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The One Truth You Need in Your Darkest Hour
Our little family is feeling just a bit threadbare as we step into this new season of darkness and cold, windy days. We’ve walked through deep waters over the past months, and we are weary. Perhaps you can relate. Maybe you need hope in your darkest hour, or perhaps you feel worn down by the daily grind of your life. Let’s take a few moments to find hope to hold onto in our dark seasons together today. In Your Darkest Hour, Turn Here Winter feels like a dark hour for me. This winter feels especially dark. It reminds me of some big bumps in the road of our lives, things…
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4 Inspiring Prayers for Hope in Troubled Times
A few years ago I met a woman who smiled more than anyone I’d ever met. She lived with a kind of hope I longed to uncover for myself. My smiling friend had faced hard seasons, losses I couldn’t even fathom, and grief no woman should ever have to bear. And yet she kept smiling. She inspired me to start praying passionate prayers for hope in my life. I want to be a hopeful woman. I want to live with optimism in my heart and a deep belief God is with me in the darkest valleys. Not long ago, I stumbled upon the following words: “Strength and dignity are her…
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3 Empowering Prayers for Strength and Comfort
He presses his face to mine in the silence of the night, and I drink it in. He’s inching ever closer to his fourth year, and I can’t help but wonder how it’s all going so fast. It seems like just yesterday I was uttering prayers for strength as the doctor pulled him from my body. We rock long into the early hours of a new day, and every time I try to put him down, he says, “Hold me one more minute.” I don’t have the heart to put him back in bed with this fever, this cough wracking his little body. I’m content to hold him through it.…
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5 Powerful Truths About Trusting God in the Valley
I weave through a mantle of green rose bushes, wood nettle, and poison oak. It’s growing darker here in the valley behind our house. I’m sure the neighbor boys are still pumping their little legs and racing our children across the backyard in the evening sunlight, but it feels like night in the valley. The shadows prompt me to consider what trusting God in the valley really looks like. Trusting God in the Valley As the valley walls block out the sun’s last rays, I recall a valley we faced when winter’s arms still stretched white over these hills. I rest on a fallen sycamore and watch trout jump as…
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3 Truths for When You’re Searching for God
I walk the country roads because I’m searching for God beneath the sapphire skies. The rolling hills and muddied pastures offer space to listen to my soul’s longings. The farmers are tilling the ground again today. The country roads smell like earth, life, and possibility. I watch the black soil turn and consider the change that will occur in this very place in a few short months. This bare patch of earth will soon birth corn stalks that reach far above my head. As I walk past the tilling tractors, I’m reminded of the words Jesus spoke to his disciples: “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts…
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3 Steps to Take When You’re Struggling With Life
I wrote an entire article with a small child on my back last week. Curious George was talking about birthday parties for the twentieth time in the week on the TV, and I typed while my own little monkey rested behind me on my back. No part of me wants to admit that I’m struggling with life in this season, but there are days . . . Later in the day, I longed for a reprieve, and I went to the basement for some time on the treadmill. Silence. Just the rhythmic rolling of the tread gliding over hard plastic. It felt like an escape. In less than five minutes,…
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How to Hope in God When He Makes You Wait
The world is turning green from the bottom up. I’ve always been captivated by this change. I can’t help but wonder if this life rising from darkness is meant to teach us how to have hope in God while we wait. Something powerful happens in hidden places. The daffodils and skunk cabbage climb out of some hidden place deep beneath the surface. The forest floor is alive and green long before the tallest maples burst into color. Every time it happens, I’m drawn in, as if for the first time. Maybe it’s because this change is reminiscent of my own journey. Change happens in hidden places, quiet places, and unseen…
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6 Healing Bible Verses for a Broken Heart
I was 21 the first time someone spoke the words, “God will use this for good,” in a painful moment. As much as I needed a few healing Bible verses for a broken heart, it felt like my friend was preaching at me instead of loving me. Perhaps you’re trying to heal your broken heart today, too. Maybe an unempathetic loved one has thrown a few Bible verses at you in an attempt to fix your broken heart. This isn’t an article about how to deal with insensitive people. However, I do hope to encourage you not to turn away from God because other people misuse his words with good…
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4 Things to Do When You Feel Helpless
I remember the way the shadows danced on the walls as I held her through the night, the ulcers in her mouth burning with a relentlessness that made sleep hard to find. I’d bring her to the bed and let her whimper in my arms as her three-year-old body slipped in and out of sleep, and it felt like something in me just might tear wide open. And what in the world are you supposed to do when you feel helpless over the situations that matter most in your life? It was a medical condition that shaped our lives for over a year, and most of the time we felt…
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How to Find Hope in Life When Your Heart Is Broken
We’re sorting through her little backpack when I hear the words echo from the TV in the living room. Another shooting. Fatalities. Children running for safety with their arms stretched in the air. I ask it in the whisper of a softly breathed prayer: Lord, show us how to find hope in life as we live in this broken world. When will it stop? When will the brokenness of the world give way to light and healing? How to Find Hope in Life We’re all facing the consequences of living in a fallen world. We all face dark days and troubled times. I think about this as I set the homework…
