header

Archive for June, 2014

Posted on: June 26th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 1 Comment
Children in Families First

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. – James 1:27 Everyone of us wants to be wanted. We all want to belong. But all around the world, there are children left to fend for themselves––orphans. Over 147 million of them, not to mention countless others who live on the street. My family and I have been in the process of adopting from Ethiopia for close to four years now. The process has been an incredible one, but it’s been long and difficult for numerous reasons that I won’t get into here (for the sake of brevity). What I will say, however, is that our difficulties have largely been due to bureaucracy that could be streamlined and resolved if our lawmakers were informed of the current issues….

Posted on: June 25th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 12 Comments
Anxiety and Depression Losing You Life to Save It

I think my anxiety was brought on by the many years of heightened stress I experienced after my dad’s murder. It seemed the stress built up slowly over time until my body simply couldn’t take it any more, and I just sort of fell apart. But it wasn’t just the murder. I think it was a combination of many things––my type-A personality, my need for control, additional stress caused by a high-risk pregnancy, and the normal stresses of daily life––that contributed to my downfall. I was confused when the physical symptoms of anxiety finally came to a head. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me, and this was when the depression hit. All the medical tests ordered by several different doctors came back normal. In hindsight this was a good thing, but it didn’t feel like it at the time. Not finding a cause for my many troubling symptoms left…

Posted on: June 18th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 5 Comments
God, Jesus, Faith, Christian, Christianity, strengths, weaknesses, weak, strong, strength, weakness, overcome weakness, overcome, achievement, start, finish, finish what you start, 2 corinthians 12:10, 2 corinthians 12:9, made strong in my weakness, when i am weak then I am strong, strengths finder 2.0

I’m a starter. When called to something, I jump on it and get the ball rolling. But I have to admit, I’m not very good at finishing. That’s not to say that I don’t finish, but for me, finishing what I start does not come without a fight. All I kept thinking during those last few weeks finishing my manuscript was, “I want to quit! I want to quit!! I want to quit!!!” I knew I wouldn’t let myself quit, but I wanted to. I wanted to give up the fight. I wanted to take the easy road. I wanted to sit myself down in front of the TV or read a book or do just about anything other than write––all things I hadn’t done for months. But I was determined to finish even though it took every bit of will I had and a strength that truly was not my own. A…

Posted on: June 11th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 7 Comments
God, Jesus, Gideon, faithful, God fights for us, God fights, trust, trusting God, answered prayer, God impossible, impossible, victory, accomplish, how to accomplish

I’m back! Thanks for hanging in there with me while I took some time off to finish my manuscript. Here’s a post about the last few months. I hope you enjoy! Have you ever had a Gideon moment with God? You know. The kind where He makes the very thing He’s called you to increasingly impossible? The kind where He just keeps putting more and more on your plate as a deadline approaches? The kind where time is taken away when you actually need more of it, not less? I have. In fact, this is precisely what’s been going on in my life over the last few months as I’ve worked to finish my manuscript. If you’re not familiar with the story of Gideon, let me fill you in a bit. Gideon was commissioned by God to lead Israel into battle against the Midianites, the Amalekites, and “all the people of the East.” Israel was armed…