Blog
From and about women who love Jesus and want to share His message through Scripture, everyday inspirations, and relatable stories.
Kevan Chandler was born with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare neuromuscular disease that causes progressive muscle wasting. The disease confines him to a power wheelchair and Kevan requires assistance for almost all aspects of his life from bathing to eating.
“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.
Julia Child brought the “art of French cooking” to the American populace in 1960s through her cookbooks and television show. To gain the culinary skills that earned her the book contract (and the adoration of housewives across the United States), she studied at the prestigious Cordon Bleu cooking school in France and worked under master chefs.
“Are you happy?” That was the question asked in frustration by my then husband as he stood in my room one night six months before our divorce was final. What I once thought was a good marriage, certainly with room for improvement, but good, had been systematically destroyed by lies, the unhealthy influence of others, and infidelity.