Almost Summer Update and Some Questions

Happy almost summer to you! Our family just got back from a week away up in the mountains of North Carolina and it was restful to the core. I’m a fourth generation Floridian and I love so much about Florida, but my happy place — the place where I can really rest and feel my soul just breathe deep — is the mountains. Give me a log cabin tucked into a wooded mountainside with the sound of a trickling stream and some cool air and everything in me starts to relax.

It was so good to get away, especially with the people I love. My oldest kids couldn’t come this year [insert sad reality face here] but I loved getting a week off-grid with the rest of my kids. I learned a few years ago to carve out the very first week my college kids are home as family vacation or the summer jobs and internships and camps start and it just doesn’t happen.  We hiked, read, hiked, rafted, antiqued and hiked. 😉

(If you’re on Instagram, I post more there and would love to see you there.)

One afternoon, after a long 3-mile hike up more than 1000 steps (hello, Tallulah Gorge) and a stop for ice cream and a quiet van on the way back to our cabin, I saw again how God has restored so much joy to our eight broken hearts.

I so clearly remember asking God not why — God allowed me to skip through that kind of questioning — but HOW? How in the world when our life had shattered into a thousand pieces and I was facing such fear, such huge unknowns and such gut-wrenching grief, how in the world could He fix eight broken hearts?

But He does. He promises it and He is faithful. There are still hard days and still tears on the pillow some nights — less often now — but God does usher in joy where there is brokenness.  And that joy is even sweeter now.

Well, as we launch into summer 2016, I am coming up on two years of writing here at True and Faithful as well as some other places. Amazing in so many ways but that’s for another post.

For now, I’d love to ask you a few questions. I love your comments and your emails because I get to know you. I love when you hit reply on a post and send me your own prayer concerns. I *loved* posting pictures of some of our moms here with their kids for Mother’s Day.

But I don’t always hear from all of you. So I’ve created a short survey. It’s just 5 questions, short and sweet, and will truly help me to know who’s on the other side of this keyboard as I click away.  I’d so appreciate you taking about 30 seconds to complete these 5 questions.

Thank you so much for your feedback. Thank you for reading and sharing.  xoxoxo