Genevieve C. West

GRACE: God's unmerited favor. In other words, getting something that I do not deserve. “If your preaching of the gospel of God's free grace in Jesus Christ does not provoke the charge from some of antinomianism, you're not preaching the gospel of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ.” -David Martyn Lloyd-Jones Eric and I started out our journey as Christians in a high-grace, high-freedom atmosphere where the gospel and grace was taught almost every week.  We knew nothing else.  And it never got old. The only danger I see in that might have been that maybe we were sometimes too casual or lethargic in following Christ. I prefer those risks than the alternative of the bondage of thinking that our relationship with God is somehow performance based. That He won't love us unless we improve. That we need to do more, be better, or try harder for God to accept us. I would rather err on the side of GRACE than judgement, legalism or moralism. Because that

I don't have anything to say today. I just need to hear the Gospel of Grace and Freedom today. Maybe you do, too: My past has been redeemed, my present has been empowered, my future has been secured. " To  Be good for goodness sake   is Santa Claus , not Jesus. That's not the Gospel. The Gospel is not , 'be good, do right, because it is right to do right.' The Gospel says, 'because of what God has already done for me in Christ, I am accepted. Therefore, I will inevitably improve because I am a new creation.' "   - Tullian Tchivdjian "So often we think we are not free to come to Christ until we clean ourselves up and have something to offer Him. And yet he wants us to come as we are and let Him do all the work of cleaning us up."  - Michelle Frost "There is no doubt some Christians need to be shaken out of their lethargy. But there are also a whole bunch of Christians who need to be set free from their performa

Spoiler alert: I'm about to ruin Miracle on 34th Street if you've somehow managed to avoid seeing it. This morning I came down the stairs just in time to see the judge declare, "Santa Claus does exist!" The courtroom cheers! The news is announced to the probably illegally gathered group of people crowding the street that "Santa Claus wins!" The mob cheers! The people from the vacated vehicles which are obstructing traffic on the bridge cheer! And I cried a little. A little sob might have even escaped. You see, we've decided that Santa won't be visiting us anymore. Santa still gets to be part of the holidays, just like Rudolph and Frosty, but he doesn't get to be the center of the holiday anymore. This is really hard for me! I grew up with Santa! Evie grew up with Santa! One of my favorite things that I looked forward to at Christmas was staying up late with Eric on Christmas Eve, drinking spiked eggnog, wrapping presents

Christmas is a magical time of... FAITH LOVE HOPE JOY PEACE GOODWILL CHEER BELIEF FAMILY I love the tradition of Santa. And I love Jesus. Yep, I get to love them both. So I'm a little annoyed by the whole "war on Christmas" thing. This is a recent development, but it bothers me all the same. Will our celebrations look any different if it's called "Holiday" instead of "Christmas"? Will Christ lose any of His power if nativity scenes & star tree toppers are 86ed? Is Santa really stealing Jesus' thunder? (You can watch a completely inappropriate video by the deep theologians on South Park with super offensive language here . Seriously, don't let the kids hear this stuff.) As followers of Christ ,  we've become known for what we're against instead of who we're for . "I've never met someone who said, "I gave my life to Christ after someone yelled at me for using

We got our Christmas tree yesterday!!! I'm pretty sure that Eric and I both would have preferred a tree with white twinkle lights with classic ornaments in subtle, coordinating hues, evenly distributed over the entire tree with an elegant, crystal star sitting on top. But Evie chose the decorations: traditional candy canes blue, purple, silver and gold plastic ornaments retro-esque multicolored twinkle lights matching retro-esque icicle tinsle - multicolored, of course a plastic star topper that lights up and changes color. The girls decorated the entire rockstar Christmas tree by themselves while Eric and I sat by the fire drinking eggnog and enjoyed watching Evie teach her little sister how to hang ornaments for the first time. You can probably guess this by the 1 sq. ft. spot on the tree that Kaylie claimed as her own and hung 1/3 of the decorations. For a moment, I contemplated moving things around once the girls went to bed... BUT... These kids get a li

Something weird happened to me today: I  responded to a friend's fb post and almost all of the next 8 lengthy comments pushed back against mine. That wasn't the weird part, believe it or not. The weird part was that, in my opinion, they seemed to be disagreeing with the Bible and what Jesus commanded us to do. This wouldn't have been weird either... except that they were Christians. So here's the post I responded to: "The most biblical church is the one in which the cross is the only stumbling block for the unchurched." - Ed Stetzer   My excited response: "If our  agenda is love ,  which is how the world is supposed to know that we follow Christ , and we  make up our minds  that we won't  let our freedoms become stumbling blocks ,  so that our ministry won't be discredited , the only thing left to get  tripped up  on is the cross and Christ crucified!" Jesus asked us to do a couple of things: "'You must l

A fb friend just posted: I get so tired of people telling me "you just need a positive attitude" when I'm sick and can't do something... "UNLESS LIFE GIVES YOU WATER AND SUGAR, YOUR LEMONADE IS GONNA SUCK." Or in the words of Job , "What miserable comforters you are!" Are those "positive attitude" people wrong? Probably not. Is it what my fb friend needed to hear? Evidently not. Romans 12:15 says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn." I come from a self-proclaimed "family of sorrow", an identity which I do not claim for myself or my own nuclear family, so I fight tooth and nail against wallowing. But not against comforting. Not against being a friend. A friend we'll call "Joe" recently shared with a few friends that he's struggling with something emotionally. Having recently been in a similar battle myself, I can empathize and I understand that it is not  a

Confessions of a Genevieve: I prefer to only let you see the best of me. Sure, sometimes I tell you about my mistakes and most pathetic moments , but it's almost always after I've come through them and I've learned some great wisdom and I'm looking good again. So let's try something new:  I am a hot mess right now. A few months ago we lost our baby. "The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!” We grieved the loss of our baby, but we know that God can be trusted and I thought my heart was good and I was at peace. And then I saw a friend's facebook photo: a positive home pregnancy test. The real state of my heart was exposed.  I cried out to the Lord in my jealousy and envy,  "Lord, she has two babies under the age of 2! What about me?!" And then last week a friend of mine sat in my living room and said, "I'm 9 weeks pregnant." I burst into tears.  Of cou

Everything is meaningless. Life is empty. All my work, all my effort, all my knowledge, all my wisdom, the career sacrificed for, the bank account built up, is all worthless in the end. Even the things that are most important - my husband, my children, the time I spend with them, family, love - It will all just fall away and be forgotten. No, I'm not depressed or suicidal . What's the meaning of life, then, if everything is meaningless? Why am I here? For a very specific purpose: to glorify God. Everything else I've been designed to do, to be - spouse, parent, friend - all of those other roles are all for that purpose: to glorify God. I believe that once we start viewing everything through this grid, through the "this is all for God" mindset, not for ourselves, not for our family, not for our own survival, comfort or joy, we are happiest and most satisfied and we are functioning within the role that God has designed us for. When the people I love

How much is enough? In a recent blog post , my husband asked the question, "What is enough?" Money, time, energy, attention, space. His theory is that we'll always want, "just a little bit more." "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." ( C.S. Lewis , Mere Christianity ) We'll never feel like we have enough of any of those temporal things because that's not what our souls have been created to run on. We're meant to run on Christ alone. But how much of Christ is enough? We will never be satisfied! We will never have enough of Christ! By His grace, we should always desire more of Him. We should never feel or say to ourselves, "That's enough of Christ for me. I'll take a break now." By His grace, we should constantly pursue more Christ with every action, every word, every breath, which are all by His gr

Some truths about me: I am created in God 's image. I am saved by grace , through faith. I am blessed to be Eric West's wife. I am blessed to be Evie & Kaylie's mom . I have dreams that go beyond being a housewife & homeschool mom. I have a long lost passion that I'm beginning to recover. I can't remember who asked me first, but I was probably in elementary school when the question was first posed, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Even then I was fearful of other's reactions if I had answered truthfully, "a writer." I needed a career choice that wouldn't get attention from nay-sayers.  I know! "A teacher." That did it. Teachers & family alike were all about that. All I had to do was go to college and get hired. But what happened when the "go to college" plan was interrupted by life? Fastforward a decade... I love my life! I have an adoring husband, two beautiful l

What I like to imagine is in the style of the fictitious Dr. Lightman , I can read my husband's face, body language and even his breathing better than anyone. I've said more than once, "you sound like you're thinking," when he's completely silent in a pitch black room. Then he laughs and tells me what he was thinking about. Because Mr. West is one of the most important people in my life, because I care are about his happiness as much as my own, and because God created me to be a suitable helper for him, if he's upset, I'm upset. I may not know the reason behind his mood change, but it changes my mood, too. Then neither of us are having any fun! I don't have any profound wisdom about marriage to offer. I just know that men and women are different. Equal in Christ, but very different. Men and women are different. And ideally, both the husband and the wife should try to understand and adjust in light of these differences. Wives, th

Today I read a friend's facebook post (apparently they're lyrics to a song I've never  heard): I don't need your forgiveness I don't need your hate I don't need your acceptance Here's what God spoke to me through her post. It's nothing new, but here's what hit me: Christ's forgiveness, acceptance, love is the only that truly matters. Then, through His grace, He asks us to forgive, accept and love the unforgiveable, the unacceptable, the unlovely. For HIS sake. Not theirs. Not even our own. For HIS sake. And the only way we're able to do this is by God's grace. "But he doesn't deserve to be forgiven, I hear you say. Neither did I. Neither did you." (I don't remember where I read that, but I can't take credit for it) “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” ― C.S. Lewis I found this powerful video from a website I stumbled upon one

"Are you holding back something that seems too obvious to share?" I am. As I mentioned before, I hate blogging. BUT I love facebooking . What if I came at blogging the same way I approach facebooking ?  What if I stopped telling you play by play what happened and started telling you about our life?  About stuff that interests me, like the walmart shopping trip from hell, 'kairos moments' I have, "kids say the darndest things" moments?  Wouldn't you think that stuff was as awesome as I think it is?  (only tell me the truth if the answer is "yes") Speaking of awesome, my amazing husband is the one who unknowingly inspired me to revamp my blog with his very own blog post.  And if you don't check it out, you may not be as awesome as you think you are ;) Your Ideas Don't Suck! UPDATE: long lost love... & my husband knows