Beloved Father, help me to expect you as I travel the ordinary road of life.  I am not asking for sensational experiences.  Fellowship with me through my everyday work and service and be my companion when I take an ordinary journey.  And let my humble life be transformed by Your presence. 

~ Streams in the Desert, October 22

“There is a reason I am not writing the story, and God is.  He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means.  I don’t.  Maybe…it’s accepting there are things we simply don’t understand.  But He does.”

~ Ann Voskamp

A Velveteen Mother — made Real by the years — the way grace can happen to you. And not all at once — but you become. And grace becomes you.

To be just a Velveteen Mother: worn and weathered down to the exquisite beauty of the frame of the Cross.

It’s the threadbare simplicity of the thing: a Velveteen mother — softened and strengthened by the years, rubbed down to the essence of Gospel — like the Lion Who sacrifices Himself as a Lamb.

And maybe that is all — a Velveteen Mother is a mother who keeps bending her worn knees with prayers that her child may walk straight paths. Never ceasing to pray for her own crooked heart.

Never forgetting — Train up a child in the way he should go and be ready to forgive him. The Way he should go is down a road named Grace.

Why do I forget that becoming Real — becoming a velveteen mother –  it will hurt in a thousand ways?

~ Ann Voskamp

After a slow wearing down and fighting the same battles and remembering that this war we wage is not against flesh and blood, and knowing that we fight discontentment with gratitude, I start again.  After too many weeks away, after October “the month that got away”, I begin the holiday season with an effort to slow, savor, and count the gifts.

1408.  being lice free

1409.  the chance to start feeling caught up

1410.  not running

1411.  family game of Monopoly

1412.  Friday night at home

1413.  getting there

1414.  clean house and truck

1415.  Chandler’s first 5k

1416.  pushing through 3.1 painful miles

1417.  the healing of deep laughter

1418.  approval letters

1419.  getting away

1420.  tropical storms

1421.  being content

1422.  ninety-three days

1423.  being with my peeps

1424.  two nights at home together

1425.  slowing down

1426.  laundry neatly stacked and folded

1427.  rainy days

1428.  candles

1429.  leaves swirling wonder around third-born child

1430.  facing the same frustration

1431.  becoming a velveteen mother

Won’t you join me this month in giving thanks to the Giver of all good gifts?  Even those gifts that hurt and wear us down and keep us on knees and faces…even these are good gifts in His hands.  Even when we don’t understand how something good could ever come, we can trust the One who has given all things for our good and His glory.

May your day be filled with thanks.

For His Glory ~

~ Sara