I began opening the Bible as a child searching for answers to specific questions. It was like being pelted with words, and not having any sense of the person speaking those words. I sometimes found answers, but more often I left feeling more disconnected and confused. What I didn’t understand then (and keep learning) is […]
My Fatal Flaw
We all love to hear the story of the perfect baby boy who changed everything. But today I feel compelled to tell you about another baby boy. It’s not a different story really, but part of the same story. I never met him, but he changed my life. Here’s part of his story, in the […]
All that, for Just One?
My family sold our house, gave away our possessions, and moved to another country to serve trafficked women and girls. The painful reality is that, in spite of our commitment and sacrifice, I only got to pray with one prostitute. A year before our big leap, my husband and I took an exploratory trip to […]
Making Sense of the Wasteland
I want everything in my life to have purpose and meaning. Waste makes me squirm. I’d rather not face those times and places in my life that feel pointless. But we’ve all felt this ache, maybe even shame, over things that didn’t gel. We sense the “more” that could be, but it’s too murky to […]
A New Way of Listening
By guest writer Caitlin Boersma After a month or so of referring to Simon as my foster son on social media, I received an unexpected comment from a Facebook friend: “You shouldn’t call a child you’re caring for your “foster” son. As long as he’s with you he’s your son…Think about how that word would […]
The Circular Path to the Hidden Side Door
“Didn’t he say ‘Sempre dritta.’? This doesn’t seem very straight to me.” My husband and I were lost in the Italian heartland, headed for a meeting with a client (this was several years ago, when our jobs involved overseas travel). Our GPS led us into someone’s driveway, and when I asked an elderly gentleman for […]
Escaping the Snare of Faithfulness
The word faithfulness keeps coming up when I tell our family’s story, but I didn’t realize until today what a trap it had become. I’m not suggesting that being faithful is bad. But when I actually caught myself thinking, “We’ll just keep faithfully putting one foot in front of the other as long as we […]
God’s Glory is for Quitters
Over the last several weeks I’ve shared how you can minimize distractions and make room for more of God’s glory in your life. Many of you have shared how hard it is, especially as moms. No matter how much we do, we feel torn between the things we still haven’t done. And we live in […]
The More I Fought this, the More I Needed It
Sometimes we fight the thing we need most. Since we’ve been talking about increasing our capacity for God’s glory, I need to be honest with you about how God made room for more glory in my life, and how I resisted it. When we first talked about observing the Biblical Sabbath (Shabbat in Hebrew), I […]
It took Losing my most Precious Possession For Me to Find This
Early this summer, I watched my wedding ring fly off my finger in slow motion. You guys, I’ve lost so much in this last year…so much. Losing my ring felt terrible and somehow…appropriate. Since I knew when and where it fell off, we told ourselves we would find it. We spent hours scouring the […]