When Ryan was a little girl, she told people that when she was all grown up she wanted to be a chair. When she was sixteen, a car accident left her a paraplegic. She wouldn’t be a chair, but she would live life from a wheelchair. From the days immediately following the accident to trying out for the US Paralympic …
Sandy was just a teenager who loved her church. It was a place she felt accepted and celebrated. When a new youth pastor was hired, he saw Sandy’s love for the church and used it against her. He started grooming her for a long-term abusive relationship before her sixteenth birthday. When the abuse was finally discovered, the church moved the …
I once heard someone say that when she experienced an unexpected moment of goodness, she thought of it as a love note from God. When she experienced something especially sweet, or when something she expected to be hard turned out to be easy, she felt like she received a love note from God. I like that, don’t you? Maybe you …
Discovering Our Scars Podcast, Episode 104 The pandemic has caused some of us to live in a sort of hibernation. Instead of spending time with friends in real life we’ve either not spent time with friends or we’ve settled for Zoom, social media, or some other slightly disconnected form of connection. As Steph and I spend time with friends again, …
Discovering Our Scars Episode 103 When we aren’t feeling our best, it can be hard to know what coping mechanism to reach for. Having a plan in advance is like preparing for a hurricane. You can stock your mental health toolkit with a list of healthy coping mechanisms, to reduce the chance that you will default to an unhealthy one. …
One of the gifts of reading the New Testament, especially the Gospels, is that we get to see how often those closest to Jesus get it wrong. The disciples are his partners in ministry, but many times they don’t seem to understand what Jesus is really all about. I wish I didn’t find them quite so relatable in those moments. …
An honest conversation with Katie Langston Katie Langston joins Steph and me to talk about her memoir, Sealed: An Unexpected Journey Into the Heart of Grace. Katie grew up in a devoutly Mormon family where she learned that God’s love was conditional and her actions could cause God to reject her. She worried about her inability to please God so …
Several years ago, I got a neat gift from an aunt who lives in Baltimore. She sent me a football autographed by Johnny Unitas—the Hall of Fame quarterback who played for the Colts when they were in Baltimore. Being in the Hall of Fame is a definite indication that a player is a G.O.A.T., one of the Greatest of All …
You’ve probably noticed, but the world is on fire metaphorically and literally. I don’t know about you, but there are days when I feel like I need to be rescued from it all. Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … Superman! Sometimes, I want a superhero to swoop in and save me. Maybe you’ve felt …
What do you think it means when Jesus says: Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. John 6:47-50 “Very truly, I tell you, whoever …