rebelling against low expectations
“Yeah, your wounds are where the light shine through….” An excerpt from Christian band Switchfoot’s latest song, “Where the Light Shines Through”, these words reveal a truth the enemy often tries to cover. Instead of seeing the hope and possibility of the future after any wound– whether it’s when your seemingly best friend abandons you for the popular crowd, when you’re belittled by...
About a year ago, God took me out of my figurative comfortable reclining armchair and made it very clear that he wanted me to do a very hard thing—‘fess up. My Story When I was fourteen, I became addicted to pornography. I hid this sin from everyone in my life, not even writing about it in my journal. I tried to hide it from God, by “making up” for it in my quiet time–reading the...
It’s almost noon, and today I almost broke down twice. I’m supposed to be happy, filled with joy, but today I can’t do it. I’m utterly broken, filled with that inexplicable sadness, and I don’t want this holiday season to come. Why? Because then I have to be happy–and that’s a foreign concept. I have to set aside my sorrows and somehow find joy. This year I’m not sure that’s something I can...
I was lying on my bed one night when the phone rang. A moment later my mom walked up the stairs and the first words out of her mouth were, “We need to pray.” She told us that one of my best friends was severely depressed and had left the house saying he wanted to kill himself. As I lay there praying silently, I asked, God…please save him. Lord, I don’t want to live without my best friend. Please...
I remember a certain evening vividly. I was eight-years-old, curled up against a castle of pillows, watching TV with my daddy. We were watching a show where people were doing hard things that required a lot of strength. Suddenly, a tall man (who looked like he should’ve been part of a biker gang) took the stage. He grabbed a Teflon coated frying pan and rolled it up with his bare hands. To...
I don’t know much about politics—but I do know that the world is broken. All you have to do is turn on your TV to see it. The killings. The poverty. The latest natural disaster, or car chase, or suicide. It’s everywhere, this darkness. The pain infects our shattered world, and it scares us. It scares us to our core. The minute I try to scroll through my Facebook feed, I see them. The voices...
Shasta felt like he was dreaming. For as long as he could remember, he had always had an odd longing to go to the north. Beyond the small grassy hill that marked the border of his little world, curiosity called to him. He could never explain why, but he wanted to go there desperately. And now, here he was, saddling a friendly, talking horse named Bree, soon to run away with him “to Narnia and the...
Not many people know about the race, though its popularity has drastically increased over the years. The number of people who actually run? That’s a small figure. The number who finish? Smaller, if any. On Monday, March 26th at 9:33 p.m. local time, The Barkley Marathons, which are held at Frozen Head State Park in Wartburg, Tennessee, ended with zero finishers. That seems strange, even for an...
The three of us eat lunch surrounded by blue walls and an even bluer sky. Moments before, as I walked my class to the cafeteria, a student asked if she and her friend could talk to me about “something important”. And now I find myself in the center of an elementary school at a red table with two ten-year-olds. Between bites of food, the student (whom I will call Ella) explains what is weighing on...
Sometimes brokenness, tragedy, and suffering are just words. Empty and meaningless. Other times, they have a face and name—a heart and life behind them. On February 15th, as I drove to work, each word took on form as I heard on the radio about the horrific school shooting in Florida. Yet again, devastation and heartbreak personified. Tragedy upon tragedy heaped themselves in my mind. The...
rebelling against low expectations
