redemption
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The woman I am now would have terrified me then. Not because she is extraordinary. Because she is quiet. She wakes before the house does. Makes breakfast. Teaches her children. Folds small clothes. Washes yesterday from the dishes. Prays over ordinary things. Keeps showing up when there is no applause for it. She has learned…
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There is something almost offensively beautiful about the way children demand repetition. “Again.” Read the same book. Sing the same song. Push the swing. Build the tower. Knock it down. Again. And again. And again. We call it exhausting because we have forgotten how to be alive. Chesterton noticed something profound about children: their appetite…
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Somewhere along the way, we started believing that everything depended on us. Our healing. Our children. Our marriages. Our homes. Our futures. We clutch at them until our hands ache, convinced that if we loosen our grip for even a moment, the whole world will come apart. It is a curious form of pride disguised…
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When I was a little girl, I learned that silence could become a second skin. It wrapped itself around what had been done to me. It taught me to smile while my spirit folded itself into smaller and smaller corners. It whispered that survival was the same thing as peace. It wasn’t. Silence did not…
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The world can offer advice for healing the body. It may even help us understand parts of the mind. But the healing of the heart belongs to God. And I don’t believe healing is something we finally “arrive” at, as though one day we become completely fixed and untouched by pain. I think we…
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The Lie of “Handling It All”… Somewhere along the way, someone started saying, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” It’s printed on mugs, shared in church hallways, and offered to hurting people as though it’s Scripture. It sounds comforting, but it isn’t fully true. God absolutely allows more than we can handle.…
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Jesus keeps setting tables in the strangest places. I know because I’ve stumbled into a few of them. A child’s bedroom where something sacred was being violated. A house full of secrets. A girl learning too early that the world could be beautiful and monstrous at the same time. I thought I was abandoned there.…
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“I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.” – G.K. Chesterton The older I get, the more I suspect that fairy tales were never merely stories for children. They were maps. Maps for navigating a world filled with beauty and terror,…
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How I Learned to Redirect a Rebellious Spirit Toward Purpose There is a peculiar strength in a woman who refuses to conform. She is rarely loud, seldom fashionable in her convictions, and almost never understood by her peers. Yet history bends in subtle ways because of her. She does not follow the crowd. She builds…
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We’ve turned “God loves you” into “God affirms everything you do.” That isn’t love.That’s abandonment dressed up as kindness. Real love corrects. It sharpens. It refuses to leave you as it found you. A good father does not stand by while his child walks toward harm, nodding in approval so he can feel gentle. He…