Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “faith”
Learning to Balance Our Emotions by @bethvogt “This is a deadline, not a crisis.” I woke up in the middle of the night with that phrase running through my head. I’d gone to bed a couple of hours earlier frustrated yet again. Staring down a looming writing deadline and an insufficient word count. I’d been chasing that deadline for …
How God Allows Us to be Lights in the Valley of the Shadow by @bethvogt A friend’s 16-year-old son fought for his life last week. Ten days ago, Schafer was diagnosed with Influenza A. He developed a secondary bacterial infection and within two days of his initial diagnosis he was taken by Flight for Life to Children’s Hospital in Denver …
Let’s talk about choosing One Word for the coming year. 2019 is just over a month away, but if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, then you know that I gave up New Year’s resolutions thirteen years ago. All my good intentions — the “I wills” and the “I won’ts” — faded so quickly, and I always misplaced …
Someone came up to me the other day and said, “I didn’t know you were an author!” I smiled and said, “Yes, I am.” Whenever someone says something like this to me, I pause and remember I’m living my dream. This crazy, challenging, some-days-I’m-not-sure-I can-do-it career? It’s my childhood dream come true. And sometimes, I forget it all started because …
Sometimes the most profound truths require the least amount of words. “Life is an adventure in forgiveness.” Six words. Life-changing truth, wouldn’t you agree? Forgiveness is an adventure that leads us into the wide open spaces of freedom. Unforgiveness leads us to a dark dead end of anger and resentment and bitterness. We have a choice: to forgive or not …
Some truths are more harsh than others. Some people avoid the word “sin.” They consider it outdated. Old-fashioned. We don’t sin anymore. We make mistakes. Get tripped up. Commit an error. But I prefer to call a sin a sin because it reminds me that my wrong action has wounded my soul — and possibly someone else’s soul, too. I …
I used to avoid messy moments. Hide my messy moments. Now I write about messy moments. And some of the messy moments in my novels aren’t imaginary — they’re just fictionalized. I understand that life is messy. I accept that life — my life — is messy. Acceptance doesn’t mean I always like life’s rough edges and unsettled seasons. And …
I don’t know what a person’s soul looks like, but I do believe there is no one-size-fits-all version. And yet … and yet, there have been times I’ve treated my soul like a ready-to-wear garment found in a store. I like what I have, until I see what someone else has … and I think, “Hmmmm, I like that style …
Several people in my family love rainy days … and I have to admit, I don’t. I don’t like driving in the rain when I can’t see the lines in the road. I don’t like having to be out and about in the rain when my shoes get wet. I don’t like what the rain does to my hair. Don’t …
To be honest, I tripped over the first few words of this quote by Emerson before I embraced the rest of the truth. While I agree with him that we all want to be inspired to be who we can be, I’m not so certain that’s our “chief want.” I want a lot of things. I need a lot of …
