Faith By Hearing
We all want to be heard, to be known, to have someone/anyone validate that we are here, that our desires are worthy, our pain is not wasted, our life is seen. Often we transmit what we’ve been taught. Other times, we fashion new ways to be noticed. For thousands and thousands of years, humans have sent out our signals, hoping that there is someone on the other end who is listening.
Luxury Problems
None of us can control much, but we can control our response in life. Each unexpected moment presents us with that opportunity to focus on the bitterness or the blessing.
For What Didn’t Happen
He has permitted certain pains, but He has spared you from far more than you could ever begin to comprehend, neither as a punishment nor as a reward but as a means in which to more fully understand His grace.
What You Get When You Choose Gratitude
This rhythm of thanking God even in the loss of expectation begins to retrain our minds to recognize Him sometimes withholding not just the things we desire but blessedly, the things we most fear.
Naming the Good
It is our choice, perhaps our duty even, to see this good and to call it by name. We must tell each other the story, from the grandiose themes to the name of the smallest beloved one, and in so doing we make manifest the story of hope that is within us all, and it is good.
On Anniversaries
Every year as spring is reaching its zenith of new life, we’re forced to remember how Katherine nearly died, out of the clear blue. Despite her "resurrection" of sorts, many other things died that day. And yet, in a very sobering way, life is a series of these little deaths, calling us to really live.
The Final Question
Sometimes, the asking is more important than the answers, because it reminds us that we still have a voice and we are not alone, even in the midst of the great mysteries of our lives.
Waiting for the Second Advent
How could we, the fair-weather receivers of His gospel ever hope to emulate this commanding voice in the wilderness? How could we the broken parents, the disobedient children, the unwise and unrighteous ever wholeheartedly proclaim, “prepare ye the way of the Lord”? Well, we can because He already has.
The Thorns
Since we know the end of the story, we can confidently endure, moreover embrace, the depth of suffering guaranteed in our own days. It is impossible to live in the joy of new life if we don't first internalize just how far we've been taken away from death.
A Short Story of Hope
As life continues and with it struggles and with them hope, we find ourselves losing our grips on the things we don’t even know we are holding so tightly. And yet, we finally find our rest, secure in arms more capable, more loving, more alive than our own.
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.
The Marriage Box
Marriage in Christ truly starts as an empty box, one which must be filled over time by the continued nurturing and struggle and fierce love that seeks to give of itself completely to another.
Returning to El Matador
Whatever mountain you may need to climb up or valley you may need to descend into, you should do it. The path will likely be worn and steep but the precious time spent there will be well worth the journey.
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.
John’s Birth Story
This story is the story of John Nestor Wolf and the day he arrived in the world. This is his story, our story, but it’s your story too. And ultimately, it’s God’s story—the one where new life is birthed from near death, where hope overflows from broken vessels. We are still pondering this profound revelation in our hearts as we hold him in our arms.
The Scars We Have and the Scars We Give
Maybe the best way to parent my boys is to not to hide the hurt, but to show the healing.
Redefining Waiting
Romans 5:3 teaches us that suffering leads us to perseverance and to character and, ultimately, to hope, which will never shame us and will never disappoint us. There is a promise and a purpose in the painful process of waiting, which means we can learn to wait well.
The Identity of Hope
The transcendent world of a life-giving God tumbles in tandem with a creation utterly decaying into death. As believers, how do we not shy away from whole-hearted living while simultaneously holding our tenuous existence with open hands?
Survival Guide: Katherine & Jay Wolf
Hope Heals seeks to re-narrate the story of suffering by sharing the lives and lessons of real people—their honest answers, vulnerable struggles, and surprising transformations through enduring life's greatest storms.