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.
The Good/Hard Life
When we choose to embrace the stories we’re living and release the stories we wished for, we can know in our deepest places that this good story is being written a God who can’t write any other kind of story.
Waiting Well
Our lives have been full of good things, which means our future is full of good things if we are willing to define and identify them rightly.
The Path Before Us
As those who are called, our role is to join the dance of the world’s needs, God’s purposes, and our own giftings.
Glorious Scars
But when we allow our paradigm of healing to shift, her scars begin to look like badges of honor. She can proudly point to this old wounded place and say, “I’m scarred, but I’m still here.”
The Power of “We”
Community is the intentional surrender of our time, money, comfort, and emotional energy in interest of contributing to the healing of our neighbors and, ultimately, the healing of the world.
In Sickness and Health
We will never satisfy the endless needs and wants of our own hearts, but we are offered the escape hatch of committing to love and serve someone else instead.
Walking Away from Shame
We are beautiful because we are made, re-made, and loved by Jesus—beauty made manifest.
Fully Known, Fully Loved
Failure provides a platform for forgiveness, grace, growth, and unconditional love. We cheat ourselves out of experiencing redemption when we build a facade around the failings.
Opening Our Hands
What we find on this side of the journey is that loss, in its purest form, is a fear of death. The good news is that when we are connected to Jesus—resurrection personified—we need not die at all.
Post-Traumatic Growth
Trauma can be more than a dark pit of despair or a spiral of depression. It has the potential to be our deepest source of empathy, strongest point of connection, and most forceful impetus for growth if we bravely choose to let others into both the brokenness and the mending.
Joyful Rebellion
What if we could see celebration as a form of worship—a necessary, life-giving acknowledgement of God's goodness?
Redefining Everything
We often take definitions for granted, but the true or false definition of a word can be the lynchpin of life well lived.
Invisible Wheelchairs
Our limitations today are merely shadows of the ultimate limitation—death—which was exactly the limitation through which Jesus worked out our salvation. If Jesus can redefine death as the way to life, can we believe our pain can have a purpose.
Telling a New Story
What we remember teaches our brains what to expect. By remembering the past thoughtfully, we can anticipate the future with hope.