December was a month full of the movement of God in my life, more so than usual. He stirred my heart with a desire to listen to Him in a deeper way, and when I inclined my ear, He spoke almost non-stop. Over the first weekend of the month, God rocked my world through two revelational messages and a company Christmas party. One message, by Pastor Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch.tv, challenged us to Obey Irrationally and Give Extravagantly and included this zinger: “Don’t increase your standard of living; increase your standard of giving.” At the end of the message, God poured out his heart to me and spoke new opportunities for my husband and me to irrationally obey and extravagantly ...

Recently, I began reading one of my most beloved books, Hinds’ Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard, as a prompting from Holy Spirit as I was praying through things on my heart; one of which was the message that God wanted to write through me for Destiny In Bloom.  I felt really impressed to share this portion with you: Then one day the path turned a corner and to her amazement and consternation she saw a great plain spread out beneath them. As far as the eye could see there seemed to be nothing but desert, and endless expanse of sand dunes, with not a tree in sight. To the horror of Much-Afraid her two guides prepared to take the steep path downward. She stopped dead and said to ...

For the past few years when Christmas ends and the new year is just around the corner, I have made it a point to sit down with God and ask Him to reveal His focus for me for the coming year. This January, instead of filling my heart with a list of things to accomplish, which speaks directly into my passion for To-Do’s, He changed things up and gave me just four words and a scripture: JOY. PEACE. HOPE. GLORY. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit,” (Romans 15:13). As the year has unfolded, God has been faithful to reveal to me the reasons for each chosen word, and I ...

Every 30 days, since the inception of Destiny In Bloom, my mind and heart have fallen into a typical routine: submit my article for that particular month, give my brain a couple days’ rest, and then begin the process of praying for inspiration for the next month. If you’re familiar with my articles, you know that I tend to write from deeper places, from lessons learned and from confessions of where I’ve been. Lighthearted is not a word I would tend to use to describe how I write. It’s not right or wrong, good or bad; it’s just who I am and how I relate. So, when September rolled around and my DIB routine began anew, imagine my surprise when my prayers for inspiration were ...

And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look! I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down...” Revelation 21:5 I know that these specific words were spoken to John as God was revealing the New Jerusalem, but for the past few years this verse has been my driving inspiration for writing. With the evolution of longhand journaling to online blogging, and the replacement of ballpoint pens with keyboards, a whole world has been opened up to us that didn’t exist just 10 years ago. We have an incredible opportunity to not only share our lives with those who will take the time to read our words but, more importantly, we have been given a tool to share ...

IDENTITY. Consult Merriam-Webster and you will get this definition: The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a [person] is definitively recognizable or known. Identity is an interesting creature. On the one hand, it gives us a means to describe who we are and what we do. It furnishes titles for personalized license plates; it supplies monikers for necklaces and charms for bracelets; but, most importantly, it provides us with all those little, black words we need to fill the white pages of our personal resumes. Identity accommodates our need to be someone. On the other hand, if we’re caught unaware, identity can be the very link that chains us to a lifetime of ...

2009 was a year where my husband and I experienced some of the greatest lows followed by some mountaintop highs. In August, after months of searching, God opened a door to a great job for my husband when self-employment no longer was feasible. And come September, after losing our house to foreclosure, God moved us into another home. Autumn came and went without a glitch, and winter hit in December like a raging bull in a china shop; and continued its assault right through February. And then spring rolled in and it was like my husband and I awoke in March from a six-month slumber; suddenly aware that we weren’t connected anymore like we had been. Between a new home and a new job, we had ...

There are times I come across someone’s writing and think, “I just can’t say that any better myself.” I recently read a devotion by one of my favorite Bible scholars, Skip Moen, and thought this exact thought. He is a man who has studied, beyond measure, the Hebraic thought pattern and choice of wording behind the scriptures, and he presents his writings from that very perspective. He is intelligent and incredibly educated, but mostly, he is a man of God, searching to know more of Yeshua and desiring to share that insight with others. I know this because my husband, Anthony, and I have had the opportunity to get to know Skip beyond his website and daily, email ...

If I could read your resume, what would I find? The resume I’m referring to is not the typical job-searching tool where the shining moments of your years of schooling, employment successes and extra-curricular experiences are documented for a random person to decide whether or not you fit the bill for the position they’re offering.  I’m asking about your ‘life resume’ … the diary of your life story? Would I read about a childhood filled with laughter and love or one tainted with abuse, neglect, abandonment or divorce? Would I discover a teenager whose life was brimming with friends, Friday night football games and yearbook memories or a lonely soul who found it ...

Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year. So much so, that a few years ago we decided to turn October 31st into Christmas Cheer Day and usher in everything Christmas with our homemade holiday. My iPod is emptied of all the regular music and replaced with Christmas tunes, decorations are pulled from the garage to transform our home from everyday to holiday and, while others are waiting for nighttime to fall for trick-or-treating, we gather to sing Christmas carols, delight in past Christmas memories, talk of new ones to come, light apple cinnamon candles, participate in whatever Christmas crafts strike our fancy that year, and close the day with laughter as we cozy up to a movie we can ...