It had been seven years of unfathomable oppression. To make matters worse, God's people brought on their oppression with their own idol-worshiping hands. Desperate Gideon, the youngest in an insignificant family from a small tribe, was quite literally in a low place. He was doing chores below ground. Grain was typically threshed on a hilltop so the wind would blow away the chaff. Gideon was threshing wheat in a sunken winepress to protect it from the locust-like Midianites. He might have been wondering how things got so bad, even though his father's had idolatrous shrine loomed above him.

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…

We went to Benjamin and Wyatt's first soccer practice yesterday. (Read the soccer camp story for important context!) I snapped a picture of Benjamin, frozen with fear, and sent it to Chris at work. I asked Chris to pray for Benjamin because he was completely overwhelmed at the sight of other kids on the field. I knew Benjamin was in a hard spot because his whole heart wants to be a soccer player, and he's been counting down the days to come to soccer practice. His body and mind simply said no. They could not integrate.

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.

And that’s a wrap on our “At the Movies” series at @southpointct ! Shrek week’s “happily ever after” theme was just as sweet as it sounds. Benjamin and his best friend told me all about heaven over snacks, and Auntie Rachel glowed while she told me she worked with the Holy Spirit as she sewed Trudi’s Princess Fiona dress. We had lots of fun shaking things up for the series, but we kept our eyes on Jesus the whole time. He is everywhere, so why not practice finding Him in the silly and social things too?

… Cape Town is experiencing some very wild winter weather at the moment. It is nothing close to a hurricane but has impacted thousands of people in our city. The desire in me to help, hold, and hear rises with the floodwaters. Nature has a way of leveling humanity’s playing field and reminding us that we need each other. I’m not in a season where I can give or do much tangibly, but I’m trying to attune my children to the bigger picture like my mom did with me…

We had an extraordinary experience this week at soccer camp. It was Benjamin's most unsheltered, "mainstream" kind of experience with boys of all different ages. It was an awkward, yet completely natural, hokey-pokey kind of experience. We were all the way in, all the way out, and then we did a lot of playing right beside them.

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.

The kids were feeling artistic on this oh-so-rainy Cape Town day, so I took a chance and took them for a walk through a “grown up art museum”. My aim was simply a change of scenery and perhaps an opportunity expose Benjamin to the idea that anything can be art.

Some of my favorite Benjamin quotes were…

Which Toy Story character did Chris dress up as?

Today was 80% temper tantrums, 10% time outs (including the big people putting ourselves in time out!), 5% prep for dress up day at Southpoint Church and 5% a nature shakeout at Kirstenbosch. I worry for Lifa on days like these. I think about his friends who hang out with kids their own age and whose families don't have to accommodate to nap times or special needs.

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"…

Chris called from church to check on me today. It's week 2 or 3 or 89 of school holidays. He knew I'd be feeding extra teens, wrestling Wyatt's burgeoning will, and dancing a regulation dance with Benjamin. I responded to Chris' sweet call with a shaky, "I'm not doing anything well. Benjamin needs more than I have, and nobody's getting anything." …

The human olfactory sense, or sense of smell, is considered to be the most emotionally intimate of the five senses. An article in the Harvard Gazette explains smell is the only sense that fully develops in the womb, and smell and emotion are stored as one memory because of the brain's anatomy. We may not understand the science of the olfactory bulb sending signals to the limbic system, but something stirs within us at the smell of cookies baking in the oven…

Lifa just finished three days of job shadowing for a school project. He learned LOADS about running a business, hospitality, the ins and outs of roasting coffee, making perfect cups of coffee, and serving people with our friends at Frisky Goat. I might be biased, but I’d say Lifa made some of my all-time best americanos this week!

Wyatt was feeling under the weather today, so I decided to take the little guys with a bucket of blocks and sit under the weather. God’s glory sprawled out all around us, and we all started to feel better. The morning started as an overwhelming whirlwind, but God’s rhythmical, breathtaking glory washed over all 3 of us. I finished the long day still basking in His loving care for us.

Everything was AWESOME on Sunday at Southpoint Church. It’s school holidays in South Africa, and lots of folks go out of town. Instead of lowering expectations and planning for low attendance, Chris decided to go big - larger than life! We kicked off a four week series, “At the Movies”. Chris will walk us through the major movie elements using clips from popular movies and apply it to spiritual principles. We started off with heroes using The Lego Movie. We all dressed up like our favorite Lego heroes. One of our master builder church elders (an architect by profession) made a larger than life Lego costume with moving arms.

Want to see how many things we can do in a day during school holiday? I present to you: Monday. Today’s video features Benjamin’s current favorite song- playing on repeat until Wyatt has his fill and starts shouting “MUSIC OFF!” 😂 I’m getting a bajillion steps a day, drinking all the caffeine, eating gummy vitamins while I give them to my kids, and making the most of a fleeting season of life. Behind the scenes, Benjamin’s song is extra relevant. We’re excavating for joy when we need to, and going out to seek it till we find it…

I will never ever ever ever skip an opportunity to spend time with all three of my boys together in God's wide open spaces. His glorious creation has a way of reminding us that we are made to be a part of something bigger, something better than what we're aware of in our regular day to days. The ocean keeps roaring. The tides keep coming, never the same but never changing at the same time. The sounds, smells, and breathtaking glory call us back to who we are. We are His. I'm so deeply thankful He's let me love these three so up close and personally for all of the days He's given me.