“God made your body to do this.” As I prepared for the natural birth of my daughter last year, midwives encouraged me to repeat this truth during labor. I pulled those words over me like a warm blanket every day before my daughter arrived. But when the contractions intensified, I felt like a fool for […]

This is an excerpt from our Flourish Study: 8 weeks on the Fruit of the Spirit. Find it here. Deep beneath the surface of the earth is a world that rarely meets the eyes. In the darkness of fertile soil, the hands of God are molding, shaping, and cultivating the vegetation we see around us. […]

A Deeper Gratitude Every Thanksgiving, the tradition of going around the table and proclaiming thanks one by one leaves me feeling frustrated. Why does this practice feel empty and insufficient to me? I think it’s because thankfulness, as a sinner-made-saint, demands an understanding of gratitude far beyond a last-minute toss-up. And so I search my […]

First Steps of Friendship On the first day of kindergarten, I decided I was going to befriend a girl in my class. I was too scared to initiate a conversation with her (social anxiety manifests itself young), so my strategy was to follow her at a distance until she noticed me and said hello. This […]

Perfectionism Paralysis Maybe it’s a personality thing, but I find perfectionism creeping into every area of my life—including my relationship with God. So often, I have an ideal in my head of what something needs to look like, and nothing less will do. I’m not artsy, so Instagram-worthy doodles on Scripture’s pages will never be […]