Welcome to my new blog home! I’m ready to take you on the tour of each room, hoping you will feel comfortable enough to help yourself to what you find in the refrigerator afterward. You know, every piece of furniture, paint color, and in this case, every tab, holds a story. If I could, I would stand in the center of each room and share them all with you. All my stories of the way God led me to each decision.

An armoire stands next to the wall in the entryway of my house, a towering piece of inlaid, meticulous beauty like a question hidden underneath your dinner plate waiting to be answered. “How did you get that piece of furniture through the door,” they ask wide eyed, every time, on the first visit through the door.

My answer is always the same, “It breaks down into several pieces. Yes, even the eight foot mirror that weighs several hundred pounds is a separate piece.” It is a beloved wedding gift from my in-laws, one we’ve taken apart and put back together like a jigsaw puzzle in eight household moves.

And just like that armoire, all the pieces in the architecture of this new space come together to create a piece of art; the scaffolding of story holding it up to welcome you into this community.

I called Michelle to ask about designing a new header knowing her skills were way out of my league. Though we share a mutual pastor friend, we’ve never met. She lives in Chattanooga but we felt like next door neighbors after the first five minutes of conversation.

When I told her how much I love this particular design, especially the script used in Redemptions Beauty, she replied with a story that still gives me chills when I share it:

“Since you’ve chosen that particular design, I’d love to share the story of the script that I used for Redemptions Beauty… My dad is a font designer and he based “Petronella” on his mother’s handwriting. I have never used it for any project before, but felt that it was perfect for your blog.
My grandmother lived two doors down from the Frank family in Holland and during WW2 she travelled to South Africa to serve as a nurse. She missed home desperately, so she filled whole journals with daily letters to her sister. Meanwhile, her sister back home was also writing journals. Whenever possible, they convinced various soldiers, doctors, etc. to deliver the books to each other. Petronella stayed in South Africa after the war and, after many years of waiting and much prayer, met my grandfather. She became a mid-wife and delivered all the babies in a small, poor, mountain town for years. After she died, my Dad’s aunt sent him her journals. They are absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful to read. I thought you might appreciate that there’s true heart and much redemption tied into the typography.”

God embodies every intricate detail of our lives, even in the design of a new blog site. He loves in the way that makes our heart sing, our tears pool, and cheeks hot with the revelation of being truly known.

The more I learn of Christ, the more I know that nothing in life is random. The font called Petronella that carries the handwriting of redemption for decades and rests here on my blog, that isn’t random. And your visit here today, that’s not random either. Go ahead, look around and then come back with a friend. We have a lot of food in the refrigerator.

I’m so grateful to Arthur at Outstanding SetUp for his tireless and quick response to all my emails that took my blog from a .com to .org. For Jeff Goins being kind enough to have a conversation with me about next steps for my writing life and Dan King for the way he so generously gave up his time to teach me the technical foreign language of setting up Mail Chimp. I’m thankful for Michelle Newton at Tiny Bungalow Design for making it all look so pretty and for Kandi Pfieffer’s photography skills and her enthusiasm about shooting on a freezing day in the middle of an empty field with a zebra chair!

Linking with Jennifer, Jen, Heather, Laura, and Ann.