Refiner’s Fire
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moreWhen you’re wondering: How God Feels About Storms?
On Tuesday, May 21 st, 2013When the guy on the screen says that he could hear the cries of children underneath the rubble, his voice starts to crack and how in the world does anything stand in a world like this? How do you just put a jug of milk out on the table on a Tuesday and stand there watching your kids eat breakfast, light in their hair, the sky hanging outside the window like a ...
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moreLetters to the Wounded {#1}
On Friday, March 08 th, 2013And after sharing Letters to the Wound {#2} this week? …. I went back in the archives and pulled out Letters to the Wounded {#1}. D ear Wounded, You were bleeding quiet in my inbox. I read your letter slow, line by line, the way one follows the trail of smearing salty red back to find the gash, to the place where the skin weeps blood. I read your words, the ones about do...
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moreLetters to the Wounded {#2}
On Monday, March 04 th, 2013Dear Thriver, You didn’t just survive, so let’s toss that myth right at the outset. I’ve seen you living chin brave through the hurt and how you keep taking one step out of bed and one through the door and how you scale mountains by relentlessly taking steps forward. The way you keep walking? You’re no victim. You’re a Thriver. You may bleed but yo...
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moreWhy Weak is the New Strong: Radical Right Where You Are {Pt4}
On Wednesday, February 06 th, 2013So I fell extremely anemic in the fall. Could hardly drag out of bed, felt like jello, looked like a gaunt ghost, and got winded walking from the sink to the stove. I’d draped arms around the Farmer’s neck and told him I was sure I was right broke. ...
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moreHow to Breathe Through the Hard Times
On Tuesday, January 22 nd, 2013They were born the same week. Both of them, days apart, two miracle years ago this week. My scribbly little book and her loveliest little person. And my sister had said to me, said into the phone, during early labor — “Tell me I can do this.” And I wait for her to breathe heavy through the mother wave crest...
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moreThe Truth about Sandy Hook: Where is God when Bad Things Happen?
On Monday, December 17 th, 2012When the guy with the glasses and guitar stands at the front of the chapel, in the middle of Nowhere Country, and tells us all to stand, I’ve got no idea if I can. I don’t know if legs can hold a heart this heavy. I don’t know if anyone can stand straight in a fallen world and why don’t we all just fall on our skinned and bloodied knees? When grief is deepest, words ar...
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moreWhere is God in the dark of this weekend?
On Saturday, December 15 th, 2012When you can hardly even ask where the heart of God is in all this evil and dark … God takes our broken hearts and gives us His own still-beating heart, His pierced-right-through-and-made-whole heart, so we can still keep breathing. His heart this weekend is in us… in our weeping and moaning and wounded doubts, in the places where we don’t be...
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moreWhat to do With a Broken Heart this Christmas
On Friday, December 14 th, 2012That one doctor thought it was a bit of a miracle before they even cracked open the chest and cut a way at his heart. Because who in the world figures out you’ve got a tumor plugging up an entire cavernous heart chamber when you’re blithely driving kids to hockey on Tuesday night and fine-tuning a tractor engine on Thursday and sitting in the front pew on Sunday? Ma...
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moreWhen You’re Looking for a Christmas Miracle {Pt. 1}
On Friday, November 30 th, 2012They say that the most glorious mess is the foot of the tree on Christmas Day. But there are frank people who will just straight out tell you that the whole thing can be a bit of a mess. The kids’ uncle lies in a hospital bed waiting for a surgeon to cut into his chest wall and slice a tumor out of th...
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moreWhen Thanksgiving & the Holidays Just Seem Hard
On Wednesday, November 21 st, 2012‘Whatever.” The Wednesday morning before turkey and pie and black Friday flyers, I wake up to this smothering of fog and this teen muttering it through the kitchen: “Whatever.” And what do you say but that’s not quite the way to start off the day, and he shrugs his shoulders and slams the bathroom door behind him, and I get it. ...
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moreWhat We All Need to Really Breathe
On Tuesday, November 13 th, 2012Six times my mama lies in ER this past week, waiting news. Good doctors can have degrees and no answers. My sister gives up long days and advocates on knees and in waiting rooms and Mama and her, they sing hymns and drown out clocks and fears. I rub Mama’s feet during the short nights and the late watches. I massage th...
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more3 lines that are lifelines in any storm
On Tuesday, October 30 th, 2012And on the morning after the brunt of the hurricane, it comes down to just three. Those three that Jonathan Edwards said one had to know about real Christian joy, that no wind should ever tear away from the knowing. And I look out the kitchen window at the corn still standing and I take and make the old preacher’s words real simple and I murmur it quiet...
