While many believe ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ is in the Bible, true biblical self-care is actually about treating your body as an act of worship. In Jesus’ words, they were like ‘manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and […]
Faith & Mental Health
Pressure within is building, and you might feel like you’re carrying a heavy burden alone. How do you release bottled-up emotions without destroying precious relationships? Recently I have gone back to old-school ways of writing. I have picked up a pen and some paper and written my first draft […]
Life can be hard, and maybe even harsh at times, but in the end, something beautiful and good can emerge from the struggle. Love is like that. It was an old climbing rose that hadn’t been well cared for. When I started to do some gardening work on an old […]
When going through Mental Health struggles, you have to give yourself permission to receive, especially from God. Every Tuesday morning, I travel to a garden in a small rural area called Clevedon. I leave early to beat rush hour traffic but also to get a few moments on the top […]
After years of teaching high school in downtown Los Angeles, my wife accepted a job four hours away. On top of my daily stressors of dealing with students and colleagues and deadlines at the school, I now moved to a tiny studio apartment, commuted to see my wife on weekends, and […]
This was never going to be a typical funeral. This was the celebration of a life well lived by a mother to 11 children. A strong farmer’s wife who not only milked the cows and preserved the fruit, but also cared with deep love for each of her children. One […]
Sometimes the knife of life drives right to the core of your being. It wrenches around till your bleeding in grief. Your speechless in shock, numb in movement and it feels like the very essence of life has been sucked out of you. You mourn because there is no other worthy […]
I am not a dancer, but I am a musician. I believe that our Mental Health is closely linked to the rhythms we keep. I have played guitar since I was thirteen and one of the little practice exercises I used to do in the early days was to play […]
What song was that? Was there a song at all, or was it the whisper of tiredness from an unseen cosmic battle. The Easter story is full of drama, but what was the musical score. We go to the movies and in the background behind the storyline there is music. […]
I always thought sheep were pretty dumb. But looking at the habits they form, I now realize that actually, they aren’t totally woolly in their thinking (sorry, I had to say it). As a child growing up on a New Zealand sheep farm, I remember asking my father a very […]