Category Archives: Note

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Think Sunrise

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jessica broberg

Yesterday morning the sunrise was amazing. My daughter noticed it right away and brought it to my attention. We tiptoed to the living room to look out the front window at the breathtaking display of orange, yellow, purple, blue and red that had painted itself against the sky. It was beautiful. We sat in silence for a minute, just her and I, taking it all in. I looked down at her, still just staring off into the distance. And then she  turned and uttered a few thoughts that I have been wrestling with ever since.

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Treasure and Ponder

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flickr-4161935408-hdThis morning was wonderful. I got up early, while everyone else was sleeping, put on some worship music, sat down with my bible in front of the Christmas tree, and enjoyed a steaming hot cup of tea.

I was reading the Christmas story in Luke chapter 2 and came upon a phrase that has seemed to always just kinda resonate with me and draw me in. The shepherds had come and found Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus laying in the manger. They left telling everyone they met what the angels had said about the child. And all who heard the sheepherders were impressed. Then in verse 19 it says this “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” 

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Time Out

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Just gave myself a “time out” from my middle child. My adorable, high energy, too smart for his own britches, strong willed child.  As I’m writing this the tears are falling onto my laptop because, well, I just can’t seem to stop them today.

Time out

Parenting is the toughest job you’ll ever have. That’s what everyone always says. What they don’t say is that by “toughest” they mean the most exhausting and exhilarating job you’ll ever have.  And usually both at the same time. They don’t say that you’ll learn more about yourself than you ever really cared to. But you will. Because truth be told, one of the things that makes parenting so hard is the ability it has to expose us as parents. The ability to bring to light our own areas of weakness, our own selfish motives, our own bad attitudes.

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No Spirit of Fear Here

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For God has not given me a spirit of fear. But of power, of love and of a sound mind.

fearI remind myself of this a lot.  Over the years I have dealt with many different faces of fear. It’s been about 4 years now since we had someone break into our home. It was in the middle of the night and my entire family was there, sleeping.  The intruders left behind an axe that they had brought with them which was unsettling. But that wasn’t the only thing they left behind that day. They also left behind a heart gripped by fear.

It was almost 3 months later before I would sleep through the night again. Fear had found a place in my heart and mind.  It was slowly eating away at me. Like I said, I am familiar with fear. It’s something that has kind of followed me my whole life, taking on different faces at different stages of my life.  But this was new territory for me because suddenly a fear of mine had become a reality. And I wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

I would find myself bolting up in bed in the middle of the night, confident that someone was breaking into our house. There were times that I would go and check on my kids to make sure they were safe and times when I was literally so crippled by fear that I couldn’t even move. Sometimes I would wake up my husband and he would do a “check” around the house to set my mind at ease. Often we would pray together. But always I would find myself repeating scripture over and over again to help settle my mind. At times all I could remember was a single verse and so I would repeat it over and over again until the truth of it settled on my heart.

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The Sleeping Shark

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We’ve been slightly obsessed with sharks around here lately.  I wish I could take the credit but it’s mostly due to my 5-year old daughter Hannah, who thinks they are the most fascinating creatures on the planet. She first became interested in them after our family watched an episode of National Geographic’s Shark Men.

Shark sleeping

I recall one particular day, shortly after she started watching Shark Men, Shark Week and any other show with the word shark in it, where I was a bit taken aback by the graphic nature of it (specifically the bloodied waters surrounding a shark attack.)