All In A Days Grace

          Circumstance's.  We all have them in our lives.  Some give  privilege and prosperity and others  difficulties and strife.  They can break our hearts or build our ego's.  Many times we pray for them to change.  They can make us feel frightened and  incapable...  Uncertain... Vulnerable. I don't think it's the circumstances of our life that make us who we are.  It's what we do with those circumstances. That statement alone is scary because it implies that we must do something.  That we must get through the uncertainty and vulnerability. The key to this is we do that by knowing a distinct truth..... That we weren't meant to do this alone.   This is where faith comes in.  This is when you surrender to the fact that non of us are meant to navigate through life by ourselves or to figure it all out on our own.  We have a very  loving God who is patiently waiting for us to reach out and...

  I have an Ivy  plant that I’ve managed to keep alive for the past 20 years! It’s moved with us several times, been knocked over a few times and gone through times of drought when I forgot to water it. It has been through allot but ultimately it is thriving. One day I glanced at it and saw that one branch in particular wasn’t doing well. I had been faithfully watering, and the rest of the plant looked good…except this one branch. I had just been looking at the plant as a whole and not in detail. As I looked more closely I realized the root to this one branch had moved its way out of the soil. It no longer had a source of life giving water. As the rest of the plant kept its connection with the soil, this branch although intertwined with the rest, was wilting. It seemed this hadn’t happened quickly, or from one event, but slowly over time. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you a...

    “Be kind and compassionate to one another,  forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. ” - Ephesians 4:32 Kindness doesn’t cost anything and it’s something that we all have the opportunity to give. Yet, so many times I have come across people who instead of being kind chose to be angry, bitter and sometimes simply…mean. It’s something that can be heartbreaking to watch. To see someone lash out at another with words or actions that serve no other purpose than to hurt. It's never made any sense to me. I believe in basic human kindness and goodness. It seems that most people want to be the best person they can be and to treat others with compassion and love.  But if you have a bitter or angry person in your life, you will likely experience the darker side of human nature. Many times we might feel blind sighted by these people in our life. These are the people we sometimes feel we have to “walk on eggshells around”. Although I ground myself in...

Several months ago, my husband and I rented a condo on the beach to get away for a couple of days. The beach has always been my happy place where I can unwind and relax. When we arrived the first thing that I did was open up the sliding glass doors and step out onto the patio. I was overwhelmed by the sound of the ocean. The waves were crashing and the wind was blowing.  This particular weekend was just coming off of a storm that had moved out to sea a day or two before. We were still seeing and hearing its effects. As we sat out on the patio, I was shocked at how unsettled I felt by the sound. The ocean was loud and the waves seemed so relentless as they crashed on the shore line. It was unsettling to me to feel a little bit rattled by something that usually gave me so much peace. The ocean remained that way for our entire two days stay. It was particularly choppy at night after the sun went down. We could hear the sound of the ocean and the whistling wind even when we wen...