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Feeling Forsaken: Loneliness and Lament in Psalm 22
We’re always looking for models; it’s how the human brain is designed. We’ll get them from healthy influences around us or from bad examples. We might get them from people we follow on social media or those we look up to in our daily lives. But another place we can get our example for how…
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The Cure for Loneliness: Why being, doing, or finding “better” won’t work.
You know what they say about assumptions, right? Truth is though, we all make them…like, all the time. I don’t think I’m the only one when I say that assumptions plague my thoughts constantly, inviting such weapons of the enemy as insecurity, fear, self-doubt, and resentment into my heart. And one assumption I hate that…
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Praying for a 2a.m. Friend
We like to forget, but the truth is that the best stories don’t start with the happy endings. They start with honest moments, usually filled with hurt, longing, or pain. We have to start there, because only through that lens does redemption feel significant. In one such honest moment, my story of community began. When…
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Holding Things Together
When it feels like your community is falling apart “The group is dead,” my friend said with a finality that made my heart break. Through thick and thin, our life group had stayed together for six years, but as various families went through hard seasons, moved, or just faded into other circles, times had become…
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Showing Up for the One
It was the first meeting for the new Bible study I had launched. I’d picked out the content, planned a get-to-know-you game to start, prepped and prayed the night before that the morning would go well. After arriving a little earlier than was strictly necessary, I arranged the chairs in the room into a circle,…
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The Misfit at the Table
Our brains may tell us that she’s a misfit, or she’s not like you, or she’s not your kinda people. But the mind of Christ might whisper: go introduce yourself to her anyway, go sit with her anyway, or go invite her anyway.
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Holistic Friendship
Have you been taking your Vitamin D? The simplest questions are sometimes the most profound. A friend asked me this in passing as I described the “funk” I’d been feeling a few months ago as Alaska’s brief autumn turned icy. What struck me about her simple question was, why hadn’t I thought of that? I…
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Why Face-to-Face Friendships Matter
As we’re looking to build friendships that last, we can and should try to maintain our long-distance friendships as we feel so led. But never as a replacement for the people around us right where God has placed us. Manufacture proximity if you must via technology, but first, prioritize those in actual proximity to your…
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5 Ways to Make Room
We all have an opportunity to not just consume community, but to also make space for others to experience it like we have. Even if hosting or leading isn’t your vibe, that doesn’t mean you can’t make space for others to experience community. The call is the same for us all, but how we are…
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How Could Ordinary Life be Harder than That?
My inclination might be to keep my hardest moments to myself, but when I choose to bravely share my pain, I’m always reminded of how God wants to care for my hurt heart through the mechanism of community.