My husband and I went on an evening walk a while ago. We rehashed a painful season we'd traversed in the previous months and marked how God had used it for our good. The conversation went deeper as we turned a familiar corner in our neighborhood. Yes, we have successfully navigated external hardships... but what about the ones woven into our family DNA? My husband worried aloud,"Your personality has changed. You were so bubbly... laughing all the time.. and now I can see how heavy life is on you." I conceded that the relentless spiritual warfare, crippling corruption, decade of distance from family, and special needs parenting has dug deep, rugged trenches in my formerly light disposition.

Yesterday was my husband's 42nd birthday. The kids and I threw him a lemonade-themed birthday party at home. I set a beautiful table with a freshly-ironed tablecloth and a vase full of lemons. We had strawberry lemonade with dinner and went back for seconds of lemon cake and ice cream. He even had to hunt for his homemade gifts in a basket of lemons! It was silly and simple. We talked about the meaning behind our celebration during dinner between giggles and our toddler's frighteningly man-like belches.

Share Life. Find God. This is what it’s all about.

Watch this quick video for an encouraging story from this week.

AND MOMS! Search “Called to Worship” on the YouVersionApp’s Bible reading plans for a free 5-day devotional from me and Help Club for Moms!

We've been asking God for a particular miracle for a long time. Last week, another "not yet" hit hard, so I searched "miracle" on my old website. I borrowed hope from my own stories as I re-visited scenes where God met me. Today's call to worship is a miracle lesson I wrote to myself from the mission field in 2011.-----------

We started feeding orphaned and vulnerable children in a nearby community- a handful became hundreds in eighteen months. Last week, an unspeakable amount of hungry children came for hot food and hope...

Relevant Magazine recently reported "Christian music is finally having a real mainstream moment." For the first time in over a decade, two Christian songs made Billboard's "Hot 100" list simultaneously. "American Idol" aired a three-hour "Songs of Faith" special on Easter Sunday. Christian singer and songwriter, Brandon Lake performed "Hard-Fought Hallelujah" on Jimmy Kimmel Live and made a surprise appearance at Stagecoach Festival, co-leading 75,000 people from every walk of life in an incredibly relevant psalm.

I recently spent an afternoon with moms ahead of me in their special needs parenting journeys. A familiar knot twisted in my gut as they shared about unenrolling their children from school. My personal nightmare, one I push down deep, was tea time conversation. You see, statistics agree with every story I've heard. Children with my son's diagnosis are often unable to stay in school and endure so much just trying to grow up.

Have you ever read stories of the disciples and wondered, "How could you do that? Jesus is LITERALLY right there with you!" Luke 22 recounts Jesus telling Peter he would deny Him three times before the rooster's first morning crow. Despite the "warning", Peter fulfilled the prophesy that very same night.

Me too, Peter.

I didn’t know what I was standing in the middle of when I started playing worship music, trying to make it louder than the pounding pulse of life. I didn’t expect those long nights to minister to me - and then others. God’s voice broke through the noise of life while I listened to those songs. I wanted to tell my friends what I heard, so I started sharing through WhatsApp messages. Over time, I started sending it to a few more people - and then more. I committed to sending it out every Friday at 6am and called it “The Friday Call to Worship”. Nobody needed me to write it down except me. I was making a commitment to God to show up every week and to need to hear Him.

When the curtains close on 2025, my oldest son will be 18 and finished with high school. We walked through much together in his earliest years, but the stories are his to share now. I can confess, however, the sleep I've lost pleading with God that my first son wouldn't have to learn things the hard way. I have contended with the same Father who let His Son die for mine (who's actually His!) to spare my boy from wandering in the wilderness. But now I pray that he, along with our other sons, would know who they are in Christ above anything else... whatever it takes. Gulp.

My husband and I have the unique privilege of gathering with missionaries around the world. This week, we were on a call with our friends serving the deaf in Jamaica, internationals and locals in Haiti, the church in Europe, community development in Northern Africa, and the front lines of the war in Israel. We celebrated baptisms, breakthroughs and the ways God keeps showing up for our families. We supported one another over the inglorious strains of living abroad and raising children in foreign countries.

Corrie ten Boom was born on Good Friday in 1892. Her family's home in Haarlem, Holland would become part of the underground movement for Jewish people during World War II.

The story goes that Corrie's father comforted his daughter while she cried over a broken heart before the war began. "Corrie, love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain... We can kill the love so it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or, Corrie, we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel..."

My mom is the greatest celebrator. She flies across the world every April to be with us for Easter and family birthdays. We plan celebrations with great intentionality to accommodate our middle son's nervous system disability. He spends 364 days a year anticipating April 9th, when he gets to be the birthday boy. We want him to be able to enjoy as much of it as he can.

God's people entered the Promised Land through parted waters. (Joshua 3) Upon arrival, their enemies fell at the sound of their worship. (Joshua 6) It only took a few generations for those miracles to become distant stories, dimmed by the shiny veneer of man-made gods. The tribes that traversed the wilderness together turned against one another, slandering, shaming and needlessly engaging in a civil war.

My childhood Sunday School teachers told me Jesus loves me, and I took them at their word. I was baptized at ten-years old, never wondering if the grass was greener anywhere else.

I was barely 22 when I walked into my first graduate-level seminary class: Gospels at 8am. I imagined falling more in love with Jesus, plain and simple. My professor had another objective…

When my childhood home went up in flames, we spent our first "homeless" nights fed, clothed and sheltered by families from my church youth group...

When I said, "There's a boy who needs a mom in South Africa. He can't come here, so I'm moving there..." my American church said, "We'll help, and we'll come to you if you can't come to us."

I did a ridiculous thing. I ordered a walking pad to use for five days and return. I can explain. (A walking pad is a treadmill without handles to slide under a desk and walk while you work.)

My husband went out of town for EIGHT days. Our two youngest sons only attend school a few hours in the morning and struggled with Dad being away….

My husband and I like to walk along the oceanside promenade after dinner dates. We were awe-struck one evening by luminescent waves. The ocean was glowing!

We were witnessing bioluminescence, a natural phenomenon of living things producing light through a chemical reaction. The ocean glowed as microscopic organisms called dinoflagellates shone light from within themselves, much like the fireflies of my childhood.

I love learning. Educated perspective often allows us to move forward. In my Marriage and Family Therapy Masters program, the brokenness within the inner-city Los Angeles families I served was harrowing. Once I learned to see the systems behind them and apply the intricacies of development and other critical layers, I could see hope. I felt honored to step into the trenches with hurting families and help them heal.

But my research-loving brain has hit overload lately. Too many tabs are open.

Lately, I've felt like all that I have just isn't enough for some big, hard things. But I already know what to do... Remember. This isn't the first time I've not been able to see the way. Today, I'm remembering how God showed up in November 2014, when I wrote this story from a rural village.

More than 30 countries around the world are celebrating Valentine's Day today. Much of humanity holds its breath on the 14th of February (and every other day) for our greatest pursuit: to love and be loved.

My husband pursued me ten Februaries ago in the most un-Valentine's sort of way. In fact, I call it "the business meeting" when we recount our love story.