Joy Leanne

I was cooking dinner with a dozen different, semi-related, thoughts running through my head. I stood over the stove, fork in hand, turning bacon and trying not to get grease all over everything. My thoughts felt scattered and disconnected. Over and over I went back to the story of Jesus telling the disciple to throw their nets over the side of the boat. I am horrible at remembering details so as the bacon drained I pulled up Bible Gate way to search for the story. Turns out there are two similar stories recounting two separate events. The first one is Luke 5. After fishing all night Simon is told to go put his nets into the deep water. Despite having nothing to show for a long nights work, Simon did as he was told and ended up with so many fish he had to call for help pulling them in. The second story takes place after Jesus is resurrected. After all the miracles and amazing things they saw at his side, Christ's disciples have gone back to fishing. Again they have caught nothing wh...

It has been pretty quite on here. Not unusual I know. But it seems like a very long time since I have been here. Five months to be exact. It doesn't feel quite that long, but dates don't lie. The last time I shared here we hadn't even had snow yet. And now we are in the middle of a heat wave. We have already hit 90 a few times this spring and we are due for a few more 90 degree days in the next week. When I sat down at the start of the year one of my few goals was to write more. Granted this is always a goal of mine but I had a slightly more concrete goals this time. Write a rough draft in 2015 and grow readership here so when I finally go to a publisher I have a decent size platform to present.  (You can read about my 2015 goals here .) Best laid plans and all that. There are a lot of reasons it has been silent here. * In February and even a bit of March we had a number of heavy snows that kept my kids out of school for nearly three weeks. Not a whole lot gets done when yo...

I only have  short window of time while dinner cooks and the kids watch Hercules, but I felt the need to write a bit more after Tuesday's post. Like I said in my last post I am slowly finding a balance between serving in my local church where I see a need, and finding other ways to use my gifts and talents to minister to others. Obviously serving looks different for every one depending on their church, their gifts, their talents and their life phase. But I thought that maybe it would help to see what that looks like for me right now. Aside from serving in our church nursery and, of course, taking care of and ministering to the members of my family these are a few ways I have found to serve God, bless others, and worship Him with my life. I have taken countless spiritual gift tests over the years and the outcome varies. I do believe that, in part, God equips us for a task at hand. But, I also think many just have a God given bent toward certain things. While I have had a number of ...

I have been having an ongoing dialog/struggle with myself for the past few years. Mostly it takes place in my head or journal. Occasionally it will spill out and I will include my husband in the conversation. But lately I have gotten just a teeny tiny bit braver and started to share bits and pieces of this conversation with other women. And I realized is that I'm not alone. In fact, I think a LOT of women are probably having this same conflict with in themselves. But it's not an open conversation yet. It's shared in whispers in the hall, quite sighs in our living rooms and guilt ridden confessions over text messages. More and more I am hearing women cautiously admit that they don't feel like there is a place for them to use their spiritual gifts in their local church. It's an awkward position to be in. It can happen for a number of reasons... *Really big churches where there are so many people that it can be very difficult to really plug into active ministry. *Small...

Well with out meaning to I seem to have taken a three month (!) break from blogging. It definitely wasn't intentional, but it was very much needed. 2014 was a crazy up and down year and the last two and a half months of it were a crazy whirlwind of busyness and processing. It may not have been a "quiet" season but it was good to take time to think through things on a more personal level and not share every thought that came into my head. (I have always had a habit of oversharing). We are now two weeks into 2015 and while dealing with a crazy case of cellulitis in my ear I was able to do some thinking and reflecting. God and I have been talking a lot about what the future looks like for me and while I still have some things up in the air I feel like for the first time in  long time I have a little more direction and focus. I have always struggled with a bit of creative ADD and have a habit of picking up every new craft trend that crosses my path. There is something in me t...

  It seems like this has been my prayer over and over. "Lord, if it is Your will, let it be." I breath out my questions and breath in this prayer and move through my day trying desperately to trust that whatever happens this prayer will be answered.  But then answers come that aren't what I had hopped and I find myself living the tension of disappointment, but striving to trust.  When jobs change, and plans fall through, and ministries I long for seem to out of reach, am I still praying "Your will be done."  When I look at the story He is writing in my life, will I trust that it is the perfect one for me. Will I cheer for victories in other's lives and not  sulk that they aren't my own? When once again my kids go to bed before their Daddy get's home. When we eat more dinners apart than together. Can I trust that even in this God is good and His will is being done? When thoughts of "this isn't what I signed up for" run through my head ca...

Fall seems to have hit full force this week at least on the East Coast. My day has been full of soup in the crock pot and folding laundry with the windows open. It's also been full of checking Instagram and feeling a slight pang every time I see the #influenceconf. This is the third year of the conference and once again I am watching it from my computer.  Four month ago just days after my 30th birthday I sat down at the computer with money in my bank account ready to buy my conference ticket. Josh had recently been promoted at work and for the first time in our marriage money wasn't really an issue. And yet, for some reason I couldn't explain it just didn't feel right. I talked it over and over with my husband, he was all for me going, but didn't want me to go if I felt uneasy. I desperately wanted to be there this year but couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Fast forward to the end of August. My husband went into work one day and called me a fe...