Join the quest and Accept The Love Challenge!
![Returning Home… [and gift(s) from the sea]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CBE06D9E-B7C8-4F4D-826F-25E68F9EBF89-1024x1024-1.jpeg)
Recently, I spent a glorious three days with the fam on the beaches of Alabama. And although we weren’t able to make it all the way to our beloved 30-A, just being in Alabama and Mississippi rendered a strange sense of being back home!? Although, we’ve never lived in those places… Even stranger, as we…
![Prayers of Blessings… [and tears]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/66796F73-C7C9-40E4-8FE7-D9292EE0D441.jpeg)
Anybody who knows me at all, knows I’m a crier. As my family will attest, one risen lump in my throat and it’s ‘water works’ city. My grandmother, Nellie, was a crier. So much so, her crying became folly for a long-standing, ‘inside’ family joke… Around the late seventies, at the end of a very…
![Being Equipped and Finding DELIGHT… [in the journey].](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/3F96D7C6-E8A8-492A-9E3E-37451C9640FB-1019x1024-1.jpeg)
I’ve been working long days on a passion project with a hard deadline… So, one day last week when I skipped my usual, extended-play version of Bible study due to time constraints, I felt comfortable with the shortened edition. Because my heart longed, instead, to be in the Word. Truthfully, I’ve grown to LOVE this…
![A Trusted Friend… [in a time of need and grief]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/E7A52A7C-6019-4BBA-B2C2-38A427304C1A-915x1024-1.jpeg)
One year ago, I made a new friend. But not the kind you’d expect, I met my new Target store. I sat in this Target shopping center while my mama braved a calcium drip at twice the speed. (Although, I told her not to do it.) We were becoming regulars at dropping her off at…
![How to Walk in LOVE in Hurt or Trauma… [learning to love those who’ve hurt us.]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/762FCE60-F649-4CCA-938D-0B959142E838-1021x1024-1.jpeg)
Acknowledge the Reality of Hurt. The reality is we live in a fallen, imperfect world full of messy, broken people and it’s only a matter of time before we are hurt by someone or we inflict pain on another. We are even told in God’s Word that we are to expect trouble in this world….
ONE YEAR AGO—we landed in Hometown, OK, began what was to be a short, but hard-fought cancer journey for my mama, escaped the first cases of Corona in Nashville, lost a dear, sweet friend the night before our departure, and started a sabbatical, career journey still on the fly! What we gained far outweighs what…
I rediscovered Yellowstone National Park pics from fifty years just a couple days before we left for own family trip two weeks ago. I was only a year old on that trip. My parents had just bought a camper and Yellowstone was our inaugural trip. But the only thing I remember about that trip is…
The second half of 2019 brought a flurry of rollercoaster twists and turns for our family… and in God’s amazing grace, all for the good! God works like this ya’ know… not on our schedule… and not at all as we would think!? Or could even imagine. But always for our good! Spending most of 2015…
With a heart exceedingly full of GRATITUDE is how I’m planning to celebrate this season of Thanksgiving… I’m grateful for answered prayers! Some of which were decades in the making… And as someone currently walking out of a desert season of unanswered prayers, all I can say is I’m grateful! So immensely grateful for all…