Resilience Archives

To Reap in Joy you Need to Sow in Tears. Psalm 126

The only way there is through. To reap a joy, we sow a tear, but it’s work, hard work, so we don’t travel alone. We journey with safe others. I knew there had to be an ocean of loss behind the lifestyle mask they were wearing. For all the stories […]

Getting Well Staying Well Relationships

Five Actions to Take when Someone Rains on Your Parade

Some people seem to like to rain on your parade, but we can learn how to hoist an umbrella and continue on. They couldn’t help themselves. Anything my friend did was negated. Any attempt at doing something special, creative, or different was criticized and smashed with harsh words. Sometimes an […]

Depression & Low Mood Faith & Mental Health

When You Find Yourself in a Dark Hole, Start Digging

When you’re in a dark hole, it can feel like there is a loss of hope, but you can dig yourself out with some wisdom and encouragement. It was a hole that I had fallen into. I was in a deep dark hole where the sun didn’t seem to reach. […]

Depression & Low Mood

Money Falling From The Sky and a Hope Deferred

When hope is deferred, our heart grows sick, but when we see and know the hope fulfilled in the now, we can build resilience to the struggles of the day. People traveled long distances hoping to get some of the money ‘falling from the sky.’ A few nights ago, I […]

Relationships & Connection

Are you helping too much?

You might be helping them too much and hinder any progress for them and yourself, but we can learn new ways of helping and see the change we want for them and ourselves. She was helping too much, and the person she was helping didn’t mind one little bit. In […]

Getting Well Staying Well Spiritual Formation

Picking Up The Broken Pieces

It was tasting the dust of devastation. The broken pieces. But those fragments can be brought together, and so we quietly form a new mosaic Broken pieces. That’s all that was left behind. It was a moment that captured the world’s attention. A massive explosion of ammonium nitrate brought […]

Getting Well Staying Well Helping Others

Nine Interesting Questions to Help you Handle Criticism

Criticism comes to us all, but we can grow through it. We need to listen, ask questions and learn how to handle it with dignity. They knew what was going to happen even before they got home. They were going to have to run through a gauntlet of criticism. Where […]

Spiritual Formation

A Mountain in Your Life? Where does your Help Come From?

When we keep looking at the mountain of struggle, we can feel crushed, but when we know someone greater than the mountain is with us, we can find the help we need. Mountains move when we meditate on God’s goodness. Where I live, I’m surrounded by mountains. They’re not very […]

Spiritual Practices

Sharpening: A Spiritual Habit for Better Mental Health

Life will blunt your edge. The knocks, the scuffs, the micro-abrasions and who you are gets dulled. Having a daily sharpening practice keeps your mental health having a fine edge. I was getting frustrated. I was cutting down a tree with my chainsaw, and it was taking forever. The teeth of […]

Getting Well Staying Well Mental health

How to Restore your Soul when Feeling Flat and Drained Out?

Feeling flat and empty can become an invite to feeling full of depth and not a step into depression. Focusing in on something and someone bigger than ourselves can revive a flagging soul. There are times when I feel flat. Life feels meaningless and like it’s one cyclical trip of […]