rebelling against low expectations
It’s funny how we think we’re above certain things. I thought I’d have enough sense not to fall in love with an unbeliever. I hoped I’d have the emotional strength to stick to my convictions and not let a non-Christian guy mess with my mind and heart. Unfortunately my seventeen-year-old self fell (hard) for an atheist. It took over two years to realize that waiting and praying for his conversion...
Dear thirteen-year-old me, As you tread the cusp between girl and woman, you’ll discover that being female is anything but straightforward. God’s Word says one thing, the world screams the opposite, and your own emotions roil in a confused mess. I want to share what I’ve learned so far in life. I hope you can learn from my mistakes, and that it makes your own journey down the road of womanhood...
“You’re too hard on yourself.” I’ve heard this so often that after a while I took a strange kind of pride in it. Such perfectionist tendencies must be good, I thought, and surely this is much better than the other extreme. Unfortunately my obsessive compulsive perfectionism spilled over into my spiritual life, with very bad consequences. Only last year did I start to realize how much pressure I...
My favorite Biblical character at the moment is Moses. Not Moses the deliverer, leader and lawgiver of Israel, but Moses the shepherd for forty years in the desert of Midian. It’s a part of his life we often gloss over or forget, but it speaks to my heart, because I too am in a bit of a desert season. (Again.) Deserts are tough. They’re dry and lonely, and they feel never-ending. To our human...
Have you ever felt useless? I have. Over the past few months, I’ve struggled deeply with this feeling of uselessness. The question keeps coming up: What do you do in quiet seasons? I’ve had several quiet seasons in my life recently: in-between times when I felt I was at a crossroad. I was never bored, but I wasn’t running from one thrillingly important thing to another, either. And...
I was fourteen when God taught me a thing or two about real faith. It was a few months after I’d been baptised; my relationship with Him was growing and I was regularly aware of his presence in my life. I felt close to him. The change was so gradual I didn’t notice it at first. But one day I realised: I do devotions daily, but I don’t get much out of it anymore. And I can’t feel the Lord near me...
I think a dream is dying inside me. I’m in a valley where I can’t see my way out for the high slopes, and all I see before me is the next bend in the road. When I turn it, I just find another one. Inside, I feel like laundry being wrung: scrunched-up and confused. The befuddlement is worse than the pain of the dream’s death. I huddle on the ground. There’s no use pretending – God knows how I feel...
I’m a loner. I love and enjoy people, but after extended socialising I need to recharge by myself. I don’t do crowds, and love visiting with my friends one-on-one. But if no “friend time” is forthcoming, I can be perfectly fine doing my own thing for weeks on end. That doesn’t mean I don’t suffer from Empty Emotional Tank Syndrome sometimes. Or loneliness. Plenty of tears For the past two years...
rebelling against low expectations
