The integrity behind your actions is the proof behind your intent. It’s so easy to let them overlap at times; but thankfully we are able to rely on God for guidance, and on scripture to provide us knowledge between the two. Stand firm.

It’s 10pm and I am getting the BEST Goose cuddles. I am so comfortable and my head is buried in his warm, fluffy chest; but as soon as I stop rubbing him - he starts to wiggle and kick. So i huffed and said “Ugh - just be still, Goose.” God spoke. That’s exactly how He feels when we’re “begging for a sign.” I say it so often when I don’t feel as close to Him. When I feel like our relationship is falling through the cracks. “God please show up. I need to witness your glory today.” Those big moments just give me a drive and a hunger for Him. But it took that small moment snuggling my dog to realize that sometimes, maybe He just wants to admire us in silence. To embrace us closely and enjoy the moment for Himself, and that - is beautiful. Goose couldn’t feel me rubbing Him, so he wasn’t satisfied… But if He could’ve felt the admiration for that moment in my heart - He  might’ve felt differently. Even when we don’t feel God moving - His admiration and love is still there. Sometimes in what feels like our “most absent” moments - He’s the closest He could possibly be. Admiring us. Embracing us. Thank God for His warm embrace and humbling spirit that is delivered when we least expect it.

Tuesday marked 17 years without Billy Denton. Those who knew him, probably could use his name as an adjective. I know I do. An adjective describing someone who played too hard, loved too hard, and laughed too hard – and even harder when the time wasn’t right. Someone who cared too much or not enough – with no in between. For me that name describes my dad. The one who I grow to understand more and more as I grow into understanding myself. Things like why he did this or how he did that – I have related to them and learned from them more in the past 17 years than I ever would’ve been able to had I not been given the time to miss him and wonder about the life he lived that he never got the chance to tell me about. I know about some things he did and some things he said because I’ve been told about them, but I remember how much he cared and how much he fun he had because I witnessed it. He scared me to tears with the snap of a finger, but I feared nothing in his presence. He would’ve thrown hisself into a fire to protect me, and I knew it. This current relationship I have with my dad wasn’t one I would’ve ever chosen for myself but it is one I can appreciate, despite the lack of time we had together, because it has shaped me more than anyone could ever expect it to – including my 9 year old self. It has prevented me from becoming his darkest sides, but encouraged me to embrace his good ones. And some of the in-betweens, I have just learned to accept because “I got it from my daddy.” God uses it all. Generations of events are the dominos that ignite what is to take place – the building blocks of what is to come, or who is to come. He has the ultimate birds eye view, with the authority to control it all. We can’t see it up close, but when we step back and see Jesus for the creator He is… man. He blows my mind. This morning I read how God moves mountains and even they have no clue what’s going on in the process of that formation. Grade school science taught me that mountains are created by earthquakes. The ground shakes and collides into its self and out comes something breathtaking. That’s God.