Roles in Check

This Sickness Will Not End in Death
It was a beautiful Friday afternoon in July.  I sat in the nursery rocking Drew, 11 months old at the time, to sleep.  I had taken the afternoon off when my husband Matt had called me telling me that his dad Mike had been sick, and bloodwork revealed there was illness.  With Mike's previous two bouts with cancer two decades prior, we knew it had returned.  As Drew lay peacefully in my lap, I found myself praying through tears, "Father, I know all things are for your glory, but for the life of me I cannot imagine Mike's death being for your glory. Even so, it's in your hands."  Interrupting my prayer came words out of nowhere.  This s

Cherishing the Good News
I found myself pulling up my mother-in-law's blog again.  I don't know why I was checking it because  I knew what would be on there.I guess I just wanted to hear the good news again.My father-in-law has been fighting cancer for over two years, a cancer that should have overtaken him long ago.  After setback upon setback this year, we received good news for a change.  The tumor hadn't grown at all in the six months since his last scan, and most of that time he had no treatment.  First my husband called me, and then my father-in-law called me.  Later I found myself wanting to hear the good news from my mother-in-law on her blog

Melancholy Diaries: True Contentment
When he said, "Just relax," I wanted to clock him.  You'd think after 8 years of marriage my husband would know that "Just Relax" is the last thing I want to hear when anxiety overwhelms me.  It was not an uncommon Sunday night, when I tend to struggle more than any other time.  This particular night seemed worse than other ones, though.  My temper was flaring and my will was losing the battle against this depression threatening to overtake me.  The next morning, true to my routine, I fought my "Monday morning blues" and got my coffee at 5:30 and opened the Bible.  For some reason, I felt steered toward a familiar passage in Philipp

Sharing with Fear
Although my hands weren't shaking, they might as well have been.  The butterflies in my stomach slowly started to calm.  I am embarrassed to even admit the reason for my nervousness.I just had shared Christ with a coworker.Don't get me wrong.  I have shared my faith plenty of times, but usually it was in the context of one of the following:a mission tripa church functiona religious conversation where the topic happened to come upAnd although sharing our faith can involve overcoming some serious fear no matter what the context, this situation had my knees shaking.I had been praying for "Amy" since sh

Miracles
Do you ever read about the life of Jesus and wonder why we don't see miracles like that today? Everywhere Jesus went, he preached and healed.  And healed.  And healed.  I'm sure there are many reasons why a big portion of Jesus' mission was healing, but today I am struck with one.Mark 6:5-6 says, "He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith."Out of all the places Jesus preached and healed, the one place in which he didn't heal many people was his hometown.  These people simply couldn't believe in him.  They had seen him grow up.