For many years I’ve really liked the analogy of being able to boil things down, to get to the heart of an experience or interaction. To come to the center of an idea or feeling, to a point where all of the water of confusion or disconnection is able to evaporate, and you’re left with the core of what’s going on. The center or the seed.

Imagine two people who are coming home after a hard day. It could be two adults, or friends, or a parent and child. They both hope to connect but are feeling overwhelmed and layered with frustration, resentment, or expectations, and the good desire to connect and feel safe is buried. When the two people start to interact it is likely that their movements and their choice of words will be caked down by irritations that distort the good love of connecting. If either of the two can begin to calm themselves and be a little thoughtful and have at least a small heart of gratitude, they can both begin to shift and work through these heavy layers. They can eventually be able to say, “oh, I see where you are coming from and what you’re going through, and I love you.” They can grow in their understanding of each other and find a good connection.

When I remember to regard others with respect and believe that they are doing the best they can with what they have, it is easier to love them and work to understand and connect with them in an honest way. Continue reading Boiling It Down →

Recently I’ve been grateful for the reminder that the Lord’s Word is full of His voice telling us to “fear not.”

For most of my life when I heard this phrase I just focused on the comforting aspect of it – fear not or don’t worry because things will turn out alright. It is very comforting, but in more recent years it has struck me that this phrase “fear not” is also in the imperative tense. It is a command.

It feels like an impossible command in some ways.  Fear usually feels like something I can’t control because it just happens to me. Then I think about the commandment, “Thou shalt not covet”. Part of coveting is a feeling that we need to reject. That seems impossible in a way too. Yet it’s one of the Ten Commandments and we are expected to follow it. Therefore, if we can do something about coveting, then we can also do something about fearing.

This phrase comes up in the middle of a lot of seemingly insurmountable problems in the Word. Continue reading Fear Not →

When I let my emotions build up into an unstable tower that inevitably crashes down on me, I am crushed. When I wake up in the morning and my to do list looms large, I want to curl up in a ball under the covers and never come out. When I open my computer and discover that there has been another natural disaster or act of senseless violence, I feel myself shrinking in the face of such pain.

There is a lot out there that’s big: Huge storms, Massive acts of terror, Mega doubts and fears on a personal and global scale. The list of enormous things to worry about is itself truly gargantuan. And these monsters can make me feel so tiny and trivial, until I remember that the Lord is in charge, and He dwarfs them all.

The Lord is so pervasive and so profoundly present in all things that I can forget He’s there, which is crazy because He truly is the biggest thing there is. He is everything good and true and wonderful in this world and beyond. And you know what’s even crazier? He took the time to make us. He made me. This all-knowing, ever-present almighty Creator took the care and attention to make simple, seemingly insignificant me. Sure, it is no great feat for someone so powerful to make a human being, but the fact that He chooses to make each of us in His own image and keeps doing it, no matter how much we mess up the world, means that we matter. We truly matter. And that makes us big too. Continue reading David Was a Giant Too →

Over the past year I’ve been reflecting on my search for peace and how I have found it in the tension between two truths. In the spring I wrote about the tension of how every moment matters and yet it is all about the big picture. In the summer I wrote about the tension between God’s sovereignty and human free will. As the leaves change and fall and the autumn weather turns colder, I’m writing my final piece this year on the tension between God’s will for good and His permission of evil, and how I can get in the way of God’s good.

Six days after I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, my husband Coleman preached a sermon on the story of Joseph. He titled it “God Meant It for Good”.

In the immediate aftermath of the diagnosis, of learning we’d need to leave our home and community in South Africa, in all the chaos of tests and doctors appointments, and the fear as we realized just how sick I was, I had peace. Incredible peace. I truly believe it was a gift of God that I knew soul-deep peace in those days. In the following months as we moved, met new doctors, made a plan, as I underwent surgery, and faced complication after complication, I still knew peace. I knew God’s good didn’t want my suffering and believed He would bring good out of it.

But somewhere in the months that followed, as we moved from the sprint of the crisis to the marathon of recovery, I lost my peace. Days of pain turned into weeks of pain. Weeks of antibiotics turned into months of antibiotics. Months of recovery turned into a year with some measurable improvement but also significant ongoing challenges. As the hard stretched on, my focus turned to earthly things and I found myself struggling with discontentment, dissatisfaction, restlessness, and a notable absence of peace. I found myself getting in the way of God’s good.
Continue reading Peace in Tension: Getting in the way of God’s good →