Often times when we are experiencing painful affliction it can seem as though we are sinking deeper and deeper into the muck and mire. We can be so overwhelmed that we feel as though we are going to drown in the rising floodwaters of pain…

I just had to share this entire passage because it is every bit of my experience in my walk with God. “Isn’t this also your experience?” I don’t know about you but this has been a constant struggle on my journey. What is that struggle? That struggle…

During my season of brokenness, I can’t tell you the number of times that I begged for God to remove my weakness. I remember crying out in my prayers to Him – “How can I possibly serve you and minister to others in my weakness? What good can come from this?”

Each time I have hit bottom – I am left feeling broken and weak. What is even more painful for me is that I have no one to blame but myself for my present condition so I feel nothing but shame and guilt. But I have learned that whenever I find myself…

The topic of conversation was laughter, but you never would have guessed it from our friend Don’s expression. A successful businessman with more to do than the hours to do it in confessed – “I don’t know how to see the lighter side of life…

In her book, A Joy I’d Never Known, Jan Dravecky shares “...valuable lessons I could not have learned by staying on the high road where the sun shines.” I’m grateful Jan joins us for a second week of sharing some of those life lessons…

“…and I think this means, among other things, that we are to bear the burden of each other’s imperfections.” Francois Fenelon. One precious treasure I uncovered was learning not to expect perfection in relationships…

We don’t normally expect to find treasures in the darkness of adversity or riches in the valley of suffering but God gives us rich rewards even in these desolate places. One of the greatest riches God prepares for us in the valley is the discovery of the treasure of relationships.

It is not good for anyone to do life alone, but there was a time in my life when I thought I didn’t really need relationships. Sure I appreciated my family and friends but I had no idea that having healthy relationships was absolutely essential to a healthy life…

So I asked God – after the imposter had been identified and my masks were removed – who am I? I learned that I am a child of God – not just any child – but Abba’s child..

I asked God to show me. Show me the masks I have worn. Show me why I began to wear them in the first place. Show me the evolution of my imposter. I asked God – as King David did…

I have struggled off and on with depression all of my adult life. For years now I have pleaded with God to remove this “thorn in my flesh.” After years of counseling and many attempts to get off my antidepressant I had resigned myself to the fact that this was the way…

Long term illness has more than one victim. Naturally, the priority of energy and time must be the person who is ill. But what about the rest of the family, especially the spouse who walks beside the sick loved one?

How can my heart be glad though? How can my whole being rejoice? How can I find joy now that my husband is gone?  Sometimes it all feels like too much.  Too much suffering.  Too much sadness.  But then I come back to this deep truth…

I have a tendency toward depression.  I have experienced three significant times in my life when I needed to take medication to help me as I worked through times of grief.  So knowing that Mike’s illness was progressing I went to see the doctor before his death and resumed the medication…

This is my favorite verse in the Psalm.  “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”  The lines in this Psalm would have been about land portions.  The land would be the inheritance that God is giving King David…

In suffering, there is a choosing.  You choose whether the Lord will be your portion and cup or if you will run after another god, another idol.  There are multitudes of idols we can run after when we are scared, hurting and suffering…

Another part of being preserved came from the community of believers around us.  The day Mike and I learned he had internal melanoma with a terminal diagnosis, we drove back to our home church and our place of ministry trying to process this dire information. 

In January 2013, our world was rocked with a diagnosis of internal melanoma with no external site.  My husband was given 6-12 months to live by the local oncologist.  We were given a referral to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa “just on the outside chance they could help”.

 “Mike has been diagnosed with deadly melanoma. He has been given 6 – 12 months to live.” My friendship with Sherry Kendrick began over twenty years ago when Mike was a church planter and Sherry asked me to speak at a women’s event…