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Trusting the Gardener
This past spring, we did a lot of work in our backyard. One of my favorite additions was the many container plants with gorgeous blooming flowers that now dot our entire landscape. Always a summer go-to flower are my sun-loving petunias. They are easy to care for and one of the most vibrant summer flowers I've found. I often grab them in pinks, purples, yellows, and corals. In the early part of the season, I feed them a little Miracle Grow, and these fun little beauties thrive! I mean billowing and cascading over the sides and bursting with lush colors. It's hard not to be filled with the sweetness of summer while gazing at them, and this year they overflowed.
Will She Ever Talk To Me Again?
I was standing in the same place that I do every Sunday morning at church as I welcome people, answer questions, and help wherever necessary. I glanced over my shoulder and there she was; an old friend that I had not spoken to in over eight years. As I watched her get closer and closer, everything about our last interaction came rushing back to my mind. This was someone who had been struck by the shrapnel of my reckless words, and bad decisions. All those years ago, hateful talk had been exchanged and promises were declared that we would never speak again.
How Does Grace Work?
Just after my world fell apart, after my bad choices were exposed, I couldn’t escape it anywhere. I was walking through the grocery store one day and encountered a woman from my church on the same aisle. Before everything was exposed and I became a spectacle in the eyes of many, this woman would have said hello and chatted for a few minutes. This day was different; she saw me and immediately turned around and went to another aisle without even a smile or hello. I was shattered. I was convinced I would be treated this way forever and that my life was over.
Boundaries, Toxic Relationships, and Forgiveness- How Should Christians Respond?
We have all dealt with a difficult person at one point or another, but what are Christians to do with abusive and toxic relationships? What do we do with people who continually hurt or misuse us? How should we handle someone who tries to pull us into unbiblical behavior or keep us from becoming the person God desires us to be?
Why Can’t Things Go Back To The Way They Were?
For a few years after my affair was exposed, I spent many a day just begging the Lord to make everything go back to normal. I was yearning so badly for normal. I longed for people to trust me again, for friends to want to be around me again and I ached for people to look at me like they used to, treat me like they used to. There was desperation for everyone to know that I was changed, that I was transformed, that I was different. It was there that I found myself falling into another trap of the enemy consumed with what people thought about me more than I was consumed with what Jesus was doing in me. I was trying my best to do everything right, clinging to friendships as if I was terrified to lose them because I’d already lost so many. I was working hard going into overdrive trying to prove myself to be good and it was exhausting.