Join me in the journey!

I've just started a second column at Examiner.com, Richmond Working Moms. My "other" column is the Richmond Frugal Family. I hope you'll take a few minutes to stop by. Subscribe to either or both, if you like, so you don't miss any great ideas, tips or suggestions!

These two columns are really ideally suited for me! I consider frugality a spiritual discipline and I strive always to support and encourage other moms in their parenting journey. Times are hard, money is tight, and being a parent is never easy! I'm quite excited to minister in two different venues to parents, and especially moms, of children of all ages and stages.

I've also been given a HUGE vision by God in the last week about the next big thing in my life. I'm not ready to share it yet, but suffice it to say, I am really blown away. I am in continual prayer, and God has sent several folks across my path to affirm and confirm that I am hearing Him correctly! As a woman who believes ardently in the power of prayer, I covet any and all you care to offer up on behalf of this ministry. I will be sharing it with my readers - and the world! - very soon!

I've been revamping this site and trying to find suitable music that reflects the tone I want to convey. If you have a particularly favorite song that makes you feel glad to be an adult living a world full of children, please leave me a comment! I'll consider adding it to the play list.

I also would appreciate your stopping by God's Wonder Woman where I invite readers to share the journey toward capturing the divinely-designed image of ourselves as God's beloved daughters. I publish there twice a month and have been blessed beyond words to share my own journey.

What is going on in your life? Leave me a comment. Are you in need of prayer? Visit my Divinely Designed Blog and register your confidential prayer request HERE.

Finally . . . where are you from? Find out where I'm from at Godly Graffiti.

Come back often! There's always something going on! Join me in the journey!

Blessings!
Mary

Bubbles of Prayer

I don't know what it is about bubbles that makes people so happy! The children I used to nanny for loved to blow bubbles! When big sister was barely 2 years old and the boys still napped a lot, sister and I spent many hours on the balcony of their apartment with a bottle of bubbles.

At first she couldn't blow them by herself, so eventually we decided I would blow and she would chase. That worked pretty well, actually, until I got winded! From the time the boys could walk they have wanted to be able to blow bubbles. This past spring they finally mastered it to varying degrees. They just giggle and run after the bubbles as if they were grasping for valuable treasures.

The trend now is also to blow bubbles as the wedding couple leaves the reception hall. We did that for my daughter's wedding and it was very festive.

The site, 42explore.com explains:

"Bubbles are round pockets of air or other gases in liquid (such as boiling water, fizzy drinks) or solid materials (plastic, glass). Bubbles can also be a thin, ball-shaped film of liquid that has gas trapped inside. Soap bubbles are shaped by an equilibrium between their outward air pressure and the inward surface tension of the soap film.

The detergent molecules tend to line up with one end pointing inward and the other outward, making the liquid surface more stable. The thickness of the soap film layer is due to these detergent molecules and is uniform for all size bubbles. Colors are seen because of the light diffraction through the soap film."

I don't know what it is about bubbles - the beauty, the wonder, the colors, their floating in the air, having the feeling of creating something unique and beautiful . . . Sometimes the children just stand and watch to see how high a bubble will float, or how far away it will go before it pops or disappears from site.

Years ago now, a small group of us gathered at our church sanctuary for intercessory prayer. We prayed aloud the name of every single person in every single family in our church as well as any particular prayer requests that had been lifted up during Sunday service.


We typically met on Sunday evenings. The church was quiet, the lights were low and we centered ourselves to pray the names of our brothers and sisters in Christ prior to beginning our sacred ritual.We divided up the pages of the list and each of us read our own pages aloud, simultaneously.

One of my praying companions said that sometimes she would just stop and listen to the others of us reading names, each of us at a different place on the list. She said it had a beautiful sound to her and when she closed her eyes she imagined that each name was encased in a bubble, floating up to heaven.

I love the idea of that imagery. It really made me tingle when she shared that vision with us. I felt as if we were encasing the souls of all those whose names we read in a type of supernatural force field --sending them directly to the Lord's throne.

Bubbles are just round pockets of air. Something about them though brings out the child in us. Something about intercessory prayer made me feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps that is what transported those names into the heavens. Perhaps a round pocket of the Holy Spirit surrounded those names and guarded them on their journey.

Even now, many years later, I think of those times we gathered and sent bubbles of prayer aloft to heavenly realms.