I love music. Since I was five, I’ve sung in choir. In high school, I attended a school that consistently placed in the top ten at state every year. I spent hours singing, almost daily. I also competed individually as high as the state level. I won awards and accolades, and it warped the way I viewed my identity. But…
Mornings at our household may or may not resemble a circus getting kids ready for school. (Parents of more than two children – my hat goes off to you.) We prep the night before, but papers teleport, shoes shrink, or clothes disappear. Someone forgets to brush their teeth or hair – or both. Murphy’s Law requires all of these things…
I’ve recently grappled with the definition of safety: mine vs God’s. And it makes me really uneasy when I consider how dangerous real safety might be. I mean, I know the story of what happened to Jesus and he’s the one I’m claiming to follow. Where exactly are we going, God? Being free from fear and harm, and feeling certain…
This should’ve been obvious, I suppose, but it dawned on me this week in conversation with friends why fear is a sin: it twists my perspective onto me – my abilities to handle a situation, my ability to make things turn out right, my power to change things. And plenty of situations stretch beyond my limitations and tempt me to…
Dear Friend, The past week has been hard though it’d be difficult to put my finger on exactly what was it that made it hard. And I must apologize to you for not sending you something last week, because I was too much in the middle of a battle. Or maybe somewhere on the bottom, might be more accurate. If…
Fear ensures I am a constant work in progress. I’d rather be a looker upper than a fixer upper, but I’m afraid I’m both. (Like how I used “afraid” there? You can groan now.) I haven’t trusted God perfectly, but thankfully, that qualifies me to be a recipient of perfect grace. I’m so grateful Jesus came to call the sick,…
There are plenty of things I’m not. It does me a world of good to remember what I am. Who I am. Whose I am. It’s been a week of remembering, forgetting, and remembering again. I wish I knew who to thank for the compiled scriptures. I’ve had this awhile and recently stumbled across it. I streamlined the list to fit…
I marveled something so small, which I’d considered soft light, shone with such intensity it needed relocating to remoter darkness.
I woke up with a sense of dread carried over from the previous day. It hung over me like Eeyore’s rain cloud. As I lay in bed, not wanting to get up, all I could think was I’m stuck. Stuck in fear. Staying in bed was a dead end. I had to have enough faith to walk out the bedroom door and live this day. Wasn’t that the lesson God taught me…
I realized WE are the light of the world – God’s children. And I thought about matches. They don’t light until struck. And I wondered if the struggles that have struck us are God’s tool to shine more brightly through us. If our God is a consuming fire, and He is in us, we have nothing to fear: He will…
