5 Friday Favorites: July 4, 2025

It's time for my Friday link up with A Little Bit of Everything and Momfessionals. 

On Fridays I share things that made me happy from the week - a photo, a song, a quote, a beauty product, a recipe, a pair of cute shoes, etc. If it's a product, sometimes it's something I actually own and sometimes something I just saw online that gave me a smile. Sometimes it's serious and sometimes it's silly. I suppose I believe that God is in the simple details of life and yes, I can even find Him in a tube of lipstick.

Hey! Happy Friday and Happy Independence Day!!! I hope everyone has plans for relaxing and celebrating today. My guys are off to see their beloved Red Sox play the Nationals in DC and I have opted out. I'll be home with my head in this laptop. Five days and counting until I step all the way out of my comfort zone and go to this writer's conference in Michigan. If you want to pray for me, I wouldn't hate it. ;-)  If you haven't signed up for my new website's email list and followed me on Instagram, I'd appreciate it! There’s a spot at the bottom of this post where you can sign up and my social media icons are at the top of the website. Thank you!

Here are some of my favorite things from the week.

1. Santa Cruz Paleo Electrolytes

My youngest son, Drew, is my wellness expert and he's constantly yapping at me about how I need to add electrolytes to my water especially since I started working out again after my long, national nightmare of neck and shoulder pain kept me out of the gym. I've tried a lot of the brands and strongly disliked all of them until Drew introduced me to these.  I cannot attest to any of the other flavors, but I love the orange.

2. The Pitt on Max

Steve and I started this show this week and I love it. The characters are compelling and there is a lot of heart and compassion in each of them. A warning that there are some graphic medical scenes, so if blood, scalpels and needles make you cringe, you might need to look away every once in awhile.

3. Waterloo Blackberry Lemonade Sparkling Water

If you've been reading here for awhile you know of my undying love and devotion to Diet Coke. Perhaps you read about my two attempts to give it up for a month. I'm not going to ever suffer through that particular heartache again. However, I am trying to mix it up a bit, especially in the evening because a girl needs to sleep. This Waterloo Blackberry Lemonade Sparkling Water is bordering on, if not fully, delightful. I cautiously recommend it. Sort of.

4. Holy Forever - Chris Tomlin

My son, Drew, was a huddle leader at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ Competitors Camp this week. He had an incredible experience. While he was away, he sent me numerous links to songs that were sung each night at their chapel time. I’ve heard this song before, but I forgot how much I love it. So beautiful.

5. The Holy Mystery of Today

Since I’ve been writing all week in preparation for the writers conferences, I’m going to repost a Friday Favorites #5 from a few years ago. There are some new readers here and I think this gives you the gist of what God has put on my heart to share through my writing.

From July 2021:

So much of my writing in the past nine years here has been about urging people (and myself) to seek God, listen for Him, and fully expect to find Him in the most mundane, ordinary circumstances of our lives. I do not have a remarkable life spent in remarkable places. I spend a lot of time sitting at baseball fields and basketball gyms, strolling through grocery stores, shuttling wet clothes from washer to dryer, and tapping out words on this laptop. I decided long ago that I would not wait to look for God only standing at the top of a snow-capped mountain, walking beside a vast ocean or just between the hours of 11:00 am and 12:00 pm in a church sanctuary on Sunday mornings.

I have come to expect Him to show up anywhere - at any time - whether I am looking for Him or not. This summer it has been in an Uber on the way to an early morning flight, on a walk through suburban streets with a friend who listens intently, on a screened-in porch with my dog, in the waiting room of a hospital, in the 7th hour of a road trip with a kid who I enjoy so darn much that I could've driven 10 more hours with him, and of course, behind home plate. 

Just as 2020 did, 2021 has brought some hard things. Things that were unexpected and difficult and required me to trust Him to be who I’ve always said He was.  As well, this year has brought us back to our normal, ordinary routines in familiar places. God has shown up to teach me in all of it. . . so many times, in so many ways, in so many places. He's been in places where I begged Him to be near and places where I was surprised to notice Him. I think facing the difficult things with Him has made me even more aware of His presence in the plain ol' everyday things. 

Frederick Buechner, in Listening to Your Life, says it this way - so much better than I could:

Who knows what He will say to me today or to you today or into the midst of what kind of unlikely moment He will choose to say it. Not knowing is what makes today a holy mystery as every day is a holy mystery. . . Our days are full of nonsense, and yet not, because it is precisely into the nonsense of our days that God speaks to us words of great significance - not words that are written in the stars but words that are written into the raw stuff and nonsense of our days. And the words He says to each of us differently are: be brave . . . be merciful. . .  feed my lambs. . .  press on toward the goal."

This life, this day, these moments (and even this 16 year old kid of mine who gladly posed for exactly TWO pictures with me this week) are holy mysteries waiting to be discovered if I'm just willing to recognize them. Thank you for reading about the nonsense of my days and how I find God speaking words of great significance to me in the raw stuff - whether serious or silly. It's so helpful for me to work it all out here in this space and I pray that it helps you, too. 

Enjoy your holy, mysterious day. I know you'll find Him there.

PS I was reminiscing this week about how many July 4ths we spent at the ballpark during Little League All-Star Tournaments. For about six years straight our bbqs, block parties and fireworks celebrations were all contingent on what time slot we got in the District 16 Tournament. I am always moved by the boys lining up to sing the National Anthem, but on the 4th, it seemed that for me, as I gazed through the chain link fence, there was always crying in baseball. God bless America and have a lovely weekend.