I recently came across a question that stayed with me: What does it really look like to love your wife like Christ? My first thought was my father. I don’t know if my father ever thought about marriage in those theological terms. I don’t remember him talking about what it meant to love a wife…
Category: Writer
The Cracks We Keep Patching
On my last trip home, my suitcase came back with a crack. It wasn’t completely broken, but it was enough for me to worry about whether it would make it through the next trip. Before I headed back, I put some heavy-duty glue into the crack. Then I did it again. And again. I wasn’t…
Not Mine to Carry
There are things in life that hurt us in ways we never expected. Sometimes it is something someone did. Sometimes it is something they failed to do. Sometimes it is a loss, a disappointment, an unanswered prayer, a relationship that changed, an opportunity that disappeared, or simply the painful realization that life did not turn…
Somewhere in the World
There are little things that happen in life that make you pause and quietly feel grateful. Not the big, life-changing things. Just small moments that remind you that perhaps our lives touch one another in ways we don’t always see. Lately, I’ve been having one of those moments. I’ve noticed people from different parts of…
The Prayers We Outgrow
This morning, I found myself thinking about some of the prayers I used to pray. Not the prayers I pray now. The old ones. The ones I prayed when I was younger and life looked very different. The ones that felt so important at the time that I couldn’t imagine being okay without the answers…
Come and See
There is something about the story of the Samaritan woman that I keep coming back to. Jesus knew where He was going. He knew Samaria. He knew the woman He would meet there. He knew her story before she ever stood at that well. And still, He went. He didn’t meet her by accident. He…
Look Again
There is something interesting about the way we come to know people. At first, we are curious. When someone is new to us, we want to hear their stories. We notice the little things. We listen closely. There is a natural curiosity about who they are, what they think, what has shaped them. But as…
Let God Handle What I Cannot
There was a time when I thought understanding why God allowed certain things to happen would finally bring me peace. I wanted to understand the pain. The disappointments. The seasons that seemed to stretch far longer than I thought I could endure. I wanted to know why some prayers seemed to take so long to…
The Person God Always Saw
Sometimes I wonder who I would have been if life had been different. If my heart had never been broken. If trust had never been betrayed. If disappointment had never found its way into my story. Would I be softer? Less guarded? More carefree? It’s a question I think many of us quietly carry. We…
The Life That Didn’t Happen
I think one of the quietest thieves of joy is comparison. Not the kind where we compare ourselves to other people. The kind where we compare our lives to the lives we imagine we could have lived. It happens more often than we realize. We wonder what would have happened if we had made a…
Charina.Writes 