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How to Practice Your Salvation
For most of my life as a Christian, salvation was a one-time event. You went to the altar call or got yourself baptized and the deal was sealed. I learned in Sunday school and from countless sermons that salvation was through grace or sometimes through faith, depending on the denomination. The primary reason I could be saved was that Jesus died for my sins. I have since discovered that these are half-truths, really. Before you decide that I am a heretic for questioning the time-honored formulas for salvation, I have to first clarify that I firmly believe in all of the statements of the Nicene Creed. My issue is not…
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Five Lies that Undermine Your Sense of Belonging
C.S. Lewis once commented that belonging to a group is the strongest emotional drive a human possesses. I suppose social media is just the latest arena, though I think most people have some pretty visceral memories of the popular crowd in middle school. I haven’t thought about being popular in decades but it ranked among my top concerns throughout adolescence. I have since discovered that many never grow out of this phase. And for good reason. A sense of belonging is crucial to physical and mental health. Isolation is so stressful that it has now become a fully recognized mental illness all on its own in the latest iteration of…
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Six Signs that You Love with Intention
I am always amused by titles like this one until I dive into the topic. Learning to love well takes a lifetime of dedication to the art. Most posts on the topic of love have a long to-do list. And while I agree that love does indeed manifest as action, those lists don’t prove generally helpful to me. After all, my husband and each of my children are so different that what looks like love to one feels unloving to another. Neither am I here to recount the five love languages, as helpful as they can be. I think that to love well, basic guidelines read more like emotional maturity…
Healing Through Art & Words
