Dear Friend, Do you believe that you are completely and wholly loved by God? Some people more readily feel it than others. Maybe those who grew up in nurturing families instinctively know that God loves them, while those who struggled with hard parental relationships have a tougher time believing that they are worthy of love….
I sat at my computer, trying desperately to come up with a few words that made sense. But nothing came. I felt empty. Overwhelmed. Beaten down. I questioned my ability to write. My power to keep going. My worth as a person. These feelings were not new. In fact, they had appeared so often that…
Sitting in the sand, I buried my 5-year-old eyes in my knees. I wasn’t hurt, but I was embarrassed that I had fallen. My trainer tried helping me up, but I wanted to wait for my mom to climb through the wooden, split-rail fence. When she got to me, she said, “You have to fall…
Almost nine months into marriage, I finally feel like I’m coming up for air. The months have swirled and surged, waves of adjustment rolling one after another, fighting the tide of learning to listen and placing my husband, Eric’s, needs in front of mine. Fresh into a new year, the first one where we are…
Is it wrong to believe that good begets good? Children are rewarded for doing the right thing and punished for doing the wrong. Right and wrong may vary in size and scope dependent upon the age of the child, culture, home, social context, and familial context. However, regardless of what the right or wrong might…
Brown-eyed girl, make yourself a home in love. Move on in. Set up your furniture. Decorate the place how you like. If you want to paint, paint. If you don’t like the layout, change it. Knock down some walls. Open up some windows. Whatever you feel like. The house of love is yours to make…
When you’re juggling a lot of roles–wife, employee, mom, student, friend, sister–or any other number of roles–it can feel like there’s no margin in your life. You feel tired, exhausted, maybe even worn-down. And in that mental state, it can seem harder and harder to believe that there’s some sort of dim light at the…
The last of the car doors shut. The kids rushed inside, and although I typically follow suit, I waited. Leaning my head into the steering wheel, I sat there in the quiet. My voice broke the silence. It started as a scream and turned into a wail. In the confines of my locked car, I…
Dear Reader, I live in Florida, so every summer we hear tragic stories of toddlers falling into backyard pools and drowning. We have a pool, and we have a 3-year-old grandson who spends a lot of time at our house. We also have a pool fence. Or at least we did until we paved our…
One long weekend we took our children to Los Angeles, to the hills under the Hollywood sign, to Griffith Observatory. The air was clear, the observatory a stark white nestled in green hills. It felt iconic: the city that isn’t quite a city lay below us, but from high up we could make Los Angeles…
Jake came to live with Stacy when he was six. Born a fetal alcohol baby, he’d been abandoned as unmanageable by four different foster homes already. His bright brown eyes and mischievous grin signaled a child behind the almost feral face and spidery tangle of skinny arms and legs. Stacy, an elementary school teacher, was…
Quiet time. It’s a description. A noun. A command. A miracle, really. I’m not sure when the phrase “quiet time” became defined by the perfect chair illuminated by the perfect light at the perfect time of day, flanked by the journal that has the perfect paper to capture our thoughts as we study the perfect…
Healthy relational boundaries are kindness in action. Enablers and approval addicts often think they are being kind, but enabling patterns are deceptively destructive. We are not being kind when we inadvertently encourage others to form ingrained habits that are harmful to themselves and others. When we do not tell the truth because we are afraid…
There’s a bumper-sticker slogan that says, “If God seems distant, guess who moved.” Pithy, right? But not very helpful. We often struggle to feel that God is near. Hardships, depression, busyness, pride. These are all things that can veil God’s face to us. When the skies are blue, we feel we can see God more…