Hard Things of Faith

If you have read the recent posts, 19, Knocked up & no good  , Honor Thy Father , you have been given a small picture of me, my dad, and generational sin. The conclusion to this is about the Lord and his hand upon my life even before I knew him. It's about how he provided the way for me to find healing and forgiveness and love after abuse. I was 16 years old when my father almost drank himself to death. He had stripped the lining of his esophagus and was bleeding internally so severely that they weren't sure if they could save him. They told us that if he lived through the night, he would not live another five years. I went into that hospital chapel that Christmas night, and I prayed to God, whom I did not know, for my father to die. This was a result of all the verbal and emotional abuse that happened in my home. I thought life would be so much better without him. The Lord disagreed; my father made it through the night and lived another 25 years with a cirr...

As a child, I loved Christmas. I believed in magical things like the North Pole, Santa Clause, flying reindeer, and elves. It was easy to imagine Santa flying all over the world. It was not just about the presents he was bringing but the fact that he would be visiting the home of every child in the world. We all were waiting for his arrival.   There was the great anticipation of Christmas Eve and the joy of Christmas morning.  Even in all of the excitement of the day, there was still a longing I couldn't quite grasp.  There was something about being united in something, but I didn't know what that was until I was older.  This longing still lives in my memory. The picture is of a community gathered around a giant Christmas tree in the city square, snow falling, lights twinkling, everyone singing Christmas carols.  The gift being, everyone knowing that they are where they belong, with friends, with family, with people they love.    In this i...

If you read last week’s blog,  19, Knocked up & No Good , you got a snapshot of what life was like at home for me with my verbally and emotionally abusive dad.  I wrote last week's blog as a stand-alone blog about ministering to post-abortive women but…  As I read it and reread it, what stood out to me most was my dad.  My father was so much more than the snapshot I have given you.  Even though our history was tainted by the ugliness of abuse, he and I are so much the same.  We both wanted to be good but didn't know how.  We both desired acceptance, but it had always been just out of reach.   After he died and I healed from the hurt, which you can read about here . The Lord opened my eyes to a whole other side of who my father was.  He had his own story of abuse. I would love to tell you that my dad and I found healing before he died, but we didn’t.  Our last interaction was full of hurt, anger, and self-righteousness. Let ...

My time with the Lord started quietly in confession last Sunday morning.  I had been up for hours and had sat through a good sermon, but my time with the Lord began at the end of the service when the pastor invited us to the communion table. It was at that moment I remembered that the Lord was with me, he knew what no one else could see. I was saddened by loss of friendship and connection. It's tempting to look back and grieve what was because it’s gone.  It’s a much harder task for some of us to look back and rejoice for having moments that have brought joy when they are no longer there. As a Military Spouse, you learn quickly that things change fast and that means that friends come and go in what seems like a blink of an eye. Before you know it time flies and it’s been 5, 10, or 15 years since you have seen people you once did everyday life with. Sometimes there is a friendship that comes along where the connection is immediate. It's l...

“And Hallelujah, Grace like rain falls down on me” The first time I heard these lyrics, there was a three-fold reaction, heartbreak, surrender, and belief.  To be honest, I couldn’t even tell you which one came first.  It was the moment I become acutely aware of my sinful nature, the Lord’s love, and God’s willingness to show me the grace I did not deserve.  Somewhere there had to be knowledge of these things when I gave my life to the Lord, but the understanding of these things became so much more clear when I heard this song.  I have struggled most of my Christian walk to fall in line with the rest of the Body of Christ.  There was always this thought that I could never be as “good” as them.  I didn’t realize that I had been trying to live down a reputation that haunted me for years.  I wanted so badly to be “good” and have a reputation that was fitting of a good Christian woman.  The thought was, to fit in wit...

We are 1 in 4 women.  We are in your churches, we are in your bible studies and we are in your small groups.  There is nothing from the outside that would make you think abortion is our story.  That is… until it’s too late.  There are so many misconceptions about the woman who chose to terminate a pregnancy and why we have done it.  The things I have heard are horrendous.  Some people think that abortion is just a form of birth control, recently I heard it said that it is a matter of convenience. These are not even the most heinous things I have heard.  The name-calling and the judgment has been too much for me to sit with and not say anything about.  Some people are happy to lump us all into a stereotype that somehow makes us sound like we are less of a human being or unworthy of the love of Christ.   Every one of us has a story.  I wish I could share with you some of these horrific things I have heard, but these st...

Someone once told me to write about what I am afraid to write about.   I will tell you, I do not write this entry lightly and there is part of me that is fearful, but I cannot be silent.  This entry is about a subject that causes division around the world.  This entry is about the reaction to abortion.  This is not a debate on being pro-life or pro-choice, this is a conversation about how we respond or react to this subject and to people we disagree with.  This is also a conversation about how we show the love of Christ to those who have chosen to terminate a pregnancy. It is a vicious fight between pro-life and pro-choice people alike.  The one thing they have in common is the passion in which they fight.  This subject is hard and it’s emotional.  People are passionate about it on both sides.  My question is this, shouldn’t we as Christians be able to have the hard conversation and sh...