mother. Mary, WHEN did you know? Was it the Angel that told you you...

December 4 started out a great day. And it finished well. What happened in between made me realize I’m not ready for this journey. I’m not ready for Alzheimer’s to steal my father-in-law. I’m not ready for heart attach or stroke to steal my mother-in-law. I still need them. I began my day trying to write a blog for the week. I was on a roll but had to shut down to go for lunch. My husband’s niece from Vancouver was coming for lunch with her family. I had not yet met the twins and they are over a year old already. My mother-in-law had made a delicious noon meal for us to share together at their place. All was going well…until it wasn’t. Shortly after lunch I noticed her sit down – she doesn’t sit down when she has company to look after. She looked pale and was having a hard time breathing. My nephew took her pulse while I checked it on my phone app. It was very low, too low. She said she was dizzy and unable to walk unassisted. She had lost vision in her left eye, and in h...

I feel stuck. I can’t hear Jesus speak to my soul like I have in the past. I have little motivation to do things around the house or to get out and meet people. I waste a lot of time doing…well, nothing really, at least nothing that makes a difference in the world. It seems the Lord is asking me to spend some time really feeling the losses I have experienced in the last 6 months to a year. Wouldn’t it be easier if I just ignored them? Wouldn’t they eventually just scab over and I’d be fine? Apparently not. Every Monday my husband and I try to lean into Sabbath Rest. A habit we began several years ago. One of the first things I do is grab a coffee and go sit by myself in my office. I review my last week’s journal entries. I look for ways in which God revealed himself and touched my heart in some way. It is a great exercise because I forget. This not only helps me remember but it positions me to enter the next week from a place of gratitude. It often reveals things I need to repent...

“ Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. ” ( James 1:2–4 , NLT) Seriously?! Joy? Sometimes I have a hard time getting past that first line. As I peruse my journals, it seems that each time I face a new trial, I write, “This is the most difficult one yet”. Funny how our present trouble feels worse than anything we’ve felt before. If the above verses are true, then it would follow that each subsequent struggle would be more difficult than the one before. I’ve been in a rigorous training program that began at the age of 5. I was 4 years old when I trusted in Jesus’ death and resurrection to pay for the penalty of my sins. It was only a year later that the abuse began. I endured verbal, emotional, sexual, physical, and ...