“Just choose joy,” they say. Great advice, but not always easy to put into practice. The secret to choosing joy is making the choice to choose joy. But’s is so hard. How do we choose joy when chronic illness or any other suffering has taken over life? I’ve got a list to get you started.
Read MoreTouch, and my need for it, has highlighted what I’ve known for years: As a person living with a rare and undiagnosed disease, I have a deep need to be understood.
Jesus is fully human and fully God. He is all-knowing, the only One who can understand the physical, mental, and emotional struggles you experience. And he is all-powerful, the only One who cannot be overwhelmed by your need.
The comfort is this: The One who wept at the death of his friend, weeps for your pain also. The same One who touched the leper, can touch you too. In your pain and need, you are understood, completely, by Jesus.
Read MoreIn Biblical terms, making space to grieve is called “lament.” Lament is part of the process that brings us to hope. Like a splinter in your finger, it’s painful to begin with but it’s best to endure the “yuckiness” of tweezing it out in order to heal.
Put very simply, to lament is to name your pain or suffering and give yourself permission to feel all the feelings you have regarding it. It takes honesty. And it needs to be expressed in some way outside your head.
Read MoreThere are no rules to this growing-in-community thing. It can look different in each friendship circle. Jesus set the example with his disciples. He called them his “brothers” (Matthew 12:49, NIV). They met for prayer, for meals, and for ministry.
Have you ever re-read a favorite story from your childhood and thought, “Woah, were these messages in there the whole time?”
Something happens when we read children’s stories. Our hearts are open to messages of love and fear, struggles and redemption in ways that we would never grasp in a Sunday sermon.
Yes, they are great for my children, but hold on, they are good for me too!
Through a story written for children, my heart received the tender care it needed from my loving Father. His message of unconditional love got in. It cemented itself in my heart forever. It is part of me now.
That’s the power of children’s stories as soul care.
Read MoreWhether it’s infertility, secondary infertility, or the complex wait of adoption, countless women have gone through Sarah’s transformation from Waiting Mother to Expectant Mother. Just like Sarah, an unexpected message at an unexpected time changed my laughter from laughter of despair to laughter of joy.
God doesn’t owe us the details of his timing when he is about to fulfill a promise. But sometimes, by grace, we receive those details anyway. Laughing with joy is an appropriate response.
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