"I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children are following the truth."
                                                                                                                  ~ 3 John 1:4

Father's Day 2016. The day my Evan gave his heart to Christ. For reals.

I say "for reals" for a reason. When Evan was a younger child, I was his children's church leader. He was Miss Becky's son and in his mind, it was something that was expected of him to do. He believed in the things of our faith, but it was not something he had fully examined for himself.

Fast forward to present. We have been talking a lot this year about "working out your salvation" (Philippians 2:12) and making the faith you hold your own. As young adults, my kids can no longer lean on believing things just because mom and dad say it's right. They must examine those beliefs for themselves and see if they hold true in their own lives.

A few months ago at DNOW, Pastor Jim Gillespie was the keynote speaker. When I first met Pastor Jim, he scared me to death. A big burly biker guy who always wore jeans and black leather. Duck Dynasty beard and just all around scary looking guy. As I've gotten to know him over the years, and his family, wow, was I wrong! His son is Evan's best friend, his wife is the most beautiful lady I've ever known, and Pastor Jim is a massive teddy bear with a heart of compassion to see people live for Christ. At DNOW, Jim spoke about John 14:15, which very simply and plainly says, "If you love me, keep my commandments." Pretty simple and to the point. To the point, that's Pastor Jim. Evan and Alex both came up to me that evening at DNOW and their views on everything were radically changed.

Father's Day Sunday, Pastor Jim preached this sermon again, and Evan was so excited to hear it again. After service was over, he leaned onto me crying. When I asked him what was wrong he simply said, "I need to talk to dad." We went to find dad, who was ministering to others somewhere throughout the church, but who stopped everything when his son needed him. What a great dad! He sat Evan down with him and ended up leading him straight into the arms of Christ. For reals this time. It's now his own faith he wants to embrace...and no longer just the faith of his father.

What a fabulous Father's Day present. Like Alex joked, "How can I even compete with Evan's Father's Day present?" No competition, sweet girl. For now I can leave this world in peace knowing both of my children are walking with the Lord. "Not a sinless perfection, but a sinless direction", as stated by our lead Pastor David.

My favorite part of this story that keeps resonating in my soul was the phrase, "I need to talk to dad." When we face hard questions and issues in life, run to the Father. Find Him amidst all the things He's doing. He will stop everything for you! The One who has all the answers. The Bible calls God our Abba Father, a term of endearment for dear old dad. Crawl up into His lap and simply talk to Dad. He's always there!

I Will Trust in You

The hardest part of parenting has to be walking with your child amidst the parameters that God has placed in his/her life.  Guiding him/her to walk the boundary areas.

God blessed me with one very obedient child and one very strong willed child.  They could not be any different!  My fleshly heart wants to view my strong willed child as "bad" and "hard".  But my spirit cries out THANK YOU to God for giving me such an awesome challenge and for the opportunity to trust Him to create the renewed heart within her.  So, the key word here is TRUST.

As a parent, I sometimes think my kids are a reflection of me.  And if they are not acting right, then I have obviously failed.  If they are acting good, then I take the credit for that.  But how wrong can that be?!  I have seen first hand that children will turn into the people God created them to be, despite the parenting they received or the environment from which they came.  My job is simply to lead my children to Christ, disciple them to live under His commands, guide them on their journey through the boundary waters, pray for them, fight for them, help them out of the pit each and every time they fall into it, and then ultimately TRUST that our Father will do the rest.

My strong willed child is designed to teach me how to trust.  And God is on a mission to teach her to trust in Him as well.  She is a follower of Christ like no other.  She lives with full abandon.  She loves God more than anything and trusts Him even through her trials. I argue with God a lot that the challenges He has placed in her life are too hard for her.  I tell Him that if He would just make things easier for her the outcome would be so much better.  Can't you just hear him laughing at my "wisdom"?!  "But, God, our evening discipleship lessons are SO hard and deep and challenging.  The questions she wrestles with are far too deep for me.  When she screams to me that she can't....I have to figure out a way to encourage her that SHE CAN! If things came easier for her, God, I wouldn't have to have all these talks with her."

Then God gave me this song, as He always does, because music feeds my soul: Lauren Daigle, "Trust in You".  And the lyrics are SO perfect.  As my baby girl learns to trust in her Father and walk the parameters that He has set out before her, I am also learning to trust my Father to do the work in her that He has promised to do.  His ways are much higher than my ways, and His outcome looks nothing like mine....thank goodness.  He gives me glimpses of His glory in her life and I know He is up to something big.  I love how He loves her.

This is a new Fight Song for you, my dear Alex, whom my heart loves....

"Letting go of every single dream. I lay each one down at your feet.
Every moment of my wandering. Never changes what You see.
I've tried to win this war, I confess. My hands are weary, I need Your rest.
Mighty Warrior, King of the Fight. No matter what I face, You're by my side.

When You don't move the mountain, I'm needing You to move.
When You don't part the waters, I wish I could walk through.
When You don't give the answers, while I cry out to You.
I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in You.

Truth is You know what tomorrow brings. There's not a day ahead You have not seen.
So in all things be my life and breath. I want what You want, Lord, and nothing less.

You are my strength and comfort. You are my steady hand.
You are my firm foundation, The Rock on which I stand.
Your ways are always higher. Your plans are always good.
There's not a place where I'll go You've not already stood."

Loaves and Fishes

When you do things that haven't been done before, it's always a little scary.  The unknown is always a scary place.

Yesterday was Mother's Day.  Michael, being the Single Adult Ministry Director at our church, planned a fabulous Single Mothers Banquet to honor some single moms.  You never know on events like this how many to plan for or how many will show up.  So, he made his best shot in the dark, jumped off the cliff, and abandoned the rest of it to God to show up and show out.

Several new moms showed up; one brand new single mom to our church.  I started getting nervous that we weren't going to have enough food!  So, I started the "loaves and fishes prayer". Jesus fed 5000 plus with just a few loaves and fishes, so surely he could feed my roomful of single moms and their kids.

After the banquet where everyone was fully fed, almost everyone took a to-go box home because the food was THAT good!  And I'm sitting here right now eating up the leftovers that I got to bring home.  God seemed to keep filling that buffet enough to provide for everyone....then some.

Looking back on my blogs, I've prayed the loaves and fishes prayer for almost 6 years now.  No other way to live than to just jump off that cliff, abandon it all and let God show up and show out.  He NEVER fails!

It's time...

Sometimes I write things, but then they are just too personal and I sit on them a while until God prompts me to share them.  Corsars vowed to be transparent on our radical obedience journey, but sometimes the transparency is too much for our humanness.  But here you go.  I wrote this about a year ago and I'm finally feeling it's time to share it.  May God use it to bless you, encourage you, urge you on to feeling His presence.  He works all things together for GOOD:




Today I'm going to write a story, but it's not fully my own story.  It's the story of a young lady who has been fighting a big fight for the past 2 years.  She is an overcomer and she is my hero.  Her name is Alexandria Corsar. She has given me permission to write this on her behalf.

Radically following God's call on our life is something that has not been easy on our family.  I've been pretty honest about it since we started this journey.  Even though we made sure both our children were "on board" with our decision to uproot our life and come to seminary at God's call, there was still some fall out.  Some of this fallout has been so incredibly painful that I haven't wanted
to share it...until now.  But I am a firm believer that the fall out was all still part of God's sovereign plan to make my children even stronger than they were before.  One thing we have learned is to see God's hand in everything!  His hand is just as evident in sunny times as it is in the dark times.  

My daughter, Alex, has always been a strong human being.  "Strong-willed"  is what it is called in some contexts of personality.  That was a part of her that we had to come to grips with how to handle when she was just a newborn and had her own ideas of scheduling and sleeping!  She likes to do things her own way and she is 100% an individual.  The phrase "marching to the beat of her own drum" was a phrase created just for Alex!  It's really NOT easy to parent a child with this personality type, but through much prayer, research, reading, counseling, and more prayer we feel we have a pretty good handle on it now.  But this story is not about us...it's about her.  Our little fighter!  

We got to North Carolina the summer of 2013.  Finding good friends took a really long time.  She met a few friends at church to hang out with, but had a hard time going deep into those friendships.  She was longing for the friendships she had left behind.  She then began to spiral into a deep depression causing us to need to pull her out of school and homeschool her for 8th grade.  This fed the isolation she was feeling, but it did offer much time for us to talk about what God was doing in her life.  The overwhelmingness of life and the sadness of what had been taken from her took a toll on her teenage soul causing her to engage in self-harm.  At this point, we had to put her into counseling and watch her like a hawk.  Michael and I had never spent more time on our knees than we did during this year and half of this trial.  Every. single. day was a fight for her soul.  God was allowing her to tread this extremely dark valley and our  flashlights seem to lose their light at times as we tried to help her navigate.  She had a wonderful, godly counselor who helped her finally get to the other side of this darkness.  AS I type this, though, the wind is literally knocked out of my lungs as I remember back to these extremely dark times.  Fighting to hold on to my daughter, all while trying to encourage my husband to remain steadfast in God's call on our family's life.  I felt torn between two things I hated at the moment.  I hated her dark moment which I felt was caused by God's call and moving us away.  So, I was not a fan of either incident at the time.  Yet, through it all, God constantly showed Himself and reminded us that He was there.  He was our God through ALL OF IT.

Through much time spent in God's presence, my baby girl has overcome.  She courageously decided to go to high school this past year, even though I wanted to keep her homeschooled to make sure she was okay!  She pushed herself out of her comfort zone and she went soaring!  She made friends...still none as fabulous as her  North Dakota friends, but she is still waiting for God to bring those relationships to her.  She has learned to wait on God's perfect timing.  She has learned faith and confidence in herself placed there by the Creator of her soul.  She is discovering her gift of song and waiting for God to use her testimony to reach others in her shoes.  She realizes that God is writing a most amazing testimony of His faithfulness to her in her life.  The spiritual warfare is great, but she is dead set on Who will always win the battle for her soul.

We were driving yesterday and a song came on the radio.  She screamed, "Mom!  This is MY song.  It's literally perfect and says everything abut me!" As we listened to it, and she sang it loudly with such confidence, I struggled to keep my car between the lines as I cried tears of joy.  Here are the words to HER song.  They are perfect.

Like a small boat, On the ocean

Sending big waves, into motion

Like how a single word, can make a heart open

I might only have one match, But I can make an explosion.

And all those things I didn't say, Wrecking balls inside my brain.

I will scream them loud tonight, Can you hear my voice this time.

This is my fight song, Take back my life song.

Prove I'm alright song. My power's turned on,

Starting right now I'll be strong, I'll play my fight song

And I don't really care if nobody else believes

Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me.

Losing friends and I'm chasing sleep, Everybody's worried about me

In too deep, Say I'm in too deep, And it's been two years

I miss my home, But there's a fire burning in my bones, And I still believe

Now I've still got a lot of fight left in me.

This is her anthem.  Let me now share the words to MY anthem.

There are days I've taken more than I can give, And there are choices that I made

That I wouldn't make again.  I've had my share of laughter

Of tears and troubled times, This has been the story of my life.

I have won and I have lost, I got it right sometimes, but sometimes I did not

Life's been a journey, I've seen joy I've seen regret.

Oh, and You have been my God through all of it!

You were there when it all came down on me, And I was blinded by my fear

And I struggled to believe.  But in those unclear moments

You were the one keeping me strong, This is how my story's always gone.

And this is who You are, More constant than the stars up in the sky

All these years of our lives, I look back and I see You

Right now I still do, And I'm always going to

Put our anthems together and you see that we are more than conquerors through Christ who is ALWAYS there for us!

"Can anything EVER separate us from Christ's love?  Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted or are hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us!" (Romans 8:35,37)

He works all things for good...

You've heard the verse in Romans 8:28, "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them."  It's one of those verses that we memorize and just assume is true...that God is working things together behind the scenes of things we can't see.  But this time, God allowed me a glimpse behind the curtain and it was DIVINE!  I absolutely love when He gives me the privilege to make my faith my eyes.

Ill try to write it so you can follow the chain, so keep up!  :) 

A little over a year ago, I heard a song on Air1 radio that I just loved!  The artist's name was David Dunn.  Not really a big name that is known, but I was intrigued by this one song being played, so I looked up his album on Amazon and put it on my wishlist in hopes to purchase it at some point.  Our family puts things on our wishlist every year to allow our family an opportunity to see what we'd like for birthdays and Christmas.  I put it on my wishlist and kind of forgot about it, actually. 

This year for Christmas, I got the album as a gift!  I was so excited to listen to all the songs on the CD!  Now mind you, my kids don't usually listen to the kind of stuff that mom likes.  When I put in Sidewalk Prophets or Mercy Me or even Chris Tomlin, they aren't as impressed as I am.  And also mind you, my daughter had been put through a very challenging time in a relationship that literally broke her into a million pieces right after Christmas.  Heartbreak, sadness, overwhelming feelings for a teenager. 

To help you with the chain, this is kind of where all things start working together for good!  My daughter struggles with depression and I was concerned for her well-being more than I ever had been before.  I was praying for God to take control and make sure she was going to be okay.  I had my  new CD playing in the car one day as we were driving somewhere and the song, "It is Well" came on.  It's not the "It is Well" that you might know from the old hymns.  It's a new song.  Take a listen here:

The words to this song hit her broken heart to the core!  She has played it over and over every day and God is using the words as a soothing balm to her soul.  She said, "Mom, I love this song!  It's like it was written just for me! Where did you find this guy?" As I listened to her sing the words, tears welled up in my eyes as I realized that God made sure I heard this album over a year ago so that it would be purchased for me for Christmas so as to heal her brokenness right after Christmas.  Do you follow the chain?  She has given her pain to the Great Physician who is also the Great Lyricist who can write songs to woo our souls.  She journals of her pain and tells me that God is in control.  Thank you, God, for orchestrating her healing for the pain you knew was coming well over a year ago.  What great love He has for us that He ALWAYS has provided a way of escape.

"When the heartache and the headaches take my breath away, When the sunshine and the moonlight burn my skin.  When the sadness overwhelms  us and the troubled water rises.  When the reason for my bleeding don't make sense.  I'm not in control!  When my world comes crashing in around my head and I feel like I've got nothing left.  I'm not in control.  It is well with my soul.

When oppression and depression have their way with me.  When the hurting and the healing feel the same.  When the sadness overwhelms us and the troubled water rises.  When the reason for my bleeding don't make sense. I'm not in control. It is well with my soul.  

In the sadness that is tearing at my soul.  I'll remember that you've ALWAYS HAD CONTROL. You're love is crystal clear!"

When your daughter is a poet, God sure inspires some great poetry in lyrics.  All things, good or bad, always work together for good.  Thank you, Jesus, for that promise. 

Roots

This time every year I get concerned with my roots. Family. Not hair.

I get concerned about my lack of "roots".  Our gypsy lifestyle always gets the best of me from Thanksgiving until the New Year.  First a military lifestyle for 10 years of uprooting our life every 3 years.  Now a ministry lifestyle of having to "work" Christmas.  We've been in church ministry now for about 9 years and getting off for Christmas is almost impossible.  Christmas Eve is the biggest night of service, so asking off to "go home" for the holidays is never an easy task.  Don't get me wrong...I'm not complaining.  I just get concerned about my roots when it's so blatant in my face. I'm human, no where near perfect!

As I was belaboring some root issues around Thanksgiving, even after spending time with my family in Arkansas, God shed some light on things for me.  He always does that when I bring my belabored issues to Him.  Seek and you WILL find.  He brought home for me His words in Colossians 2:7,

"Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness." or Ephesians 3:17, 

"Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong."

My root-ed-ness is not in where my earthly family all gathers with or without me in attendance.  My roots are where God is.  And when I'm walking in obedience to God wherever He's placed me for such a time as this...that's where my roots are.  They grow deep, but they can also be easily uprooted by the Master Gardener and re-rooted wherever He sees fit to plant me.  My family is not just blood relatives, but also the church family that God has given me for the exact moment they are needed in my life.  Or even, at the exact moment I'm needed in their lives.  God's family works both ways. 

I am proud to be a Caudle by birth, a Corsar by marriage, and a child of God by His mercy and grace.  He chose me before the foundation of the earth was lain.  And I await the days the skies are rolled back as a scroll and we see all our Father face to face.  Believers in Christ all have the same roots.  We just live physically in different locations.  I love that my family is literally all over the world.  My Christmas cards reminded me of that this year. 

#notofthisworld #gypsymomma

Thoughts on Year 2 of Seminary

Well, we've been in a "foreign land" now for 2 years.  In a land not particularly of our choosing, but where God chose to send us nonetheless.  Following a direction to simply, "Go". Go to school.  Michael has finished up two years of his Master of Divinity degree.  His emphasis is currently Biblical Counseling, but that may change, as he's presently leaning toward Expository Preaching.  We've been serving in several ministry capacities, but still haven't found our "niche", and haven't received any further calling.  After two years into this obedience thing, we were kind of expecting something by now.  It's still embarrassing to answer the question, "So, what are you going to school for?" or "What are your plans after your graduate?" with the answer... "I don't really know yet."

We have learned more in the 2 years we've been here than ever in our lives.  Even though Michael is the one officially enrolled in seminary, I get to learn right alongside him.  He'll be the one getting a paper diploma at the end, but I get to enjoy all the knowledge without all the studying and tests!  :)  Not only are we receiving book knowledge, but the faith lessons are unimaginable.  Watching God's provisions will never cease to amaze me.  There are still plenty of things going on that I don't understand the reasoning behind, but I'm just leaving those things in God's capable hands.

The most amazing of His provisions come in the way of people that He places in our lives.  People who come on the scene exactly at the moment we need them.  People who share stores of things in their lives that encourage us at the exact moment we need to hear them.  Friends who provide for us financially with words totally anointed by our Father.  I want to tell you about one of those instances most recently that blessed me.

Michael and I had just had a discouraging conversation of  not feeling our "calling" yet.  There are times when God is silent and you feel He has forgotten where He's put you.  You ask Him for direction and the only answer you get goes back to your original call.  Nothing new.  Can I be honest?  That is SO frustrating!  If nothing else through our journey, I'm gonna be honest.  Following God's call is NOT easy, sometimes totally not fun, and as current culture has shown us...it's not safe!  But IT'S GOOD!  It was at this exact moment of discouragement, we received the most anointed note from a dear friend encouraging us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. She wrote, "Our ministry IS the journey.  We tend to look too far ahead sometimes."  How could this friend have known this was our struggle unless God prompted her to pray this and encourage us in this exact area?!  God is so good!

That's probably the best lesson from 2 years of seminary.  God is good.  Even though He can be hard, He's good.  Even though we don't understand, He's good.  When I doubt Him and fail him, He's still good.  And He still continuously shows me that this verse was written for me: "God directs the steps of the godly.  He cares about every detail of their lives." Psalm 37:23

Every detail.  All the time.