Browsing Tag

Lily Annette Colley

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Happy Christmas!

Posted on December 25, 2025

Thank-you for loving our family and for letting our materials come into your homes. Thank-you for many letters and texts and calls  of encouragement throughout the past year. Most of all, we are so blessed by your  perseverance in Him. Many of you have suffered loss this year. You have kept serving. Even now, some are planning funerals. But you are leaning on His everlasting arms as you walk through the valley. Some of you have suffered because you have stood for righteousness. And you are still  standing. You are a bright light to our family. Through you, we find courage and steadfastness.

We wish you peace and comfort in the hard times and we wish you the fulness of His joy all the time.  May your days be merry and bright. And, in Him, may all your robes be white (Rev. 7:14).              

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Winner is Jody Trone!

Posted on March 25, 2025

Lily Annette Colley weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces at birth. Lucky Jody Trone guessed that she would weigh 7 pounds, 11 5/8 ounces. She only missed it by 3/8 of an ounce. That’s less than a half-cup of water weighs . Pretty close! She says she submitted the birth weight of her third child, so I guess she’ll have to split the prize with that third child!

Thanks to all the diggers who played along. You all are great every.single. time!

Congratulations Jody! Pick out what you’d like to have from the store: https://thecolleyhouse.org/store  Then  message me with what you’ve chosen and your USPS address.

The podcast is tonight. Hope you can join us! Those three shunned women teach us some very pertinent 2025 lessons. We need your comments, too, for the maximum podcast potential. Get in the word with us! You can watch on the Digging Deep facebook page or at https://thecolleyhouse.org/live-digging-deep-video-podcast

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

She is Here!…Lily Annette Colley

Posted on March 24, 2025

Dear Lily Annette,

Click here for her movie debut: IMG_7628It’s that quiet moment when I know you are here…I mean, you have been born, but there are really just a few of us who know. I’ve seen beautiful footage of you sucking your fingers. (Click here for that: IMG_7628.) I know that you are just under 8 pounds and you have been fearfully and wonderfully made. You have just spent your first night in the world of light. I cannot wait for you to meet your Mammy. She will love you, protectively and providentially, for all of the rest of her days!

I wish it was just a world of light. I mean, metaphorically, I wish the Light of the World permeated every heart that you will ever encounter and every place you will ever go. But the prince of darkness still has a real domain and he parades as an angel of  light (2 Corinthians 11:14).  You will encounter people, one day, who belong to Him. They will try to take your very soul. They will try to wrest from you the things that are invaluable in exchange for the shiny things that are really just the decaying rubble that is this world. 

But because of THE Lily, the Lily of the Valley, the bright and morning star, this day, your first full day on the planet, and all the other days will be filled with hope and light and goodness. God has given you parents who are determined to be sure you follow and grow toward the light. You will lean, like the field’s lilies, toward the Son. You will be given every spiritual luxury—family Bible time every single day, a strong church family, a regimen of nurture and discipline—every spiritual amenity to insure your days are sweet and directed by the pure truths from the Word of God. I cannot wait to see you grow in Him.

But, yes, I can wait. The sweet days of having a tiny finger wrapped around mine, of swaddling and waiting for first smiles and first laughs and first words and first steps are so fleeting and precious. I hope I get to share lots of them. I want to caress chubby cheeks and hold you close—so fresh from God’s arms to mine. Babies fresh from heaven are blessings that are incomparable in this life! I want to watch Maggie and Ellis love you and make you smile. I want to hear you say the name of Jesus when it first sweetens your lips. I can wait, but I can’t wait. 

Papa and I are so very excited. You came along, as all the rest have, just when we needed you most. God’s timing is the best, every single time. He is the God of more. Last night, He filled our hearts with more joy, peace and love than we had ever thought possible when we had awakened to a challenging day just a few hours prior. You are the exceeding, abundant blessing of the God of More that we attempt, in our feeble way, to glorify (Eph. 3:20). We know you will always serve the God of More! 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

“Well, God can hear my words…”

Posted on March 10, 2025

Don’t forget to make your guess! Lily’s weight and birth time. Instructions here: https://thecolleyhouse.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=19056&action=edit

And speaking of the babes/ It’s always “out of the mouths of babes”…

We have three with us this weekend, while Hannah is speaking at a ladies day at the good Sandyville church near Parkersburg, WV. When three are here it’s a noise competition and a general knock-down/drag out—not of people, but things. Today, I’m actually taking them to explore a nearby cave. I think the damage today will be under the earth and who will know? I think if Eliza Jane says “I a-uh-dentally” one more time, I’ll…well, I’ll probably grab her up again and tickle her. (Actually, I can no longer pick her up, which makes me very sad! But she is off the charts—both weight and height.)

So, it was 3:53 am and I was about done. I’d already been up with Ezra, who had a bad dream, when Eliza came pitter-pattering to my bedside and cried “I had a bad dweam!” 

I must say here that I didn’t really believe her. I really thought that it was all those other times she’d said that and I had lifted her into my bed and snuggled her back to sleep that had driven her to imagine that her benign dreams were a little bit “bad”; bad enough to come and climb in. I lifted her up and put her between Papa and me. That cast on her right arm is “to be reckoned with” in a double bed with three people! (It is a “violet” cast and she is so proud of it.)

Eliza then whispered “I don’t think you can hear my wuhds.” 

I said, :I don’t need to hear your words. We are not talking. We are going to sleep.” 

Then she softly whispered “Well, God can hear my wuhds.” 

I woke up then, for maybe the first time. “Oh, yes, you go ahead and talk to God. I can hear, too.” 

The she whispered, “Dee-ah God, PWEASE, oh PWEASE, don’t let me have any mow-ah bad, ‘cary dreams. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

Well, I was pricked. I had doubted the severity of her dreams. But, I did go right back to sleep (With my arm securing the otherwise unruly cast) in spite of my conscience-ache . 

In the morning, I asked her if she could remember her dream. 

“Oh yes. It was mama and me and somebody else. Mama spilled a bag of cookies and a whole bunch of dogs came and ate dem all up. When dey finished eating dem, dey attacked us.” 

I said “Did they bite you?” 

She said “Dey didn’t get us. We ran and ran and while we runned, I waked up.” 

Lord, Help me to be more trusting of the innocent ones, more sympathetic and comforting in their little trials and more assured that You hear our whispers. And help me to remember that sometimes the innocent ones who need me may be bigger people, too.

Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish (Matthew 18:14).

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

The Lily Annette Contest!…Go!

Posted on February 6, 2025

She will be here next month! Lord willing, some time around the middle of March, Lily Annette Colley will grace our family with her sweet presence and this mammy, whose name is Cynthia ANNETTE Colley, cannot wait. Her North Jackson family has given her every material thing she could need for the first year of her life (at least) and her older siblings, Maggie and Ellis have been thinking a lot about how to be the best-ever sister and brother. Lily will be a blessed baby, for sure. God is supreme, of course, in all His care. But he exhibits his marvelous wonder, perhaps most of all today, when he breathes into tiny lungs the breath of life and lays a baby in the arms of a Christian mother for the first time. Glenn and I are already praying for heaven for Lily. 

So, in the tradition of The Colley House, we will present the best “weight-guesser” upon Lily’s arrival, with a $50.00 gift of choice from www.thecolleyhouse.org. Any item(s) you want from the site with a combined value of $50.00 for the one who most correctly guesses the birth weight of Lily. Please also guess the time of day of her birth, in case we have a tie. All submissions must be sent to byhcontest@gmail.com and must be received at least 24 hours prior to Lily’s birth. SO go! We need a birth weight and a time of birth (not a date…too much pressure there…just the time of day). 

Blessings and prayers for all the spring babies! So many sisters are carrying, in wombs right now, the next line of Spirit sword-bearers for the greatest Cause!

(Colleyanna is going first. She says this Lily-cousin will weigh 7 pounds, 6 ounces and be born at 3:30 pm. Good luck, Colleyanna!)