Davalynn Spencer's Blog, page 42
August 14, 2017
Have You Dreamed An Impossible Dream?
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
When my husband and I set out on the rodeo circuit (with our small children) people told us we were crazy.
“Wait until your kids grow up,” they said.
“How can you haul your children across the country like that?” they said.
“What about a normal lifestyle – like a playhouse for your daughter?” they said.
Thank God we didn’t listen to those people who couldn’t see our vision.
When we listened to God instead and followed His leading, He provided everything we needed and more.
Today we have friendships that I would not trade for all the “normal” the world has to offer. Our children have traveled to a majority of the fifty states, had experiences very few others would even dream of, and learned what it means to be a family.
Thank God, we pursued our dream.
What’s your dream?
Take it to God and get His word on it. He has options you haven’t thought of.
Pull up a chair in His presence and get comfortable. Take delight in Him, settle in, and listen to what He tells you.
Then do what He says.
What glory she’d not known existed. What life even her dreams had never imagined. ~from An Improper Proposal
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
(c) 2017 Davalynn Spencer, all rights reserved.
The post Have You Dreamed An Impossible Dream? appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
August 7, 2017
Their Faces Were Not Ashamed
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
Before my husband and I were married, we endured a long-distance romance while each of us lived in a different state.
Phone calls and letters were the highlight of my days.
No texting or Facebook or Instagram. No instant messaging, Skype, or FaceTime.
Just plain ol’ phone calls from landlines and mail via the United States Postal Service.
An unusual element of our courtship involved typed (as on a typewriter) Bible verses on 3 x 5 cards that we mailed to each other. Each week we chose a scripture that spoke to our heart, typed it on a card, and included it in a letter.
One of our first shared verses was: O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together. Psalm 34:3.
These scriptural exchanges drew us closer to each other and to the Lord.
Last week when I saw this field of sunflowers along a local highway, I recalled another verse sent by my husband-to-be, typed on a small white card by a manual typewriter with a thinning ribbon.
For some reason, this verse has stayed with me over the years, encouraging me to fix my eyes on Jesus. When I do—with someone else or by myself—I am filled with light, never with shame.
Most everyone knows that sunflowers follow the sun, turning their faces toward its warmth as the earth spins away.
What a light-filled life we have when we remember to do the same with the Son of our salvation.
“The Lord make His face to shine upon thee.”
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
(c) 2017 Davalynn Spencer, all rights reserved.
The post Their Faces Were Not Ashamed appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
July 31, 2017
Bouquets – and cowboys – come in all sizes
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
Dandelions remind me of a cowboy from my former life as a sixth-grade teacher.
He was in my Ancient World History class and lined up each morning with the rest of the students. Except he wasn’t much like the rest of the students.
In his Wranglers and dusty cowboy boots, he didn’t dress like the others. A towhead among dark-haired children, he quietly stuck out in spite of how much he tried not to.
But in the spring when the dandelions sprouted, he was often at the front of the line with a short-stemmed bouquet and a shy smile.
I talked to him about cowboy things and noticed the shiny buckle he wore one day—his trophy for winning an event at a local junior rodeo. Most of the other kids had no idea what it meant to rope a calf or ride a snotty steer or run a pole pattern horseback.
He was a loner. A throwback perhaps, from a long line of those who preferred the company of their horse and a good view of the herd.
I saw that heritage when his father came to parent-teacher conferences one evening, a taller, stouter version of my dandelion cowboy in his good palm leaf hat and square-toed boots.
The creases at his blue eyes were several shades lighter than the rest of his sunbaked face—the badge of a working man who spent his days in the saddle.
His words were few, but they showed his heart. He wanted his young man to tend to business. Hold up his end of the load. Be polite and honest.
Cowboy morals.
Today when I see a patch of what most people call weeds, I smile and wonder about the little cowboy. If he stuck to his ways in spite of the crowd. I hope he’s riding the California foothills with a good view of the herd and going to summertime rodeos, But most of all, I hope he’s becoming the fine man I knew he would someday be.
My son, give me your heart,
And let your eyes observe my ways.
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
(c) 2017 Davalynn Spencer, all rights reserved.
The post Bouquets – and cowboys – come in all sizes appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
July 24, 2017
Holding Up or Holding On?
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
“How are you holding up?” an acquaintance asked the other day.
The answer came without consideration: “By holding on.”
The phrase “holding up” insinuates personal stamina, strength, jaw-clenching determination.
But “holding on” says something else entirely. It points to solidity outside myself.
I don’t have the strength to hold up under life’s pressures and disappointments. But I can hold on to the One who is holding on to me.
And He never lets go.
Yet I am always with You;
You hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with Your counsel,
And afterward You will take me into glory.
… no one can snatch them out of my hand.
… no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.
If God really was behind this whole business proposition of Mae Ann’s, then it was a whole lot more than Cade just showing up at the wrong place at the right time. ~An Improper Proposal
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
The post Holding Up or Holding On? appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
July 17, 2017
Where Seldom is Heard a Discouraging Word
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
How many discouraging words have you heard lately?
Probably more than a few.
Last week as my heart strings twanged from someone’s negative feedback, I was reminded of how powerful words are to hurt or heal. Immediately a line from the chorus of an old Western tune rang in:
“Where seldom is heard a discouraging word …”
The song, “Home on the Range” is an iconic ballad of the American West, written in the 1800s, sung by cowboys on the Chisholm Trail and elsewhere, and popularized by silver-screen heroes such as Gene Autry. (Check this link for Autry’s rendition.)
As children, many of us were taught to deflect painful words with an old rhyme,
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
How untrue!
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can slice us to ribbons.
Words build up and tear down, and it’s a whole lot easier to tear down a house than to build one.
Today, discouraging words are destroying marriages. Like little drops of acid, over time they corrode once-loving foundations until nothing is left.
Young people are more and more devastated by unkind remarks on social media. Those fiery darts—not even arrows, just darts—devastate their developing characters and sense of worth.
God knows the power of our words and He has a lot to say about them. Here’s an interesting list of scriptures about kind words.
One of my favorite passages describes pleasant words like a honeycomb: “sweet to the soul and healing to the bones” (Prov. 16:24).
This week, may we choose our words wisely, and make our homes a refuge where “seldom is heard a discouraging word.”
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
The words snagged her heart and drew blood as quickly as the thorn had from her finger.
~An Improper Proposal
The post Where Seldom is Heard a Discouraging Word appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
July 10, 2017
The Lord is My Trail Boss
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
God’s word has a way of reaching our soul, touching specific notes that respond to His call. Even if we don’t speak Hebrew or Greek or the King’s English.
Even if we live on the other side of the world from where His scriptures were first copied down.
Even if we’re a cowboy—like an ol’ crusty codger called Deacon who’d spent countless miles in the saddle.
Deacon is a fictional character of my making, but I believe he embodies many big-hearted men who have bowed their head to their Maker.
In Deacon’s translation, the scriptures sound different, but their meaning is the same. His imagery fits his life, full of things he’s familiar with.
Isn’t that the way the Lord spoke to the people of Palestine? In pictures they could understand?
People from every nation and tongue hear His words in their own language. Why not a cowboy, speaking over the grave of a good man gunned down?
Who knows if somewhere, sometime in the Western past, similar words weren’t offered from such an open and rugged heart …
“The Lord is my shepherd
I shall not want.
He beds me down in green pastures
with sweet water …
He leads me on a good trail
and stays with me in the tight places …
And the Lord’s spread will be
my home forever.”
I wonder if this is what the Lord intended when he poured His songs into the Psalmist’s heart.
This week, take a moment away from the world’s noise, and write out the Twenty-Third Psalm with words that paint the picture of your life. You might just see how close the Lord is to you after all.
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
She raised her eyes to Deacon, taking in his cattleman’s words that weren’t exactly what the parson would say but sure enough painted a picture of these high mountain parks. —from An Improper Proposal
The post The Lord is My Trail Boss appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
July 3, 2017
Many Happy Returns of the Day
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
Today is my youngest granddaughter’s birthday. It is also my mother’s.
When girl-child number 3 was born, I felt an ancestral connection run through me that I’d not felt before. July 3 linked my granddaughter to my mother in a special way, with me as the conduit.
The date shouldn’t have mattered, but somehow it did. Somehow it brought my mother into the picture as I imagined what she’d think of her tiniest descendant.
What would she tell her great-granddaughter? What bit of wisdom would she pass on? Would it be something she’d passed on to me?
And suddenly I knew.
My mother taught me many things, and I’ve mentioned them on this blog before. Some of that knowledge is obsolete today because of changes in fashion, technology, and societal norms.
But one directive remains applicable regardless of the decade or century, regardless of political or social climate. The one single thing I want to teach my granddaughter is the most important thing my mother taught me:
“Love Jesus more than anyone. Even me.”
If I can plant this single truth into the next generation of my family—in all the girls and all the boys—then I will have given them the most precious birthday gift of all.
And it will result in many happy returns of the day.
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
The post Many Happy Returns of the Day appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
June 26, 2017
Living on Pins and Needles
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
Every year my little patch of prickly pear cactus blooms with the most delicate yellow flowers—a flaring contradiction to the plant’s spiny pins growing in protective clusters.
Overshadowing the cactus patch on its east side stands a magnificent Colorado blue spruce with its characteristic blueish-green needles.
This year, the living metaphor captured my attention. Pins and needles, right in my front yard.
To be “on pins and needles” is an idiom defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “nervously waiting to find out what is going to happen.”
Other idiom sites define the phrase as anxious, in suspense, worried or excited, nervously anxious.
Personally, I don’t enjoy living on pins and needles, anxious over what is going to happen. I’ve learned that such a state has absolutely no productive or positive effect on anything, particularly my health.
I’ve also learned that it’s near impossible to simply say, “I’m not going to worry about it,” whatever it may be. I must push the anxiety out of my mind and heart and substitute something else in its place.
God has known this all along.
And so he tells us how to get away from those pins and needles:
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7 NKJV)
Did you catch what the replacement is?
Thanksgiving. Telling God all about our worries while thanking Him.
We can thank Him for who He is, what He is, where He is—right in the thick of it with us. And like the beautiful blooming cactus flower, His peace blossoms in our hearts and minds.
We don’t have to understand how this works.
I just know that it does.
~~~
… and give thee peace. This time the words hit her from a different side. If she were given peace, then it was hers to accept or reject.
– from An Improper Proposal
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
The post Living on Pins and Needles appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
June 19, 2017
Train Up a Child
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
Not until I had the photograph developed did I realize I’d caught the pattern.
Look at the feet and legs, the arms, and the focus of attention in this father and son—my husband, Mike, and our son, Jake. At two years old, Jake mirrored his father perfectly without even trying, without awareness of what was happening. It just came naturally.
You could say it was in his DNA. Or you could say it was the power of parental influence.
Our children do what we do. The old cliché, “Like father, like son,” is cliché for a reason.
We see the same principle hold true with Jesus and His Father, and Jesus emphasized the point to his followers:
“Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does” (John 5:19,20).
Whether we are fathers or mothers, neighbors or friends, we often “train up a child.” We teach others by the way we live. Do they learn how to pray by watching us? Do they learn how to respect and love and laugh by living in our presence?
In these post Father’s Day hours, may we be mindful of the example we are providing, and pattern our lives after our heavenly Father who is not given to selfishness or hatred or violence or absence. He loves us more than any earthly father can.
Let‘s emulate Him—for someone, somewhere, will surely do what we are doing.
~~~
His father’s bold pen dominated the page, third entry from the bottom, noting the date that he and Madeline Bennett were wed. The familiar writing burned against Cade’s heart like a branding iron, and resentment fired once more toward the man who failed to practice what he preached. The man whose arrogance had cost his children both father and mother. -An Improper Proposal
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
Today is the last day to enter the June Bride e-book give-away for a chance to win all ten of these inspirational and sweet romances, historical and contemporary. Just click on the image to connect with the rafflecopter entry.
The post Train Up a Child appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
June 12, 2017
Rest is Underrated
By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
I took a couple of days off, went to a mountain retreat, and planned to write thousands and thousands of words on my next novel.
No phone (when I turned it off). No chores or cooking or other life distractions. Just writing. Plain and simple work. Work. WORK.
Instead, I rested.
Did I berate myself?
A little. Between naps.
Did I fail?
No.
Did I learn anything important?
Yes.
Rest is underrated.
Rest is necessary.
Rest is a gift.
God did it. (Genesis 2:2-3)
Jesus gives it. (Matthew 11:28-29)
Refreshment follows it. (Psalm 62:1)
We are so production-oriented that we often miss out on this regenerative blessing.
I pray you will make time for rest this summer. Recharge your batteries. Renew your spirit.
Do what Jesus said:
“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” (Mark 6:31)
~~~
Enter the June Bride e-book give-away for a chance to win all ten of these inspirational and sweet romances, historical and contemporary. Just click on the image to connect with the rafflecopter entry.
Connect with me via Newsletter | Facebook | Pinterest
#lovingthecowboy
The post Rest is Underrated appeared first on Davalynn Spencer.
