I still don’t have my “daily devotions” or “quiet time,” as is traditionally thought of in regard to the spiritual disciplines like reading the Bible and prayer. But pursuit of God has been weaving its way through our days more consistently now than ever before.
2020. I don’t know how it’s possible to simultaneously have both the worst year of your life and the best year of your life. But I suppose if it was possible for Charles Dickens, maybe it was possible for me. It is my hope and prayer that you are encouraged by the 20 2020 stories I will tell in this series. I hope that they will make you smile. I hope they will remind you of God’s amazing faithfulness.
When I found out our Thanksgiving dinner table was going to have few guests, I was excited about having Ezra’s help and making Thanksgiving dinner with him! He did not disappoint! All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving. I’m so thankful for my little family and how they have taught me to enjoy the simplest things in life. I’m so proud of Ezra and the growth and maturity I’m seeing in him. I’m so proud of how far we’ve come as a family.
My mom has been reading to me since I was born. So I called her up and asked her to take on the immense endeavor of narrating the first-ever (to my knowledge) King James Version audio Bible read completely by a woman.
This is the moment everything up til this moment formed into this realization of healing. Because not once during the last few days had I been triggered. Not one hymn. Not one shudder induced by a smell or a sight. No anger. No pain. No regret. Just genuine gratitude and bittersweet joy for my family, for my grandma’s prayers, for the good old hymns, for each and every last memory.
Maybe you have looked up to people like Rachel Held Evans and Joshua Harris. I know that I did. Maybe their deconstruction stories have shaken your faith. Maybe you wonder if faith deconstruction is for you. Maybe you are ready to walk away from it all. It’s tempting to take a hacksaw to your faith, dump the remains in the yard waste cart, and wipe your hands of it all as the city utility workers haul it all away. But I urge you: build a compost pile. Stay. Please stay. Because the tree grows on the fallen forest. If it died, it can live again.
If you have ever been on my blog before, you probably know that I feel like I have a complicated “faith story.” (If you are new to my blog, you might want to start here.) After walking away from “fundamentalism” in my mid-twenties, I’m now in the process of letting God reconstruct my faith as … [Read more…]
A few weeks ago a fellow faith blogger asked me to write a guest blog for her some time about my faith journey. “I’m particularly interested in your journey to finding Jesus…how grace has changed your life…or something of that nature.” I readily agreed. That was a month ago and I haven’t written a word…until now. … [Read more…]
This morning I drove to church – alone, feeling guilty. Between working all week on moving things over to our new house and my having to play the piano for both Easter services at our church this morning, “Easter” activities for the kids got the short end of the stick… By short end, I mean … [Read more…]
As I write this, I am in the backseat of our minivan on the way home from our family’s 4th of July Summer vacation. For now, everyone is behaving. My heart is full, but I am unsure quite where to begin. Every patriotic holiday evokes emotion for us, but Independence Day is the happiest. It is … [Read more…]