There’s something about a song that can take me back. Back to where I was, what I thought, and how I felt at the time. What is it about music that has the power to transport us back in time and sweep us off to another place  … taking us back to the exact moment […]
How Your Story Can Change the World
Our stories are made to comfort others. And your story can change the world. Where we’ve been, what we’ve walked through … all that pain and suffering, or guilt and shame, is never, ever wasted, when we surrender it to the Giver of all things and allow Him to use it for good. Whenever I […]
To Risk is to Be Brave
To risk is to be brave. Because there is no bravery without risk. I recently completed the Strengthsfinder assessment for the second time. It was for a leadership class I’m in, and to my amazement my results were almost exactly the same as four years ago. I’m a communicator and a relator, someone who likes harmony, […]
To Speak is to Jump
I spoke to a group of women last night. Women who were lovely and warm and welcoming. And yet, no matter their warmth, I won’t lie, I was nervous. Not because I was afraid to share, but because of my longing for God to meet those who were there in a way they otherwise wouldn’t […]
When You Doubt God is Here {Letters from God}
I am here. And I see. I see the discouragement that seeps in through the cracks of your doubt. The times you question whether you’re able to be used by Me at all. I see how your tired head bends in the dark and longs for more hours in each day. How you stay up in […]
When You Need to Believe There Can Be Beauty After Pain
It is only in the after, that we might see any beauty at all. After the snow melts. After the rain has come. After the bulb spends months in the dark cold of the ground. After the leukemia, and the chemo, and the central lines … the hospitalizations, and the procedures that swirl life right […]
In Case You’re Wondering What They Will Remember
We say goodbye to her just five months after her 90th birthday. And it is ever before me that life really is a vapor, a mist that is here for a time and then gone, vanishing like steam rising in the air. He plays his guitar and we lead the music and sing “It Will […]
For When You Know You Need More Rest
Rest has become a foreign stranger to me and I’m not quite sure how much longer I can survive without her. It’s been so long. Sleep evades me and a heightened sense of urgency is ever before me, as every single minute of each day is utilized with little to no margin at all. And […]
Lessons Far From Home
Sometimes I don’t appreciate something until it’s gone. And sometimes I’m so busy looking to the next thing I miss the now-thing that exists right before me, lamenting only after it’s gone right by. Thankfully, I’ve not done that this time. We haven’t been home in almost two weeks—a family vacation. Tomorrow is our last […]
Because He Loved Us
We all feel loved in different ways, and it still surprises me how it all works. We tend to show love to others the way in which we feel most loved, but they don’t always feel most loved by what we offer. When my husband and I read Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages, it […]
