Eighteen years ago, I planted a garden for the first and, as it turns out, the last time. My neighbor at the time, a retired landscaper, offered to till up a corner of my yard with his landscaping equipment. He must have had a lot of faith in my gardening abilities, as evidenced by the…
suffering
When Life is Hard, Keep Reading Your Bible
I once heard Tim Keller say that when life is particularly difficult and you’re struggling with your emotions or you don’t know how to feel about suffering, one of the most helpful things you can do is to turn to inductive Bible study.[1] It’s interesting advice because we often feel the need to dissect our…
God Is Our Guide on Paths We Did Not Choose
I was twenty-nine when the pain started. It was subtle. Just a little soreness in my low back that began waking me up at night. But as the weeks turned to months, the pain increased steadily, growing from a flicker to a blaze that burned all night. Unable to sleep, I walked the floors in…
Preparing for the Storm
As I write, the entire state of Missouri is bracing itself for a giant winter weather system that will bring a significant amount of freezing rain and ice with it. Where we’re located just south of Cape Girardeau, we find ourselves in this position often. My young son is praying for snow because we so…
The Goodness Grid
One of my favorite things about the book of Psalms is the room given for biblical complaint. In our modern sensibilities, we waffle between respectfully questioning God for His mysterious ways and raising our fists in anguish and frustration. We know that anger feels wrong, so we fight it. But immediate acceptance seems completely out…
Who Am I Without My Thorn?
“Who am I without my thorn?” I asked myself. The needle on the spring-loaded pen was much smaller than I expected. I pinched my skin together and injected my third dose of TNF-blockers into my stomach. For six weeks, I’d been giving myself shots prescribed by my rheumatologist, and I’d watched—incredulous—as my pain levels gradually…
You Could Be Faithful with Your Frailty
“You could be faithful with your frailty.” I was walking the track at the gym like I do every morning before my workout, and the lyrics from the Christian hip-hop artist were so quick I almost missed them. You could be faithful with your frailty.[1] He’s speaking, I think, to our inability to make our…
Good Either Way
My grandmother used to interrupt our stories to correct our theology. We often praise the Lord when He protects us from something or when we barely scraped by in a tough situation. We say things like, “I almost had a car accident today, but the Lord protected me! Isn’t God good?!” or “I was afraid…
Jesus Is In the Boat
I took my laptop to the hospital. I don’t really know what I was thinking. When I’d packed it in my tote bag, I figured there’d be lots of sitting and waiting—and there was. But did I really think I’d do anything but stand next to my son’s hospital bed? Because that’s what I did…
Remember
The other night, I curled up with a book in what my kids call “Mom’s Corner” of the couch. We bought our gray sectional last year because of that corner. Well, technically we bought it because our fifteen-year-old sofa was just about to fall apart. But, I sat in the corner of the floor display…