BEAUTIFULLY BROKEN

WHAT'S IN A NAME? ELOHIM When Greg and I were having our children, I remember pouring over names. We wanted to give our boys strong, Hebrew scriptural names that means something. But to be fair, pop culture also played a part in the choosing of at least our first two sons:) Then name Jacob is actually not a great Hebrew name. It means supplanter or deceiver. And yet, we loved the name because of God's redemptive power over the Jacob of the Bible. God took what was flawed and broken and made a great nation out of it. You can't read the old testament without reading, "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." While Jacob had issues, he was never too messy for God to produced great blessings in his life. The name Zachary is a derivative of the Hebrew name Zachariah and also Zacharias, who was the father of John the Baptist. The name means, the Lord has remembered. If you know the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth, you will know that they were past child bearing years ...

BEING THE PERFECT PARENT I am, of course, joking with the title of my blog. Even when Greg was here to help me parent, we were anything but perfect and clearly, on my own, I need a lot of help. Parenting in general is so difficult, and single parenting... whole 'nother level!😅 I feel as I am in the thick of it as pertains to parenting. I have some adult children and some teenage children. The funny thing is, I always thought when they were little that it was the hardest time parenting. Hands down, parenting early adult children is the hardest! Finding that balance of guiding while still allowing them to make mistakes is hard. The consequences for some of the mistakes they want to make can be steep. Because this is an area I have been struggling with, I wanted to remind myself what God does when He parents us. Of course, He IS the perfect parent! In studying this, I was reminded of so many amazing principles. Ephesians 1:4, "...even as He chose us in Him before the foundat...