Day 7: Favorite Word

Dadgum-  chiefly Southern US expressing mild annoyance

Day 6: Favorite Book Character

My mom used to read me this book titled, "Stephanie's Ponytail". It's about this spunky girl named Stephanie who came to school one day with her hair in a ponytail and the next day when she wore the ponytail again, she saw that everyone had done the same. Every time she changed her hair, everyone else did the same. One day she said that the next day she was coming to school bald and when she came to school she saw everyone had shaved their head but her and once again she could wear her ponytail without fear of being copied. 

I think my mom knew that I would be more like that girl than even I realized. 

Day 6: Favorite Book Character

My mom used to read me this book titled, "Stephanie's Ponytail". It's about this spunky girl named Stephanie who came to school one day with her hair in a ponytail and the next day when she wore the ponytail again, she saw that everyone had done the same. Every time she changed her hair, everyone else did the same. One day she said that the next day she was coming to school bald and when she came to school she saw everyone had shaved their head but her and once again she could wear her ponytail without fear of being copied. 

I think my mom knew that I would be more like that girl than even I realized. 

Day 5: My Best Friend

I could've gone with the sentimental or the Christian answer but I decided to go with the funniest, yet still true, answer. My bed never turns me away, is always there, carries me, holds me when I need him to, and comforts me. 

Day 4: My Favorite Place

Day 3: Favorite Food

Day 2: Favorite Animal

30 Day Drawing Challenge

Something fun and creative to do. Want to join me?

Day 1: Me

Object of Eve's Affection

In Genesis 3 we read about The Fall and how one wrong move affected the whole of mankind. I must have read or heard this read a thousand times. We're told that the Garden of Eden was a place where man walked with God and there was pure and perfect communion between God and man; it is a place that we have been separated from and an intimacy that we strive to have again. Yes, because of Adam and Eve's disobedience we all now wrestle with sin but look closely at what was taken from them at the moment of their judgement:

16 To the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."
17 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." ESV

Look at the difference between what was taken from them; they both lost the easy life they had with God and inherited a life of pain and struggle but the arenas in which they would struggle were different.

With Eve, what sticks out to me most is when God says, "Your desire shall be for your husband..." This is one of her key consequences; that she would desire her husband. That struck me weird because wouldn't you consider that a good thing? Most married couples break up because one or the other no longer desires their spouse. So because this is a consequence, a part of her discipline, we can reason that her desires were elsewhere; more specifically, her desires were for God.
Think about how God has made women; we are naturally more affectionate, compassionate, tender-hearted and sensitive. Think about how all of that was once solely and completely directed at God and how, all at once, it was turned away from Him and turned to man. Imagine that all your passions are instinctively for Him. Now imagine Him saying to you, 'No longer will your desire and longing be for Me but it will be for your husband.' Can you imagine the devastation Eve must have felt?! We can't even begin to fathom the misery Eve was undergoing at that moment because her starting point is our finish line; what we spend our whole lives trying to acheive, in falling completely in love with God and having everything in our being adore Him without contest, she had and she is being told that she'll spend the rest of her life with her desires drawn back to her husband like a bad magnet.

So what does this say for us? Daughters of Eve, what does this say for us? I think for us it means that we were made to love God. I think it means that because everything, that comes natural to us, was once only for God that it is still meant for Him.

I encourage you to really meditate on Eve and on what she had, what she lost, and what she was left with.

Be Hyperactive

You remember that kid, growing up in elementary school, that could never sit still; maybe it was you? Well there's a little hyperactive spirit in each of us. We weren't made to sit still, doing nothing. We were made to be out there living, creating, doing, enjoying, inhabiting, and dwelling. Why do we put ourselves in our own time-outs where we sit and don't do, when inside there is something dying to move? It's dying to move and to do; let it sit too long and it will die...it's called "compromise."