If you look up “hope” in the dictionary you will discover two parts to the definition: a) “desire or expectation” for something in the future to occur; and b) “grounds for believing” something in the future will occur. You run into trouble when you have one without the other. When you have “desire without any grounds” you […]
When travel plans for your life are altered or interrupted and your new destination changes or is uncertain, what do you do? How do you live with the tension of having a new destination that’s way off in the distance yet knowing that if you just sit and wait for it, you’ll go stir crazy? […]
“Good grief” sounds like an oxymoron – two contrasting ideas that don’t seem to fit together. But when we look deeper, grief is a process we enter into when we experience a loss in our lives so it makes sense to make it as “good” or “beneficial” as possible. Grief is: “keen mental suffering or […]
When trouble rocks our world, our first response is often disappointment, anger and frustration. We might even feel like God is cursing or punishing us for some reason. The thought often farthest from our mind is to say a prayer of thanks for this blessing! In life, things are not always as they appear. The […]
Healing is not quick or easy. It involves facing brokenness head on and pressing through the stiffness and soreness of body and spirit to find a new place of wholeness. Where does brokenness come from? There are three sources: Your own stupidity Good work you’ve done The mistakes or evil of another We all know what […]
“Two men looked through prison bars, One saw mud, one saw stars” (Oscar Wilde). What do you do when you feel like your circumstances have created a prison like atmosphere in your life? At 23 weeks into my recovery, I looked at my situation and even though physically I was coping with the pain and […]
“People change when they hurt enough that they have to, learn enough that they want to, or receive enough that they are able to.” John Maxwell People change for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the face of change looks stressed (“My body will never be the same again!”) while other times the face of change […]
“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how” [Friedrich Nietzsche]. One of the writers who has influenced my thinking and living these past several months has been Viktor E. Frankl. He was a psychiatrist who spent the years from 1942 to 1945 as a prisoner in a German concentration camp. […]