Three Ways to Rediscover Who You Are
I teach middle schoolers, and from the beginning of the year to the end, something mysterious happens: They lose more of the child in their heart.
God will bless what’s broken. Here’s how I cope in the waiting
There’s no way God can use this. There’s no way God can use this. In many ways, I used to be the pessimistic version of Dorothy. But what I couldn’t see back then was this: God will bless the broken…we just don’t know when.
We can’t hide from the hurt and expect to heal
We all have a go-to method of hiding pain. Maybe it’s food. Maybe it’s alcohol. Maybe it’s really good acting. But we do it. And it’s not to hide from the world around us. It’s to hide the hurt from ourselves.
Micro-grieving: When the smallest losses threaten our peace
My father died on a Friday afternoon in late March at the very beginning of the COVID crisis. Letting go and healing in months of isolation is what I would describe as macro-grieving.
There is no finish line in healing
We do this thing: We get really frustrated with ourselves. We thought we were past the pain. We thought we had transcended all the troubles. But we haven’t healed. We’re still healing.
Forgiveness may not change their heart, but it frees yours
When we try to escape forgiveness, we begin to build a wall. Brick-by-brick we praise our strength and admire just how efficiently we can protect our hearts.
The gift of being normal
“You’re a normal person.” To be honest, it’s a comment that would have destroyed me in my 20s.
God is not the rules. God is a relationship.
I used to think there was something wrong with me. I would pray. I would worship. And I would study the Bible. (I even finished reading the whole Bible last year.) But it felt like I wasn’t growing.
Forgive yourself for the things you did to survive
I think shame is the worst of all enemies. It doesn’t matter what we did. And it doesn’t matter why we did it. Shame enters our heart and is nearly impossible to shake.
How to recover from life’s greatest losses
I once attended a workshop called “How to Make Your Comeback”. And, frankly, it was terrible.