God is love and so He gave
Or so the Good Book reads…
But now my heart feels as if it is
The only one that bleeds

Are You the one who forgot me or strayed?
Or have I been the one who has carelessly disobeyed?
My mind fails to believe the love that You have given
That everything I’ve done can be fully forgiven…

Peace… a fickle word that often is easier to say than it is to actually have. In our culture, the word “peace” is used as a way to say goodbye. Peace is often talked about in superficial terms. Yet, for most of us, peace seems elusive. If you’re at peace right now, I commend you. Awesome! I’m encouraged by that. But if you’re struggling in this moment with feeling at peace, maybe this blog can help you a little. If you find anything helpful, I ask that you share a little bit of your struggle to find peace with someone else…

As long as I can remember, I’ve wrestled deeply with depression. Every morning for the past 47 years, I’ve woken up feeling as if there was a 500 pound emotional barbell weighing down my soul. As a teen, I didn’t understand how to deal with the magnitude of my inner struggle. And when personal and family struggles began to pile up…

Fingertips and ears aching, chin and cheeks burning. It is the winter cold. Trees bare their naked twisted branches, grass shrivels into crisp, brown deadness. This is the deadly winter cold. Animals hide, clouds hover, all of creation falls asleep under the sparkling, white enchantment. Everything looks dead, cold, all hope has been lost for green life. But wait, roots in the ground hold the tiniest spark of life. Seeds lie dormant, awaiting. Trees full of icicles pause, quiet. Nature knows there is always hope…

Inside I was grumbling, maybe cursing. I had accumulated huge piles of wood for my projects and they had gotten, shall we say, a little out of hand… Today was the day I had to get it all organized. Clouds were billowing and threatening to dump water, weeds were encompassing my workspace, and a halfway-chopped tree was in my way. I groaned…

“Mom, mom, mom, MOM, MOM, MOMMMMMYYYYYYY!!” Startled out of my daydreaming, I suddenly enter back into reality to my three-year-old daughter desperately trying to get my attention for the fifteenth time in just as many minutes. She wanted to ask me a vitally important question about the whereabouts of one of her favorite stuffed animals…