She Loves - Series Day 7: Stay & Rest

Psalm 9:1 - Under His wings you will find refuge. [NIV]

So I'll admit, we're only 7 days into this and I really didn't feel particularly drawn to any immediate correlation for this verse and my life, at least today. That's not to say there never has been, but that's the reality of scripture - while it is wonderful, there will be times when specific passages just don't speak to you in that Richter scale kinda way.

And I believe that's okay. I believe it's normal, and natural, because if we force something to fit, it's not authentic. So yes, I believe today's verse is without question an indisputable declaration, and I have in fact sought out the exact type of shelter it's referencing. I've been so broken that I thought I'd never find my way back to willingly getting out of bed the next day, and as much as I'd love to say I was resilient on my own accord, that's not the case.

But today, many miles later and in between valleys, I can say that I read that and smiled at being reminded of it, but didn't feel the deep sigh as though I had desperately needed it.

Today, at least. And I am thankful for that .

I do however have a praise to share! Tonight was the first night for me and Sydni [disclaimer: yes, I realize I just created grammatical treason; I did it on purpose ;)] to go together to the SonRise peace center to fill bags for our church's backpack ministry. I had major proud mama smiles as we made our rounds through the line. We talked about what we were doing, and that these bags are for kids just like her, but who perhaps wouldn't get to eat anything yummy on the weekends outside of the school cafeterias. I've said it before but I'll say it again - this little girl's heart is bigger than the ocean is wide sometimes, and it was everything we could do tonight to keep her from literally running through the person in front of her - she wanted to fill 'a thousand bags, Mom' so that 'no kids get hungry this weekend!' < GOSH.♥

be.still.my.heart.

 After backpack, we headed home, where Mare & Derrek met us after their day gallivanting around Cincinnati with Cooper.

cooper!
[& stella's waggy butt :p]

We grilled out, spent quality time as a happy household of young and adult humans and dogs, and finished up the night huddled under blankets in the basement watching Captain America: Civil War.  

[minus rob, stella & syd]

Perhaps you stumbled here looking for some eloquent parallel around this verse; I'm sorry I may have disappointed there, but that should not miniaturize at all the promise behind it. If you really did need that today, then I encourage you to go and read it on your own, and pray for open eye and heart for how you might be drawn to related scripture and let it speak to you in the way that you need. 

We were happy to host our traveling friends tonight, and although I am NOT saying our home would never equal the refuge God provides, I can hope it did prove a humble place for them to rest, if in no other way than literally. 

I hope you find rest throughout this week, whether it's serious or not. Breathe, pray, give thanks. Repeat. 

Happy Midweek! 

xo | cmd

She Loves - Series Day 3: Real Strength. Real Trust.

Today was almost a 180 from yesterday, at least as far as the weather was concerned. Sydni's mid-afternoon soccer game wasn't lined with parents in parkas and players in [multiple & multi-colored] layers. It was sunny, beautiful and on the warmer side of brisk - kind of exactly what we all love about October here in Ohio.

So we started the day at church, which I have to admit was really.. not.. my favorite? It sounds strange sometimes to say that, but I think it's important to recognize that not every message will resonate in that powerful way we often hope or expect. Today was... well, maybe intended for someone else in another seat.. who knows.

We made a grocery run after soccer, came home and did some cleaning, blah blah blahhh..

I pulled out my list of verses for today, and was given this:

Psalm 28:7 - The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. [NIV]

I realize this list has a running theme, and that if I superficially dissect them daily, I'll be repeating a lot of the same things. I'll leave it up to anyone out there who would like to do so independently. Of course I will acknowledge that this verse speaks to the absolute nature of who our God is, and what He is, and how He is, and everything He does and doesn't do. It's neither the first nor last place in the Bible that an author has spoken in confidence of God's unwavering promise to never leave us, never forsake us.

So the obvious:
The Lord is my strength and shield, in the same way that a king in the time of David [the author, in this case] would be for his people.
And my heart trusts the Lord, he He does help me.

So I read this today, and immediately wanted to go  and tried to go another step beyond stating the obvious, and talk about confidence - mine specifically.

I'm a pretty confident person, on most days, in most areas. Given that I wear a number of hats in addition to human, I am also very susceptible to moments, days, seemingly-infinite spells of doubt. I don't want it, but the fact is it's pretty hard to ignore it 100% of the time.

What?

So I'm a mom. I'm a daughter. A sister. I'm a wife. A boss and a co-worker. An athlete and a teammate. A driver on the road. Passenger on a plane. I am a Christian. Do I count all of those as hats? Yes, I do, because while some of those things are who I am, some of them are also what I am, depending on that exact moment in time. Some of those hats I wear every single day [& night!], for hours at a time. Some of them I wear every once in a while, for just fleeting moments it seems. They're all unique in what they require of me, but they all have one thing in common: a choice of whether I will wear them with confidence, or with fear of how they will affect me. What they might make me. What they might give or take of me. And will I be able to stay resolute, however long that might be?

I. can't. even.. begin to count how many times as just a mom alone I've felt unsure. And unsure is a light way of putting it. All new moms [& dads] can relate to the idea of being tasked with the job of keeping another brand new human alive, and raising it to be a housebroken, contributing member of society. You don't think that could make someone doubt themselves?

As a daughter, a sister [or any type of relative, really], it's easy to feel inadequate, especially if your family dynamic is less than storybook. As a wife, I may be confident that my husband loves me, but am I always sure that I'm living up to being the type of wife that was talked about in yesterday's entry [the noble wife]? While I may not fear it, I do know that we will both let each other down and perhaps unintentionally hurt each other throughout the rest of this life we've promised to live together.

As an athlete, especially in my sport [soccer], the moments are certainly more instant and fleeting, but have I ever doubted that I'd be the one to screw up a play? That I'd be the reason the other team found the back of the net? Yes and yes, probably a thousand or more times over, and sometimes so much so that I believed it, gave way to it, and made expensive mistakes.

At work, I have those that look to me, those that expect from me, and those that will either capitalize on my mistakes or be at a disadvantage when they come. Not if, but when. The corporate world is certainly a place where precision is key, and if you think that I've never had a day of uncertainty or at least maybe a strong second guess about an executive decision .. well, I do. Sometimes daily. Sometimes multiple times daily.

Confidence is such a delicate thing to hold onto while wearing multiple hats.
But then there is the matter of professing - of claiming - this verse. Will I do it robotically, or will I actually stake claim to it and own the words as I say them, with full and total confidence that the God of whom I speak is in fact everything I say He is.

I have to actively believe that my strength - my real strength, comes from my belief that I was created to be loved, to love and to not just allow, but train my heart to trust in the life that is found in faith.

And I want to. And every day is another day of intentional efforts to rely less on me, and more on Him. It sounds... romantic, maybe, but I can assure you that if you've ever really had to push through disappointment, anger, anxiety, loss... whatever, in order to actively choose light, then you know that it is a discipline not learned in one day. It'll take me a lifetime to come close, and that's all I can do on my own. So in the meantime, I'm going to let go, and let God. Because I do trust Him, and He will help me.

And you, too!

Happy Sunday, loves.

xo | cms

She Loves - Series Day 1: Everyday Encouragement

You guys.

It's been over a month since I last published an entry on here. That doesn't sound like much, but I was the girl committed to myself in an effort to visit my e-journal daily, if for no other purpose than for revisiting it later on if I was curious as to what I was doing a year ago on whatever day. Yeah, that's a silly reason, I know, but if I told you it had never helped me out in a moment of memory lapse, well, that'd be a lie. So I've struggled with the big old first world problem of lack of blog time, over really the last year or so. It's more to me than just a blog, really, it's the idea of journaling in general that I've back-burnered all together. Over the past week though, I went out and purchased a composition notebook, and forced myself to sit in complete silence until something..anything.. came out of the pen.

And I realized that my busy schedule wasn't the only issue. I could literally only think of meatless, surface things to say. Don't get me wrong, that's not always a bad thing, but there exists a span of years: 28plus, to be exact - of my life in which I was an avid, consistent journaler, both on paper and then in an e-format as well. I favor at times blogging, because both my mind and my typing fingers partner together at about triple the speed of my writing fingers.

That's my backwards way of apologizing to an audience that I guarantee doesn't really care about the fact that I haven't been keeping up with my daily blogs. Let's face it, it's really not this big of a deal.. *wry laugh. #firstworldproblems #ijustusedahashtagoutsideofinstagram....#again.

Whatever. So UPDATES, huh? What the heck have I been doing?
Well, as I scrolled back through the handful of entries I made between June and mid-September, I think for the most part, life has been a blur, but of the same things on repeat: Sydni's soccer games and practices, work day in and day out, volleyball, road trips, family and friends as much as life allows these days.

OH, and yeah.. that little detail that we GOT MARRIED!

mr. & mrs. stokes | est 08 Oct 2016

And gosh.. what a day that was! (When I get more pictures back, I'll for sure make a retro entry, because it was awesome and then some!) Here I am a day shy of 2 weeks after, feeling both like the wedding day was yesterday and yet a lifetime ago. The collection of married people we know all said that the day flies right by, and unfortunately I've been there once before to know that much can be true, but honestly, while our day did come and go in a flash, we made sure to live in every moment, and for that, it was the exact amount of time we needed.

Afterwards, we came home, back to real life, our house, our adult responsibilities, our dogs, our jobs and our life together now as a husband and wife. It is so similar to "before," and yet so different, which, if I'm honest, kinda baffles me, since our 'regular' life didn't really change. And yet... here I am, feeling more in love with this guy than I did yesterday, and a multitude of other sappy cliched amorous feelings toward my husband. Must be a newly-wed thing ;). 

Then last week-ish, I stumbled across a list of Bible verses geared towards women, compiled [careful not to say written.. haha] by a Marisa Donnelly, on ThoughtCatalog.com, a website I'd literally never heard of before. She'd tracked down 27 verses that had spoken to her - after reading it, it's actually 26, but one of them was listed twice in two different translations. It hit me that in the past, any seasons of writer's block I experienced were more easily dissuaded when I turned back to Scripture and opened my heart and mind to whatever application was tied to my life - in all its mess & beauty. 

So I've arrived now at the reason I finally opened the blog today. I have a renewed sense of reason and purpose to be on here, and I'm excited for it. I wanted to go down Marisa's list of verses, one at a time, one-a-day, and remind myself why I needed that verse, that day. We'll see if that holds true; while I read through the entire list once, I don't have it memorized, so each day will be something of a surprise, I guess? 

And five novels later [sorry], here we go: 

Psalm 46:5 - God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. (NIV)

Sidenote:  For those of you who've never cracked open a Bible before, I implore you to maybe find a Christian - a real-life, imperfect, broken, compassionate, every day Christian - and just... get to know them. Sure, some of the Bible is daunting, and at first glance might look like a manuscript of rules and regulations, but I can assure you, there is so. much. more to it. And If I happen to be that really screwed up, sin-ridden but undeservedly-loved Christian you need to talk to, you let me know.. and I'll let you know just how normal you probably are ;)! Adversely, for those of you who have this postered all over your house on everything from wall decals to coffee mugs, well, it's a good one.

Not the first time I've seen this verse, and it's admittedly not one of my "go-to's," either. It does however, apply in more than one way. See, at first glance, this is one of those lines that I see all over the place, usually in the context of an encouragement card or confidence boost for someone facing a difficult time. It carries that kind of absolute hope & strength of God's steadfast support for when we are tripping over ourselves and other people on our way to not drowning in hard times. It's [ok, most of these are, if I remember.. ] a feel-good verse for sure, and I'll admit I've leaned on it once or twice over the years. 

BUT, as I re-read it today to start this mini-series of my own, I realized that I personally will draw more depth from this if I remember that it applies to me on my very.best.day.EVER... as well as the days I feel like melted plastic. Seriously though: The past week and a half have been ah-mazing - work has gone smoothly, our home life has felt renewed since the wedding, we've had good fortune with cars and house and pets and kid and health and aaaall the pieces have just fallen into and stayed securely in place. And I wake up feeling positive about the little piece of time I have in this world, to recall this verse - this promise that the Lord of all creation is also with me?! To be not reminded, but re-assured, really, that He loves me.. loves my husband, loves my family, my marriage, my well-being and my mission as a human to share His calibur love? That HE is the timeless source of love, life and real, unfiltered happiness.. and that same HE.. has chosen to be with ME, and ensure that I do not fall farther than He can reach? Y'll.... just... y'all... Nobody deserves that kind of love, but the fact that we have it is pa-lenty reason to at least make an effort at a good day. 

And the effects of that realization on the good days are what will sustain me on those particularly bad days, when the ship sinks and I'm blind in dark waters with a piece of the sail stuck to my face. I've been there, you've been there, we've all been ugly crying over life & loss at some point. To fully download this verse in that moment, in the storm, really is impressive if I think about it... usually if I'm inconsolable, I'm.. well, inconsolable. You could read me every song in the book and my human sarcasm might take over, will it away as I might try. BUT, give me this guy on a day when I'm clear-headed, and it'll add to the emergency reserve I'll need when the rain comes. 

I don't know if today's a good day, or a bad day for you, or if you've got a well-balanced mix of them like I do. I don't know if you're here reading this because you're in a dry spell of bad luck, nasty people and pressure to fix things out of your control, or if you're sailing through reading this because you were curious. Or, if anyone's reading this at all. I said earlier that really, these are for tomorrow me to come back and read, when the time is right and I need reminded that a little thread of lucidity did exist that one time on a Friday. But wherever you are, and whatever season you're in, I'm pretty sure we could all use a little encouragement, to fill the tank. 

Happy WEEKEND, blogbots. 

xo | cms <<< and that's new, too.. yiee!

[BIG] HURDLE.

Today was not a good day.
To start things off, Mother Nature skipped snooze this morning and woke up right on time to send me a weeklong reminder that my non-pregnant body is functioning just fine, thank-you-very-much. So hello, hormones.
And hello to the alarming phone call I received just minutes after the work day started.
I will share no intimate details here, but will suffice to say that it was a very serious matter that needed to be addressed immediately.

To say that my head has been spinning like a top for nearly 14 hours straight now is an understatement. When the welfare of my child is brought into question and another party who ought to be more concerned with it than with proving a point, is pushing for the latter rather than the first, it becomes an intricate trap that we all fall into. Tempers raged all day today, and decisions that may have sparked an irrevocable course of events were only held off by the sense of the advising of pastoral staff.

every. single. day.

Today was not a good day.

It is over now, with what we all believe is a sigh of huge relief. Call it a false alarm, if that feels appropriate. In a way, it is. It doesn't change the new imprint of similarly-exhibited behavior that I now have on my mind, and in my heart. I saw an evil tonight, masked by a claim to good intentions, that I know I will not be able to forgive without the grace of the God I serve and spoke to many, many times today.

©casting crowns

I am grateful tonight for the grace and mercy of the Lord I love; through this today I have still praised Him, and I won't ever stop doing that. This isn't the first time in my life that I've been driven to my knees asking for His help, wisdom, peace, tenacity or whatever else it is that i need. It won't be the last, either, but the beautiful thing about that is that I will always have double the opportunity to praise Him for what He's already given me when I am standing on solid ground again.

And tonight, that's what I'm doing.
Rob is not here tonight; he'll be back tomorrow, as part of an agreement in sorting everything out this evening. We all reached a point of peace tonight, and for that alone, with my four-year-old's story as the only foundation for clarity, I am beyond grateful.

The tears on my face have dried and while my voice feels shot, I have my little girl curled around my arm right now and that is how we're going to stay until the sun comes up again tomorrow.

One breath at a time, we will press forward.
I never would've gotten through today without the faith I have.. without the intervention of a couple of select people, without my mother's advising and without the strength in me that I take no credit for having, but attribute rather to my mother's raising & the values I was taught.

©newsboys

Tomorrow is a new day.
Tomorrow will be the day of clean-up from today.
Tomorrow is a chance to either validate or discard my personal character & beliefs with how I handle the situation and the people.
Tomorrow is not guaranteed, but I'm planning on it either way.

xo | cmd

Happy 30, ROE Girls!

I always wondered what it would've been like to be a twin. Sometimes that thought scares me, because that would've meant the world would have two of me to handle. Haha. Other times, I think it would be hilarious and fun, since the majority of the twins I know prove twindom to be just that. Or, it could be just that the twins I know are all beautiful people, inside and out, so they make the whole shebang look that much better. Either way....

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

- to my former roommate Trisha, and her twin sister, Laura. Today they are the big 3-0, and I wish them both the best of the best for their birthday! (:

adorable, right??
l: i think it's laura, then trisha?... and on the r: trisha & laura (:

birthday memoirs!
b: trisha & catie
f: jacinda. laura. cori

I remember when Catie and I joined the Roe family for a birthday celebration for these two ladies a few years back; we decided we'd tell everyone we were also twins and see if they believed us. [I'm kidding; we didn't, and it wouldn't take more than a snail to recognize that clearly we aren't.] Anyway, happy birthday to these two beautiful girlies and wishes for many, many more!

The only thing about which I'm not sure I'm crazy when it comes to the Roe birthdays is the fact that it marks the first day of JULY, which means it's time for me to do my annual peek back at the first half of the year, and consequently wonder where in the heck it all went. I know I'm not alone. Haha. This year certainly has made its way without lag and while it seemed like it would be a daunting one at the beginning, there was a certain shine to it that I saw early on... I'm convinced the last half will be amazing.

Something else I found for the day that I thought was fitting for both a Monday, the first day of July, monumental birthdays, whatever.... [borrowed this from searchquotes...]


happy ________ ! [july! birthday! life!]

This is going to be a great week for a multitude of reasons... including [but most certainly not limited to:] Sydni being with me all week, Ali & Co. visiting this weekend, a holiday [=shortened work week!], possible camping trip with Becky, maaaaybe having a visit from Rob, fireworks, gosh.. list could go on. I am blessed, and you are too, whether you can see it now or not.

"Wait for the Lord; Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." -Ps 27:14

Here's the the second half of the year.. Happy JULY!

xo | cmd

Psalm 119 - The end!

Over the past 3 or so months, we've been patiently traveling through the book of Psalms 119. It's taken our pastor and a few others to help facilitate each weekly study, and tonight we finally crossed the finish line. We are finished!

The next big venture for us will be our upcoming Rick Warren 40 Days in the Word study that's starting up this Sunday evening. I'm certainly feeling blessed at this very moment to have such a studious, dedicated group of peers at our church to help hold me accountable to getting myself into the word. Not only that, but in the short few months that we've been immersed in the company of these incredible people, I've already got a renewed sense of energy and hope. It's refreshing!

To celebrate the fact that it's Wednesday and we are the Dills [aka, no other reason than that God is good all the time{and all the time, God is good!}], we grabbed some of our resident Disney characters and took some photos.

Work Week: 3 down, 2 to go!

xo | cmd