“This is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (1 John 3:11 ESV). A hand-painted sign above my front door reads “Love one another” in elegant script. While the lettering and words are beautiful, I have the sentiment displayed there not because I like how it looks,…
The past year has been a difficult one, full of challenges much like the decade before it. I sometimes feel like a battered ship struggling to stay afloat in an unrelenting storm. And last fall, the seemingly endless stress of balancing marriage, motherhood, and caregiving—while trying to “keep it all together” and hide my depression…
“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” ~Lamentations 3:21–23 NIV Last year was particularly difficult. My family received a multitude of blessings, most definitely, but we also experienced…
When I look back at my thirty-three years of life, at first glance it seems as though everything I’ve ever wanted has been granted to me: my marriage, my children, my home, my career, and even my friendships. Yet none of these deepest desires of my heart came without a period of waiting and struggle…
“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come, O children, listen to…
“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;…