Where is Your Refuge?
Our world is in distress. It's like I can hear it gasping for breath and flatlining as disaster after disaster overtakes. Yet within the disaster is a unifying, rallying cry of the human spirit. Collectively, we turn to the One who holds our hearts in his hand....
The Best Kept Secret of the Marriage Puzzle
Friends, A disclaimer: I do not presume to claim that I have marriage figured out. But I do claim that with God at the center, he is able to guide us through. I know that marriage is a beautiful hard. It's beautiful because it's a picture of God and his church....
The Heart Cries for Help in Devestating Times
I'm in the heartland, where the latest risk to my life was almost catching on fire while lighting a paper lantern. My evening enemies are no-see-um bugs and mosquitoes. My daytime struggles involve teaching the components of a literary essay. My troubles seem so puny....
Pour Out Your Heart
God is so good. He meets me where I am and he's my safe place to pour out my heart when I'm feeling rejected. I know this sounds silly, but sometimes I wake up and feel like all my friends don't like me anymore. By the end of the day I have myself convinced that I am...
How Remembering Helps You Gain Victory
I seem to forget the things I need to remember. It's like I put them in a "safe" place in my mind, only I lose them, forgetting where I put them. I can't tell you how many times I've turned my house upside down looking for something I put in a "safe" place. So...
A Beautiful Hard and a Heart Shattered
The best stories make you cry, laugh till you cry, scare you, anger you, and then make you glad again. These are the stories I return to over and over again. I crack the cover, knowing the ending, but wanting to savor the middle. My life is a story. Your...
The Mystery of Afflictions
Have you ever read a mystery and thought you had things figured out until you read the end of the story and discovered you were totally and completely wrong? I have. Which is why read the end of the story first, the suspense just about kills me! There are times...
What Freedom Really Means
The Red Sea parted and the Israelites walked away from bondage to freedom on dry ground with walls of water towering above them. Their freedom had come in shifts. First the freedom from experiencing the plagues that attacked Egypt, then the freedom from their...
Your Dream Manifesto
"Dream small or not at all." This statement arrested and accused me. I do dream small. I dream small because I'm afraid of disappointment, danger and daring to fail. But in the dreaming small I lose pieces of my heart until all that's left is a...
What You Need When You’re Hurting
There is a song by Elevation Worship that repeats in my mind and meets me in the life-overwhelms and reminds me where my strength and hope is placed. One of my children had a dental procedure and the weight of the unknown overwhelmed her and I felt overwhelmed...
Hope in Your Suffering
Senseless deaths. Wounds fester. Terrorists attack. Fingers point blame. The news channels sensationalize the bad and minimize the good and I wonder, where is hope? When life falls apart and I have no good words, what do I do? In order to know hope, I must walk...
Why it’s Important to Feel Your Feelings
My feelings roll and rage like a rushing river. At times they laughingly flow over smooth rocks and other times they tumble and roar over dangerous rapids. If I were given the option to cross a mountain divide by climbing a narrow path or floating down the...