Tracy Jones - Take Heart. I AM.

Take heart. I AM.

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a blog called “Stop Being Alarmed”. It’s a word that’s been burning in my heart for a while and this month I had the opportunity to preach the full message on my parent’s monthly podcast for October called Seed to Seed. I was so blessed to be entrusted with the responsibility and glad to be able to share. I hope you’ll be encouraged with the word as well. Click on the link below to listen to this months message please feel free to share it. Take heart. I AM October 2016 Seed-to-Seed Message …

Tracy-Joy-Jones-Baby-Grass

Watching Grass Grow

I have baby grass. It’s tiny little green fuzz that you can only see when the light catches it just right. It’s a lawn of promise right now… but such a beautiful promise. Every summer in our new home, the entire backyard dies. The trees, which we love so dearly, completely block out the sun and when the temperature hits over 100 degrees, the lack of sun and the heat chokes the life out of our lawn. We have come to accept that for three months out of the year we are doomed to live with dirt. I repeatedly encourage …

Stop being alarmed…

Five years ago, Matt and I moved our children from a private school we loved to a public school we have grown to love, and for me, the transition was brutal. Though it was my kids who made the actual transition, it was me who fell apart. We went from the safety and security of a cocoon-like environment to one of perceived danger around every corner. The private school was small, family-like, well-structured, with great communication to parents. The public school was enormous, double the class size, little communication, and in general it was sink or swim. I jumped in …

Tracy Joy Jones - Seeds of Faith

Hope in the Seed

A couple of months ago, Matt and I decided that we needed an exit strategy for our business. One day, we will want to retire and what will we do with all of our dear clients and business when we do? It’s not something you tend to think about when you start your own business, but I’m sure it’s something we’ll think a lot about in 25 years time. Anyway, we decided to go and speak with some financial advisors whom we had met at a meeting where they spoke on the subject. We didn’t know them well, they hadn’t …

Baby Turtles and the Sea…

I’ve often joked in my life that God lives at the beach. I don’t know if it’s just that I have had so many God moments with sand between my toes, my eyes on the horizon, and the sound of waves ringing in my heart. I have cried, laughed, danced, dreamed, and prayed so many times at the ocean and found myself time and time again when I’ve felt the most lost. This summer, it happened again. We had a much needed vacation to the ocean and as always, it cleared my tangly soul, swept my heart clean, and cleaned …

Behind the Vacuum

When my youngest son, Luke, was two, he was a fearless, rascally boy who loved dismantling the vacuum. However, one day as I was vacuuming, he became really scared of the vacuum. As I was vacuuming under his kitchen chair, which was littered with dropped veggies and crumbs, he kept yelling and running away. I was watching him in sort of amazement because first of all, Luke is fearless. Second of all, he had never done that before with the vacuum. However, the thought that really gripped me was that usually when he was scared of something he ran to …

Season of Thanks

There are many things that I am so very thankful for as we enter into the season to be grateful.  Just yesterday I was reminded of the how precious life is and how much there is to be grateful for when a little boy disappeared from the school where my daughter attends school.  The entire community came out to search with police, teachers, administrators and hundreds of people from the community.  Late last night he was found in a field right by our house.   He was safe and unharmed, but ran away because his Mom’s parental rights were terminated yesterday. …

On Your Mark… Get Set… Jump…

When Matt and I started Jones House Creative four years ago, we leaped confidently off of a cliff from this wonderful place of assurance and strength. We had a lovely reserve in savings, a retirement fund that was growing, college savings for our kids, and I had confidently written a blog on finance for the past three years. Matt and I had a plan.  We had a word from God in the direction of the business.  We knew it would be hard, but we were also excited about the adventure of it.  Like Abram setting out from Ur, we had …

Home and Back Again

Three and a half years since my last blog!  That actually made me laugh out loud when I saw this tonight.  Three and a half years to start a business and get that tiny little frail sapling to be strong enough to carry our family.  Three and a half years of seeing miracles, and being stretched, and questioning and standing, and finally coming to a deep place of knowing our God and His faithfulness in ways we never would have before. So… three and a half years later, we are still at the helm of our beautiful business, Jones House …

His Hidden Heart

Last winter was one of the most brutal that I have ever experienced in Oklahoma. The first frost came early in November and spring only made it’s appearance in May. We had ice storms, snow storms, and lots and lots of cold rainy days. It was a very long, very hard winter, and it also happened to be one of the hardest times in my life. I went through an 8 month period of health problems where I felt like I was walking through thick, heavy mud each day. I would get up in the morning completely exhausted and barely …