If it were up to me…” and then the words pound, desperate and hard, “I’d write this story differently.”…”Just that maybe… maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a...

God can enter into me, even me, and use these hands, these feet, to be His love, a love that goes on and on and on forever, endless cycle of grace.

…the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.

…this counting blessings was the unlocking of the mystery of joy, joy, “the gigantic secret of the Christian,” joy hiding in gratitude … God had used the dare to give me this; led me all...

Without God’s Word as a lens, the world warps.

Losses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of a life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all...

We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of...

So now we pause. Still. Ponder. Hush. Wait. Each day of Advent, He gives you the gift of time, so you have time to be still and wait. Wait for the coming of the God...

Sometimes you don’t know when you’re taking the first step through a door until you’re already inside.

When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life...

His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB).

I make soup and I back bread and I know my supreme need is joy in God and I know I can’t experience deep joy in God until I deep trust in God. I shine...

It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark...

Why do I lunge for control instead of joy?…do I thin Jesus grace too impotent to give me the full life…Whenever I am blind to joys well, isn’t it because I don’t believe in Gods...

I wear the lens of the Word and all the world transfigures into the Beauty of Christ and ‘everything is eucharisteo’.

I am a mother-tired, but when my soul doth magnify, my time doth magnify.

Expectations kill relationships — especially with God.

To get where you want to go, the first question you always have to answer is Where am I? … We only find out where we are when we find out where He is. We...

I know the theological answers, but do my blood and my pulse?

Stress isn’t only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.

That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To...

The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life – in my life – is lack of thanksgiving.

Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in...

Instead of filling with expectations, the joy-filled expect nothing–and are filled.

I speak the unseen into seeing and I can feel it, this steady breathing in the rhythm of grace–‘give thanks (in), give thanks (out)’.

Communion, by necessity, always leads us into community.

Counting one thousand gifts means counting the hard things — otherwise I’ve miscounted.

Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen...

Trauma’s storm can mask the Christ and feelings can lie. I draw all the hurting voices close and I tough their scars with a whisper: sometimes we don’t fully see that in Christ, because of...

Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?

That is what a shadow is, and empty space, a hole in the light. Evil is this – a hole in the goodness of God.

Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.

Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.

Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering the converse does. The brave who focus and all things good and all things beautiful to give thanks for it and discover...

We ‘have’ all received on grace after another, but we only recognize the glory of God in this moment ‘when we wake to the one grace after another’.

Wherever you are, be all there.” I have lived the runner, panting ahead in worry, pounding back in regrets, terrified to live in the present, because here-time asks me to do the hardest of all:...

While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.

Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks.

I receive grace. And through me, grace could flow on. Like a cycle of water in continuous movement, grace is meant to fall, a rain…again, again, again. I could share the grace, multiply the joy,...

True saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings; joy comes from the place of the very presence of God. Joy is God and God...

How to ‘live’ in a state of awe when life is mundane and ordinary?

Can God be counted on? Count blessings and find out how many of His bridges have already held.

The practice of giving thanks…eucharisteo…this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don’t have to change what we...

With memories of gravestones, of combing fingers through tangled hair, I wonder too … If the rent in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, and our own emptiness, might...

Satan’s sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude.

This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there’s this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity.

Start with a simple request, making it the refrain of your day: ‘God, open the eyes of my heart.’ This journey must be Spirit-led, every day.

I glance back in the mirror to the concrete bridge, the one I’ve boldly driven straight across without second thought, and I see truth reflecting back at me: Every time fear freezes and worry writhes,...

When it gets dark, it’s only because god has tucked me in a cleft of the rock and covered me, protected, with His hand? In the pitch, I feel like I’m falling, sense the bridge...

Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand. In an open and humble palm, released and surrendered to receive, light dances, flickers happy. The moment the hand...