This is a VISION CASTING verse for me. I want to be about the work of rebuilding ancient ruins and restoring places long devastated for the rest of my life. At times, my faith has been a VERY personal journey, and in some ways, that feels appropriate for deep and lasting change to begin at a heart level, but as I have continued to grow and walk with God and…
Do you know that you are beloved? Do you really know it, deep in your bones? For me, I forget. This is actually the truth that I seem to forget most often! Lots of days I’m really busy, so I just don’t take the time to remember. Other days I make LOADS of mistakes, and I get down on myself… I mean, down right MEAN. “You idiot. You should know better/do better/be better.” On the days…
A friend of mine with older kids, one of whom is walking through a really hard season, just told me, “I realized this year that so much of the way I have parented my children has come out of fear, and fearing for someone is NOT the same thing as loving them.” She then explained that when fear drives her actions toward her children, she is more concerned with fixing…
This seems simple enough, right? Clean up your home in love. Prepare dinner in love. Do your work in love. This feels like a beautiful way to move about our days, and a good reminder to let God’s love be the place we start and pour out of throughout our days. This directive feels SO much more challenging when I move to the more specific and difficult aspects of daily life. Move through a traffic jam in love. Strongly disagree with someone in love. Discipline your children in love…
Reconciliation is a beautiful thing. It’s one of my favorite upside-down parts of the gospel. We are broken and sinful, BUT GOD sent his Son, bringing BOTH justice and freedom, on the cross where Jesus gave up His life for ours. We get His righteousness for our brokenness, and this floors me, and then He calls us onward, to be carrying the message of reconciliation wherever we go…
I was in the Smoky mountains this week with my family. We went to visit some dear friends, and got to stay in their guest cabin perched on the edge of the Nantahala National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a gift in so many ways. Our friends were telling us that late May and early June are firefly mating season, and that if we walked outside after sunset, we’d see what looked like a silent fireworks show! I was thrilled to do this, and I cannot really explain how beautiful it was. Thousands…
This verse has been a good guide for me through this current moment we are facing. There has been so much brokenness, and there still is so much brokenness in regards to the racism in our country. Things feel divided and not united, but I am learning how to get quiet and listen… humbly and gently… learning about so much pain and suffering and disregard and dismissing that our black and brown brothers and sisters have faced in this country. It has been hard to swallow and almost unfathomable…
