Today is my mom’s birthday. She would be 115 and 26 of these years have now been spent with Jesus. This makes me smile and tear up all at the same time.

Yesterday morning as I was working on a counseling lesson my phone rang. It was a young man seeking an ally. He had contacted one other who wasn’t available. He said he was reticent to call me because “I’m his counselor” and I would likely judge him for being weak and not applying what we’d talked about. I told him how much I appreciated this truth and how it had been true for me when I was seeking help. The lies Satan wants us to believe as true become great fears we each must deal with in order to see that what’s true is that Satan lies. In the course of the next 10-15 minutes he said he was good and could now make it through his day.

Before I close out today’s journey message, I need to go back to mom’s birthday. I keep seeing Feb. 11 at the top of the blog. Every time I see it I get that soft and tender sense of my mom. If you know my story you know that mom was the stable rock for all of us kids. She was our first Christ image. Later in life I needed to address mom’s humanness–her part with my childhood abuse for she never entered into it leaving me all alone. Today that wound is healed and understood. It is replaced with a love and thankfulness for a life well-lived!