I haven’t lived a perfect life and I wonder if my problems are punishment from God, but maybe I don’t know the whole story and that God is overflowingly full of grace and mercy. They wanted retribution. Payback. A desire for revenge coursed through their veins for what had happened […]
Job
We think we can do it all, manage life ourselves, but you simply can’t. You discover you can’t make it on your own. They were told by their closest companion that they should not need others to affirm them. That they should be able to do it themselves. They should […]
Trouble comes. It’s nothing new, but we have the assurance of others, so we hold on tight and ride our way through it. You can see it coming. You’re sailing along. Life seems to be going along ok, but out on the horizon, you can see a storm. You know […]
Turmoil – a state of unease, disquiet, and storm, but what if you weren’t alone in that drowning boat? We need a confidant to share the storm with. Often people say that life is like a rollercoaster ride. Ups and downs, highs and lows. But I think life is more […]
Fear can be like a shadow creeping up and over you, but what do you fear the most? Understanding what you fear the most can bring assurance. It was a simple wire bridge on a confidence course. Not very high, the three-wire bridge was a challenge for some and not […]
Sighs and groans can come with such ease, but inhaling is also necessary. So we take note of our diet of breath. ‘That was a deep sigh,’ he said to me. I hadn’t noticed it, but he was right. I had let out a long deep sigh into the safety […]
You wake up and see a new day, but you didn’t want to wake up. So it’s a call to endure and go deep with God. They want the pain to end. The struggle of the journey has become too much. That’s the underlying theme of many of the emails […]
When you’ve hit the brick wall, the question may arise. Why was I even born? But over time, new depth may come through. A new birth may evolve. I want you to imagine that you have a bungee cord tied around your waist. You are flying through the air, and […]
We can get angry to the point where we want to curse the day we were born, but being held in our anger allows us to go through and not around the pain. It was about time they got angry. As the words vomited at me, through me, and around […]
Grief is hard, but grieving alone can be a torment of anguish, so we sit with the broken; we are silent and Shiva to the tears. When my father cried loud and hard, I experienced a kind of solidarity in my grief. A child had died, and a funeral was […]
We are happy to accept good from God, but what about trouble? There is something deeper available when we center on clinging to God. As a gardener, I work in all kinds of weather. Rain, sun, and wind – both light and strong. In the extremes, I complain. The furnace […]
People can say some harsh things to us, but when someone close says ‘Curse God and Die’ you have to go to a deeper place of faith than they possibly have. I was watching him wilt. He was once like a flourishing plant, enjoying water and sun and growing and […]
It can be so easy to lose hope. But when we ask, ‘How is it with your soul?’ an opportunity opens to journey to know wellness. ‘How are you?’ they asked. My response was polite, and I said that I was okay. They repeated the question. They wanted to know […]
You have a story. You are a story. To receive a story is to listen to the white space between the words. I hear stories every day. You do too. But there are some stories I hear where I sense I am on sacred ground. It’s when you feel that […]
Life can hand us a bunch of questions with few answers. But there is something inviting in a question, and so we explore a road less travelled. When Bob climbed into the passenger seat next to me, I could see that something was wrong. He wasn’t his normal cheery self. […]