I’m so excited to introduce Amy Bayliss to you today! I also had the pleasure of meeting Amy at She Speaks last summer, but I’ve been blessed by her writing for years. She is the author of Pursuit of Proverbs 31, a beautiful Bible study for women. I know you will just fall in love with her! Nineteen years ago I was a broken teenage girl who fell in love with a broken boy. Though Mark drank a lot and gave many {Read More}

It is that point in your life when everything is broken that you must make a choice. Trust or despair? Bitterness or praise? Beauty or ashes? I think it’s the reason that God doesn’t always protect us from brokenness. It’s the perfecting of our faith, the molding of our character.  It’s the point where everything changes. And if we chose to walk toward the light, there is blessing. Yes, I said IS. Not WILL BE. Maybe there won’t be manna {Read More}

It’s been 1,178 days since I first felt the shattering. I can still feel the grass on my bare legs as they lifted my body to the stretcher. I hear the questions I couldn’t find a voice to answer. Ma’am, what day is it? What is your name? Who is the president? I see the look on the paramedic’s face, perplexed and shouting that he couldn’t find a pulse. I remember only the shutting of the door of the ambulance {Read More}

When I close my eyes, I can still see the white picket fence in the distance. Flowers surround it’s base as rays of sun dance around them. How desperate I am to frolic in the dream, to twirl around and bask in all that is beautiful. But it didn’t turn out that way. This one thing has been the hardest to swallow. I didn’t get my white-picket-fence perfect family. It wasn’t because I didn’t try. Oh, how I tried. I even had {Read More}

Wind beat cold on my face as I stood before it’s beauty. The depths of creation cried out His glory and I could hardly breathe. My whole existence paled and God overwhelmed. To think of His magnificence. To think of His scandalous grace. It was breathtaking. Incomprehensible. It was broken. As the Bible defines it, the Grand Canyon is the result of a catastrophe: the magnificence formed through the wrath of God on a sinful world through a destructive flood. But one can not see the destruction without {Read More}

This morning my sweet little 2 year old turned on the charm with those big blue eyes and pleaded for another piece of toast. Believing that two carb-infused and sugar coated slabs were sufficient for one breakfast, I told him no. He pierced his little lips and squinted his eyes in anger. “Fine,” he stomped away angrily “I’m gonna tell my mommy.” After moments of hysterical laughter over his decision to threaten me with telling-ME that I was being unreasonable, {Read More}

Most Americans woke up today and pledged a commitment to a better tomorrow. You know the drill… healthier eating habits, more consistent exercise, better control of spending habits, intentional parenting, a new time management system, etc. Even if you aren’t the resolution-making type, I bet you still woke up this morning with high hopes. Hopes that this year would be filled with blessing and promise. Hopes that even just one thing that you do this year would reap harvest. I woke up this morning {Read More}

Can you imagine what it must have been like for her? Years of temple prostitution likely left her broken, worthless, and ashamed. But Rahab had heard about this God, the one who parted the Red Sea (Josh 2:10) and she believed. She clung to the hope of the miracle and she trusted this God, causing her to help the spies when they entered her city. I realize that Chrismas is hardly the time when people think about Rahab. But, she {Read More}

I learned to drive on 6 lane highways that really should have been 10. The phrase bumper-to-bumper was a daily ritual and it was a good day if there was only one accident hosing things up on the 5 o’clock commute home. So, when I moved to a fairly small town, I had great difficulty adjusting to this new way of driving. I would come up to a 4-way stop and everyone else would still be sitting there politely waiting {Read More}

Today I am desperate for prayer. Desperate to hear from my Father. I need direction. Guidance. Comfort. My soul is hungry for the ONE who sees me. The one who holds my tears in His hands and speaks promise into my moments. I long for even a moment to be with Him today. Maybe you feel the same desperation. The brokenness waiting for it’s redemption. The wounds crying out for His healing. As my fingers move across this keyboard in {Read More}

The clock kept ticking on past 11 pm and I had yet to shower. The day had been long and the worries a constant battle. I tripped over a pile of children’s books, a plastic ambulance, and a crushed oreo as I stumbled into the bathroom. I wanted to skip the shower and curl up with a great book, but knew that choice would complicate matters. As I turned the corner, my feet slipped on a slightly damp floor from {Read More}

Please help my welcome Emily as a guest to my blog. Today’s post is part of the series, Walking a friend through the fire. I pray that you will be blessed! When my daughter lay in the hospital bed, and we learned about seizures and tumors, grief and worry surrounded me. I needed sleep and a cup of coffee and I needed to read her a book without crying. I needed help. I needed help from other people, but I did not {Read More}

Guest post by Lara L. Sadowski “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” –Genesis 1:27 Eating disorders are not about food … or, in my case, the lack of food. They are about control – plain and simple. I felt absolutely out of control due to my intense depression as a child, and those feeling of hopelessness followed me into my adulthood. And then I {Read More}