My American heart beats for turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie when the calendar turns to November. America's Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday for more than the food... but the food sure is good.

Thanksgiving dates back to 1621. One hundred Pilgrims set sail from England one year before seeking religious freedom. Winter came quickly and tragically, and half of the new colonists perished.

I abandoned breakfast table manners completely this week. My five-year old son is struggling to sit still. Every meal is a brutally painful process. So, instead of continually starting our morning with frustration and fighting, I have reformatted breakfast. I turn on worship music, put his breakfast at the kitchen counter, and he dance-eats while I pack lunchboxes. It has changed our morning story this week…

I've started compiling a collection of the Friday Calls to Worship for publishing. I never intended for a 300-word message to go beyond a WhatsApp to a few friends. It's been surprisingly encouraging to dip into the archives, walking week by week through a pandemic with a younger version of me, one who didn't yet know she was also in the thick of special needs parenting. It all started because I spent an enormous amount of time lying next to my toddler between 2020 -2022. I had to wait for him to be in a deep sleep and tiptoe out of his room….

My younger children's understanding of the world, time, relationships and life in general is fantastical, nonsensical and at the mercy of their moods. My five-year old measures time, height, days and all units of power in larger than life numbers like fifty-hundred-trillion-and-threeteen. He processes big ideas from the backseat, saying, "MOM, the days just keep GOING AND GOING". My favorite of his latest song lyrics are, "God has so much power, He doesn't have to shower. He never even gets diiiirrrrttyyyy."

We pray for our children to know their identities in Christ every single night. We cannot predict the twists and turns of life or understand the ways of the world. But they can withstand it all if they know who they are and Whose they are. We teach them Bible stories so they have testimonies to stand on when the waters start to rise.

The Israelites were caught between an army and an ocean, yet they walked through the depths on dry feet...

In 1951, researcher Nikolaas Tinbergen wanted to know if exaggerating a specific stimulus could impact behavior. He created cardboard replicas of butterflies that are attracted to their mates through color and movement. Tinbergen's cardboard butterflies were much brighter and designed to move more regularly than the actual butterflies they replicated. He found that male butterflies preferred the more stimulating cardboard butterflies than the living, breathing females next to them. Tinbergen called the cardboard butterflies"supernormal", or an exaggerated ("super") version, of a "normal" thing.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." (Psalm 23:1) King David wrote this shepherd's song with firsthand experience. Philip Keller is an author who knows the climate David wrote from and has also shepherded people and sheep. In, "A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23", Keller recounts story after story of lifesaving interventions for his flock, one ewe at a time. He unpacks the grueling work of protecting, providing and creating sustainable environments.

The Lord recently reminded me of a time I struggled with a damaged relationship. I asked Him "How do I let go of hurt and bitterness? What would You say to me?" A list of everything I was NOT exuding flashed through my mind: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Sound familiar? It's the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. I turned to the famous chapter and found another list before that one.

I've absorbed teachings on fasting this week as we prepare to invite our church into a corporate fast. One pastor calls fasting "whole body hungering for God". Another scholar says it's "a way of praying with your body".

Fasting has become a trending health practice in the modern world because of the undeniable mental and physical health benefits. I practice intermittent fasting daily as a tool to manage my blood glucose levels. The practice of completely denying food for spiritual purposes, however, might seem extreme to some and has hardly been taught to the generations we will pass the Church to.

I am cautious about miracles. Don't get me wrong... I know miracles intimately. I've witnessed bodies heal while my fingers still interlocked, while my mouth still formed the "Amen". I've seen finances and families resurrected against all odds. My own life's story is marked by miracles, big and small.

Those visible miracles are so very spectacular, like the fireworks of faith. If I'm honest, they can easily become the prize I run toward or a measuring stick I use to see if I'm pleasing to God. The miracles are not the prize, the portion or my salvation. Jesus is.

I begin my “40’s” today. I remember thinking life had peaked at 17 when I was my high school’s head cheerleader. Then again, at 21, when I was one signature away from a dream job after graduating university at the top of my class... And then I heard God speak.

He spoke from the ashes of my childhood home, surrounded by the charred remains of every physical marker of life to that point. His words were the beginning of climbing down the ladder of success as the world might see it. I declined my job offer and took out my very first student loan. I drove a moving truck across the country on my 22nd birthday and enrolled in seminary to study Marriage and Family Therapy.

Our five-year old's brain functions differently than most. Lately, he's been showing all the signs that the pressures of daily life are closing in on him. We could see what wasn't working but didn't know what would bring relief. We decided to change his rhythms, surrender the process to God, and see where He took us.

Our son's play school is geared toward kids with special needs and meets him right where he's at. He still needed a break, even though it's a good thing. We reduced his school hours significantly for the week.

In 2010, I found myself on a bumpy, creepy-crawly 18-hour bus ride from Lusaka, Zambia to a remote village on Lake Tanganyika. I saw the brightness of the stars in the complete absence of electricity for a month. I learned to "grocery shop" at the market, and how to turn two skinny, living chickens into dinner for 20.

I am speaking to a group of moms this weekend about parenting in this high-tech, digital age. I'll cover the basics of brain development to empower moms to decide how to support their children in each stage of life. Humans are born soft and underdeveloped. Meanwhile, hoofed mammals are walking and baby baboons are clinging to their mother's hair as she swings through trees within hours of birth. Human brains are 25% developed at birth, with just the lower portion of the nervous system "online". The frontal cortex is the is the last part of the brain to fully develop in our 20's and is responsible for judgment, impulse control, decision-making, and insight.

Brittanica encyclopedia defines "amen" as "an expression of agreement, confirmation or desire". The ancient word's Semitic root means "firm, fixed or sure" and is related to the Hebrew verb that means "to be trusted". Jesus' words "Verily, verily" or "truly, I say to you" in the Gospels is written in Greek as "AMHN, AMHN".

My post-prayer amen can often be translated as , "This is me, God, signing off!"

I am a song repeater. It is not unusual for me to continuously listen to one worship song for a season. I find that, with repetition, the very first chords of the anthem draw my heart to God no matter what's happening around me. I am currently listening to "Gratitude" by Benjamin William Hastings again and again. That's the song I shared in last week's call to worship. Friday friend, I must confess that I've been ignoring a nudging…

Worship is not just a genre of music or a playlist. It’s a path to healing, salvation, and a change of life. Listen to Sunday’s message!

I've dealt with blood sugar imbalances my entire life. Doctors said I was destined for diabetes, obesity, and was unlikely to have children due to the hormonal imbalance at the root of it all. They were the experts, so I accepted my fate... until I couldn't anymore. In my late 20's, I was alone in the South African bush. My world was closing in on me. I needed hope in something beyond what I could see and faith that my fate wasn't sealed by a broken endocrine system.

Does anyone else find themselves trying to just survive the week to get to the weekend? Or get through one season of life to get to the next? There will always be something on your path to "survive" if that is what you're looking to do. Alternatively, there are rich blessings to find on that very same road.

Our uniquely wired 5-year-old loves music. More often than not, we listen to one or two worship songs in our van before he says, "MOM, CAN I SING?" That's my cue to turn the music off so he can sing his own song.

I'd call our son's genre a fusion of "delightfully five" and "deeply worshipful"…