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We Can Never Out-Do God
In the middle of espresso prep this morning my eldest wandered downstairs. His voice was hushed against the backdrop of my steaming wand as it worked it’s magic wonders on my coffee—a desperately needed morning routine. “Mom, do I have Jesus in my life?” The question caught me off guard. “Well, I remember the day we talked a long time about it and you wanted to pray and ask God for forgiveness. Do you remember?” He nodded, but I could tell this answer wasn’t sufficiently addressing his concern. “But mom, I still sin. Does God just leave me when I sin?” Talk about an anything but routine morning conversation. That’s…
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We Can Steward Pain Well
As I write, the air is cool and my maple in the front yard glows a fire orange. It’s Fall. I love everything about Fall—the cooling temperatures, the changing colors, the promise that the cold season is coming. It’s in the cold season, when the snow flies, that time slows and I exhale. And so my children wait with me. They wait in anticipation for the first snow of the year and another change in seasons. I’m thankful seasons change. I’m thankful hard seasons in life change. Life moves—it doesn’t stay stagnant or motionless. Sometimes though, in the unseen parts of my heart, emotions feel stuck. Hard emotions that are…
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Limits
I’ve been thinking a lot about limits lately. I don’t like to admit I have them. Limits to time, energy, patience and resources. Limits—endless limits. I feel limits close in at the end of the day when I am running on fumes. These limits press hard when my body fails and my mind falters. It is in my weakest moments that I feel limits keenly. Our world likes to persuade us that we are limitless. If we just put our mind to it we can do it. Where there is a will there is a way, right? Not always. Our attempts to live limitless try to persuade us this is…
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Family
When I think of family, I think of two things: having family and experiencing family. We are all born into family but that doesn’t guarantee we experience family. Family should be laced with security, steadfast presence, and unconditional love. Family, in that sense, has not been an easy road for me. My family road has been full of ups and downs, twists and turns. It’s been strewn with loss, heartache, rejection and uncertainty. Growing up it had been a series of foster-homes, in which some I experienced the taste of what family should be and others I did not. With that said, it’s also been full of hope, joy, and…
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A Hard Kind of Beautiful
These days we are walking in are strange aren’t they? I’ve spent the past 2 weeks wanting to write, but not really knowing what to write. Like many of you, I have been at a loss for words. We are walking through and living in times unexpected. Covid-19 has done things none of us could have predicted or imagined. We are not only living lives interrupted, but altogether halted in a sense. Everything cancelled, right? And with all the store closings, schools shutting down, hotels and restaurants shuttering doors, grocery shelves emptying, we feel a loss of control. As if control were ever really ours to begin with. In all…
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Three African Violet Pots
It’s strange the things we focus on when we are waiting for important news. In that space the news could be good or the news could be bad. It’s the not knowing that hits the pause button in that moment of waiting. In hospital or doctor’s rooms most especially. As minutes drag on we hone in on our immediate surroundings. We count lines on a wall, dates on a calendar, look for detail in the pictures on the wall. We seek to distract ourselves from thinking. We seek to calm a racing heart. Three little African violet pots were my distraction. They sat on the window sill in room number…
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Trust
Summer. I remember as a little girl spending Summers in my back yard gardening, swimming, dreaming. Sometimes I would lie face-up to the clouds and watch as they drifted and shifted shapes, all-the-while trying to imagine what life would be like all grown-up. I dreamed about the man I would marry. I wondered if I would have any kids. What kind of job would I have? Where would I be living? The imagined answer was always someplace exciting, some place exotic. I never imagined fading polaroid pictures of a lost childhood. I never imagined life interrupted. I could not have dreamed that at 12 I would greet police officers at…
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God of Comfort
I have a secrete. Last week I spent most of the days in tears when no one was looking. I guess that’s not so secrete anymore. Why do I share that? Because chances are, most days, I’m not the only one that wears happy on the outside and struggles on the inside. We all have struggles. We all have loss, pain, defeats we are doing inner battle with while we put one foot in front of the other, doing the next thing. That simple act of walking some days can be so hard. Last week was hard because it was the return of my normal, every-day cycle. No big deal.…
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A Higher Perspective
We tend to see things from the middle of two perspectives. We look to the left and then to the right and swing in either direction. From a faith standpoint, swinging right we see God as just, sovereign. Swinging left we see Him as mercy, grace, love. The reality is He is BOTH, not one or the other. But we often focus on one and ignore the other. We view these aspects linearly and live confused by the chaotic tension created. Recently it has rained so heavily in Kansas and for so long that rain runs everywhere. The ground is beyond saturated. Any rain we receive now water-logs streets, basements,…
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What is “Enough”?
This week I re-visited a book I first picked up over 15 years ago entitled, These Strange Ashes by Elizabeth Elliot. The book had tenderly ministered to me when I needed a reminder of God’s character, of His perfect sovereignty always at work. Today it is hard not to forget the girl I was then, ages ago and yet not so many ages ago. I was young, in love, and losing love. I had finished the task of sending back my engagement ring and with it what felt like my entire heart. To be sure, I was jilted beyond broken. In more ways than one I was a girl who…
