Helping Women Find Their Identity in Christ
Earlier this year, my older daughter was working on a submission for a PTA Reflections Contest at her school. Each year, the PTA holds a contest for different grade levels and encourages students to submit artwork, photography, and writing. My daughter, a budding artist at age 9, gets excited each year about the new piece […]
I hesitate to compare marriage to football, but there are a multitude of meaningful parallels. Many people love the game because of the suspense. No two games are the same. No two marriages look the same either. My husband and I often talk about how some couples love to attend every event together. Where one […]
I had a manager once tell me I was really “good out of the gate,” but my energy lessened as my shift wore on. I have found that to be a true description of how I generally approach many tasks in life: My motivation is generally quite high at the outset but begins to wane […]
In my life, trust of God has been the most difficult lesson for me to learn, and I’ve had many big failures in this area — times when I succumbed to fear and doubt in a crucial moment when I needed to have faith instead. In fact, I can count some major times in the last […]
“I feel so alone,” I told my husband in a hormone-induced crying spell. We had transitioned to a new house and a new community, and the transition had been fairly smooth, but as I moved into my last weeks of pregnancy, I felt alone. Alone when I drove my kids to school, and I didn’t […]
“I like the design on your shirt.” I snapped out of my daydream at the teenage bagger’s words. “Oh, thank you!” I replied. Standing at the checkout line at the grocery store waiting for my groceries to be bagged, I hadn’t expected a comment to come in my direction. In fact, I hadn’t even given […]
As a starry-eyed bride 18 years ago, I vowed I would never turn into some of the old boring married women I had seen growing up in the church. I would never snap at my husband, let the fire in our sex life die, or allow a divide in communication to grow. But then I […]
God’s calling you out. I jumped when I saw the words in front of me from the Lysa Terkeurst devotional. They echoed the words I had heard from my pastor that Sunday. He announced he was doing a study on the book of Exodus. And he had used a few variations of the same phrase, God’s calling you out, at […]
As this is the month of love, I wanted to take some time to give a few practical points of encouragement and advice, as well as resources, to the married readers out there. This will be an overview of some of the most common issues that arise in couples’ sex lives. I hope to […]
One of the most popular phrases we tell others when trying to guide or encourage them is, “Follow your heart.” It seems harmless and altruistic enough — and I am quite sure it is often delivered with the best of intentions. But what does that mean exactly — and what are the implications to our […]
As I look around in culture today, the thought so often enters my mind, “Lord, where are you? How did we get here?” It seems that so much of our media is sex-crazed, almost to a point of worshiping it. Sex has become confused with the notion of love and intimacy. While it can certainly […]
I sat in the seat of the mini-van and watched my mom’s lips curl downward into a frown. She turned to me, “I think you need to be careful about how much of your heart you give away.” I sulked in my seat, “I know what I’m doing.” In my head, a rebellious litany broke […]
In this episode, we continue our 2-part series talking with Sheila Michael about her struggle with anxiety and panic attacks. (Check out Part 1 if you would like to hear the first part of Sheila’s testimony.) Sheila shares about what she has learned in her journey about tapping into the power of the Holy Spirit […]
Breathe, breathe, and breathe again! My heart raced like I was running a marathon, but I wasn’t. I was dying, gasping for air. Panic swallowed me in a deep dark cloud. There was no one to call out to! I was in a place of anxiousness and fear. My brain chemistry had set off a […]
People with anxiety have fear. They have worry. I think some people are born with anxiety. Like me. Stories of my childhood depict me as difficult, even as a baby. I even sort of felt disliked. Sometimes I still do. Anxiety is also sometimes an inner conflict resulting from choice. When I make choices that go against the person I […]
As I shared in a previous post, I served as a volunteer on a church launch team years ago. While many churches in the community celebrated and came alongside us to help promote our new church, the church office also received a call from a church that didn’t have a friendly agenda. They weren’t excited […]
Years ago, when I served with my husband as volunteers on a church launch team, I heard about another church in the area that had made a call to the church office to make an inquiry about our new launch. Unlike the other churches in the area calling to congratulate us, this particular church asked […]
An almost cliché question we hear this time of year is this: What can I give the King? We hear it in songs and Christmas pageants, but the question is one that we should all take a moment to consider: What does God want from us in terms of giving? Is there a gift we […]
Some time ago, I went to a large children’s consignment sale. Because the consignment only accepted cash or check, I had to withdraw a set amount of money before I entered. Of course, I did not remember this until after I pulled in the parking lot, turned off the car, lifted my son out of his car seat, strapped him in his stroller, and headed […]
Years ago, when I was a child, I took a trip with my family each summer to visit my grandmother. Her house was located two states away, so we had to drive for a few days to get to her house. I grew up in the 80s before Internet, email, and GPS. Therefore, we used […]