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I remember the first time I heard my daughter make the promise she’s repeated to her children many times. Lauren, her toddler, clung to her as she attempted to leave.

When I first heard Bill Russell’s words, “There’s no such thing as other people’s children,” it felt like someone had finally captured what had been in my heart all along.

I still remember the sound. The clinking of coins spilling from a glass jar, each one representing a small sacrifice, a quiet act of love. My grandmother, Ruby, was a woman of modest means, yet every year, she found a way to make each season overflow with joy–especially the holidays.

During a trip to Cancun with my husband and son, a family from our church vacationing in a nearby hotel invited us to join them on a fishing trip. Early on the morning of our scheduled trip, the captain postponed our departure by two hours.

A while back I offered a survey to social media friends, asking for input on how they viewed the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. The responses were actually “both/and.” While every single response admitted to being underwhelmed at the fruit production in their lives, they also expressed awe and gratitude for the experience of looking back over their lives and identifying real, God-produced attributes that revealed His character in their lives. 

“I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice . . .” I hummed and sang to myself, holding back my tears. I put one foot in front of the other, climbing the steps that were wedged between the library and Patterson Hall on the way across my college campus. “. . . to worship you, Oh my soul, rejoice . . .”

Lately I’ve been captured by the story of the woman at the well from John’s gospel (John 4:1–30, 39–42). You may know her as a shameful, fallen woman—the woman of many husbands now living in adultery who visits the well in the heat of the day to avoid the villagers’ looks of judgement and stifled whispers.

One of my favorite passages from the Bible is found in I Kings 19.  Elijah fled into the wilderness because he was afraid—full of anxiety and panic—after he heard that Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, sought to take his life. Jezebel vowed to kill him in revenge for criticizing Ahab’s idolatrous worship of Baal and for the deaths of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18).