How to Survive the Dry Season
This is the season of waiting. The dust makes tornadoes in the road and the wind whips. The clouds gather heavy with expectation …
sacrifice
How to Have Character
The afterglow. The touch of Jesus still radiant on my skin. And a hand. A hand upon my heart sealing it for Him. This is the essence of life. What I live for. But oh how I’d forgotten, forgotten how good it can be. …
How to Enter Rest
“You must enter into the rest of God and that, My children, would mean that you have presented to Me those things which trouble you to such an extent of love and faith that you are able, indeed, to enter in.” -Bill and Marsha …
How to Embrace Joy
“All journeys that really matter start deep inside us.” -Michele Perry, Love Has A Face– I’m learning to live as one who is loved by God. It isn’t easy sometimes to stop and receive when the needs of so many press down on you. But it’s the only way to live, its the only way …
When You Want to Give Up
To believe, even though shredded, even though crazy and impossible, this is where faith goes to live or to die. To put it all on the line. To bear hope. To look into a mother’s eyes and tell her you believe her dead little girl can live….It is one of the hardest things I’ve had …
How to Brave the Dark
I wrote this poem several weeks ago in a dark time, when everything seemed to be going wrong. Two babies had died and our prayers and faith had failed to bring them back to life. I had been through betrayal of a staff member. We had to give some of our children back. The injustice …
How to Break Your Heart for Justice
Vanessa pulls her orange skirt over her feet. Her shirt is covered with red hearts. She traces the ground as she cries. Her step father used to call men over to rape her. Used to pimp her and laugh as she cried behind the curtain. Too small. Legs, …
When You Open Your Eyes
Caught in the crossfire of bullets they only wanted to survive it. To outrun the cycle of war, rape, and the blaze of huts as they were destroyed. They promised them safety. A future. Maybe even a marriage. A truck out of hell, out of the heart of darkness. But it would cost them something. …
When You Need a Reason to Stay
Sometimes we wonder why we do what we do. Things get tough. Doing it on your own with little to affirm you. Life is not perfect in a family of eighteen where fights can start over who left the bicycle out or who drank the last of the water. Sometimes it seems the problems outweigh …
How to Recover Your Heart
“The city will be rebuilt on her ruins.” Jeremiah 30:18 (Pamela, age 16, raped, with daughter Maria–they live in our house) Here, they do not cry. But I watch an Acholi girl cry. I think in the end, what scares her most, what scares all of them, all of us, most, is being alone. I …
An Update from Mozambique
(me with Medina after she came back to visit…feeling much better:) “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten…You will have plenty to eat, until you are full and you will praise the name of the Lord.” Joel 2:25-26 Another exciting day in Pemba. Was on the back of a truck heading …
How to Stay Tender
“Blessed are those who hunger, for they shall be filled.” Mt 5:6 After miraculously recovering from some sort of unknown illness (pretty typical here) I was beginning to really enter into the presence of God again. My prayer the last few days has truly been, Lord make me hungry, hungry for your presence, and for …