Blog
From and about women who love Jesus and want to share His message through Scripture, everyday inspirations, and relatable stories.
Some moments I’ll never forget. Seeing my published story after four years of writing it and twenty years of living it was one of those moments. Being falsely accused and shunned for it was another.
God has given me amazing friends. Linda was my first best friend. We shared an apartment stoop, a love of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, and an enviable collection of Barbie dolls. Ellen came next. Awkward in our adolescence, she and I spent hours discussing favorite books, giggling about boys, and weeping over mean girls.
“Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD himself, is the Rock eternal.” – Isaiah 26:4, NIV I spent years of my life dieting, desperately trying to shrink myself, to fit in, to hit that ever elusive number on the scale that would finally make me happy with my body. Or, more accurately, I should say I lost years of my life dieting, laser focused on thinness in pursuit of a beauty standard that always seemed just out of grasp.
“Hey girl, you okay in there?” I asked as I knocked on my ten-year-old daughter’s bedroom door. I turned the doorknob and found her with tears streaming down her face, wrapped in her Grammie’s floor-length fur coat that she would put on just about every time she went to her house.
Most of us have experienced the frustration that occurs when a conflict between family members drags into the holidays. Not many of us can say we’ve never seen a situation blown so far out of proportion that bonds built over decades are broken in seconds.
The unmistakable force of a car hit us from behind. “Are you okay?” I asked both my husband who was driving and our son in the back seat. Both reassured me they were. Brett asked, “Are you okay?” “Yeah.” I nodded. Was I trying to convince my husband or myself?
I was running through my mental to-do list while my husband dug out another pile of dirt in our overflowing garden beds. As I prepared to wheel yet another pile of dirt to our backyard, I found my heart growing increasingly resentful.
“I’m thirty-five and single—haven’t I learned enough about waiting?” I said it as a joke when telling a friend about yet another delay in my kitchen renovation project, but I wasn’t entirely kidding. For me, singleness has been the greatest lesson in waiting that I never asked God for.
Pareto’s Rule, or the 80/20 principle, states that 80 percent of the consequences come from 20 percent of the causes. Over the years, I’ve heard this applied to the church: 20 percent of Christians do 80 percent of the giving and work of the church. If Pareto is right, and experience is any indication, a minority of professing believers participate in the life of the church, including outside of the four walls of our church buildings.