Long before the emergency room doctor turned to me with sad eyes and told me my husband was gone, I knew. In fact, I think I knew he would not be revived while he was still on our bedroom floor, a half-dozen paramedics busily preparing him to be transported to the hospital. Something deep within…
“She has, you know…issues.” I hate having “issues.” The dreaded connotation underlying the word implies different, problematic, maybe even burdensome. I hate burdensome. Yet the reality is, we are born with”issues” all but written on our foreheads. Our connotation of “issues” as something negative, a problem, comes from the old English meaning “to flow out…
Summer at our house means backyard bonfires. We love to have people over to roast hotdogs and marshmallows. Sometimes my husband and I will even go back outside after the kids go to bed, just to talk. We talk about all sorts of things, but eventually, as the fire dies down so does our conversation….
“But the king replied to Araunah, ‘No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing’” (2 Samuel 24:24 NIV). My pastor preached on this verse a few weeks ago. The story goes like this: King David, the man after God’s own heart, made…
A retired pastor in our congregation often proclaimed, “God is so kind.” When Pastor Chuck died last year, my husband, Daryl, adopted the phrase as his own, a tribute to his mentor and friend. “God is so kind,” he says, watching the plants in our garden beds sprout in the backyard, tucking our sons in,…
Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28 CSB) Are you like me? Does the idea of rest make you sigh with longing? Rest from day-to-day responsibilities and burdens is an absolute necessity, especially if we find ourselves living at a frenetic pace. Our…