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I am so honored to welcome my dear friend, and the leader of the Compassion Bloggers in Equador this week, Brianne McKoy. She is one of the most precious people and gifted writers know and she is full of the love of Christ.  I traveled with her to Nicaragua in 2012 and I am honored to partner with Compassion to spread God’s love to the some of the hardest places.  Welcome sweet Bri. You are precious to me. Thank you for sharing the stories our little neighbors around the world.

I learned that in your community more likely than not, you’ll get married at 14. You’ll start having babies. And then the father will leave you.

As we traveled to you, our Trip Specialist was explaining the poverty of your community. She talked about your early entrance into marriage & I begged why. The reason? Most likely, your own father is not present in your home. Your mamma is gone too because she needs to find work to feed you.

So love, you’re missing it.

Right around age 14, right when the loneliness in your heart has expanded to where you are sure you just can’t hold it anymore, a man will come along and promise you all the things that you believe are echoes of your dreams.

And I know poverty is lapping over you relentlessly and this man, you will convince yourself, he has to be the answer. He has to be at least some kind of different from where you stand now.

All of this, I know all of this before I take one step off the bus.

As we arrive I see lingering right outside the church several trucks filled with guys. Just watching. Trying to cast a net with their eyes. Calling out for a little attention.

The information I was just given about the danger of your future came eerily into focus and as I entered the church I looked back and watched as the pastor locked the gate to the church to keep the men out. To keep your future safe.

When I met you and saw how beautiful you are. How precious. How loving, I wanted to run to the gate of the church and dead bolt, no, double dead bolt it’s doors.

I wanted to keep you impossibly safe.

But poverty – it is not something to just be hidden from. It must be broken.

As I took you in and wondered how easy it must be for you to give away a future that you don’t believe you really have – I became vibrantly aware of what you are coming up against.

Sometimes poverty looks like not having enough food to nourish your body. Sometimes it looks like not living in acceptable conditions – leaving you exposed to the weather, disease and an easy target for all kinds of evil. Today it looked a lot like loneliness. Like no one was ever going to come for you. Like the only way out was just another turn into poverty – getting married too young and starting a family you can’t possibly provide for.

You were up to your elbows in abandonment.

And just when I though I’d need a lifetime of deep breaths before I lost my mind at this cycle of poverty, I went to your house, Brenda.

Your smile was so innocent and blindingly pure.

Your mother and father were both in the home. Your dad had not abandoned the family.

We learned about your older siblings. Your sister did get married early and now she has a lot of her own troubles that your mom pleaded with us to pray for. But for you? Her prayers for you were different. Not strained. For you she wanted us to pray that you would continue to study hard, to become a professional.

They said they have these prayers for you because you are in the Compassion program.

While loneliness, abandonment, and an urgency to settle down young is raging through your community, there is something else living loud. The local church.

Five years ago Compassion partnered with this church. Your family registered you in the Compassion program and now you have a sponsor.

You told us that your sponsor’s letters are filled with encouragement. Asking you to work hard. Telling you God has a plan for you.

You have come to know Jesus. And you know He has a plan for you too.

So poverty, it is breaking with every step you take. And you are another divine appointment, reminding me that my life is so worth losing for the work of God.

Your hope filled smile was simply this, the irrefutable voice of God reminding me that if I have, if any of us in this world, have any amount of status, any money, any power it is for the sole purpose, the soul-purpose, to allow Him to use us to save many lives. To release a child from poverty. To come into their world, and say to them,

“God sees you. He sees you. He loves you. He has a plan for you. One you cannot even imagine.”

And a few years ago I didn’t understand, but now I know that coming into your world is as simple as sponsoring a child for $38 a month. For committing to partner with God and allowing Him to use us so that a child in an impoverished community can know, they are not abandoned. To taste and see that God’s love is so fierce it drowns out and expels the ruthless desertion this world would impose on you.

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To Edie’s readers, you are a gracious bunch! I know this from when she was on a Compassion Blog Trip. Thank you for reading about the girls of Manta.

Will you partner with God today? Will you please sponsor a child for $38 a month and break light into the great shadow of darkness and abandonment that poverty casts?

For reading about Brenda, thank you. God has something so unimaginable for her, doesn’t He? I pray that today you allow him to bring a Brenda into your life. If you were like me, and wondering if sponsorship is the right time or step for you, can I say that I waited to long to sponsor my first child? And a child’s life is not worthy of my “lofty” time-delayed contemplation. We must act.

We must allow Him to use our life for something greater than this world has to offer.

View children from Ecuador who are in great need of hope and love. Sponsor a child today.

This week I am in Ecuador with Compassion for our 14^th Compassion Blogger Trip. Enter this with us? Read more stories about our time in Ecuador from Ruth at GraceLaced.com, Shannan from FlowerPatch Farmgirl , and Ashley from Under the Sycamore.

And a gift? Ruth graciously created a print exclusive to Compassion. To anyone who during our trip, you will receive this print FREE to commemorate your decision to save a life.

Back in the glory days of blogging, I used to host a 12 Days of Handmade Christmas during November. I kinda miss it.  So, instead of 12 Days, I’m sharing my favorite 12 projects from the past few years, in the hopes that it’ll inspire us to sit down and do something fun and creative with our hands.

Right now, I’m knitting a scarf and then switching over to dishclothes when I get bored. I’ve made all these projects on this list and they are some of my favorites!

  Hope you will find some inspiration for making the holidays more meaningful and more handmade.  Enjoy!

For a full list of the past projects, 12 Days 2009, 12 Days 2010, 12 Days 2012!

1.  The Handmade Dishmat

I’ve made this project SO MANY TIMES.   It’s my favorite thing to give for Christmas, with my favorite cookbook wrapped inside.  This mat takes about an 1 1/2 and everyone I’ve ever made one for LOVES it.  I have my friend, Darby, to thank.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving.  My sister just made me one and I’m in heaven!

2.  The Linen Flower (Pin)

This is my new favorite project.  They’re so fun to make and are perfect plate/table decorations as well as beautiful flower pins.  They take 1-2 hours to make.

3.  Large Zippered Make-Up Bag

Thank you to Miss Jan for this awesome project! I’ve made it for gifts many times and it’s easy and fun and easy to personalize!

4. Large Photo Prints (mounted to foamboard)

These would make great gifts for kids, teens, or adults.  They’re so easy and so personal!

5. DIY Alphabet Crayons

Thank you, Meg, for sharing this awesome project so many years ago.  So colorful and fun, just like Meg!

6. Yarn Wrapped Wreath

I made this a couple of years ago and it’s been hanging in my house ever since, loose strands and all.  It takes about an hour or so.

7.  Hand-knit Dishcloth

Let me teach you how to KNIT!!!  This is THE perfect time of year to learn to knit and this is THE perfect project on which to learn.  These make wonderful little gifts wrapped up in soaps or homemade dish soap!

9. Pom Pom Wreath

Thank you, Julie, for sharing this project last year.  I’m determined to make one this year and can’t wait to try one in a gold/mustard color!

9.  DIY Monogrammed Candle

Amy shared this project during our very first 12 Days and it’s still THE most popular 12 Days post.  It’s been pinned 6 million times.

10. Grannie’s Homemade Fudge

I just finished a sugar detox so I figured it was the perfect time to tell you about the best fudge in the WHOLE entire world. You can only have one piece because #DIABETES.  This is my favorite gift to give away.  And my favorite holiday treat to make.  It’s so easy and SO delicious!  Thank you, Grannie!

11. DIY Crayon Roll

The super talented Lindsey shared this post with us and it’s been one of the most popular of the 12 Days posts.  Make some for traveling gifts for your own littles or for all the lovely littles in your life.  Thank you, Lindsey!

12.  Homemade Honey Wheat Bread

Perhaps, THE perfect Christmas gift!  I usually gift it with some homemade strawberry jam or local honey.  It’s love at first bite.  I get these clear cellophane bags from Amazon and give bread away all year!

Have you made any of these projects?

What’s your favorite (easy-ish) handmade gift to give to others?  Leave links or descriptions in the comments and I’ll share my faves this weekend!

Click here for my free ebook on hospitality!

If you’re new around here?  Thank you for visiting my blog!  I’m honored you’re here and I hope you’ll find some encouragement (and some laughter!) for your days.  Visit my about page, which highlights some of my popular posts or will at least show you a peak into my crazy people.  You can subscribe to this blog by email here.  I am currently addicted to Pinterest, so follow at your own risk.  I also post updates to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

• The girls and I are packing up this morning and heading for Greenville, South Carolina to the Allume Conference.  I think this is my 3rd (or it 4th) year to go to Allume, which is a Christian writer’s/blogger’s conference and since the girls are on fall break, I thought we’d make a little field trip of it.  I LOVE seeing my online friends in person and meeting new ones—it’s THE highlight of blogging for me.  We will be setting up a respite/catch your breath station on Friday and giving away some  awesome essential oil roller ball samples, to help with things like sleep and stress and mood and the immune system and more.  I’m glad Em & El will get to experience it with me and they are excited too.   I did a vendor fair last week and they were so awesome at talking to the women and helping them that they didn’t even need me!  I’m basically taking the house, as you can see from the photo above so it should be a cozy and therapeutic little station. If you’re going to Allume, I’d love to meet you!

• Next weekend, I’m headed to Orange County, California to speak at a women’s conference at Concordia Irvine!  I’ll be speaking on the Jesus way of hospitality and would LOVE to see you if you live in the area! They’ll be having a wonderful vendor fair with the event so come hang out and eat and shop and fellowship! You can register here.

• Ruth and I are speaking at the Sweet Sister’s conference Nov. 13-14 at First Baptist Charlotte and would LOVE to see you there!  You can go here to read more and register!  We are each doing a session separately and then one together so come join us for the weekend.  We’ll be talking about Jesus hospitality, friendship, and being your sister’s keeper and we can’t wait!!  It’s been a heavy travel year for me so I’m excited about these events and then I’m excited to snuggle into fall & winter with some good books and something on the knitting needles!

Mucho love and hope to see you in real life!!

I’m also teaching lots of classes so if you’re local, come join us sometime!

(I just taught an online FB class on winter wellness and you can still view it here, just look for the Table of Contents and click on all the posts! If you’ve been contemplating oils, get them before winter! You will be so glad you did!)

My whole life has been filled with the best women.  Sisters, friends, mothers, daughters, aunts, cousins, and random women I’ve only known for a few minutes—women who have loved me, inspired me, mothered me, taught me, rebuked me, and handled my heart in the kindest, most beautiful ways.  I’ve always had friends who could be gone from my life for days or months or years but then when we found ourselves back together, nothing had changed.

That’s the way I feel about you too.  I know I’ve been scarce around these parts but I hold you in my heart just the same.  I’ve missed you and I pray for you and think of you everyday and hope you’re well.  Happy Mother’s Day friends.  xoxo

(Enjoy this repost from Mother’s Day last year.)

My oldest mother gave birth to me eons ago.  She lived in a luscious garden by day and surely twirled under leafy moonlit palms by night.

She was the most beautiful creature in all the world, the consummate woman—made for glorious communion, devoted and adored.

She gave herself freely in love and affection.  Her name was Eve, the mother of all the living.

But like us all, her story bleeds.  She was wrecked by heartache.   Her paradise was laid waste.  So she hid and felt ashamed, she doubted His love and provision.

Her story is the story of us all—the fall that wrecked us and shut us out of Eden.

I see myself in her.  I am my mother’s daughter.   We both cling to the world’s only hope and her story sustains me.

She mothers on.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My flesh and blood mother gave birth to me in the January cold and bundled me up on a  Friday night for my first homecoming.

The handsome man in the fedora was no where to be found.  That is, until he brought the honky tonk band home from the bar to finish out their set in the kitchen at 3am.  Because surely homecomings need music.

(I’ll tell you the whole story someday but it may well be the best birth story in all the land.)

(Think Doyle Hargrave’s band in Slingblade)

This woman carried me through hell and back. She gave me the gift of life.  She worked all the jobs.  She sacrificed everything a woman can.   She NEVER complained.  She loved me,  she believed in me, she never, ever stopped giving, she worked harder than anyone I’ve ever known.  She laid her life down with quiet courage so that I might someday stand tall and find my voice.  This is how I learned to be a woman.  This is how I learned what it means to empty yourself.  She was first light for me.   She has made my every homecoming possible.

She is my momma.  And her love plays a melody in my heart.

She mothers on.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My spirit and blood mother  gave birth to me on a Sunday morning, in the clear cool waters of Baptism.  Her name is called Church— the arc of safety, where Christ our Father has placed us and befits us with everything we need.

He left her with His manifesto and she faithfully labors on to give birth to God’s children;  to teach of His love and to serve His blessed body and blood for  life and forgiveness.  She is weary from the war, bruised and battle-worn.  But, she knows what’s at stake so she soldiers on, bending and stooping to hold on to us at all cost.

Mother Church will bear us to heaven, where we will finally know what price Love has paid to get us home.

Until then, she mothers on.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We labor and love and sacrifice—as our mothers have so faithfully done before us—for the sake of seeing the miracle of grace born and nurtured in another human heart.

Mother on, dear sisters.

You are the beautiful life-givers, body and soul.

This is day 17 in an email Lenten devotional series.  Join us?

Texts:  Psalm 38:13-15, Gen. 29:1-30, Mark 9: 14-32, Luke 15: 18-19

​I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.  Treat me as one of your hired servants.”

Well, the snow finally gave way to warm sunshine this weekend and not ten minutes after we ate our brunch of broiled salmon, soft scrambled eggs, & cowboy potatoes, a tree swallow swooped in outside the glass doors trying to get our attention.  Being the good bird man he is, Stevie jumped up from his feast to watch our friend dive and hover and search around the homestead for his gourd. This is our first tree swallow sighting of the season and since they usually return to the same nest year after year we feel a certain warm familiarity with the little guy.  Before he had even finished his coffee, Stevie was on the lake bank lowering the gourd to clean it out and make sure everything was ready for Spring nesting.  It’s probably too early for them to be back for good but it was fun to see the first real live sign of Spring.

The prodigal is not quite home yet either—he too is hovering around trying to figure out how to get there.  This  seems evident by the fact that he wants to earn his way back into the family by becoming one of his father’s hired servants.

He realizes he has sinned against heaven and against his father. That’s an important start. But like us, he figures the solution for what he has done is something he is capable of fixing— if he tries hard enough, is earnest enough, if he joins enough Bible studies and goes on enough mission trips.

Ken Bailey in The Cross and the Prodigal says, “Sadly, the prodigal does not yet understand the nature of his sin. He thinks the issue is the lost money. It isn’t! It is the father’s broken heart.  The problem is not the broken law but the broken relationship.  If he is a servant, he can get a job, earn the money back, and pay his debts.  But if he is a son of the house, such a solution will not satisfy his father.”

And such a solution will not satisfy our father either.

The grace that he freely gives us as his children is a stumbling block to us. We don’t fathom it and we don’t really believe it.  In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus heals a boy with an unclean Spirit and then he tells the father of the boy, “Anything is possible for those who believe.  The father speaks the most honest answer ever spoken when he says, “Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.”  And the kicker is that the belief we need is itself is a gift from him—one that we must receive by faith.

We have come to God looking for a transaction.  But our father is not looking for day laborers.  He is looking for sons and daughters to whom he can lavish the gifts and mysteries of His kingdom.  We want to show him our skills & talents and He wants to show us His Son. We want to tidy up our outsides and he wants to raise us to life.  We want glory.  He chose suffering.  We have been wrong at every turn and He has met us at every turn with love and forgiveness.

We want to flitter around the edges of our Father’s abundance and He wants to kill the fatted calf and make merry in a feast that never ends.

Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief.

Two days after my house burned down in 2010, I was in Knoxville with my sister getting the bare essentials.  Things like makeup and cowboy boots and a computer.  I shudder when I look back at the photos.  I had a black eye from jumping out of my two story window wore ill fitting borrowed clothes for days. I think it was the lack of hair products though that made me look the most pitiful.

We walked by Williams Sonoma and I went in to look at their soup pots.  My sister very kindly and tenderly said, “Um, sis, you don’t even have a stove.”

Oh yeah, the little detail of my house just burning down.

I bought the soup pot anyways.

Two days after everything I owned burned to the ground, I was now the proud owner of a computer, some cowboy boots, and a dutch oven, while my stove and a lifetime of memories lay in an ashy heap beside the turquoise chair.  People fed me for weeks, God bless them every one,  but I found my way back to life again by making soup, by feeding my people.

That very same dutch oven sits on my stovetop everyday and reminds me that my calling is to serve and love and feed and I can do that no matter what burns down around me.  There’s always some one right in front of me who has needs that I am perfectly suited to meet, regardless of my education level, my current job, or my socioeconomic status in life.

Lent begins this Wednesday and every time it comes around now, I think of the fire.

“Dust you are and to dust you shall return.”

Lent reminds us that we aren’t yet home.  Lent reminds us not to settle too comfortably into this world, to travel lightly so that we may have hands free to serve our neighbor on the way.  Lent reminds us why God came  to us in the flesh—not to give us wealth and prosperity, not to destroy our enemies, not to set up a powerful earthly kingdom, no, none of that.

He came to serve, to give His life as a ransom for many.  He came to die.

So, before we rush on ahead to the blessed Easter resurrection, let us walk with Christ through the dark—His pain and agony, the betrayals and lies, the night of our own sin, the stronghold of our self-righteousness, the doubt of our weak and failing faith.  Let us walk with Him to His cross and find that the Hope of the world was running to rescue us all along, to give us life and salvation and to fit us with a the sacred calling of sharing that love with the world.

It would be my honor for you to join me in a 40 day Lenten devotional of the Prodigal Son.  The sign up period ends tonight at midnight EST.

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 The devotional study will include a near daily email with occasional videos and access to a private Facebook group for discussion.  At the end of the study, those registered will receive a pdf of all the material in one easy to access document, along with printable quotes that will be used along the way. The study is free and there are no required materials.  Resources that I will be using are—Finding the Lost, Cultural Keys to Luke 15 by Kenneth Bailey,  Grace Upon Grace by John Kleinig, The Commentary on Luke by Arthur Just, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey, and The Cross & The Prodigal by Kenneth Bailey.  Also, the ESV translation of the Scriptures.

Join the study by filling out this form.