Pain can feel like protection. If I hold it tight, no one can tell me to move on. No one can rush me. No one can take what's left. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who has held pain this way. Close to the chest. Quiet. Guarded. Some days it feels like the last piece...
God Smiled Down on a Starbucks Line: How A Stranger’s Invitation Became A Gift I Would Need In My Hardest Season
An Ordinary Morning in Texas It was June 2021. We had moved from Seattle to Tennessee in the middle of the pandemic. After months of screens and isolation, I was finally going somewhere. I was going to see people. In person! The National Religious Broadcasters...
The Stories Fall Brings Back: When Remembering Becomes Comfort ~ The Infamous Applesauce Fight
How does fall arrive in your heart? I love fall, but out here in Tennessee, the stores have been decorated for fall and selling fall decor since August, when school went back in session, and that is a little too early for me. I have not started with the “Happy Fall,...
Leaning on Faith and Community After Losing Our Daughter – My guest conversation on Hope After Child & Sibling Loss
Thirteen days changed our family's history. That's how long we had from the day Annie went into the ER on August 11 until she passed away on August 24, 2023. She was 29. The cancer that took her was one none of us knew was there. I sat down with Greg Buffkin to talk...
How God Met Me in the Month I Lost My Daughter
I flipped the calendar a couple of days early… August is a month I would rather just keep flipping past. The page in July is already the heaviest one I turn all year. And I didn't want to see August, the month we lost Annie. Never has time moved so slowly. And yet,...
When the Season Changes Before Your Heart Is Ready
There are losses we recognize right away: the death of someone we love, the diagnosis, the divorce, the empty chair, the phone call that changes everything. Those losses usually have language around them. People may not always say the right thing, but at least they...







