A Purposeful Peek

Our home is simple, cozy, and filled with treasures that tell stories of our world travels and of the people and places who have shaped our lives.  We value experiences over things; however, some things are very special to us because they remind us of those experiences.   Some of our favorite pieces are the traditional mortar and pestle sets from 5 different continents that are perched on our living room shelves. The beautifully painted wooden pieces take us back to the many years we passed through busy marketplaces in Peru and Ecuador en route to providing medical care in the jungle. The smooth olive wooden piece sparks memories of our incredible honeymoon in Greece.  The large piece adorned with an elephant transports me back to adventurous days in Thailand, where I visited my sister while she and her family lived in Chiang Mai. The intricately carved wooden pieces are reminiscent of the blessed days we spent in Togo and Zimbabwe, Africa, serving alongside some of the m...

If you were to visit our home, you may be surprised by the way our family lives. It seems that every time I turn around, I see people around me who are just starting their careers and/or families and are already moving into their "dream home" - a home that my accomplished, hard-working, middle-class parents could only dream of in their retirement years. It seems that our Western culture screams, "You need bigger and newer, and you need it NOW."  It is never fair to judge a book by it's cover; likewise, it's impossible to judge someone's "success" by the cars they drive and the home they live in. While you may live next door to a modest millionaire and never suspect it, you also may live next door to a mini-mansion with a 3 car garage filled with luxury SUVs that is all underwritten by crippling debt.  People who know our family well are likely not thrown off by our very modest (at least in terms of dual-pharmacist income) home.  Bu...

An otherwise ordinary trip to Target tonight quickly escalated when I started to drive away through the parking lot and heard a woman screaming - I looked to see her being dragged inside the store by 3 men, and I immediately threw my car in park right there at the entrance and jumped out to follow them in. With no idea what was happening, but recognizing that this woman was being dragged against her will, I couldn't not stop and find out. On my way into the store, I had to step over a puddle on the sidewalk, just as I heard her screaming for help, that her water had broken.  I followed the moving cluster of commotion over to a red door, where the woman was being dragged into what appeared to be a break room. I quickly learned she had been accused of shoplifting, and the security guard told me she just needed to "calm down" and that the police had been called. He described to me all the things they believed she had taken, and I was struck by the fact that everyone was...

There is something truly special about a fresh start, a new beginning, a clean slate. I love breaking open an unmarked calendar and dreaming of the possibilities in the year ahead of me.  But before I am able to fully embrace a new year and move forward into the wide-open space of the blank pages, I like to reflect on the previous year. While I often recap each year chronologically by month, this time I am going to instead revisit some of our family's most defining experiences of 2018, where God's faithfulness was so incredibly apparent. The Wreck. January started off with a literal *bang* when JJ was turning into his work parking lot one freezing cold early morning and a car behind him slammed into the rear of our SUV going nearly 40 mph. Cue the protein shake in the driver's side cupholder flying out the shattered back window and the spare tire on the tailgate now nearly in the back seat.  By the grace of God, J.J. escaped the accident unharmed, with only some ex...