The Sweetest Mother's Day Gift!

Have you ever gotten to the point where you are so comfortable with life, that in a blink of an eye something has been taken away from you? That’s a definite reminder that we take life for granted ‘everyday.’ God has a reason for everything. It is not up to us to put the pieces of the puzzle together. He has the pieces placed right before our eyes. 
 
In life, there are some things we want to see and some we don’t. 
 
For example: we want to see ourselves succeed and grow in our career, we want to see where our parenting will take us and how it’ll model our children, we want to vision our marriage at 25 to 50 years, we have seen our children born and grow from infants to toddlers, to adolescents, to tweens, to teens and finally adulthood, etc.
 
Then there are the lesser things we wished we had never seen. For example: raising a child as a single mother, adultery, divorce, death of a loved one, natural disaster, miscarriage, bankruptcy, failing, illness (cancer, disease, etc.), etc.
 
But those things we have seen, whether good or bad does not mark us as a person. But rather lessons learned in life. It is those experiences that strengthens us. Those experiences that forces us to help others so we can recover and heal.
 
You can either let it make you or break you. The choice is yours. But I choose to always press forward; to outweigh the negatives with every positives. My loss is no greater than anyone else’s. My faith has strengthened so much since the death of my mother and brother. So to that, Satan will have no power over me! And knowing by the grace of God that He will get me through anything that my eyes will see.
 
Maya Angelou once quoted: ‘We are only as blind as we want to be.’ How true! Just don’t be so blind that you forget how to live… with hope, grace and mercy from our heavenly father!
 
“There are things we don’t want to happen, but have to accept. Things we don’t want to know, but have to learn. And people we can’t live without, but have to let go.” ~Anonymous 

Crystal Glause

My name is Crystal Glause. I grew up in Dannebrog, NE. My Dad, Dave Sr. still resides in Dannebrog. I have 2 brothers, Bryan and Dave Jr. After moving several times, my family and I made our home in the country by a town called Worms, NE. I am married to the love of my life, Jason. We have 3 beautiful daughter's! Our oldest is Michaela Anne, 16 years old and a junior in high school. Our middle is Kristen Elaine, 13 years old and a 8th grader. And our youngest is Alyson Jean, 11 years old and a 6th grader. All 3 go to Palmer Public School in Palmer, NE. I have 2 indoor cats, George and Miles as well as numerous outdoor cats. I am dubbed the crazy cat lady! You can't tell that I love cats right?! I am a licensed esthetician (I treat the skin!) at Elle Salon and Spa. I offer services of microdermabrasions, facials, plant peel, body wraps, professional make-up applications, professional body waxing, pedicures, manicures, etc. I absolutely love my career and clients! I have always had a passion with helping others. I enjoy uplifting others and building ones self-esteem. I am a Sunday School Teacher for 3rd and 4th graders at the Zion Lutheran Church in Worms, NE. My husband, daughter's and I are all members there. I enjoy teaching God's word! I am very original, but can be unpredictable. I am very outgoing! I love to talk. I'm also the one who's voice you could hear 10 blocks away. I love to make people smile and laugh! I'm a lover of music. I have had numerous friend's ask me what my favorite genre is. I tell them a little bit of everything. But I listen mostly to country. My greatest gift is my faith from my heavenly father! As a child, I didn't grow up going to church but attended a few Sunday school classes. I was baptized at 13 and confirmed to Lutheran at 27. I didn't have a bible growing up, but I knew who Jesus was. The only thing I had was a pocket bible of the New Testament. I also taught myself and recited the Lord's Prayer when I was 8 years old. Meeting my husband was surely a God send! It lead me to worship God. I am a firm believer that strength comes from faith. I just can't imagine my life not believing in the promises from God. My faith has lead me to where I am today. In turn has lead me to my path to righteousness and eternal salvation. Each day is a gift from God to us here on earth. My hope is to inspire people. That's what lead me to this sight over a year ago. After reading several authors blogs, I felt it was time to tell my story and spread the good news of Jesus!

Your Worth Is Not Someone Else’s To Measure

In: Faith, Living
Woman looking over canyon

Insecurity is something we all carry in one form or another. For me, it has probably always looked confident and outgoing from the outside. But internally, it can feel heavy, complicated, and exhausting at times. And when someone comes along whose behavior reinforces those insecurities, it amplifies what was already there. There was someone I had hoped to genuinely connect with, but it was clear from the start that the feeling wasn’t mutual. From the beginning, their wall was up. No matter how kind I tried to be or how carefully I showed up, it never came down. Their distance...

Keep Reading

Lord, Give Me Faith Like Hannah

In: Faith
Woman walking in field with hand in wheat

Hannah knew what it was like to feel forgotten. She often clutched her empty womb and thought Surely the Lord has forgotten me.  She knew the bitter sting of feeling isolated and alone. She knew the anguish of praying day after day after day and seeing no fruit, not even a bud, from her faithfulness. Hannah knew what it was like to feel like the weight of the world was on her, and her hope may have dwindled. Even those around her did not offer encouragement. Quite the opposite—they did their best to sow seeds of discouragement. Yet Hannah pressed...

Keep Reading

God Carries Me Through the Deep Waters of Change

In: Faith, Living, Motherhood
Woman at the beach as waves come in

“Ahhh!” My underwater scream garbled in my snorkel tube as the manta ray’s cavernous mouth swept a hand’s distance from my face. My fingers tightened around the surfboard until my knuckles ached. My arms trembled. I jerked my head side to side, searching for my daughters, Mia and Megan. Recent college graduates, they had joined me on one last mother-daughter vacation before launching their adult lives. They floated easily on the vibrant Hawaiian water, relaxed, trusting. I wanted to borrow their calm. Earlier, our guide had explained that the LED lights built into the surfboard attracted plankton the way college...

Keep Reading

Faith After a Rare Disease Diagnosis

In: Faith, Motherhood
Family smiling in posed photo

My pastor frequently speaks of “kid pain” and acknowledges there’s nothing like it. I can testify to that. After nine months of uncertainty and unexplained issues following the birth of our now 4-year-old daughter, Harlow, we finally received her diagnosis of Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex Deficiency (PDCD), a life-limiting mitochondrial disease with no cure and no FDA-approved treatments. It was heartbreaking. In moments like these, a parent can fall into complete desperation. You go through a range of emotions almost too fast to name: fear for your child’s life; anxiousness about how much time you’ll get with them; overwhelming grief. And...

Keep Reading

What If I Don’t Hear God’s Voice?

In: Faith
Woman with folded hands looking up

There have been many times over the years when I’ve heard others share stories of how the Lord spoke to them or gave them a sign. Seashells scattered along a sandy beach, numbered to represent how many children they would have. A quiet walk in the park, followed by a clear sense that another little one was coming. What a blessing, I think, when I hear and read their stories. I often wonder how much more faith they must have than I do—to know with such certainty that what they heard was truly God speaking. I listen, I smile, and...

Keep Reading

God Holds You As You Hold Everyone Else

In: Faith, Motherhood
Mother holding toddler daughter on her hip, standing outside

She stands in the kitchen, hands trembling over the sink, tears she cannot let fall pressing behind her eyes. The world outside her window is quiet, but inside her heart there is a storm she cannot name. She is hurting, not because she does not love her life, but because somewhere along the way she forgot how to breathe inside it. Yet even in her pain, little voices call her name. Tiny hands tug at her shirt. Lunchboxes need packing, homework needs checking, hearts need holding. And so she wipes her face, forces a smile, and whispers a quiet prayer:...

Keep Reading

Yes, I Know Fear—but I Also Know Faith

In: Faith, Motherhood
Mother holding child's hands in hospital bed

The night my daughter woke up screaming at 3 a.m., I knew something was wrong. Her cry wasn’t the half-asleep whimper of a bad dream. Instead, it was pain—raw and sharp. Within an hour, we were rushing to the emergency room, the world outside our headlights still wrapped in darkness. Tests, scans, questions, and then the words no parent ever wants to hear: “We’re transferring her to another hospital by ambulance. She needs surgery right away.” They said “torsion.” They said “tumor.” They said “appendix.” I nodded, because that’s what mothers do. We stay steady, even when our hearts are...

Keep Reading

10 Years after My Mother’s Death, Her Faith Still Guides Me

In: Faith, Grief
Woman praying

Growing up, I was a reluctant Catholic. My mother would drag us to church, and I’d go through the motions—fingers moving across rosary beads without really feeling the prayers. But she never stopped. Sunday Mass, daily prayers, devotions to the Blessed Mother. She was relentless in her faith, not because she was trying to force it on us, but because she genuinely believed we would need it someday. She was right. My mother died of stage 4 colon cancer in 2012. My brother and I watched her suffer, saw how her body betrayed her, watched as treatments failed. And here’s...

Keep Reading

Finding God in the Middle of Disbelief: A Mom’s Journey through Faith and Fear

In: Faith
Mother holding hand of young child, silhouette

“But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not triumph over me.” – Jeremiah 20:11 God, thank You for making sure my son is okay. Thank You for this just being paranoia. I believe in You. I believe in Your control. I believe. I believe. I believe. These words streamed through my head as my husband drove us downtown to visit our first specialist with our 4-month-old son, Maximus. Our pediatrician had written me off, but I could not ignore the feeling in my bones that something was wrong. Tiny, hard bumps...

Keep Reading

In Praise of Indebtedness: How Threads of Reciprocity Weave Us Together

In: Faith, Living
Woman holding casserole

It all started with tomatoes. After we moved, a neighbor invited us to pick from the abundance in her and her husband’s gardens. In return for a pile of tomatoes gathered from their raised beds, I left a plastic bag of homegrown pumpkins on their porch. Later that summer, our neighbor stopped by with a recycled container full of still more fruits. By the fall, we were sharing chili and cookies over dinner at our place. Threads of indebtedness were weaving us together. For most of my life, the idea of indebtedness has tasted rather repulsive on my tongue. The...

Keep Reading