Thanks so much to all of you who participated in our 52Home giveaways the last few days! Tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at 10 a.m. we will have our first weekly flash sale with ready to ship signs. Every sign pictured here will be available. However quantities will be limited so it will be first come first serve.
::UPDATE MONDAY 10 a.m.:: Cuz Mondays need more giveaways! Head over to Instagram for all the details.
::UPDATE SATURDAY 11 a.m.:: New sign giveaway today. Head over to Instagram for all the details.
::UPDATE FRIDAY 2 p.m.:: New sign giveaway today. Head over to Instagram for all the details.
Things have been humming in the 52home workshop this summer as my husband, Mike, and I have been preparing for an exciting new launch. Today, I’m grateful to announce that next week we will begin weekly Flash Sales on Instagram. Whatever signs we’ve made that week will be up for sale and ready to ship out immediately to their new home. Once they’re gone they’re gone!
There’s no better way to kick off a new venture than with a giveaway. Am I right? That’s exactly what we’re going to do over on Instagram all weekend. Give stuff away. Left and right. And by stuff, I mean signs.
Go follow us on Instagram @janelle52home for our big weekend of giveaways and new weekly flash sales. Let the fun begin!
“Few things frighten me more than the beginnings of barrenness that come from frenzied activity with little spiritual food and meditation.” John Piper
Fall and the start of school means frenzied activity. So why do I forget this every year?
In those final, lazy days of summer break, when my kids get bored and restless, I start to long for the structure and schedule of school. Then I get what I wished for and wonder, “What was I thinking?!”
I’m running on cold coffee and stale brownies, struggling to keep up. The laundry is turning sour in the washing machine, we’re already a week behind our homeschool schedule, and yesterday I discovered that my son went into science class unprepared because I forgot to give him his homework. Let the mistakes begin! Mornings are the frenziest (and the time that I’m most likely to make up words). Getting a family of six prepared for takeoff and launched into the day is a challenge. Doing it without sinning against anyone and everyone? Extreme challenge.
And so my Bible reading and prayer have been pushed off to later and later in the day—so late that it isn’t happening. I’m not being lazy and I really want to spend time with the Lord. It’s just that I can’t send my son to school without a lunch, or give up teaching my kindergartner how to read, can I?
But I’m starting to feel it. The beginnings of barrenness. I need God’s Word. I need His presence. More than anything. (John 15:5)
So where do we find the time? Finding the time to spend with God each morning often begins the night before. We have to get practical in order to prioritize the spiritual.
Here are some practical ideas that are helping me right now, along with some suggestions the other girltalkers threw in as well:
Making one or two of these practical changes will easily give you an extra half an hour or more each morning to spend in God’s Word and in prayer.
Fall will still be frenzied, but our souls won’t be. As we abide in God’s Word (John 15:5), we will thrive and bear fruit, even in this busy season.
Next year, I’m gonna try to remember this.
~from the archives
Am I the only one ready for summer?
Table manners are still a work in progress.
We are still talking and reminiscing about our mother-daughter-granddaughter trip to Chicago to attend Elisabeth Elliot’s memorial service. It was a profound experience to hear from so many of Elisabeth Elliot’s close friends and family about her joy, humor, trust in God, and love for others. We are so thankful someone has posted the entire service online for all to see. It’s hard to imagine two hours of your week better spent than watching this service and learning from the godly life of this amazing woman.
Girls road trip to Elisabeth Elliot’s memorial service where the next generation got to meet this amazing lady!
Last Thursday morning, we received the agonizing news that our friend Rebecca’s husband, Wade, went home to be with the Lord after being killed in a car accident. Since that day, our church family has been grieving with Rebecca and her children. Our hearts are breaking for their loss. Wade was a godly man who served alongside our husbands in the church, a man who was greatly respected for his passion for God, his faithful and sacrificial service, his humility, and his kindness. He is already missed so very much.
On Sunday, my father and pastor, CJ Mahaney, sought to care for Rebecca, her children, and our church family, as we “made our way to the house of mourning together” (Ecc. 7:2-4). He shared words of comfort from Scripture as well as instruction on how to care for those who have lost a loved one. May these words serve your soul as well.
We have a Savior who not only feels the effect of death in our lives and weeps with us, we have a Savior who was willing to bear God’s judgment for our sin so we will be forgiven of our sin and spared judgment for our sin. “Death is swallowed up in victory.” And the one who wept by the tomb of Lazarus will one day personally wipe away every tear from the eyes of His people.
Read entire sermon here.
If you use a coffee cup, your kids don’t know you’re drinking chocolate milk.
(We’re in the throes of book writing at the moment, thus the recent slow-down in blogging. Here’s a recent archive written by Mom that continues to serve my soul.)
Where There is No Grace
by Carolyn Mahaney
What do our mothering fears have in common? They are all in our imagination. Our fertile minds generate countless scenarios whereby one calamity or another befalls our children: What if my son rebels when he hits the teenage years? What if my daughter doesn’t want to be my friend when she grows up? What if my son gets in a car accident? What if my daughter is diagnosed with leukemia?
After thirty-eight years of mothering, I’ve discovered that most of the bad things I imagined never actually came true. But there have been other trials—ones I never anticipated.
That’s why Elisabeth Elliot’s wise advice has been invaluable to me in fighting fear: “There is no grace for your imagination.”
God does not sprinkle grace over every path my fear takes. He does not rush in with support and encouragement for every doomsday scenario I can imagine.
No, instead He warns me to stay off those paths: “Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil” (Ps. 37:8).
There is no grace for our imagination. That’s why our fearful imaginings produce bad fruit: anxiety, lack of joy, futile attempts to control.
There is no grace for our imagination. But God does promise sufficient, abundant grace for every real moment of our lives. That’s why the Proverbs 31 woman can “laugh at the future in contrast with being worried or fearful about it” (ESV Study Bible note on Pr. 31:25)
There is no grace for our imagination. But there will be grace for our mothering future, the moment it arrives.
There is not grace for our imagination. But there is grace for today’s mothering trials. Not tomorrow’s imaginary trouble or next year’s envisaged problems. Just for today.
That’s why Jesus tells us: “[D]o not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:34)
Moms of all people know this to be true: each day really does have sufficient trouble without adding tomorrow’s worries!
But for today’s sufficient trouble there is God’s more-than-sufficient grace: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).
“As your days” it says in Deuteronomy, “so shall your strength be” (33:25).
What’s more, for the Christian mother, goodness and mercy are behind every moment of today’s trouble. Our trouble isn’t meaningless. God is pursuing us with goodness and mercytoday and all the days of our lives (Ps. 23:6).
“Courage, dear friend” encourages Charles Spurgeon, “The Lord, the ever-merciful, has appointed every moment of sorrow and pang of suffering. If He ordains the number ten, it can never rise to eleven, nor should you desire that it shrink to nine” (emphasis mine).
God is busy working today’s mothering trouble for our good. So do not worry about tomorrow but look to Him today.
