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I see you there. You might have slipped in quietly as the service began or you might have been chatting it up as you came through the doors, but either way, now there you sit. Alone and exposed in a sea of families.
I’ve been you. For different reasons in different seasons. You might be a single mom or just a single, braving a very family-centric environment alone. You might be sitting, praying for a husband to believe and to share in the faith you’ve found and hold dear. Maybe, like me, your better half’s work schedule keeps him away or he’s traveling, yet again, for work. No matter the reason, the pain, the vulnerability that comes from sitting alone is the same. And until it’s been you, it’s hard to understand.
But friend, the church needs you. We need you to keep showing up. In this family-centric environment, you remind us God calls us to different seasons and we need to reach beyond ourselves.
You there, sitting alone, you are the functioning widow in our midst. We need to embrace you, to love you, and to remind you that this is why we are here. Our faith is expressed in reaching out and loving you. You provide a unique opportunity for us to love another and to break out of our mold. Please don’t take that gift away from us.
Your gifts, your thoughts, they are needed in your local church. We need you here. We need you sharing and laughing and worshipping. We need you to serve and we need to serve you. You are a valuable part of the Body of Christ, not an after thought.
So don’t give up. I know it’s hard sitting alone and awkward during greeting time. When everyone else is sitting with loved ones, it’s vulnerable to sit alone.
“Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some.”
-Hebrews 10:24-25, ESV
Be vulnerable. Stand up and meet the person next to you. Be brave and ask someone if you can sit with them. Shake up the dynamic of the church with yourself — I promise you, it’s a good thing. Stir someone on to good both by example and by providing them an opportunity to love on you and your family.
He knew you would be there, sitting, waiting to meet Him. And He will always prove faithful. He offers His very Body and Blood to you, sitting in that pew, to sustain and strengthen you. Your time spent in worship will not be in vain.
So this Sunday morning, get dressed, put the kids in the car, and make your way to the pew. Meet your Savior there and see His love expressed through His hands and feet in those sitting next to you. It might be awkward. They might fail you. But He never will.
I was sitting on the floor of my daughter’s nursery. She was still admitted in the NICU, but my mom was determined to find a solution for her ever-growing bow collection. She’d found herself prioritizing projects and tasks in anticipation of discharge and today was no different. The hospital called and reviewed her results. They’d found the reason for her inability to wean from oxygen. I hung up and wept. “I don’t think I can take much more.” RELATED: Everyone Warns You About Childbirth But No One Warns You About a NICU Stay My mom, also a Jesus lover, shared...
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). When put in an impossible situation, many people turn to their faith. It’s the only thing that can help us make sense of things that don’t seem to. It can bring strength and comfort in the hardest times. I’m going to share my story of faith and how it helped me during my difficult journey. I had always known I wanted to be a mom. I had no idea it would be such a difficult dream to achieve. After over a...
Trigger warning: This article discusses abortion Many years ago, I heard a statistic that one out of every four people sitting in church has had a personal experience with abortion. I don’t know how relevant that statistic is today, but that number always stuck with me. One out of four. Could that be right? Could one out of four of us be sitting here with this controversial word as a part of our story? How many of us in this room are silently guarding our hidden shame with a fortress of internal walls that we’ve created to keep the judgmental...
I grew up going to church. Every Sunday, my parents got us four kids up and going, and we’d head to Sunday school followed by the church service. I remember when I was really young, I’d written a note of sorts to Jesus and put it in my window in hopes He would see it. I’m not sure if He saw it, but a friend did. They made fun of me, and I was so embarrassed. How silly of me to write a note to Jesus? What was I thinking? As a young kid and soon as a young adult,...
To my sweet little boy, Today I thought about you and I thought about what I want for you in life. I thought about what all mothers must want for their children. I thought about the future and about your hopes and dreams. I thought about what I want you to do and be and about who you are. My heart aches with the thought that you will be hurt and you will suffer in life and people will let you down and disappoint you. I thought about how safe you are inside me right now, probably the safest you...
My life had been struck by the cleaver of tragedy twice: once by infertility and again with an epilepsy diagnosis three years later. I was praying for, hoping for, desperate for miracles—the grand, sweeping Biblical kind, ones that were radical, magical, and immediate. I prayed for them, but there was no immediate healing, no miraculous pregnancy. Years passed, and I grew weary of waiting. I lost touch with that part of myself that searched for the miraculous, and when I stopped looking for it, I stopped seeing it. It is hard to know you are in the middle of a miracle while...
When you feel like you can’t breathe. When you’re lying in bed silently crying When you’ve cried the prayers of “what’s wrong with me?” When you’ve contemplated sending the kids elsewhere so you too could leave, even just for a day. When the shame of those thoughts buries your soul. When you’re trying to hold it together because you are the glue that holds it all together. When your motto has been blessed and living that to the fullest. Where do you go? Who can you share this with? The fear of judgment and shaming is overwhelming. The idea that somehow...
Once upon a time, there was a woman who was sad. About a year ago, she was skipping along, busy as a bee, marching to the beat of getting things done and getting ahead. She believed the new year held possibility and promise like every other year. Why wouldn’t it? It was the start of not only a year but a whole new decade. She was excited. But right after her big party in her new house with all her friends, an ugly monster came. It came and gobbled up all her normal, all the rhythms that held her and rocked...
Hey there, mama trudging up the stairs with a load of clean laundry that you tell yourself you’ll get to later . . . Can we chat for just a minute? We both know what will happen with the laundry. The littles (and you) will just ransack the hamper to find clean clothes for the next couple of days. And that’s perfectly OK. Hey, if you have clean undies for the family, consider that a win. Folded laundry is highly overrated in my opinion anyway. RELATED: Kingdom Building and Dirty Diapers No judgment, mama. I’ve been there. But my kids...
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