BLOG––Encouraged by Faith

I grew up in the company of men. With a father, three brothers, a husband and two sons, my closest human bonds throughout my life primarily have been male. As a child, the kids I played with on my street were boys, and most of the kids in my class at church were boys. I didn’t really spend...

In August, I was in Alaska for my niece’s wedding. Several of the family had just spent a miserably cold, wet day in Seward touring the Kenai Fjords National Park in search of whales, seals, sea birds and other marine wildlife, without any luck. The sea was extremely rough because of an...

“Everyone hold up your hands and say, ‘Weeee!!’” The allusion is to riding a roller coaster, and the saying was one of my mom’s favorites.  Her meaning: You can’t control life’s twists and turns, but you can decide whether to scream and throw up...

A friend told me about an experience she had recently of hearing the voice of God. Not through reading His Word. Not in reflection through prayer. Not through godly counsel or the wisdom of the church. Not through life’s circumstances. No, she was in a movie theatre lobby when God told...

Are you a catastrophic thinker? I am. Well, perhaps not in the clinical sense, but I certainly have the ability to ruminate endlessly about worst-case scenarios. For example, on the recent trip to Hawaii with my husband, I cleaned the house with extra care before we left “just in...