Terribly Interesting

above photo credit: Ian Taylor  Perhaps you read A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet by Sophie Hudson. It was delightful. I wrote a raving review about how much I loved it. I loved it so much that I passed it along to one of my besties. She loved it too and we read it for our church's book club. My friend Amy has a lovely home and she hosted us all with great Southern flair. I am posting pictures of her handiwork.  I mean...look at this floral piece, y'all. We had pulled pork sliders, beans, rice, pound cake, congealed salad...and on and on. I loved hearing the ladies talk about what they loved in the book. It's funny because it kind of seemed like normal life to me.  The thing that touched me about Sophie's book beyond her humorous banter was that she was tender toward those around her and she had a real, tender love of Jesus. That kind of sweetness toward the Lord and others is a rare gift. I thought so much of it that I sent her a note. She wrote back

Zephaniah 3 The Conversion of the Nations 9  “For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples      to  a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the  Lord      and serve him with one accord. 10  From beyond the rivers   of Cush      my worshippers, the daughter of my dispersed ones,      shall bring my offering. 11  “On that day   you shall not be put to shame      because of the deeds by which you have rebelled against me ; for then  I will remove from your midst      your proudly exultant ones, and  you shall no longer be haughty      in my holy mountain. 12  But I will leave in your midst      a people  humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the  Lord , 13       those who are left in Israel; they  shall do no injustice      and speak no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouth      a deceitful tongue. For they shall graze and lie down,      and none shall make t

This post is for the ladies. Shuffle off, fellas. You probably recognize Shannon's name from the Every Woman's Battle series. She has been bringing healing to to our abused hearts and misguided notions about sexuality for years. It is amazing how many wrong ideas we formulate from life lessons and from the church about our role in marriage. Shannon seeks to sort much of this out for us in her latest book The Passion Principles. I think most everyone could go through this book and find things that could bring healing or freedom to their marriage. Sex is such a bonding agent and we very often misuse, abuse, or neglect it. These pages are filled with simple ways to get past the hang ups and get on with the enjoyment. If you are married, pick up a copy. She touches on all of the reasons we may be misguided or distancing ourselves from our spouse. Our goal is to honor one another and take pleasure in one another so that our earthly reflection is a reflection of our heaven

Last week, I was unable to attend something that I truly wanted to go to. I cried for a while after because my heart yearned to be there. I know that God heard me because of my Sunday morning.  After a lovely service on Easter Sunday, a seventy year old male friend came up to me with tears in his eyes and handed me a hundred dollars. He told me that God had nudged his wife to send my husband and I out on a date. I started crying, y'all. I hardly ever get to go on dates with my husband. Then, here comes his wife and hands me fifty more dollars and tells me to get a sitter. I cannot tell you how much this touched me. It was a gift of personal care for my marriage. It also spoke to me because this week it is my birthday and my husband is about to start leading worship for about 100 days straight. There most likely won't be a date again until August. The Lord knows. I had been really wanting to go out with him, y'all. The Lord heard me. We invited our dear friend and

Abba is talking to me. Perhaps you remember my post about how God kept giving me the theme beauty from ashes for a window of time. If you missed it, read it here . My dear friend Betsy gave me the most precious gift that carries on the theme. I completely teared up when she gave it to me. Her kindness spoke volumes. Would you please say a little prayer for her family for me? Those two three letter words are "beauty" and "ashes." Keeping in mind that you read Hebrew from the right to the left, you can see that the words have identical letters with the first letters being transposed. It is a powerful play on words. He takes what was and realigns it to himself. I thought of how Christ changed places with me and that is how I became beautiful. We were transposed and He took my place on the cross. Beauty for ashes. from Biblehub: "to give unto them beauty for ashes; in the Hebrew text there is a beautiful play on words, which cannot be so well expresse

It was Saturday night and we were all beginning to get ready for church on Sunday. Denbigh was shining his shoes and ironing his clothes. All three of our girls were playing happily in their room. My husband said something about how nice and quiet it was. (You can imagine that this doesn't happen much here.) Of course, we all know that you are never supposed to make remarks like that. Our middle child was being quiet because she had put some thing up her nose and was trying to get it out. Eventually, she came and told me that she could not get the round thing out of her nose. Y'all, the emotional upheaval of this parenting thing is too much. Attaching your heart to tiny human beings is a roller coaster ride to say the least. My husband decided to try and pull this thing out with tweezers and he was getting frustrated that she wouldn't just sit still and let the man get it out. She's three. She was in full blown hysterics. She is weeping and shaking and telling

This past weekend was perfectly delightful. Five guys from the Sam Houston State University BSM stayed with us and volunteered. Friday night they showed up around six in the evening and put together our new trampoline. My girls were in bed when they finished putting it together, so I tested it out for them. Of course, they all were on there over the next day. They did this for the children, I'm sure.  They did a ton of work around the property by cleaning up brush, putting up more fence, trimming our giant trees, and putting foam on the ceiling in the living room. They are all around nice guys that bless us. We are so grateful for their coming. Thank you, gentleman, for your hard work and gracious hearts. Come again anytime. What I made for supper: Chicken breast topped with cream cheese, jalapeño, bacon, and a slice of aged swiss.  In other news, our beloved bassist and drummer are going on tour with the O Hellos and opening for Need To Breathe. We have been interv

We don't own a t.v. because we are a t.v. free respite, but a few weeks ago we were visiting my daddy and I saw a commercial for Victory motorcycles. It made me have a truly humorous flashback about my husband. Perhaps you know that he is known for his hair. Even though there are four females in the house, we refer to him as the diva. It's all in good fun. We desperately love the man. A few years ago, I convinced him to send in his head shot to try to get some gigs doing catalogues and such. I told him to put that hair to work! Low and behold, Victory Motorcycles contacted him to do a shoot for a thousand dollars. He accepted it because the man thought he'd be sitting around looking good on a bike. He hadn't ridden in years. As the date approached, they contacted him and told him he would be doing a video shoot at high speeds through the winding backroads of the Hill Country. He panicked a bit. He thought he would break his arm right before he left to go play his

Follow my blog with Bloglovin Jesus has been talking to me about being gracious in the face of critical and judgmental people around me. I would say that my natural, fleshly bent is to just think those people are obnoxious. I think God has purpose with them however. Perhaps it doesn't come out as the beautiful exhorting message that is going on in their mind. Perhaps most of us lack the ability to actually articulate what we are trying to say. I know I stick my foot in my mouth all of the time. I stumbled on a quote last week that I have been pondering. I didn't write down who said it, forgive me. Here it is: "If I refuse to see God in others, they will never see God in me." Now, I am quite sure that most of us would apply this to tattooed homeless people, but I thought about the people in my Christian circles. I'm just dumbfounded at the things people will say in the guise of encouragement or exhortation. I am making a choice to listen to the voice o

Living So That is one of the four books in the new inScribed collection of studies by women. They are beautifully packaged and marketed. Looking at them, you want to pick them up and read them.  I attended a Bible study on Romans years ago. I had to take notes the entire time to stay focused because the teaching was dry. I stayed because the content was good. That is how I found this book to be. I had a hard time getting through it. The content was good for the most part, but the delivery could be dry, some what like a Sunday school lesson. It is a mass delivery of the facts. Of course, the Scripture in the pages is wonderful and beneficial. It was simply hard to stay to course with the delivery. There were other things in the book that turned me off to reading it. Some were quotes. One in particular was a chapter on that story about the two wolves fighting. You have probably heard it. It says there is a good wolf and a bad wolf inside of and the one that wins is the one we

I don't know if you follow the Facebook, but yesterday's feed was full of pictures of brothers and sisters for National Sibling Day. I had been seeing them and my heart was a little sad. Then, my husband looked at me and quizzically asked if this was a real thing or something made up. I burst into tears, y'all. It is funny how you can be going along just fine and then something catches you completely off guard. If you are missing your sibling(s), I'm saying a little prayer for you too. Be blessed, sweet friends. I came across this and spent much of my evening meditating on it. Let it be our prayer. "Come in, O strong and deep love of Jesus, like the sea at the flood in spring tides, cover all my powers, drown all my sins, wash out all my cares, lift up my earth-bound soul, and float it right up to my Lord's feet, and there let me lie, a poor broken shell, washed up by His love, having no virtue or value; and only venturing to whisper to Him that if

Y'all, follow me on the Instagram. I'm SCherry77. Perhaps you tuned in yesterday when I waxed poetic about the irises in my Southern garden. It's practically Southern Living over here, lovelies. I talked about my day of bringing things down from the third floor and the fact that I clocked eight miles on my fitbit in the house that day. It was crazy. We have so much stuff. We have stuff in boxes and against all of our walls in this enormous house. We did have a cute normal-sized house before we moved here. When we get out the things we had in our house before, they look like miniature versions of how they perfectly fit our other home. That means we had to let go. Then people give us stuff left and right. Some of it is nice and some isn't. The trouble is that we have so much stuff that we can't get to the walls to finish the work. I had a bone-deep need to purge so we can finish working around here.  I cleaned out about half of the third floor and sold o

As you may know, I had a yard sale this past weekend. I made a complete mess of my house. Everything went to the wayside and there was stuff everywhere. I had on my fitbit and in one day of bringing stuff down from the third floor, I clocked almost eight miles. I did that inside my house. More on that later. Saturday morning came and I had sold most of my stuff by 9:30. The interesting thing to me was the number of older women who kept asking me if they could buy my irises. Of course, I was thrilled to give them away. They all came from the gardens of dear friends. Isn't that how a Southern girl's garden grows? We ask our friends for clippings. I started with about forty iris from varying locations and I now have a few hundred. My first ones came from my momma's house and my friend Shelley. The next I plucked up when my parents sold my brother's house after he passed away. I pulled them up out of his front flower bed. I pulled a few from my dad's ranc

Sometimes, amidst the chaos and the noise I can hardly think my own thoughts. My mind is constantly bombarded with the words of those around me . . . the words of my children. Even when I awake early in the morning I find that my brain is still cluttered with the words that take over my days. Often, I find myself with my head still on my pillow simply asking Jesus what He wants for the day. What does He want to say. What does He want.  Abba, I just want to be near you. I want to listen to you. Tell me your heart. Bend my ear. Talk to me through the clutter, the noise, the chaos of this life. Let me hear Your voice. Your beauty abounds in every spring flower. It abounds in the soft songs of my children and in their laughter. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this day to bear witness to your grace. You lavish me with grace upon grace from your fullness. Thank you.

I was taught that the Bible was mostly about me as I was growing up. It wasn't as direct as I make it sound and I am sure that you were taught the same way. Every story that we read, went through in Sunday school, or heard from the pulpit was about our moral application of said story. We needed to have the faith of Joseph or the patience of Job. Here are five steps to being an awesome believer like so and so. Emulate the guys in the hall of faith. Get to work being a better believer. Then, I started wondering if God had written the hall of faith in Hebrews to simply say, "Hey, look what I did with these jokers." I wondered if Job wasn't about Job at all. Perhaps it was about the God who sustained him. Perhaps, it preached the gospel to us. As I began reading Jared's book The Storytelling God , he emulated my thoughts. The first lines really captured my attention. He tells the reader to throw out our flannelboards because the Bible isn't a book about