introducing Annabelle

Happy Saturday before Christmas friends!

I hope your day is filled with lots of fun and family and joy about Jesus. 

I am also so honored to introduce you to Annabelle. 

She has one of my favorite shops on Etsy and a blog that you can't help but love. 

Enjoy her! 

..........

Hi fellow readers of Jessi's blog, I'm Annabelle and write over at hohumdiddly.  Like many of us, I think, it started as a place to show grandparents and friends our little man, his rolls and dimples and various baby to now toddler-boy antics.  But sometime last year, it became a place for me to think out and write out what God has been doing in my life and the life of my family.  There is still a lot of my sweet boy's face shining about the blog, and I do think he is the best.  But the focus has shifted.  It has been a little scary giving voice to some years full of groaning and heart-work still going on;  but I know that the Lord has pressed on me to share, mostly so I will sit down and do the work of looking at Him and not just busying myself with sweeping the lessons He has for me under that ever-famous rug. (and I like commas and semi-colons, apparently) 

Anyway, there are a few things that get mentioned here and there throughout the blog.  One of those, is my husband's health.  Really, our journey with Epilepsy and Crohn's disease is too convoluted and bogged down with medical jargon to sum up in a blog post, but suffice it to say, God is in control and He is good and gracious to love us in our sadness and anger, confusion and joy. 

And so, right now, this very day, I am learning to live.  I am learning to be a human alive in Christ; which right now, means I am acutely aware of my sin but empowered to move in Christ.  And one of those ways I am able to move is by reading His word.  It is something that I neglected and even resented at times, but the Lord has given me a fresh, spring-like love for Him and His word.  Yesterday, I was reading Psalm 84 and verse1-2 shot into me and lodged.  "How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty!  My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." 

And those 2 verses have so much in them!  I can't possible unpack it all, but obviously the second verse feels like it was written just for me.  Because the past years have been full of yearning and just getting through, but this week has felt like that too.  This week, 3 year oldness has been grating on me, our recycling pile has sprouted hair and started talking back to me and the floor is covered in a beautiful array of crunched up goldfish and whatever we have been eating for dinner.  And it has been driving me to the point of feeling a little more than just edgy.  But I read those words, those life-giving words and at one point I am ashamed and in the next instant, or really in the same one, my heart is full to bursting with praise and thankfulness.  Thankful that God, the Lord Almighty, Emmanuel, God with us knows me and understands.  And thankful that He is so much bigger and stronger than busyness.  Thankful that he gives me eyes to see Him, but also the practical knowledge of simply what to do next.  And so, this morning as I sat on the couch and almost got overcome with our day and weekend plans, I remembered.  Him.  I cry out for the living God and He is here.  In our apartment, on the couch, living in me!  Halleluiah! Emmanuel!