LW Designs

I've been teaching children's ministry for nearly a decade. I've come across many lesson plans, curriculum, and books that describe prayer for kids in an easy-cheesy way. In fact, just a few weeks ago I went through a prayer curriculum series with the kids at church and had to supplement and add to to give it any substance. And then this week I received a copy of "Prayer Works" by Stephen and Alex Kendrick (known notably for their Sherwood Pictures films Fireproof and Courageous) with Amy Parker from B&H Kids . The Kendricks and Amy Parker use a Biblical model and Scripture to show children that God not only created them and loves them, but that He desires a relationship with them. It lets parents (or teachers) guide kids through many questions that they have about prayer - who can pray, what to pray about, where to pray, when to pray - and provides prompts for prayer that build on each other to grow in their faith journey. Highly recommend i...

October is the best month. You can debate me all you want, but this is my reality. I L.O.V.E. October. The first full month of fall, it's my anniversary month and my birth month, the leaves are changing colors, the weather is getting cooler, there is pumpkin everything EVERYWHERE... and... football. It's a great time to look back at the past year and look forward at what's to come. For the past few years I've done a 31 day writing challenge each October as a fun way to document my reflection. But this year I have no time. I honestly don't ever have time to write for 31 days straight. I've never made it through posting every day for the 31 days. As I was reading through posts about people preparing for the challenge last year and this year I came to the realization that many people who participate don't - they pre-write and schedule their posts. So this year I'm trying something a little bit different - 31 days of being intentional. It won't be ...

I start this post knowing that my opinion varies greatly than much of my family and friends. Yet, as I sit here in tears scrolling through Facebook looking at posts about Planned Parenthood I don't feel like I can stay silent any longer.

I saw a question from one of my favorite blogger/authors this morning that made me pause. If you could tell the 18 year old you, one piece of advice, what would you say?

When I was in college I took a human diversity class. There is a day from that class that will forever be etched in my mind. Before I tell you about that, let me preface with the disclaimer that I am fairly naïve about discrimination. I haven’t ever really been subject to it. And if you’ve ever met me you know that I really like to please people – I like them to be happy, I don’t like to disappoint them, and I try to help anyone however I can.

Since November I have started a number of new posts. They are all sitting unpublished in DRAFT form. Some have full posts written, there's one with just a link to an article, and there's even one with only a title. So why haven't I posted anything? I really don't know. I guess my real struggle is figuring out what I'm blogging about. Why do I write here? What am I trying to accomplish? I wrote a post last year that had a huge response - high views, comments, shares on social media - but could not be replicated. I actually tried. The post was about my sister and a desire to raise awareness for her illness at a time when her health was not doing well. It also happened to be during when the ice bucket challenge was very popular. I wrote a post about pediatric cancer a few months later. It's a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I talked about several children that I have had the privilege of getting to know through work, volunteering, family, or friend...

Would you rather be right or safe? This is a hard lesson that I found myself in this week. Once as a teacher and once as a learner. My husband's variation on the question was, "Would you rather be right or dead?" My little friend's question was, "What if someone's been picking on me for three years?"