30 More Days of Grace

I stumbled into church Sunday morning a whopping 7 minutes before the service started, and I was feeling pretty good about that accomplishment.  I wandered over to my typical, might-as-well-be assigned, seat in the back corner and dropped my purse onto the chair, but before I could even sit down, I was intercepted by a great friend whose mother-in-law in the hospital with end stage vascular disease.  His wife has been camped out at the hospital with her mom for the last 10 days or so, and he was at church with the family and extended family.  I hadn’t heard an update for the morning, yet, so he quickly filled me in on the night and the exhaustion they all were feeling.  I’ve sat in that same hospital, in those same rooms, and even worked with those same surgeons, and as he explained all the things happening in that hospital, I felt that weight on my own shoulders from my own hours in their shoes.  Before he even finished updating me, a friend from bible study st...

The Messy Truth I’ve written this four times.  Each time, though, it seems too neat, too tidy, too finite, like wearing a power suit to brunch at the coffee shop with your best friend when you should be unshowered in joggers and a hoodie with your hair up in a messy bun.   I start to write, get a page or two in and find myself staring at the words and wondering if I really believe them or fearing if I hit publish, what then?  How will I be attacked? What will the fallout be? How will I lose? Because, spiritual warfare is real, and Satan is real, and I know Satan doesn’t want me to love my enemies.  He doesn’t want you to love your enemies. He wants us all to wallow around in our hate and anger until it festers into something uncontrollable. But I don’t want that.  I don’t want the hate. I don’t want the anger. I don’t want the spitefulness or the cynicism or the doubt. I just want peace.  I want the peace of knowing...