Tina The Storyteller

 Love Lifted Me is the third in the Songbird series by Sara Evans. I was excited to start reading this installment of Jade and Max’s adventures, mainly because Softly and Tenderly ended with such a cliff hanger. In this story, Jade and Max turn away from their pasts and towards a new life in Christ. Set in a small town in Texas, this story does a great job of expressing the fears and joys that are found when we let go of the old and take on the new. It’s a relatively quick read and a nice tidy ending for our journey with Jade and Max. I enjoyed the Texas high school football aspect of the story and having lived in Texas for a short while; found that Evans and Hauck captured the lifestyle very well. The story line of Max’s parents is brought up in the beginning of the book, but mostly ignored from that point, which felt a little glossed over. Overall, I would recommend the entire Songbird series for an emotional journey that shows one families circle from sin to redemptio...

I made an ebook! It's titled Something Different from the Microwave . It was inspired by one of my readers!  And I want you to have a copy!!!  You can buy it on Amazon for 99 cents or you can email me at hohablog @ gmail.com  and I'll send you a pdf file for free!  It's ten recipes with meal ideas included.  Hope you enjoy!

My daughter and I love giving presents to people.  Yesterday, she went shopping with her dad and wanted to buy me some jewelry, but the consignment store was closed when they went by.  I took her back out so that she could pick something out.  I entertained myself while she chose something.  She even came up and got my card from me to pay for it.  Then when we stepped out of the store, she gave it to me.  She did not want me to wait for Christmas.  Here's a picture of what she gave me It reminded her of a peacock feather, I think she's right.

I must say that at this point, the week before Christmas has been relatively calm.  We finished mailing our packages last night.  My husband loves to go to the Post Office and use the self-service machine after hours, because, no one is there and it's in and out.  You can buy stamps there, too!  I think that I have spent every last dime that I can and I'm excited to see the faces of my family when they receive their surprises. We're slowly making our way towards Christmas and the one thing that I can say is that this has been a season of repentance for me.  I'm trying my best to see things as God desires, but there is so much history clouding my view sometimes.  What about you, what word would you use to describe this Christmas season?

This morning, I woke up with this word in my head, scrambled.  I think it describes me.  I've been kind of lukewarm lately.  The problem with a being a person who is constantly recovering from depression, any amount of time that feels lukewarm feels like an eternity.  It's probably only been a day or two, but any day with that feeling touches places that run deep within. It's almost like a scent memory.  In this time of Christmas, you'll know what I'm talking about.  When you smell the woodsy evergreen of Christmas trees or the warm sweet scent of cookies baking, you remember something deep within you.  That smell reaches down into the thoughts that you haven't had in a very long time and pulls them to the surface as if you were living that moment again.  It's beautiful and wonderful and I marvel at the fact that God gave us memories, because honestly, we could have been like fish that see themselves in the side of the tank, turn around and are s...

We talk a lot about patience this time of year.  We have not been able to put gifts under the Christmas tree until after Hannah has gone to bed on Christmas eve, ever.  She wants to open them right away and instead of having that constant nagging from her and temptation in front of her, we just hold them all away until she's asleep and wakes up to a pile of gifts. Anyway, I'm not really talking about Christmas presents, I wanted to share about some of the fruits of patience.  I've had lots of opportunities to be patient.  I don't always take them, but when I do, there are some awesome things that happen.  I can't explain to you how it is that I let my impatience cause me to believe that I can make things turn out better than God, but somehow I do.  So I wanted to share one specific thing with you. We bought our mattress when we were first married.  It came with a free metal frame, the kind that you can attach a headboard to.  Well, we...

All the time.  I just wanted to share.  We all know that it's that time of year when we start thinking about what we can give each other.  Well, I had two really awesome God things happen yesterday at church.  Plus lots of other awesome things, it's just that these two really jumped out at me to share with you. 1.  I really wanted to get Hannah a Christmas mug.  We normally have a hot drink on Christmas morning, like Egg Nog lattes or something equally yummy.  There were four big beautiful mugs that we bought years ago, but the paint was chipping on them and they were tossed at the end of last Christmas season.  We had two whimsical mugs that are Christmas themed.  I had been on the look out for another set.  Then I decided that I was just going to get Hannah her own Christmas mug this year and we would have three all together.  Yesterday, we went to church, someone walked in to the class I was in and asked if anyone needed ONE Ch...

I wonder if this is a confession...I can't remember a single Christmas present that we've ever bought for our daughter.  In fact, I think we may not have bought her a single Christmas present, ever.  Don't worry, she's opened up tons of gifts.  And maybe that's why we've never added to the stash.  I love that she has been so blessed with gifts, but I had to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't buying her anything.  That she doesn't have anything to look back on and say "My parents gave me that for Christmas when I was five."  But let's be honest here, who can say that except for maybe a five year old. Having lived through 35 Christmas's already, I will admit, I remember several gifts that my parents got me for Christmas and I will also admit that they are stored aka not in use or have long since passed hands.  It reminds me that the things of this world pass away, but the word of the Lord remains forever. There is a tremendous pu...

It has been a very full week.  We have been working on some schoolwork.  I have to strike while the iron's hot with my little one.  We also went caroling with the church.  Had a great visit with a friend.  Got new windows and a storm door.  And most importantly we are finishing up a wonderful Sabbath. We celebrate our Sabbath on Friday. My husband is a pastor, he has to work on Sundays so we don't really get the luxury of taking Sunday as a lazy day.  He also has a lot of meetings on Saturdays, because the church is made up of people that work Monday through Friday and we sometimes need Saturday to meet together to get the work of the church done.  So, we have settled on Friday.  Joel does not go into the office, we as a family tend to ignore the phone, and we try our best to ignore the internet, but that hasn't been happening as much lately, we ignore the television, and we pay attention to other things.  We spend time being thankful ...

The great people at Tyndale are not only spreading the Gospel this Christmas, they want to help you spread the Word, too. They are having lots of great giveaways, go over to their Facebook page and "Like" it by visiting this link New Living Translation (NLT) Facebook Page If you sign up for the giveaway, you get a free downloadable copy of the book of Luke from the Life Application Study Bible. Hope that you win something cool!

This past Sunday, Joel talked about the word  repent Little did I know that that word would haunt me until I did something about it.  I'm thankful that God sends his hounds after me with intensity when He needs my attention.  I would hate for some of these things to linger on.  I knew that something was going on when I did Hannah's lesson with her on Monday and there was the word again. repent I brushed it off as a happy little coincidence.  And then I showed up to class on Tuesday and there it was in big letters in the lecture repent I felt that tinge that this is something I should really look into, but what is it that I need to repent And so I let myself sink into the idea and out flowed the post from yesterday about homesickness.  And out came all those feelings and emotions that I was holding on to, not sharing.  And that was when I realized that I needed to repent And then there it was for the entire world to see, even though ...

I don't remember where I read it, maybe it was Fresh Brewed Life, but it struck a cord with me, this idea that we get homesick for our true home, heaven.  Today, I was hit pretty hard with it.  This time of year is always a little tough for me.  I think I figured out part of the why today. Eight years ago right about this time of year, I became pregnant.  It was our first pregnancy and even though it took us a few months, it was still within the realm of normal considering the form of birth control we had been using.  I hated being pregnant.  I loved the fact that I was going to be a mother, but I suffered from terrible depression through out the entire nine months.  It was awful and I never said anything about it to my doctor, because I was afraid they would put me on meds that would hurt my developing child. I was terribly excited to have that part of my relationship with my daughter over and move into the holding, feeding, changing era of our live...