It’s 7:00am on a beautiful cool crisp sunny Saturday morning and I’m sitting in a coffee shop alone in downtown Nashville trying to “hold it all in”….but my tears testify in this photo.

Soo many things encompassing my life the last couple months, has felt like a big ole pile of stress, anxiety and disappointment. I’ve been overwhelmed to say the least. And if one more thing arises I might need to sit in an empty room and rock back and forth until it all goes away….OR I could also just sit on a beach somewhere! That seems more like my style!

I feel it all around me. The hot breath of summer has slowly changed to a refreshing chill in the air.

Change. There’s that word again!

There is change that grows us. Change that makes us better people. Change that opens our eyes to things that we were once blinded to. Change that forces us to reevaluate our motives or life goals. And all of these type of changes offer new opportunity…IF we choose to step into it.

All of us have faith, but will your anchor of faith hold in the storms of life?

Is your anchor of faith a true anchor? Is your faith built upon the truth of scripture? Is your faith tested? Do you know how valuable, revealing and full of love a faith in Christ is?

Here we are again…September 11th. 20 years ago, on this day, I got the phone call that I had dreaded getting all night long the night before….”Tammy, we found Trent.” He was about 100’ below the water in Jamaica’s Blue Lagoon, still hanging onto his underwater scooter, and it appears something had struck him on the back of the head while he was free diving. And he didn’t survive. He didn’t make it. He was gone.

Earthly blessings are temporary; they can all be taken away. And oh what pain and disappointment that can bring. Job’s blessings all disappeared in one fateful day. I, too, had a wonderful life that was stripped away within seconds. My husband was gone and my dreams were shattered.

And yet, in the midst of those painful days that followed, I began to experience God’s truest and richest blessings. My faith was growing stronger than I had experienced before. I felt a deeper love than I had ever known.

Life is full of movement. If we are moving, we are living. Yet movement can also be exhausting—physically and mentally.

In some ways, movement can be paralyzing. We can feel stuck because though we’re moving all over the place it might not seem like there’s any real direction or meaning behind it. We know we’re moving, but we wonder if we’re really getting anywhere.

Finding Joy can be a challenge for alot of people. Especially during a year long pandemic when nothing has been normal. But when I talk about joy, I’m not doing so from the perspective of a bubbly person who never seems to have a bad day or questions WHY! Many of us think that joy means feeling good all the time. That’s impossible! Even for those who are naturally upbeat and optimistic, that’s impossible.

On September 8th, mine and Anita’s precious friend Lieutenant Colonel Shelli Huether was killed in a plane crash here in TN, along with 2 other airman. Shelli started her military career in the Texas Air National Guard as a Navigator and has deployed five times. Her current assignment was with the 118th Airlift Wing in Nashville TN. Shelli had a servant’s heart and spent countless hours volunteering with the USO, Operation Stand Down, and many other charities and non-profit organizations

Often we hold on soo tightly to things in our lives or our own way of thinking because we don’t want to change or it’s just soo hard to let go.

But God can’t redeem what we will not release.

Maybe we forget that He still holds the power to heal and to set free.

Life is full of broken dreams, heart ache, challenges, mind blinding circumstances and plans that feel like they keep falling short. It can feel at times like we’re living in the wilderness of self-defeat with different shades of pain and numbness. For many, we lose the hope to believe in the place called tomorrow or a new beginning.

In spite of these difficulties, God’s word stands solid as an anchor to take you to your promised land. God does not want you to remain where you are if you’re feeling hopeless.