Signs of Life : The Brownie Chronicles

At church, we've been studying the book of Exodus.  Today, we focused on Moses' response to God calling him (from the burning bush, if you remember the story) to go convince the Egyptian king to free the millions of Israelite slaves. God tells Moses to go AND follows up his command with promises and encouragement: I will lead you. The elders will accept your message. I will raise my hand and strike the Egyptians. He (the king) will let you go. Moses's response?  "What if they don't believe me?" God has just said, "The elders will accept your message."  Obviously, Moses doesn't think God is telling the truth. So God preforms THREE miracles to encourage Moses.  Each miracle proves that nothing is more powerful than God.  No fear, no seemingly-unbeatable enemy, no national superpower. (Read the story in Exodus chapters 3 and 4. ) Moses' response? "Lord, I'm not good with words. I've never been. My words get all...

EDIT 2022: My views have totally changed since this posting. I simply don't think this way any more. But leaving it here because it's where I was at the time. God is good.  All the time. There was this mom of three boys.  Just as her oldest was graduating high school and her youngest was beginning high school...when she could start carving out some real time for herself and her husband, she felt the lump.  Breast cancer.  Aggressive. Chemo.  Dense dosing.  Neuropathy?  Not good news for someone whose job relies on her hands. There was this other mom of three boys. She loved them more than words.  At the same time, she prayed for a girl.  She felt strongly in her heart that her family included a little girl.  But it just never happened.  A few false alarms.  Miscarriages.  Maybe she was wrong about the girl.  After all, she's over 40 by now. There was this teenage boy.  He had been orphaned and abused for ye...

Adoptive parents who have just begun the process often ask for advice. I have a lot, but one thing I can't stress enough: record as much as you can.  Write it down, blog it, vlog it, photograph it, do something to keep a record of the process and especially your days leading up to meeting, meeting, and then adjusting.   Every July for the past four years, I go back and peruse my blogs and photos from July 2011 and the year leading up to that time.  There are always details I've forgotten, stories that make me laugh, and pictures that remind me how little and frightened, yet brave the boys were when they were literally pushed into our arms.  The boys love looking through the old photos, too.  They have never tired of their adoption stories.  Every time we talk about it, more questions are answered and more questions are left unanswered.  The more the boys understand about adoption, the more they can realize that there is much about their first two a...

In Kentucky 2012 A few years ago, on an RV road trip to Louisville, Kentucky for the NAD Conference , we stopped at a Jellystone RV Park in Mammoth Caves and had the time of our lives ! (Except for Ken, who was sick that day.) I was surprised to learn that Texas has several Jellystone Parks, as I hadn't heard of them before our road trip in 2012.  The Brown Family needed a quick getaway.  While we are SO ready to go on a cruise again, we've recently replaced a vehicle and leased a new home, so our savings is sparse.  When we saw the  Living Social  deal for  Jellystone Park Hill Country , we jumped at the opportunity! In Texas 2015 Check-in is at 3pm, but in our usual style, we were running behind our goal to leave Austin by 3:00.  Around 3:30, we got a courtesy call from Jellystone, asking if we were on our way and still planning to be there. They gave us instructions on how to check ourselves in since we would be arriving after their...

If the last post was titled "Language Boom 2," this one should be titled "Boom Boom POW!"  Sorry it's been so long since I last posted.  Life has happened and blogging was put on the back burner for a while. We continue to see gains in the boys' language development, especially Travis'.  I'll share with you a story: Last night, after Ken, the girls and I had been away for the weekend at the Empowered to Connect Conference (amazing, by the way), I was putting the boys to bed and reading a couple of books.  We began discussing age and how they both have birthdays coming up in the next few months.  I told them they are growing way too fast!  I pushed down on the top of their heads and said, "Stop it!! Stop growing!"  They both giggled and stood up on their tip-toes to get as high as possible.  I told them that they will eventually be taller than me.  Travis seemed curious at this and said, "But you'll always be older." ...