Devotions of a High Heeled Warrior

 Let it be known that I hate spiders. Little ones, big ones, they are all equally repulsive to me. My earliest memory of encountering spiders was at the age of three or four-years-old. I had the great idea of bringing my outside tricycle into my room at bedtime. When I woke up, my mother found me and my tricycle connected to spider webs throughout my room. As I watched my mother panick, I realized spiders were not my friends. Later, around thirteen-years-old, I was bitten by a brown recluse spider. The doctor mentioned the bite would rot and cause damage to my leg. My parent's church prayed for me. At that point, the bite was four colors and growing. After prayer, everything disappeared. No damage. No rot. Just normal color and better. As a result of my past history, my fear of spiders is very real. This is especially unfortunate when I live in an area where tarantulas migrate for mating season. I periodically cross paths with the super-sized representation of my greatest fear. Th...

  Yesterday was an exciting day in a not-so-great way. We have been navigating around a back door with a broken glass pane courtesy of a stray snd a lawnmower. Since it was double-paned, we were in no great hurry to repair it. However, yesterday, the need for glass repair doubled. My oldest son noticed a neighbor's dog had escaped their fence, so he grabbed a leash and attempted to capture it. When my son's Boxer saw his owner with another dog, he began to whimper, bark, and pace in front of one of the front door's sidelights. Once the leash was established on the wandering dog, Ruger had enough. Before I could catch him, in his excitement, he pawed the window, causing it to shatter. The need for glass repair is now inevitable. When my son's dog saw the other dog, he couldn't contain his excitement. It made me think of the woman at the well in the Bible in John 4:4-42. Jesus is traveling through Samaria during the hottest time of day and stops at Jacob's well....

  I had a wonderful weekend at Rockhaven Ladies Retreat. It's always a treat to get away from the hustle of life and just slow down to listen to God. In preparation for the retreat, I sent a list of the names of the ladies attending. Once there, a couple of the ladies from my church noticed misspellings in their names. Upon hearing one speaking with a leader to correct the error, a thought suddenly occurred. When I sent the text of all the ladies going, it was late. I pulled up the text only to realize it was my fault. Between autocorrect and my late night exhaustion, I had misspelled a couple of the ladies names! This made me think about how important it is to be properly known. I have spent the majority of my life with a first name that is misspelled. When someone got it right, I somehow felt I was fully seen and understood. My friend, God sees you. You are known by Him. 1 Corinthians 13:8  But if anyone loves God, he is known by God " (ESV) To be known by God is simply lov...

  While taking a little mini-vacation in Missouri, my husband and I decided to eat at a restaurant in town. The restaurant was packed, so everyone sat very close together. While glancing over my husband's shoulder, I noticed a lady's purse sitting on the ground beside her table. Her phone was sticking out of the side pocket of her purse. I did a double-take when I saw her phone. Her phone had four letters displayed- BUTT. I immediately questioned why someone would want to display BUTT on their phone. When I looked a little closer, I realized the phone case was yellow. That's when it occurred to me that the original BUTT was actually the beginning of the word BUTTER. Her phone case was a stick of butter. Have you ever made assumptions about someone only to realize you were completely wrong? It's so easy to look at situations from our point of view and read the situation entirely wrong. Instead of assuming the worst and going into immediate attack mode, God has called us...

  After a very busy weekend, my husband and I thought we would wrap it up with some construction on my daughter's future home. We laid trim and realized it would look better painted white, so we took the first step to painting. We primed the wood. I am not super handy in construction. When my brother, husband, and I redid the floor joists and flooring i.n half of my parents' house, I realized this. My husband's growls, repeating of misunderstood instructions, and frequent head shakes indicated this fact. I've even been known to start a project wrong in front of my husband to get him to finish it for me. Because of this, I must say that I am not an expert, but I'll do my best to explain this construction fact. The purpose of priming is to prepare and seal a surface so that paint can stick well. Without primer, the paint will be uneven or not adhere as well. Primer is the foundation needed for a smooth paint job. What happens in our life without a firm foundation? It ...

 I received a call from my youngest son as we were each driving our cars back from oil changes. With most of my family out of town at a camping event, my youngest son and I decided to get much needed oil changes on both our cars. He took one route home, and I took another. Upon almost making it home, he called me telling me his car had stopped moving. It was stuck in the middle of the road on a very steep hill. I rushed over to find him at a dangerous section of road right above a hairpin turn. It was getting dark, and I was nervous. After realizing the transmission was frozen, I called a tow truck and prayed it would arrive before dark. While we waited, I noticed something interesting. Out of the eight cars that passed us, three people slowed and asked how they could help me. One woman was in a car that looked like it was on its last leg, but she stopped to help someone else. This brought me to a challenging question. Do we take the time to show kindness to those around us? God s...