Save The Day Cookies!

Here is a fail-proof cookie recipe that will simplify your life and make hospitality a snap! There are many versions of this recipe out there, but this is my favorite. Of all the selections of cake mixes available, our all time household favorite is Funfetti Cake Mix, frosted with a festive colored frosting and happy sprinkles. You don't need to add the 1 cup 'mix in' for these cookies. The other mixes are great with 1 cup of anything you want to add to the batter...chocolate chips, nuts, candy, etc...Have fun!

Cake Mix Cookies

1 box cake mix

1 egg

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup water

1 cup any mix in

Mix everything together, adding mix in (if using) last. Drop dough onto cookie sheet as usual and bake 15 mins @ 350'. Cool and frost, if so desired, and add fun sprinkles. If you choose another cake mix have fun with the mix ins...broken up candy bars in white cake mix, coconut in lemon cake mix, unique flavored chips, heath, nuts....and the standards are always delicious...flavored chips in chocolate cake mix, raisins in spice cake mix, be creative!

Colossians 1:9-14

"For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father Who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." Amen

At Peace

A weaned child is so completely different to hold than a breastfed babe. I remember holding little ones in any position but the feeding position for the hours in between feedings. Place a breastfed baby in the feeding position, let them smell the slightest hint of milk and they thrash and fuss and search until they find what they are looking for. Even before they are aware of what they are searching for, they grow anxious and disquieted, in search of it. Psalm 131 came alive yesterday as my eyes and heart saw more clearly its meaning. 


"Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever." Psalm 131


Suddenly I thought of the weaned child and how you can hold them in any position, closely upon your breast and they are calm and content and at peace. There is no frantic searching, no fussing, no fretting;  just rest. When we are prideful, trying to see what God sees, worrying over His way and will for us, we are as that breastfed baby in the feeding position. We thrash and search, trying to sustain ourselves, fully disquieted and anxious. When we trust God with the great matters and things that are too high for us (which is everything) we rest calmly upon his chest and are at peace. He sustains us and blesses us with every good and perfect gift. We need not thrash and search and worry and wonder. We need simply to rest, as a weaned child, upon His chest. He is     El Shaddai. Amen.

Bridging the Gap

Schooling children is an area of great faith. Equipping our children is a call that God has given us that will lead them in the right way. "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it". (Proverbs 22:6) What a comfort and a promise this is! When a family prayerfully seeks the road of education the Lord calls them to, it is a humbling experience. We were two months away from kindergarten with our first child when our hearts were moved to homeschool. I had never even said the word. We followed obediently and found blessings in abundance. The precious time spent with the children will always be a great treasure to me. It was a privilege to have this experience and to pour myself out to train up our children. The Bible was our greatest resource and the deepest desire of my heart was that they would be filled with His Word. The kids learned to write by copying Bible verses, they learned to read this way too. There is history (Judges, Kings), math (Numbers), science (Genesis) and so much more. Of course I had school curriculum, lots of it, but the Bible was the most precious resource of all. I will always remember the day the phone rang and we got confirmation that our eldest child had been accepted into the public Junior High School that I had attended when I was a child. I fell back into the couch and cried. We were entering a new season. God was calling us to public school. I was so frightened and yet we knew God was calling us to trust Him just as we had with homeschooling. We obediently followed and were blessed. There are so many amazing opportunities in public school. The children did projects, plays, music! They had experiences that I couldn't truly give them at home. They excelled and blossomed and were well equipped. They had strong faith and shared boldly. I now had a much larger opportunity to meet families and share with them the love of Christ. I made new friends along with my children and God brought new ministry into our lives. I cherish the time God has given us in public school with the challenges and victories and blessings. They were all there during homeschooling too! The most important thing to do regarding schooling our children is simply to obey God and follow Him. His ways are so much higher than ours. We could never even get close to the exquisite plans He has for our children and for us. "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path." Proverbs 3: 5-6

Snuggle Corner

Pearl Kashishian is a woman you should know. Have you heard of her? She was born in Kayseri, Turkey on August 17, 1888. Historians describe the time she lived in Turkey as "frightful, barbaric,". She lived through a time of horrific genocide, resulting in the deaths of more than 200,000 Armenians from 1894-96. There followed another massive attack on the Armenian people from 1914-1915, where more than a million were massacred. This true story not only introduces you to Pearl (Henazant) but carries you with her through the adventures and miracles of her faith-filled life and her Escape to Freedom. It is an amazing love story of earthly and spiritual significance. Introduce yourself to this woman of God and her beautiful, persevering, Christ-following people, the Armenians. BONUS: When you finish this wonderful book you turn it over and will find the true story of her brother and his escape to freedom. Enjoy!

Available at: http://product.half.ebay.com/_W0QQtgZinfoQ2drefreshQQprZ49119217

Contentment = Trust (Part 1)

Contentment is found when we trust God with our whole heart.

                              Trust   Abide   Love   Know

It is very hard to trust someone you don’t know.  You may hear all kinds of wonderful things about them but until you meet them and spend time with them, watching them in different circumstances, you truly don’t know who they are. It is just about impossible to trust anyone until you really know them.

Many have heard of God and His amazing love for us. We have seen Him work in the lives of others, we know people who speak highly of Him and praise Him in many ways. But what does it take for each us to truly trust Him. How can we know that we can trust Him with the circumstances of our lives and in that trust find true contentment?

I remember clearly the day I felt the Lord telling me it was time to let go of the last commitment I was involved with.  I pictured myself out in the middle of a huge lake in a little row boat with only one oar left in the water. I cried out to God that if I pulled that last oar in I would be left out there with nothing and I would dry up and blow away.  He was asking me to trust Him to meet me right where I was, even if it was all alone in a big lake with no oars in the water.

 When we have newborns and little ones who are in such constant 24/7 need, it can be a very dry season.  Not only are you putting in nonstop hours through the day and night but you are facing situations that you most likely have never had to deal with before. Things like sleep deprivation, exploding pumpkin colored diaper disasters, crying little ones that you can’t comfort, ear infections, fevers, out-of-the-blue rashes that all seem to appear Friday afternoon, right after the Dr’s office has closed for the weekend. If you try to get to church you rarely hear the sermon due to a hungry baby, fighting siblings or a page that your little one needs you in the nursery right away. It can seem like all you are doing is giving out and nothing is being taken in.

Contentment = Trust (Part 2)

It was during such a season that God called me to Himself and taught me how trustworthy He is. He lovingly taught me to Trust Him, Abide in Him, Love Him and Know Him. We need a desire in our heart to truly put God first, above everything else. His love is what motivates our actions. That love that suffered at the hands of His very own beloved children is what captures our heart and makes us want to give Him our time, our full attention and our heart. Naptime was from 1:00 till 3:00 every day. This was the perfect time to meet one on one with God. There would be no answering the phone, getting the mail or giving in to any other distraction. He would be number one.  You draw near to Him by reading the Bible. If you just get the Word of God in, that living and active Word that pierces bone from marrow, soul from spirit and judges the very heart of man, it will change you, whether you understand it all or not. Its not easy. The distractions come in many attractive forms: a call from a dear friend from out of state telling you she has great news, the UPS truck delivering something exciting on the front porch, suddenly remembering an important item that needs to be taken care of that second.  And then there is the battle to read the Word. You get bored or simply are not in the mood to read. The kids fight their naps or keep making noise. There are a million thoughts running through the mind as you try to concentrate. Sometimes you  just fall asleep. It is a battle.

Day by day with perseverance something beautiful will start to happen. You start to understand what you are reading. You lose track of time and don't want it to end. The words are alive as you read them. The more time spent reading the living Words that come from God’s very heart, the more you come to know Him and trust Him. God is loving and faithful in all that He does. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is for us and not against us. He loves us with an everlasting love, a sacrificial love that holds nothing back.  

This journey leads to a desire for deeper fellowship with God. He tells us to abide in Him just as the branches to a vine. The branches receive their nourishment and life from the vine. When we abide in Him He abides in us. His life flows through us and nourishes us and changes us. You will start to take the Bible with you places, even on vacation. The shower becomes a place to sing praises. Empty notebooks become places to journal your heart to God. Middle of the night feedings became havens of prayer and alone time with God. You will start to see life differently. You won't have to plan everything out so that you get your way. There is a more excellent way, Gods way. His way is so much higher than ours and its not motivated by selfishness, it is motivated by love. 

Contentment = Trust (Part 3)

God is our loving and faithful Redeemer from Whom every good and perfect gift comes. The more we come to abide in God’s presence the more we fall in love with Him and the more we realize the depths of His everlasting love for us. Love seeks us, love finds us and love saves us. It covers all our sins. It restores what the locusts have eaten. It makes us new. God blesses our lives with the love of family and friends, to walk alongside us, sharpen us and encourage us. But there are times when we are alone and only God is there. We have been called to a certain pilgrimage as wives and mothers. It is lonely at times and challenging. How beautiful to know that God is our Husband and Maker, that He delights in us, sings over us and even saves our tears. He loved us before we ever loved Him, with a perfect, unconditional love that never fails. What a confidence this love places in our hearts, what a fire and a passion it fills us with to live for Him.

This perfect love helps us to trust God. Trusting God gives us a contentedness with where He has us and what He is doing in our life and the lives of those around us. Yes, we do feel like a wave tossed to and fro at times. But the book of James tells us that this is due to doubt. These are the times we take our eyes off the Lord and forget that He is trustworthy and that He loves us with a perfect love. When we lean on our own understanding our path grows very difficult and it is hard to keep going. We start to panic and feel alone. We take things into our own hands and try to control them. When we trust the Lord with all our heart He gently directs our path and we grow closer to Him, loving Him more, trusting Him more and being content with such things as we have.

God calls us to trust Him. What we might think will be a time of weary emptiness can become one of the richest times. God meets us right where we are, exhausted, showerless and feeling very much alone in a little row boat without an oar. We only need to open our heart to Him, put Him first and show up. He is calling each one of us this day to trust Him more, to learn to abide in Him and love Him deeply. “Faithful is He who calls us and He will do it.” 1Thess 5:24.