I love preparing for the Advent season each year. When I talk with friends about our traditions, I’m sure they visualize my family gathered serenely around a wreath of candles, quietly absorbing the weight of the incarnation with our children, sipping hot cider and talking about how much we love this time of year. That’s […]
I went to bed that night with bitterness in my heart. It was a pretty ugly offense I was mad about—something that wounded me and others I loved. I’d spent much of the day just good and mad. Good and mad. Is that really how it is? I guess it feels good to be mad […]
Author’s note: Since penning this article six years ago, I’ve put everything I know about Scripture memorization into my book, Memorizing Scripture: The Basics, Blessings, and Benefits of Meditating on God’s Word, which was published by Moody Publishers in 2023. This book gives you all the most helpful tips and tricks I’ve found to train […]
Before Genesis, He was. Before the garden, before the fruit and the snake and the shame, He was. Before the Lord spoke words that formed stars and dirt from nothing, tree branches and blades of grass from emptiness, He was. Before there was light, He was. Jesus was. Jesus, the Son, was with God in the […]
Every Thursday, my friend Dora comes over for lunch and accountability. We catch up on life, talk about what God is teaching us, and confess our sins to one another. Our pastors are preaching through the book of Galatians this fall, and Dora and I find ourselves coming back to the sermon on Galatians 5:16-26 […]
This morning I realized a universal truth for women: under-eye concealer only goes so far. I’ve tried a lot of beauty products over the last few years to slow the visible process of aging, but no matter what concoction I slather on my face every night or sponge around my eyes in the morning, the […]
“Family worship” is a term we use a bit loosely for the dinner table devotions we enjoy as a family each night. My husband usually reads some Scripture, one of the kids prays for a neighbor or someone from church, and we all sing the Doxology together. The highlight for my two boys is to […]
I lay on my left side facing the screen. The sonographer squirted a clear jelly on the wand and rested it near my sternum. Fascinated, I watched images of my heart fill the screen—pumping, beating, opening, closing. This is amazing, I thought, until I felt the familiar flutters and off beats pounding in my chest. […]
My alarm clock was pretty rude this morning. Five-thirty is pitch dark. The remains of an all-night thunderstorm hung about the air, making my bed the obvious first choice. As my feet hit the floor, as I hunted for my slippers and shrugged on a long cardigan, as I headed to the coffee pot in […]
I picked out a tune on my grandparents’ old Wurlitzer when I was quite small, plucking the keys to make a melody I recognized. I could hear harmonies before I knew what they were, so my parents signed me up for music lessons when I was seven. I learned basics with one teacher, then switched […]
