Tag: God

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anxiety

Anxiety During the Holidays

As a culture, we tend to idolize and idealize holidays.  The food has to be just right.  Everyone has to get along.  The decorations have to be creative and fun, and the house has to be spotless.  You better come up with some good stories and some exciting news to tell your family.  There’s some serious pressure to do everything right and to not mess it up.  After all, you don’t want to be the one ruining the holiday.

I’ve struggled with anxiety for several years, and the holidays have gotten progressively harder for me.  My anxiety tells me that I have to be perfect, that I can’t mess things up, and it literally ruins the holiday for me.  All I ever want to do on the holiday is stay home and do nothing.  But that’s not the way the world works.  I don’t get to call in sick to Christmas.

When I started dating my husband, I actually confessed this to him.  I was nervous about being around his family, especially since I was meeting a lot of them for the first time.  What if their first impression of me was not good, and they hated me for the rest of our lives together?  They also had their own set of rules that I was afraid I would ruin.  But if I went back to my own house, I felt like I was walking on a tightrope, and that anything I said or did could cause everything to go off balance.

I am fully aware that all of this is irrational, but it does not shake the feeling that I get whenever the holidays roll around.  What I’ve learned after letting this happen is that, if I let anxiety win, I miss out on a great day.  Since I’ve been praying and having the support of my husband holding me accountable, I’ve been conscious about not letting my anxiety get the best of me.  I intentionally focus on what I look forward to, not what I anticipate going wrong.  And for the last couple of years, I’ve actually been able to laugh, talk, and relax with both sides of my family instead of being overcome with anxiety.

If you are like me, here are some practical tips that I have discovered to at least avoid the panicking feeling:

  • Watch what you eat/drink.  People tend to indulge on sugary snacks and drinks during the holidays.  Sugar causes your heart to race, which in turn causes your anxiety to increase.  Alcohol may calm your anxiety, but it may also give you acid reflux.  Be aware of how certain foods affect your body.  If you’re feeling anxious, drink some water or some peppermint/herbal tea to calm down your body.
  • Remember the true meaning of the holidays.   As a Christian, I celebrate Christmas, the time of year where we remember Jesus our Savior coming to Earth.  Jesus is the Prince of Peace, the one who reconciles all people to each other as well as to God.  When I am anxious, I can remember that Jesus is the Prince of Peace.  When I am nervous about upsetting someone, I can remember that my identity is in Christ and not in what people say about me.  If you’re feeling anxious, remember that God is with you.  One of God’s names is Emmanuel, which means God With Us.  God is with you, even in your time of weakness.
  • Guard your heart.  Not everyone believes the same things that you do.  Some people might mock you for trusting in God.  Do not let their negativity, complaining, or criticizing keep you down.  If you need to separate yourself, find another family member to talk to.  If someone wants to chew your ear off about how wrong you are, don’t let it get to you.  Just take a deep breath and let it go in one ear and out the other.
  • Breathe.  The holidays are meant to be a time for relaxation, reflection, and fun.  Don’t let your anxiety get in the way of the rest that you deserve.  You work hard all year, so you are allowed one free day where you don’t have to do anything.  You can be anxious any other time this year; give yourself a break just this one day.  Literally, close your eyes, breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth, until the anxiety is gone.  The anxiety will pass; you just have to let it leave.

Merry Christmas to all!  I pray that the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, meets you all in a special way this year.  I can’t wait to hear what He does in your life!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Categories
Books

Just Courage: From Safe to Brave

The office where I work has a collection of books that the senior staff believed will help encourage us and strengthen us in our jobs.  I was interested to find a book by Gary Haugen, the founder of International Justice Mission, among the pile.  One of my friends works for IJM, so I was excited to read about the beginnings of this organization.  I also wanted to see what the work of IJM had to do with the work that I do in my church office.

The book is short, so it honestly is a nice pick-me-up, but if you really let the words settle into your soul, it will rock your world.  Haugen talks about his journey founding IJM, as well as the stories of some of his associates who have changed the world in big, brave ways.  At first, I thought this book would just be filled with success stories and a shout-out to the great staff at IJM.  But it also includes a challenge, a challenge to give up our safe and take on our brave.

Haugen uses the analogy of the cul-de-sac to describe how Christianity is today.  Most people feel that keeping their houses in a cul-de-sac area is safer because it is only one-way traffic.  However, studies have shown that more accidents occur in these areas than in other areas.  Therefore, we were wrong about what would be best for our children and families.

He expands on this idea of a cul-de-sac by saying that we tend to play safe in church.  We like our comfortable house, our kids, our pets, our finances, and we don’t really see life beyond that.  We get dissatisfied.  And the reason we get dissatisfied is because God has a bigger life for us.  He doesn’t want us to be safe; He wants us to be brave.  He wants us to trust Him.

I appreciate the work of IJM and the faith of Gary Haugen to start this organization.  I will admit that it is not a long book, so there is not much more to discuss.  But a powerful sentence can change the course of your day, even the course of your life.  Gary Haugen’s book Just Courage, although it is short, packs a punch that gets you thinking.  If you let it, this short book could change the course of your life.

In terms of how it relates to my job at the church, and my job as a writer, it reminds me that an act of courage can truly impact the world.  The courage that will truly change the world for good, though, is the courage that comes from knowing Jesus Christ as Savior.  I personally tend to be a fearful person, who even gets nervous going to work on occasion, but when I trust in the strength that God gives me, I am able to drive through traffic, make it to work, talk to people on the phone, interact with my co-workers, and handle all the tasks before me.  In my blog post next week, I’m going to share about what courage looks like.

Categories
Wisdom Wednesday

When Fresh Water Looks Familiar

We just set up a television in our office to display a calm waterfall scene.  So far, the scene has managed to distract me from getting work done because it is so relaxing!  My eyes are drawn to the water spewing out of the waterfall.  How does the water look so fresh every time, but the water is never replaced by an outside force (well, obviously, besides rain in real life, but in this picture, there is no sight of rain anywhere).

I feel like the word of God is accurately portrayed in the vision of a waterfall.

I’ve heard people ask for a fresh word from the Lord.  We want to hear something new from God, not something that we’ve heard before.  We’ve been following His direction about an issue for several months, and we need something new to follow.

Isn’t that so much like our culture, to always expect the new and unfamiliar?

Come on, God!  Let’s get on with it.

God really challenged my belief when I was brought to read Psalm 23.  Let me tell you, if I could get a Masters in a verse or passage in the Bible, it would either be Philippians 4:6-7 (thank you, anxiety) or Psalm 23.  I had to memorize Psalm 23 for one of my classes in my undergrad.  I had done a Bible study on Psalm 23.  I heard a speaker talk about Psalm 23 during another one of my Bible studies.  I had studied sheep and shepherds and understand the importance of the sheep and the shepherds.  I studied each and every word out of the study.  I analyzed every, single, verse.  I sucked the verse dry, as if it were a hose with a limited amount of water.

So, why was God leading me back to read it again?  Didn’t I already graduate from Psalm 23?  Where was my fresh word?  Where was God going to meet me?

I read the chapter, and nothing in particular stuck out to me.

But that is exactly what I learned.

See, I approach God with what I want Him to teach me.  I approach God expecting Him to speak to me, expecting a fresh word, expecting His Word to bend and mold so that I could be satisfied with new information.  But I realized that God isn’t going to change His Word for me.  He isn’t going to feed me new food when He has already provided me my daily bread.

When the Israelites wandered through the desert, they got sick of the manna that the Lord was miraculously providing them daily.  The LORD was literally making bread fall from Heaven, and the Israelites were mad that they had to have manna again.  They were getting sick of it.  They were so numb to the miracles of God that they had forgotten that their provision truly was a miracle.

Instead of expecting a fresh word from the LORD, I should be grateful every time I approach God’s Word because God speaks to me through His Word.  Even if He keeps repeating “I love you” or “I will provide what you need,” God is speaking to me.  Psalm 23 may be a familiar word, but the word will always be true.  No matter if I’m about to walk into a difficult season, if I’m walking through a difficult season, or I just came out of a difficult season.  I’ve learned through time that the LORD is my shepherd.  Even though I can believe that now, there have been times in my life where I’ve really had to trust God to provide financially or emotionally, and I’ve seen Him provide money for me when I need it, as well as peace when I was going through a panic attack.

In that moment I was getting a reminder of the times that God had revealed Himself to me as shepherd, and has taken me through the hard times.  If I was expecting a fresh word, I would have missed the wonderful lesson that God wanted to show me.  When we approach God’s Word, let’s not be expectant of a fresh word.  Let’s be humble, teachable, and let God speak to us through His Word.

Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash

Categories
Marriage

Finding Financial Freedom as a Couple

This post is a unique one because my husband helped me write it.  Go, team!

My husband and I are excited to say that we are 100% debt-free.  In our first year of marriage, we paid off my student loans (about $20K by the time we got married), his car loan ($21K with 0% interest), and a few dollars we owed my sister!  We are now in the process of saving money toward our emergency fund, and after that, we will start putting money toward a down payment for a house.

As many Christian couples that have gone before us, we have learned a lot from the teachings of Dave Ramsey, as well as from Christians around us who are good at budgeting.  We are thankful for their wisdom, and ultimately, for the wisdom that God has provided for us during our newlywed stage.

Here are some quick tips that have helped us to find financial freedom as a couple:

  • Evaluate your priorities. As a couple, we’ve had to make some hard decisions together about our spending.  Do we use our wedding money to pay off student loans, or to buy a house?  Do we save for a house, or do we go on vacation?  Wherever we choose to spend our money demonstrates our priorities.  Even while looking for jobs, we’ve had to ask ourselves: would we rather be making six figures, or would we rather be together as a family?  Unfortunately, the world does not promise us both.  We often have to pick between long hours of overtime and spending quality time with our loved ones.  We’ve clearly chosen the latter; we’ve both decided that we never want work to come before our marriage, even if that means making less money.
  • Tithe.  Along with priorities, in our marriage, our priority is to give glory to God and to serve Him above anyone else.  We have chosen to love God first, then each other, and then our family, and then everyone else.  That pattern of love is the way we make every decision, including with our finances.  We honor God by giving Him the first-fruits of our income, not the last bits of crumbs, if there’s even any left!  We have seen God bless our marriage and bless our finances through our decision to honor Him with the money that He has given us.
  • Make a budget.  Sit down together and make a budget that works for both of you.  One thing we’ve learned from Dave Ramsey is to assign every dollar that you make to an item on your budget.  The money shouldn’t just sit in your bank account.  It should have a purpose, and you and your spouse should have control over it.
  • Stick to the plan: This is the point that my husband wanted to add.  If you don’t stick to the plan, then you’ll just get right back into debt.  Plain and simple.  These are the wise words from my husband!
  • Have open communication: Today, I got a check for $10.  Ten.  Dollars.  That’s it.  But I still sent a message to my husband to let him know about it and to let him know what I was going to do with it.  Part of sticking to the plan is to talk about what money is spent, what money is taken in, and what money is being saved.  We can talk about what is working in our budget and what needs to be adjusted.  We don’t hide any money from each other, and we don’t make any major purchases without talking about them.
  • Make it fun: My husband and I have truly enjoyed saving our pennies together.  We have found fun and creative ways to save money each day.  In the beginning of our marriage, we would go out to eat in order to have fun.  Just yesterday, our date night involved learning how to play the guitar together by watching videos on YouTube (for free!).  When we went out to eat on Friday, we tried to see what little things we could change to our meal to lower the cost; we ended up sharing a drink and the fries.  It can be fun coming home after a day together and still having money in our pockets.

I am thankful to God that my husband and I are a team.  Since we do everything together, we are able to celebrate our personal victories together.  That includes becoming debt-free and saving money toward bigger things.

Make the decision today to trust God with your finances and to work toward your financial goals as a team with your spouse.

Photo by Jonathan Brinkhorst on Unsplash

Categories
Marriage

Why the First Year is the Hardest

For eleven months, my husband would ask me if we could eat our anniversary cake.  “No!”  I protested.  My play-it-by-the-rules attitude insisted that we must eat our anniversary cake on our anniversary.  That’s what made it special, right?

On the drive home from our anniversary trip last week, we were so excited to finally be able to eat our anniversary cake.  My husband joked that they gave us the wrong cake, or that the box was empty, but we both hoped that none of those were true.  For most of our months of marriage, we’ve heard several horror stories of in-laws eating the wedding cake while the bride and groom were on their honeymoon.  We were thankful that was not our story!

I began to realize that this was the last tangible piece of our wedding that we could grasp together.  My dress is collecting dust in the closet.  My husband returned his tux.  The rest of the food had already decomposed in the trash (sorry for that graphic!).  Even the honeymoon was a distant memory.  This cake was the last tangible piece of the wedding that we can experience.

The last time we had this cake, we were madly in love.  We ate the strawberry and buttercream without a single clue of what it would be like to spend the rest of our lives together.  We had no idea what we were in for in the years to come.

This time, the cake tasted even sweeter, because we were able to eat it on the other side of the spectrum.  We were able to eat the cake knowing that we were much closer, much stronger, and much more in love than we were the last time we ate it.

The lovely people who offer us unsolicited advice warned us that the first year of marriage is always the hardest.  Some have even gone as far to say that the first year of marriage will either make or break your relationship.  Hearing advice like this left me a little fearful of what the first twelve months of our journey together would hold.  I wondered if every fight, every disagreement, every time I didn’t get my way, would make or break us.

Since my husband and I fought on the same side, we knew each conflict would only bring us closer together.

We’ve learned together that the first year of marriage is the hardest because it is the first year where we have to surrender.  The rest of our marriage will continue to be surrender, but after surrendering our holiday traditions that were so familiar to us, after surrendering our own personal ways of budgeting, and after surrendering how we spend our quality time, we now have a rhythm for the rest of our lives together.

We know that surrender is still going to feel uncomfortable.  We know that surrender is not always going to be cut and dry.  We know that surrender is going to involve compromise from both of us.  But since we’ve already surrendered to one another for a year, we know that we can continue to surrender daily for as long as we both shall live.

Biblically, this type of surrender is called submission.  Ephesians 5:21 calls us to submit ourselves to one another.  The marriage relationship is no different.  We need to submit ourselves (our hopes, dreams, traditions, and beliefs) to one another in order to become one.  Surrender helps us to connect.

Our society does not like surrender.  Society teaches that we need to fight for our rights, to fight for our way, to never give up until we win.  Surrender, however, is messy.  Surrender tells us to fit a square peg in a round hole.  But surrender causes us to give up our comfort for the sake of true satisfaction and true contentment.

I wanted to write a blog post about my wedding cake because I was amazed that it tasted so good.  People had told us that the wedding cake usually tastes horrible by the first year.  (But hey, here’s a shameless plug for those planning their wedding: strawberry apparently freezes really well!)  I was so excited to be able to prove them wrong.  I was so excited to share that our cake tasted just as delicious as it did one year ago.  I was so excited to share what this cake symbolized: that we defied the odds of our society, that we defied the negative “advice” that we received, and that we not only survived our first year of marriage, but we thrived.

Are you thriving in your marriage?  Maybe it’s time to surrender your expectations of the perfect marriage, your holiday traditions, your budget, and your time.  But since I’ve been getting a lot of unsolicited advice since marriage, I’m going to offer you some: surrendering to your spouse is so much easier when you’re already fully surrendered to God.  Jesus surrendered His life so that we could have a relationship with God.  He calls us to give up our lives in return.  Our surrender to our spouse is just a small reflection of our surrender to Christ.  Ultimately, we must give God control of our lives and let Him remove the roughness of our edges so that we could connect deeply with our spouses.

This is an actual picture of a tier of our wedding cake.  It tasted better than it looked!

Categories
Marriage

Make Time to Connect

My love language is quality time.  That doesn’t just mean that I like to sit with my husband and watch TV.  No, it means sitting face to face and having a deep conversation that involves getting to know each other (and preferably, this meeting should have tea involved).  Since this is not my husband’s love language, it took us several months to understand what that looked like in our marriage.  This weekend, my husband truly spoke my love language.

This weekend, we celebrated our first anniversary.  My husband found us a sweet bed and breakfast in Connecticut.  Considering we are from suburban Long Island, where we have a plethora shops, restaurants, and movie theatres, we were in for a rude awakening when we noticed that there was nothing in sight around us but beautiful mansions, trees, and the house where we would be staying.  I had asked my husband to plan a place that was just the two of us.  I didn’t want any distractions; I just wanted to relax with my husband.  We were three hours away from home and we didn’t have cell phone service.  It was exactly what we needed.

In the thirty hours we were away (between driving to Connecticut, staying at the B&B, and driving home), we talked about everything.  We resolved some issues that we were having and made compromises that worked in both of our favors.  Since we were away from all the distractions and anyone who could make an objection to our plans, we figured that in the middle of nowhere was the perfect place to resolve our issues and set goals for the year ahead.

We spent at least an hour trying to state our case, looking into each other’s eyes and attempting to compromise.  We now have our holidays planned from Thanksgiving this year (2017), to Easter 2019.  We also have more of an idea of our financial goals for the upcoming year.  We used the time that we were given on this trip to truly get back on track and fall in love again.

Life gets in the way sometimes.  We’re distracted by work, by money, by our plans with friends/family, and by our own hopes and dreams.  We have both been in a season of waiting for several months, and it has taken a toll on us emotionally and physically.  The best solution for both of us was to drive three hours away, sit in a fancy house with no one else around, and re-connect.

We have found that this time away has truly helped our marriage for the better.  We were in love before, but now that we have reconnected and we are on the same page, it feels like we have a deeper intimacy because we’ve been reminded that we’re fighting on the same side.  We’re praying the same prayers and aiming for the same goals.  We know that we can use our time to remind ourselves of the commitments we made over the past few months.

If you need to reconnect with your spouse, here are some habits that we’ve implemented to make our marriage a priority:

  • Make a date night.  Depending on your schedule, your date night could be once a week or even once a month, as long as it’s consistent and it’s firm.  For example, we have our date night on Friday.  That means we cannot make plans with friends/family on Fridays.  Our only exception is when we make double date plans with other married/engaged couples, especially our couples Bible study that meets every other Friday.
  • Be intentional.  Have an agenda.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money.  In fact, you don’t have to spend any money.  My husband and I plan on using our next date night to learn how to play the guitar together (we both have guitars and haven’t even touched them since we got engaged).  When we go out to eat, since we’re on a budget, we make a game out of using a gift card and keeping the bill within the amount on the gift card.  It doesn’t have to be an extravagant night out; it just has to be an environment where you can talk and remind each other of your love for each other.
  • Set goals.  During our first year of marriage, we learned a lot and we realized a lot of our flaws as well.  Talking about our issues this weekend gave us goals to work toward for our next year of marriage.  Setting goals makes what you think is impossible attainable in your marriage.  As a result of this weekend, we agreed to get out of debt (pay off my husband’s car), save for a house, and make better use of our time.  Working on these goals together strengthens our marriage and makes the mundane tasks of life a little more fun.

Making our marriage a priority honors God.  When we pray together and seek God in our marriage, He meets us during those conversations.

 

Photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash

Categories
Books

What I Learned from “Gray Faith”

I met Carrye Burr on the reNEW retreat that I attended on Columbus Day weekend.  She was one of the women who encouraged me and now continues to encourage me with my writing.  We sat next to each other in the main room where we had our plenary sessions.  At the retreat, they had a Book Celebration and Signing for everyone who had published a book that year.  Carrye’s name was on the list!  I was sitting next to a published author!

I read the excerpt from her book Gray Faith on a sheet that we had received of everyone who published a book.  She wrote that she had grown up in a Christian home, the daughter of a pastor, and she had a lot of questions about her faith.  But, because she grew up as a pastor’s kid, she did not feel she had permission to ask those questions.  Nevertheless, she writes this book with the answers that she has discovered throughout her life, especially through the various trials that she has endured with her health, raising her kids, and the adoption of her son.

When I saw her summary, I instantly wanted to buy a copy of her book, not just because she was a debut novel writer, but because she had a story that was worth sharing.

The book is a fairly quick read (about 100 pages), but the information that she provides is genuine and fresh.  Without giving away too much about the book, Carrye includes issues that people deal with today, such as “seeker-friendly” churches and how to deal with sin.  Through the lens of a mother of three kids and a daughter to an obedient pastor, she is able to provide parenting advice for those who want to foster spiritual growth in their children, especially for those kids who have these times of questions about faith.

My favorite part of the book is the chapter on the church.  Having grown up in the church, Carrye never really thought about what it would be like for first-time guests to a church.  She felt comfortable in her church, so she thought everyone did as well.  But as she moved from place to place with her family and tried out different churches, she realized that all churches do not do things the same way.

Because of the rise of “seeker-friendly” churches (the ones with the dim lights and the coffee and the pastors wearing jeans), Carrye begins to question how comfortable the church should actually be for first-time guests.  Yes, we want them to feel welcome, but Christianity in and of itself isn’t always about comfort.  As a matter of fact, it’s about conforming to God’s standard for our lives, which almost always means a surrender of our plans for our lives.  That doesn’t sound too comfortable to me.  Since I work for a church that I think does a pretty good job of making it seeker-friendly but also Christ-focused, it was encouraging for me to do a heart check of what is important in a church.

The book Gray Faith demonstrates a sign of maturity in the Christian who asks these questions. The Christian who questions does not take everything at face value. If you have these questions, they might not get answered through reading this book, but the book was meant to start a conversation. May your questioning bring you closer to God.

Carrye Burr self-published this book, and it was a great book to get her name out there to continue building her platform as a writer.  At the retreat, she was already playing around ideas for another book, so I’m excited to see what other ideas God gives her!  You can purchase Carrye’s book Gray Faith on Amazon.

Categories
Books

Just Mercy: A Book that Made Me Cry, Ponder, and Cry Some More

As much as I love reading, it takes a lot for a book to make me cry.  Usually I cry at movies because the screen is right in front of me.  But a book has to be written in such a way that I can literally imagine myself standing in the same room as the one being hurt, and feel bad for him/her.

Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption was written in that exact way.

This book was another read recommended by the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit.  The book was so well-written that I literally read it cover to cover.  I even read the Acknowledgements!

While reading the book, I thought that I was reading a fiction novel.  The book was written in a descriptive narrative that appeared to be omniscient perspective.  Stevenson had been able to perfectly replicate the feelings, thoughts, and actions, and motives of all the people who he highlighted in his book, just like a novelist would.

But that wasn’t the only reason why it felt like a fiction novel.

The book summary highlights the story of Walter McMillan, a man who was put on death row, having been wrongly accused of murdering Ronda Morrison of Monroeville, Alabama.  However, Stevenson also includes the stories of other cases that he had helped, especially children who had been sentenced to life without parole for non-homicidal actions.  McMillan’s story, as well as the others, exposed the racial injustice in the judicial system that Stevenson’s agency, Equal Justice Initiative, fights to correct.  The injustice that I read in the book was so terrible that I had wished throughout the entire book that it was a fiction novel.  I couldn’t believe that this was true, that these events had actually happened in our country.

The book is a timely novel in that there is currently debate over whether racism still exists today. For such a touchy subject as racism, Stevenson does a brilliant job of appearing unbiased toward the criminals as well as toward the victims.  Since the book was written in 2014, and the trials that he discusses took place between 1980 and 2010, it seems that Stevenson wants to continue the conversation of racial injustice in the judicial system so that it does not continue.  History has a habit of repeating itself.  If we forget about the mistakes of our ancestors, we run the risk of making the same mistakes.

While I was reading the book, my husband noted how often I would gasp.  I didn’t even realize I was doing it.  My gasps were in response to the incredulous actions of the court.  There were situations where they disposed of evidence in favor of the defendant, they forbade people of color to enter the courtroom, and they even sentenced the defendants to life without parole without any credible evidence that they committed the crime.  For the most part, the court just wanted to blame someone.

My gasps were also in response to the terrible lives that these criminals had to endure.  Stevenson writes in detail what it actually looks like for people to be executed in the electric chair.  I cried right along with them as the flesh was burning off of their skin.  One little boy was so small that the headpiece of the chair fell off his head when they did the first shock.  Stevenson also shares their backstories.  Some kids had watched their mothers get sexually and physically abused right before their eyes.  Some kids were good kids, but they hung around the wrong crowd.  Some had mental illnesses.

What Stevenson portrays in his book is that these people are, well, people.  They are people created in the image of God who have been tainted by sin, who have been broken by the world.  Just like all of us.  Maybe killing the broken people of this world isn’t the best way to make the world right.

To present a critical analysis of this book, I must point out a message that may not be clear to every reader: the fact that these criminals have terrible backstories does not excuse their behavior.  These stories may explain their behavior, but they do not excuse their behavior.  If a rape victim murders somebody because she feels paranoid that everyone is out to get her, it’s sad that she feels that way, but it does not make the fact that she murdered someone okay.  These kids did commit acts of violence that were completely and totally wrong.  What I think Stevenson is trying to argue, however, is that there should be a different way of dealing with these situations, such as through counseling or other correctional programs.  Simply killing someone (or letting someone rot in jail) who made a mistake does not fix their behavior.

For more information about Bryan Stevenson’s work with the Equal Justice Initiative, visit his website (click here).  The work that EJI continues to do demonstrates that the issues in this book are not completely resolved.  Pray about the part that you will play in promoting justice and mercy in our society.

Categories
Marriage

Standing Together

We’ve heard lots of advice when we were preparing for marriage.  Some of it was good, and some of it was just plain distasteful.  One of the best pieces of advice that we both received at the exact same time in different places is “You need to join a couples small group.”

One of the girls that I’ve watched grow up in the church told her mother that I had just gotten engaged.  Her parents had a small group for couples who were engaged and married up to five years (newlyweds).  From the other side of the Atrium, her mother called me and invited me to her group.  I instantly wanted to sign up, but I needed to get permission from my then fiance first.

My husband was in Florida, helping his grandfather who was terminally ill.  He visited his aunt’s church that Sunday.  While I was being invited to join her Bible study in New York, a woman that I had never met was praying over my husband, encouraging him to join a small group with couples so that we could learn from each other.  When I called him about the small group, he knew it was a complete confirmation.

We have been in the group for almost two years now, and it has been nothing short of a blessing.  We have a safe place where we can be real about our struggles and we can hear the struggles of others so we know that we are not alone.  When we see each other at church, we ask each other how we’re doing and we truly feel encouraged by each other’s company.  They don’t just throw advice our way; they talk to us and ask us specifically how they can pray for us (which is what newlywed couples need most).  We also go over a Bible study each year to help us center our marriages around God.

We have other couple friends who are not in our Bible study, but we see them at church and are involved in ministry with us.  We have taken a front-row seat into their marriage to see how all this theological stuff on marriage is played out in everyday life.  We have watched them interact with each other, go through the process of raising kids, engage with in-laws and relatives and friends.  All the while, they provide us advice and encouragement as well.  It is such a blessing to have them in our lives.

When we got married,  we wouldn’t have known what to expect if it wasn’t for these people in our lives.  We wouldn’t have been aware of the conflicts that would arise or the feelings we would encounter or the struggles we would face in our first year of marriage.  The couples who have blazed the trail before us were able to give us an inside look into their stories so that we could learn from them.  We are so thankful to have friends and family who are married and can simply share their lives with us.

Do you have that sort of accountability?

Find a couple in your church or in your family that is a good example of marriage to you.  Whether it’s your parents, your aunt/uncle, your cousins, your older siblings, small group leaders, or a well-respected couple in the church, you can simply start off the conversation by asking them about their marriage.  Pray that you can be real with them as they are real with you.  Then, learn from them.  Sit at their feet and see what it’s like to be married.  May they be people who give you an inside look into their marriage so that you will be prepared.  You will learn so much from their wisdom and experience.  What you learn will encourage you in your struggles and your successes as a couple.

 

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Categories
Encouragement

Step into His Rest

I woke up Tuesday morning with a sense of urgency.  I had a lot on my plate: the apartment was a mess, I anticipated a crazy work day, and, of course, I wanted to write my book and my blog with very little time to do so!

Despite all the activities that stood on the path before me, I knew what I needed to do first.  I needed to put my day in God’s hands.  On Tuesday, I sacrificed the small amount of time before I had to leave and trusted God to show me what I needed to know.

And wow, did He show me!

You’ll never guess what I learned in my devotional.  It was about rest and trusting God to do the impossible!  They alluded to the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand.  We always focus on that incredible story, but what the disciples did before this great miracle happened is just as significant.  Before sending out His disciples to encounter these hungry people, Jesus asked them to spend some time alone in prayer.  Time alone with God is so important, because it allows us to center our attention on Him.  We need to rest in God in order for Him to strengthen us to overcome whatever obstacles we face in the day ahead.

One of the most powerful things I did on the retreat this past weekend was just let God control my day.  Obviously, He’s always in control, but sometimes I like to think I’m in control.  We had a schedule that we were suggested to follow, but nothing was mandatory.  I set my alarm so that I could follow the schedule.  When my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep peacefully.

Several hours later, I detected the sun shining through the curtain.  My alarm should be going off soon, I thought, snuggling deeper into the covers, allowing myself a few more minutes to sleep.  After dozing off again, I realized that my alarm hadn’t gone off.  Is the sun really up this early?  I looked at my phone.  If I’d wanted to follow the schedule, I should have been up 45 minutes earlier.

I guess I had needed my sleep.

I decided, since I’m constantly a slave to a schedule, to let myself relax instead of rushing to each and every activity that weekend.  I did not rush through my quiet time with the Lord.  I didn’t care that I was a little late to breakfast and that I couldn’t find a seat.  I made new friends, and I had some incredible conversations with people I wouldn’t have talked to if I was on time.  Whatever I chose to do during the weekend was more meaningful; instead of attending workshops and meetings because I had to, I attended them because I knew God wanted to show me something through them.

Trusting in God’s timing shows your confidence in him, which ultimately shows your confidence in what He says about you.

While it is tempting to rush through life, God calls us to trust Him with every step.  Someone told me this weekend that the way in the right direction always involves the first step.  We get so focused on the steps that follow that we feel too numb to take the first step.  All it takes to get us started is to rely on God for that one step, and then the next step, and then the next.  One step at a time.

And step by step, God will lead us.

You don’t have to have it all figured out.  You don’t have to choose right now.  You don’t have to be a slave to your schedule or to others’ expectations of you.

During these next few weeks, I’m going to through rush out the window.  I can’t ignore the tasks that God has allowed me to do, and the activities that God has provided for me to participate in, but I can develop an attitude of rest that reminds me who is really in control.  I’m not in control.  My activities are not in control.  My blog readers are not in control.  My potential literary agents/publishers are not in control.

Ultimately, God is in control, and I rest confidently in the fact that He will guide me in this next step, and every next step to follow.

Photo by Julia Caesar on Unsplash