Devotions of a High Heeled Warrior

  As we entered Thanksgiving this last week, I knew it would be a bit chaotic. Thanksgiving is the time when my herd migrates south to see my parents. At one point we could load into our truck and road trip. However, my grown kids pointed out they are no longer the size of five year olds and would not all fit in one car. They even offered to pay the gas, rent my other car, and even offered to drive their own car, so two cars were taken. We had girls in one, and guys in the other. After driving all day, we reached my childhood home to find out my dad was sick. He appeared for brief sightings and a family photo. As we left the day after Thanksgiving, I got a call from my mom saying they had the flu . By the time we made it home, my oldest was coughing. I took him to an urgent care and discovered the flu. During all of this, we were moving my son to his new apartment further north. We had borrowed a box trailer and loaded all of his pilfered furniture to take up the next day. On the l...

  As Thanksgiving looms near, there are mixed feelings among our country. There are those who are rejoicing because COVID no longer keeps families apart. This will be the first real Thanksgiving where families can gather. There will be those who feel the pain and loss as they gather and family members are missing. There will also be those who feel anxiety of gathering again. In my husband's sermon, he mentioned a disturbing statistic. Thirty percent of families in our country do not have dining room tables. COVID wreaked havoc on the structure and stability of families. Many of you know that we have been without a downstairs for over seven months. At one point, there was not a floor, just a big hole in the dirt. We were forced to gather in my bedroom. Our meals were in chairs around my bed. We watched television upstairs. Everything was done upstairs. After all this time, the floors have come into the house! We were able to install a table. It was amazing sitting around the table a...

  Last week, I had lost my car keys. It seems that the older I get, the more I find that I can't find things. This is hard because I am the finder in our home. My husband read where a mother had created a finder's jar. Everytime she found someone's things, they placed money in the jar. The joke was that she bought a brand new car by the end of the year. This was me. Finding things was my superpower, so when my keys disappeared at church, it was extremely frustrating. Everytime I went to church, I searched for the missing keys. I tore my car apart looking for them. It's like they vanished. Finally, I had stopped by the church to use the restroom on one of my long drives when I happened to walk by a shelving unit with a decorative plastic sheet over it creating a curtain. We had covered it with the parrot scene for a children's vbs and left it there. As I walked by, the slight wind caught the plastic, and it billowed out revealing my missing keys! I was overjoyed that...

  Have you ever found yourself locked out of something? I'm not one who typically loses her keys. If anything, I'm the one in the house who is commissioned to find things. You know what I'm talking about, right? My husband, "Where's my belt?" How about still hanging on your pants and folded across the basket of clean laundry? My son, "Where's my drink?" He asks this as he is staring straight into the refrigerator. I move one bottle and, voila, there it is! To which he replies, "I thought I looked there." So this weekend, a strange occurrence happened. I had finished working at the church, preparing for our upcoming Christmas play, when the time had come for me to take my leave. As I gathered all of my things and headed out the door, I realized I was missing my keys. I had locked my doors since I was alone at the church. I double and triple-checked the church to no avail. The keys were not in the church. That left one place they could...

  My oldest son is getting married soon, and it has me thinking of weddings. I can remember snippits of mine, but after twenty-five years a lot of the particulars are a blur. I remember starting the planning process six months before the wedding and thinking six months wouldn't be enough time to plan everything. Some women plan for years, so six months seemed like the blink of an eye and then, voila, it was there. I remember the slightest hiccup bringing stress and panic. Would my special day be ruined? I remember realizing we didn't have communion wafers for communion. First there was panic, then we substituted Ritz crackers from the reception. When it came time to take the cup, my husband gargled the juice to get the gummy crackers out of his mouth. Did it ruin the wedding? No. We spend so much money and time preparing for one simple moment. Do we spend more time preparing for the rest of the marriage? Most time, the answer is no. This is like our spiritual lives. We spend ye...

  Sometimes we need to just hear from God. Is this the job I should take? Should I marry or date this person? Where should I live? We always want to hear from God when it comes to big decisions, but sometimes there's those moments of anxiety, depression, or heartbreak when you need to know you are not alone, and God still cares. This morning at worship practice, I had a young lady ask if I could play the song that basically says, " I speak the name of Jesus over you. " She said she felt God in the song. I told her I would play it sometime in the future. She had been going through a lot lately. During worship service, the Holy Spirit really impressed upon us a question. Whose report will you believe- the lies of the enemy or God? Many responded to God. At the end of worship, one of the ladies in the church felt God leading her to pray. She pointed straight to the young woman going through hard times and said, "I speak the name of Jesus over you." Of course, t...

 The past few weeks have been very busy. Because of this, I jumped on the chance to stay home this weekend and catch up on laundry, cleaning dishes, and paperwork for my job. I was putting away silverware when I noticed that even though I had 12 knives the last time I did dishes, I now had four knives. It's magic! Where in the world does all of my silverware and cups go? I somehow think it may be a little less magic and a little more related to my family! My frustration continued as I filled my dishwasher. My dishwasher is one of those dishwashers that require you to wash the dishes before it washes the dishes. Sounds like my children sometimes! So basically, it is a large drying rack for my dishes. However, I've noticed lately that my dishes are still wet after it dries my dishes. This requires us to not only prewash the dishes, but also dry the dishes after it "dries" the dishes. It is basically useless. This makes me think about us as Christians. God has a purpose ...