Imagine that you have fallen into deep waters, but it’s your first time to swim. Fighting just to get a breath in; & then someone hands you a screaming child, a stack of paperwork, a bunch of trainings & appointment reminders. Then imagine being expected to complete it all while keeping yourself & that terrified child above water. Oh, & you can’t get the paperwork wet because, of course, it has to be legible when you turn it in.
Continue reading You Don’t Have To Be A Foster Parent To Change A Foster Kid’s Life
9 Lessons I’ve Learned In 9 Years Of Marriage
Let me just tell you that when I fell in love with my husband I fell HARD.
Like I lost my mind.
My grades dropped. I barely slept. I couldn’t get enough. I was basically obsessed. Continue reading 9 Lessons I’ve Learned In 9 Years Of Marriage
I Collect Dead, Dying Things. I Collect Brokenness.
I found a coin from The Netherlands when I was 10 years old. I was camping about an hour east of Seattle, deep in the mountains, and as I walked barefoot through the camp sites I suddenly felt something underneath my feet that seemed out of place. I looked down to see a square coin, and couldn’t believe my luck. A coin, IN THE DIRT, from half-way around the world.
Continue reading I Collect Dead, Dying Things. I Collect Brokenness.
God Doesn’t Make Mistakes, So It’s Impossible For You To Be One
I’ve heard God doesn’t make mistakes.
I’ve heard it is impossible…
Everything about you. Your nationality, your skin color, gender, hair texture. How expressive or reserved you are. How introverted or extroverted you are. Your ability to sing or create art or to fearlessly barrel race horses. Your laugh.
NONE OF IT IS A MISTAKE.
God knew exactly what he was doing when he reached across time and space and birthed you in the darkness and fashioned you into something spectacular.
You are not a mistake.
It is impossible for you to be a mistake. Because it is impossible for God to make mistakes.
I spent my whole life thinking I was a mistake. That who I was was so shameful. The way I theatrically tell stories, how I want to weep for three days every time I watch The Green Mile. How making a space look beautiful fills me up with so much joy I cannot even express it. How injustice makes my blood boil. How my idea of “good church” involves crying with and laughing with and eating with a handful of people at a time.
Because I always thought I should want other things. I should be less passionate. Less emotional. More practical. More extroverted. Less awkward for heaven’s sake (Lord, above have mercy).
But none of these things about me is a mistake.
It’s weird, but not weird at the same time, to say that THE WORLD NEEDS YOU! And it needs ME. And not in a self-absorbed way, but simply because we are here and because we exist means that God destined for each one of us to be here.
The family he placed us in is not a mistake. Your birth order. Gender.
The country we were born in is not a mistake.
Our skin color is not a mistake. And all those freckles you have or don’t have.
God isn’t surprised you made it earth-side. He isn’t surprised you think post-it-notes can save the world, or that you haven’t been able to find a pair of matching socks in your house since 2007.
God knit you together and created you exactly perfect. Where you are standing right now, that earth beneath your feet that bears the weight of your presence, it is sacred because a sacred being stands upon it: you.
You are priceless. Invaluable. Never compared against another. Never regretted by God.
You are not what has happened to you. What someone took from you or did to you. You are not what someone else says you are, or even who you say you are. You are deeply and irrevocably eternal and brokenness is not eternal.
Stand in this today. Say it out loud. Because a thousand voices are telling you otherwise. Speak this truth over yourself and your children and all the people…that you are not a mistake.
God doesn’t make mistakes.
I’ve heard it is impossible.
It is impossible for you to be anything other than exactly what God created. And this is not something to fear, it is something to rest in.
Child Abuse Is The Social Justice Issue We’ve All Been Overlooking
I listened to a podcast today that talked about how, in the Bible, there is no concept of separate justice issues. There is only JUSTICE and INJUSTICE. Preach!
When you start talking about injustice, child abuse doesn’t really jump to the forefront of your mind. Because it hides in plain sight, and like a deadly bacteria that works its way deep into the crevices of your body, child abuse is an insidious destroyer of a sense of self.
Continue reading Child Abuse Is The Social Justice Issue We’ve All Been Overlooking
How Generational Curses Are Hurting Your Ability To Thrive
Think of your family. Think of your siblings. Your cousins. Your aunts and uncles. Your Grandparents.
What are they like? Are they thriving? Are they the type of people you’d like to be someday? Do you smile when you think of them?
Generational curses run in EVERY family, because we all carry the heaviness of sin in our bloodlines.
Continue reading How Generational Curses Are Hurting Your Ability To Thrive
Ask Yourself This ONE Question When You Don’t Know What To Do
I started asking myself questions several years ago. Does anyone else do this? Ask yourself a series of questions throughout the day?
Continue reading Ask Yourself This ONE Question When You Don’t Know What To Do
Christ Is Building His Kingdom Inside of Broken Vessels
We live in a world overcome with images. But mostly, we carry these images inside of us, always comparing, because searching for an identity is the core of what it means to be human.
Continue reading Christ Is Building His Kingdom Inside of Broken Vessels
This Is What I Want To Say To Every Survivor Of Child Abuse
I’ve lived through my fair share of traumatic moments. And I’ve learned that no one will ever stand up for you the way that only you can stand up for yourself.
Continue reading This Is What I Want To Say To Every Survivor Of Child Abuse
Listen to me. We are NEVER going back (R-rated)…
Let go of the people who say they love you but hold everything against you. Because true love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs.
Let go of the people who tear down your dreams with wild words of incapable fears. Because real love always hopes. Continue reading Listen to me. We are NEVER going back (R-rated)…
And This is How He Heals
Have you ever heard someone tell their story without a hint of shame?
In my senior year at Northwest University, we had a guest speaker; a man who had lived a wild life of parties and dark sexual pleasures. There he stood, with so much humility and joy and theatrical storytelling it was almost like he was telling someone else’s story. But he wasn’t. He lived every second of the heartache, the brokenness, the shame. And yet here he was: healed and thriving and generous and vulnerable. Continue reading And This is How He Heals
