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Where is Your Promise, God?
I’m the queen of both romanticism and nostalgia. This means that my vision of an upcoming change in life doesn’t always match reality. If we decide to move across the country for my husband’s job, I tend to romanticize the change with cautious optimism while greatly minimizing its challenges. Or, if time ushers in a new life stage, such as the beginning of middle age, I go to the other extreme and embrace nostalgia while despairing that the future will never be as enjoyable and meaningful as the past. In either case, my tendency to imagine the future creates expectations that slam into reality and produce disappointment and discontentment once one chapter closes and another one opens. Can you relate to either of these? Whether we are optimistically romantic, or hopelessly nostalgic, our presumptive nature is a tactic to help us manage our expectations and quiet our fears.
Should I Stop Striving?
Years ago, I remembered thinking, One day, I won't be tempted to sin anymore. One day, I will fully trust God with all my son's health issues. One day, I'll stop searching for approval from others. One day, I won't struggle with God anymore.
What Should I Do?
One of the reasons it took me so long to get sober is that I was ashamed of my problem. I didn’t want anyone else to know that I couldn’t control my drinking. I was worried about what they would think. I refused to talk about it to anyone for over two years. All the while my self-confidence dissolved, and my emotional stability slowly weakened…
How Do We Limit God?
Lesson #8 on Journey to a Water Well.
Have you ever heard if you do what you can do, God will do what only He can do? God demonstrated this reality in the spring of 2015. Beginning in February 2015, God initiated a series of prompts regarding financial gifts to the unknown well. After a bit of angst and a series of debates with God regarding the donations, I relented and took the steps of faith requested.
By early June, it was time to celebrate with Ben at his end-of-the-year kindergarten party with games and a special lunch. Armed with ketchup and ranch, the room mom directed me towards the children, eagerly awaiting their favorite condiments for the chicken nuggets. As I moved down the line..
If I Do It, What’s It Going To Hurt?
This one is for the girl that is one step away from making the decision to catapult her into the depths of sin that will forever change her life. To the one who is standing on the brink of that choice, that escape that seems so right, so intriguing, and satisfying; it will make you feel better if you do it, and you might even feel on top of the world.
For a moment.
Why Am I an Emotional Wreck?
Have you ever considered trusting God with your emotions even though your circumstances are unlikely to change?
I wish I could say that stuck in crippling emotion, I sit cross-legged, with my eyes closed and my palms up, trustingly laying my feelings at the feet of Jesus. Maybe I could even add some scented candles to the scene, creating a peaceful setting that I report smells like lavender. Unfortunately, that’s a work of fiction that exists only in my mind. Instead, my narrative is filled with turmoil, restlessness, and frustration. I become pre-occupied. My mind distractedly focuses on my problem, and my brow goes into a prolonged furrowed state. Lavender is nowhere to be found.
Would a real Christian do that?
Is it possible to know deep in your heart that salvation belongs to you yet still fear it could slip through your fingers at any moment?
What’s Next?
I've heard it said that “the days are long, but the years are short.” I dismissed this cliché phrase during the toddler years, but it’s defining these teenaged years. And I’m struggling. What’s next? They’ll all graduate one right after another, and while I recognize the Enemy is trying to distract me from embracing these milestone moments, I can’t deny that I’m starting to wonder what I’ll do after the house is empty. Who will I be? What will my husband and I do with all our free time?
Can You Hear Him? (Learning to Discern God’s Voice. part 2)
Lesson #7 on a Journey to a Water Well.
I believe most Christians want to know and do God’s will. And I think God is speaking to most Christians. But some fail to recognize His voice. Because sometimes His voice presents like a deep-seated knowing, idea, or thought. In the spiritual metaphor, His voice wasn’t in the wind, the fire, or the earthquake. It was in the still, small voice. (1 Kings 19:11-12)
His voice is subtle.
Would You Rather?
As I journeyed through my years of healing, one of the things I had to realize was that I had chosen so many other things for fulfillment over Jesus. My life revealed this in many ways, yet, I didn’t recognize it because I was blinded by comfort and complacency. We often think we are living good and right because we are checking all the good christian boxes, but the reality is how our lives reflect it. Does your life reflect that you choose Jesus above all, that you’d rather Him than any other thing in your life?
Is It Always Going to Be Like This?
It happened on the last day of our vacation. We were sitting down for lunch when my sister called. After two and a half years on hospice, Mom had taken a turn for the worse. No one knows when someone will die, but the nurses estimated that Mom had a week or two left.
Can I stop hiding behind the pretty pieces of my life?
Confession: Just after I had babies, I purchased several pairs of Spanx because I found that they held in areas of my body that I didn't know were humanly possible to tuck in anymore. I haven't worn them in quite some time because as I approach the age of 40, I have decided that breathing is much more important to me than sliding into a sausage casing that compresses my bodily organs to one another. And let's be real here- no one has really ever just "slid" into a pair of Spanx, have they? I have legit wrestled myself directly to the ground in an attempt to squish my mom-body into these mysterious spandex contraptions before.
Why Don’t I Feel Like Them?
Whether it’s society’s endorsement of extroverts or my own personal insecurities, I determined early on that I wasn’t the right kind of mom, a good Christian or a loving wife. The world celebrates the “outgoing,” applauds the “never met a stranger,” and rewards the community organizers. Social media highlights the color coordinated group photos, the perfectly executed thematic parties and the more “followers” you have, the more important you are. If connections are currency, the world calculates our worth by the number of people in our orbit.
After years of comparing myself to others and appraising my worth based on their personalities, I’d concluded I was defective, so I drank to cope with high anxiety in social situations and low self-esteem in moments of self-reflection…
How Do You Wait on God Without Falling Into Traps?
When God planted the conviction for a water well in Africa, I thought He needed a water well and wanted to know if I would take care of that for Him. But in reality, God wasn’t asking me for a water well; rather, He was inviting me to walk alongside Him as He delivered the well to His people. The responsibility for the well was on Him, not me. He was just offering me a ride. He was offering me relationship.
God didn’t need Sarah’s help, and He didn’t need my strategies. He wanted to use my obedience, my yes, to teach who He is and how He loves.
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.
How Can I Find a Blessing in My Pain?
Are you going through something right now that feels hard and painful? Whether it’s a divorce, the rebellion of a child, an injustice that threatens your future, or a different stressful situation, life isn’t short of difficulties that disrupt our peace and threaten our contentment. On top of the ups and downs in each of our lives, society has dealt with a pandemic, supply shortages, inflation, and the war in Ukraine. It’s not surprising that many people say their mental health is challenged. Combining a personal hardship with our societal challenges is enough to steal our hope and rob us of any remaining optimism for the future. When our lives are interrupted by unpleasant circumstances, we just want it all to stop and life to return to “normal”. My normal was disrupted the other day
What does God have to do with it?
I am aware of the dangerous ground I tread on today by addressing such a divided matter, and I want to be clear that I'm not here to judge or shame anyone. I also won't ever pretend to understand someone else's story. So today, I only write to share an incredibly personal part of mine with you that I've never shared publicly before. There are parts I'm not proud of, but it's a testimony filled with truth and the hope of Jesus, and I hope and pray it will help someone else along the way.
Following or Followers?
It’s been six months since I’ve posted to my Instagram account for my sobriety blog, www.thisthorn.com. And it’s been almost three years since I’ve added a new article to the site. I’ve been writing all this time, but not uploading any new content.
When I started my blog in the fall of 2015, I wrote endlessly about all my new feelings and experiences in sobriety. I’d never considered myself a writer before. I never journaled. But those first months of recovery, my emotions were raw. I was present for events and situations I’d previously been too numb to experience. I didn’t know what to do with all those feelings. So, I wrote to write. I wrote to expose, to process, to purge and to thank God.
Then the mind games started.
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.
How Do I Love Well, No Matter What?
A few weeks ago, a friend and I had a slight miscommunication that went awry. Something she said, I interpreted very differently than what was her intent and in the moment, I snapped back at her and retreated to my own pity party. My mind and my heart knew that she would never say something to try and hurt me but I let emotions take over and I chose to allow them to rule the situation.