Fall has finally arrived here in rural Missouri where I live. The temperatures are dipping down near freezing at night, the leaves are beginning to blush with red and orange, and the sky is full of that autumnal blue that hurts your eyes with its clarity. The cotton fields behind our church building are ready…
God Loves You in Your Longing
The scene is burned into my memory. It’s been fifteen years, but I remember the day I began to doubt God’s love for me. It was a Sunday. It was that window of fellowship after church just before people start heading home for lunch and naps. I stood in a circle of women, listening to…
Where is the Bright, New Day?
Every Sunday night we have movie and charcuterie night at our house. I slice up cheese and sausages, lay out crackers, pickles, dried fruit, and popcorn, and I put stacks of napkins on the coffee table in lieu of plates. Everyone puts on their pajamas, and we crowd around our snacks together on the floor….
Legalism or Laziness?
(the following is an adaptation of a talk I gave recently at a women’s retreat) I grew up in the church culture of the southern part of the U.S. in the 80’s and 90’s. I like to joke that I lived in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Though I was raised in a church…
How to Pray for Believers
Nothing has encouraged my relationships with other believers like praying consistently for them. I used to feel embarrassed by my often-offered platitude, “I’ll pray for you,” because I seldom followed through, and I knew it. When I did happen to remember to pray for someone as promised, it usually amounted to an awkward and rushed,…
Perseverance When Life Isn’t Hard
When I was fifteen years old I read a book about faithfulness that impacted me greatly. It was a novel, actually, and the main character had promised God when she was young that she would remain faithful to Him no matter what happened to her in life. Of course, the plot thickened with all these…
Living as One Who Belongs
When my husband and I first married, we had to work through that adjustment period of learning to live as one family unit instead of two adults independent of one another. With a vow and a ceremony, a white dress and a black tux, with a signature on a license and a lifelong promise, suddenly…
When You Feel Too Unworthy to Serve
I remember the first time I stood up in front of a group of women to teach the Bible. My shirt was damp with sweat, and my voice wobbled into the microphone. My knees might actually have knocked together in fear. But it wasn’t fear of failure or of public speaking. It was fear that…
Yes, You Do Need the Church
I was sitting with my back to them, the two young women sipping iced coffees and talking loudly in the quiet coffee shop. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could hear nearly every word of their discussion. Anyone in the shop could hear their discussion. I tried to absorb myself with my open laptop…
God’s Sovereignty is Your Pillow
There are 132 tiles covering the ceiling in my bedroom. It’s an old house, and when the addition was built several decades ago, the homeowners thought it prudent to tile some of the ceilings. Six of those 132 tiles still bear water stains from the spring of 2015 when we discovered our roof leaked. And…