-
Guided By an Unseen Hand – Part 2
Just two months ago, I wrote about trusting God’s hand even when you can’t see his plan. In a short time so much has changed, and yet the challenge to walk by faith remains. After a year and a half of waiting, praying, trusting, my husband was offered a new job. But it didn’t come in the package we expected. The trials of the past year opened our hands. Eventually we told the Lord we’d go anywhere—we just wanted to be used by him to make a difference. And he answered. My husband was offered a job nearly four hours from where we currently live. We’ve both grown up in…
-
The Keys to Emotional Healing: Part 1
After seeing God bring about major transformation of emotional healing in a number of broken people, I asked Him what was happening when He healed people’s hearts. I wanted to understand the process. His answer was simple and profound, but never easy: “grieving and forgiving.” Both of these emotional disciplines are necessary to move from the place of sustaining a wound to the soul, to the place where that wound no longer controls and diminishes us—because it has been transformed into a healed scar. Grieving means moving pain and anger from the inside to the outside. Tears are God’s lubricant for that process, and what a gift of grace tears…
-
Worship While You Wait
Waiting is the hardest thing I am ever asked to do. If I am waiting for something good, then it is difficult because I am so excited and can hardly wait for the party or the present or the event to happen. If I am waiting for something bad it seems even harder. I don’t want it. Yet, I know it is coming so I just want it to happen already. How good are you at waiting? When it comes to children and waiting…well, if you are a parent, you know how draining that can be on everyone. In my last blog I talked about the importance of waiting…
-
From Fears to Tears
In a previous blog post, I’m Scared, Lord, I wrote about my apprehensions concerning my upcoming hip replacement surgery. My doctor was cheerfully confident that I would not experience the post-operative pain I was afraid of, but I was all-too-aware of my potential complications. As a polio survivor, I’m twice as sensitive to pain as those whose brains were not infected by the poliovirus. On top of that, I was extremely aware of the fact that my severely arthritic hips had become basically frozen, leaving me with a limited range of motion. I knew that the surgeon and her team would be moving my legs in all kinds of unnatural…
-
Let My Tears Flow
This month I am thankful to have guest blogger, Marnie Legaspi, instruct us on how to appropriately minister to those who grieve. “Sister, I have cancer.” My stomach dropped. My body felt numb. My brain whirled with worst case scenarios. I tried to be brave. Every fiber in my being wanted to believe my thirty-eight year old brother was playing some kind of cruel joke. Who jokes about cancer, though? No one. The carcinoma that grew inside my big brother’s body advanced quickly, ravaging him within a mere six months. As I literally watched the tumors grow and protrude through his skin, my grief often came hard and fast leaving…
-
The Problem of Pain
Pain is not partial. It rears its ugly head in every home in every neighborhood in every city on every continent. It is not a respecter of age, race, or gender. Pain is almost always caused by loss. Pain can be brought on by a medical condition resulting in a loss of health. It can be caused by the loss of a relationship through a disagreement, a divorce, or the death. Sometimes a person is attacked physically, emotionally, verbally, or mentally and this develops a loss of safety. The opposite of someone attacking would be someone neglecting and this ends in a loss of nurture. The list could go on…
-
What Makes New So Beautiful?
New. What comes to mind when you think about that tiny but enlivening word? A home with freshly painted eggshell walls? A classroom full of wide-eyed kindergarteners? An unknown city bursting with possibilities—and anxieties? When I think about new, I envision a clean white shirt, freshly pressed with a hint of starch mingled with my husband's scent. I love fresh, new things. But I crave the familiar too. Do you? Flip through the book of Revelation, and you won't find much that's new—at least at the beginning. Images of destruction, fear, and horror stain the pages—until you reach the end. Then everything changes. In Revelation 21, the author paints a…
-
The Keys to Emotional Healing – Part 2
In part 1, I talked about grieving as a necessary part of emotional healing. The other part is forgiving, separating ourselves emotionally and spiritually from the offense so that we can continue to be healthy toward the offender. As I said last time, forgiving is like pulling out the soul-splinter that is causing pain and the emotional “pus” that accumulates from unresolved pain and anger. (Grieving discharges this emotional pus.) Forgiving releases the person who hurt us into the Lord’s care, for Him to deal with. We see this modeled by the Lord Jesus during the crucifixion process, when He repeated over and over, “Father, forgive them, for they know…
