discipline
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Lately I’ve been thinking about how strange it is to wake up one day and realize you have spent years trying to get back to a person you used to be, only to discover that God was quietly making you into someone else. I look at my children and sometimes feel the distance between who…
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There is a particular kind of evil that does not end when the man dies, or when the house is sold, or when the child grows up and finally walks out the door. It survives in the people who learned to call it something else. They learned that silence was loyalty. That protecting the family…
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There was a time when I thought God was supposed to make my life easier. I didn’t say it quite that plainly. I was more sophisticated than that. I dressed the idea up in spiritual language. I prayed for peace. I prayed for healing. I prayed for restoration. I prayed for the day when my…
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Sometimes I wonder… If my heart still races, have I failed God? If I’m still exhausted, is my faith too weak? If I still carry symptoms from trauma, have I not surrendered enough? I think many Christians quietly ask these questions. Perhaps the answer is this: My body is still catching up to a truth…
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The Small Permissions Most life-shattering failures do not arrive like lightning. They seep in like water through the foundation. They begin with tiny permissions no one else can see. Just this once. I deserve this. It helps me cope. For the child who grew up in safety, these permissions may remain small. But for the…
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People often imagine God’s miracles as lightning bolts. A flash. A spectacle. A man wakes blind and goes to sleep seeing. But there is another kind of miracle that receives far less applause because it happens so quietly that, for years, no one notices they are standing in one. It is the miracle of the…
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Life isn’t random to me. It’s a training ground. I’ve come to see that God designed it to shape my character, not to keep me comfortable. Every day puts choices in front of me. Some are obvious, most are small. None of them are neutral. Each one trains my will. I either move toward the…
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Oh God, the one who hears the small and voiceless, the one who spins the wind into hymns— do you see the bruises pressed into their silence? Do you touch the aching marrow of those who could not save themselves? The children cry in muffled tones, their voices swallowed whole by shadows. Their hands, once…
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Some mornings it feels like my heart is its own little plot of land, stubborn and overgrown. Not a polished garden, just soil that needs attention and a woman determined to show up anyway. That’s the real work: tending what you’d rather ignore. I’ve learned that resentment grows fast if you let it. Neglect does…
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I hated discipline. Every form of it. Until I learned that disciple is not punishment. Growing up we were punished for every slight infraction we made in my father’s kingdom. If you spoke or behaved inappropriately, a leather belt was waiting to connect with your raw skin. Any infraction, after he delivered his punishment, was…