happy birthday to my favorite hardy boy

today is shaun cassidy's 47th birthday. i was so in love with him for most of my childhood. the good old days. before the glorious inventions known as vcrs & dvds. i lived for sunday nights, when shaun and his semi-hot older brother parker stevenson saved the world as the hardy boys. having to go to church at night was a cruel, cruel sacrifice...and my parents didn't get warm, happy feelings about leaving their nine year old daughter home alone, so i went along. to get me by, until the next week (while i prayed daily that we would not go to church the next sunday night) i had every record shaun ever made, even one of his older half brother (in reality), david cassidy's.

sigh. and today he's celebrating his 47th birthday. i don't even want to know what he looks like today. i prefer to think him as he was. i wonder if he knows i'm still waiting for him. :-)

i cannot ask for more

to sing with a heavy heart...
to love undistracted by details...
to walk in the rain knowing the sun will shine...
to laugh with tear-filled eyes...
to stare down my deepest loneliness knowing i will never be alone...
to stand on my own knowing a greater hand holds me...
to not know the answers and still trust...
to know that while truly known, i am truly loved...
to see growth in the midst of failure...
to stand by another in their fire and not be consumed...
to ask the question knowing the answer may never come...
to have my discontent heart know that You are enough...
to sleep while all around me rages...

i cannot ask for more

overcoming unbelief

i love the statement in Mark 9:24, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!". i love how it helps me not feel like a complete loser about my own duplicity.

when i know i should trust, i worry. when i know i should wait, i need to make things happen. i always manage to say too much when i shouldn't say anything at all. even though i can read what God thinks about me, too often i give in to feelings of insignificance and forgotteness.

help me overcome my unbelief.

To me, one of the proofs that God's hand is behind and all throughout this marvelous Book we know as the Bible is the way it continually touches upon this very fear in us--the fear that we are so insignificant as to be forgotten. That we are nothing. Unconsciously, His Word meets this fear, and answers it. (Amy Carmichael)