Unwasted Grace

  Five days ago, my son and I discovered a bird's nest in one of our trees. Nothing was in it. Today, we noticed a bird sitting in the nest. Thanks to my six-year-old, our day has been consumed with watching this bird. We go outside and check every few minutes to make sure the bird is still in its nest. It always is. Sometimes it sits there when we approach it and sometimes it flies away but stays close...always watching the nest. A little investigating confirmed what I thought all along, eggs are now in there. That bird is protecting its young.  The last time my boy asked to go check on the bird, I told him he could go check and I would watch from the window. He has never been allowed to go outside on his own so he walked outside trepidatiously at first. Then he looked at me through the window, waved, and with great courage because mom was watching, he ran toward the nest. Much like the protective bird, I watched my little guy until he came safely inside.  A year ago, almost to th

As I watch my daughter peacefully sleep, I wonder...what if she was me? What if she was the mama of three beautiful children and the wife of a godly man and she was spending valuable moments of this one life feeling completely worthless? Moments she will never get back. What if she couldn't see her value came from above, from the Creator who always thinks "precious thoughts" of her? (Psalms 139) What if she was stepping on the scale and basing her self-worth on what that number said. What if it dictated her day? The way she spoke to herself? The way she spoke to her spouse? The way she spoke to her kids? What if she contemplated avoiding others or social settings all because of that one meaningless number? What if she spent hours upon hours trying to figure out how she could lose more weight? Reach that "perfect" size...even though she didn't even know what that size was? What if she insisted on doing just one more workout even though her body was scr