Celebrating in the Midst
We must approach celebration as a spiritual discipline, a rebellious act of worship we practice on the good days, the hard days, and the ordinary days. When we’ve spent time earnestly rehearsing a spiritual response, it becomes a part of who we truly are. With the ingrained discipline of sacred celebration, we can live and respond from a place of truth, rather than a place of regret or despair.
Community & Commitment
Christ-like community is neither incidental nor accidental. It requires the intentional surrender of our time, money, comfort, and emotional energy in the interest of contributing to the healing of our neighbors and, ultimately, the healing of the world.
Calling & Limitations
Limitations don’t have to be losses; they can be the avenues to our flourishing. This is particularly true if we stay focused and creative within their boundaries, if we care for and cherish what’s inside them.
My Body Is Not A Prayer Request
If we believe that disabled people are not whole until they cross an enchanted threshold into the afterlife, that will certainly impact the way we engage with them in the here and now. We talk about God’s kingdom as the now and not yet: the in-between space that we get glimpses of but are not fully a part of yet. Treating disabled people as image-bearers only once we get to the “not yet” impacts the now.
The First in a Litany of Insecurities
For 15 years I take note of possible imperfections before anyone can see, question, or mock. I hide the litany of physical insecurities growing with age. The goal is to prevent harm from people, yet the self-contempt within becomes its own poison.
Maybe They’ve Never Seen Someone Without Feet
At just ten years old, Jude offered the antidote to shame to a crowd of four hundred misty-eyed people, most of whom were older than he and many of whom have typical bodies. Through the unexpected teacher of pain, Jude has learned what most of us will never fully understand: we were all made in the image of God, and we don’t have to be ashamed.
Breaking Free from Body Shame
Whether you struggle with illness, injury, or just insecurity: I believe God’s Word can be a balm for our souls and a pathway to freedom. It’s one thing to know in your head that you were created in the image of God. Yet it’s quite another to experience this belief in your body, against the cultural ideals of a woman’s worth. And between the two lies a world of frustration, disappointment, and the shame of somehow feeling both too much and never enough in your body.
Finding Grace in Singleness
I’ve learned that my desires don't define my life. His grace does. On the days when my heart wants to wage war on what I know to be true in my mind, God in His grace reminds me that being single is my relationship status and not an appraisal of my worth.
How Did We Get Here? The Science of Faith
Humanity is the work of God’s own hands. If you think that life on Earth took four billion years or so to get where it is now, the Bible gives you room to hold this view. If you believe it took seven days, the Bible gives you a solid place to stand. What it does not yield to either camp is that we are a cosmic accident.
The Shape They Are
For these 2 hours, I could just surrender the impossibility of trying to recognize and categorize every worry in the world—as we grow and gray, we realize: they are the shape that they are.
Eyes to See
I used to believe that on Earth, most of us received an equal distribution of pain; we all had a comparable storm to endure. But after two storms in my first quarter of a century—my dad’s suicide and a seventeen-hour brain surgery—I started to wonder if maybe this wasn’t true. Maybe pain didn’t play fair.
Redefining Communion
We can make our way through entire days and weeks without acknowledging the Beauty of our Creator. Without admiring His creation, or loving our neighbor. Without taking one long look in the mirror, and choosing to truly love what we see. To acknowledge the truth that the Image of God exists within me.
Survival Guide: Melissa Niednagel Wolmarans
While I have experienced a fair amount of loss in my 35 years of life, I am not someone who is a victim of unjust suffering. am the person who has caused it.
Redefining Ability
We are not alone in disability. It’s a reality all of humanity shares at its core. But more than that, we are not alone in our disability because God is there with us, to show us himself in ways that are hard to see when we are blinded by the illusion of our ability.
A Mother’s Day Card
The simple words on that Mother’s Day card belied a deeper meaning, a revelation that James was developing into a little boy who recognized his life and his Mommy looked a little different from those of his friends.
Making Peace with Letting Go
If the alternative to a broken heart is an "unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable" one, then I suppose the choice is clear, but when our heart has been broken as the result of loving something then having to say goodbye to it, we can't help but question if the love was worth the pain.
My New Face
Now I know my face tells a story far deeper and richer and more intentional than good genes or expensive makeup. My faces tells the story of survival, second chances, and suffering strong.
Paying Attention to What We Remember
Responsible remembrance is a bit of past-changing magic that gives us the grace of distance, which leaves space for perspective and gratitude to redefine our past, present, and future.
We Are All Disabled
Solidarity is born when we agree to destigmatize inability and invite each other into the beautiful possibilities of interdependence.
Why I Love My MomBod
Beneath our pursuit of external beauty and eternal youth is both a deep fear—to escape death—and a deep longing—to be loved without having to earn it.