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Do You Ever Feel Stuck?
Recently, I found myself in a completely incomprehensible situation. It was so beyond anything I could imagine that my natural tendency to “rise to the occasion” just shut down. I felt shell-shocked, and I had no idea what to do.
Two of my longest and closest friends were experiencing life-altering events within days of each other. One friend’s daughter was getting married. The other friend’s son had just died unexpectedly on a normal day in a tragic car accident. The funeral for my friend’s son fell on the same day as the wedding for my other friend’s daughter.
What’s Your Impossible Prayer?
Lesson #17 on a Journey to a Water Well
Friday, June 17, 2016
Thirty to forty Ugandan construction workers gathered around the water well surrounded by a handful of spiritual giants. It was a motley crew of Ugandan men clad with grey denim-like work suits and bright yellow, orange, or white plastic construction hats interspersed between a few oddly placed mzungus (white people). The kids busied themselves with new young friends, sticks, red dirt, or anything else they could find to occupy their minds or bodies.
One at a time, the spiritual giants stepped to the podium to speak of the water that wells up to eternal life. First, the country director spoke, then Katie. But the transformation of the quiet-spoken, unassuming American engineer into a passionate orator for Christ as the Living Water captivated my soul. It was so unexpected. Too much so.His passion slowly dissipated as he lowered his head and concluded his message, making me the final presenter.
“The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” (Luke 18:27).
Why Can’t I Surrender?
I was on a conference call when it happened, but I could have easily been on the phone with one of my young adult kids, or in the kitchen when my husband came home, or having lunch with a good friend. Someone made a comment that shattered my peace and filled me with dismay and devastation. The rest of my world stopped while my thoughts started spinning. How can I solve this problem?
How Do You Know When God’s Talking to You?
Lesson #5 on a Journey to a Water Well...
The question most people want to ask but don’t have the courage to say is “What makes you think God told you to drill a water well in Africa?” How do you know when the prompt, the thought or conviction, is really God speaking to your spirit? It’s a fair question. After all, even the prophet Samuel didn’t recognize God’s voice the first time God spoke to him. (I Samuel 3)
Let me share one example of how I have learned to discern His voice.
Have You Forgotten My Request, God?
The other day I found myself wanting an explanation from God. I know this sounds ridiculous but let me explain.
Some of my prayer requests are several years old. Healing, salvation, relationship restoration, and other long-term desires take time. I understand God knows far better than I do the perfect outcome and the best time to respond. But I also know that His flawless will may fail to match the way that makes so much sense to me. In fact, His answer might be, “no”, and I may have refused to recognize or accept that.
When the pain of unanswered prayer enters my day, I find myself asking God,” Why are you silent and still when I know You could be powerful and present?” Do you wonder the same thing sometimes?
Can you let go of white-knuckled living?
I have a confession. I love everything about being a mom…except sitting in the passenger seat when our kids are learning how to drive.
They saw independence, freedom, and an exciting future. I saw the potential for an accident with possibly life-altering consequences. While our new drivers enthusiastically tackled busier roads and more complicated intersections, I hid my nerves to avoid undermining their confidence. Quite often, I found myself clenching my hands together so tightly that my knuckles turned white, and I had to take a deep breath because I realized that unconsciously, I was barely breathing.
Of course, I prayed for safety before these nerve-wracking road sessions, but we live in a fallen world and my petitions for protection sometimes felt more like frantic pleas. What if God allowed an accident despite my prayers?
Is God Trustworthy?
The thorns get our attention because we feel their pain. Loneliness, isolation, stress, anxiety, and desperately desired but unanswered prayers poke us every minute of every day, reminding us there must be something better than this!
We must surrender our own way to fix things and remind ourselves that God’s will is better than what we think is the best way.
Does God Know What He’s Doing?
Have you ever experienced a moment that turned your life upside down and left you feeling disoriented and distraught? Maybe that describes your current reality and you’re wondering if the future will ever feel promising again. Whether we try harder or deny its existence or numb it or push through it, emotional pain isn’t healthy to ignore. It must be addressed, or it will start to control our actions.
What Can God Add to My Life?
Everyone must start somewhere and as beginnings go, mine was pretty great. I had parents who loved and advocated for me. I had grandparents who teased that I could find a home with them if I ever wanted to run away from my parents. My birthday was celebrated every year with unique cakes that my mom made from scratch, and I have scrapbooks filled with pictures to capture special occasions and milestones from my childhood.
If there was a flaw in my well-nurtured background, it happened with the very best of intentions. Passed down to me was the belief that I could do and be anything, assuming I worked hard enough. Something got lost in the translation from what was said to what I heard, and I adopted the belief that average wasn’t acceptable.
This conviction was reinforced when I expressed interest in becoming a nurse. In an upbeat tone filled with confidence came the response, “Don’t be a nurse. Be a doctor.”
As mistakes go, erring on the side of believing in your kids and encouraging them to reach their full potential isn’t a disastrous mistake, but it cultivated in me a skewed sense of what was important in life. Most important was worldly achievement, not personal fulfillment or spiritual enrichment or emotional contentment.
What if I’m Not Enough?
“No one would like the real you,” whispered Insecurity in my head. You don’t fit in. You’re socially awkward. You aren’t as pretty, or as smart, or as sophisticated as them. Does that thought ever run through your head too? I was in eighth grade the day that insecurity slipped into my life and started to follow me around like an unwanted friend.
Can I Find Purpose Through My Pain?
From the time I was a young girl, I was a hopeless romantic. I could spin it to you by saying I was just plain boy-crazy, or by telling you that I possibly watched one too many Disney fairy tales along the way - but the truth of the matter is that I desperately wanted to be loved. As human beings, but women especially, we are designed to want to give and receive unconditional love. We want to be known intimately by someone who will cherish and value us for our wonderful qualities, and someone who will continue loving us right through our bad ones. As I got older, this aching desire I had to feel loved ended up making of fool of me more times than I care to recall. I made some incredibly unfortunate decisions that I'm not proud of today in an attempt to feel love. After a while, I found those attempts at "love" to be incredibly fleeting and in the long-run I was left feeling quite the opposite of what I had hoped for.
Then I had kids . . .