To my ride-or-die friends who have walked with me through valley and mountain—
I know how deeply your beautiful hearts are wrestling with what you are being asked to do — to love so fiercely in friendship, and then hand me back to Jesus. To surrender our journey just as it felt like it was only beginning. How does one even begin to do that?
We have shared life together for about as long as the disciples sat at Jesus’ feet. Imagine how they must have felt, thinking their journey had only just begun — how desperate they must have been at the thought of losing their closest friend.
But as the disciples learned — and as you will too — God never asks us to walk alone. His Spirit of grace, His face in your friends, His voice in your heart, will comfort and guide you.
Yes, there will be tears. But there will never be a loss of hope or joy. The planting of you in my life is coming to bloom. We have loved deeply and served one another through many seasons, each with its own beautiful purpose.
Though I may slip away from this celebration a little early, it is only to join an even grander, more glorious one.
I ask that you continue in what we have learned together through this suffering: to show up, to love the brokenhearted, to carry hope into weary places. There are so many hurting hearts all around who need the same friendship, encouragement, and relentless pointing to Jesus that you have given me.
Our story doesn’t end here.
Go. Love fiercely. Serve joyfully. Laugh and grow richly, with hearts full of gratitude for the gift of friendship we are blessed to share.
There’s a particular kind of pain that slices deeper than most—by the time the blade’s edge has cut deep into the soul, the compression meant to stop the pulsing flow is often insignificant and ineffective. This is the deep pain of being hurt by the very people who were supposed to be a reflection of Christ. The ones who were supposed to be your spiritual family. The ones you trusted with your most vulnerable confessions, your wounds, your heavy burdens. And instead of grace, you were met with rejection. Instead of love, you found judgment. Instead of healing, you were left with more scars.
This pain is a quiet heartbreak. A confusing one. Because how do you reconcile the love of Jesus with the rejection of His people?
It can look like being vulnerable in a small group and having your words twisted or used against you later. It can be coming forward with a struggle—addiction, abuse, mental health, prodigal children, doubts—and being met not with compassion, but with shame. It can be trying to serve, lead, or simply belong, only to be ignored, belittled, or pushed out.
If you’ve been there, I want you to hear this: you’re not alone. And you’re not crazy for feeling heartbroken and angry and confused. Jesus understands this kind of pain—He experienced betrayal, too. Not just from the world, but from those people closest to Him.
So how do you keep your faith when your heart is breaking?
Here’s what I’ve learned, often through long tears and difficult wrestling:
First of all, separate Jesus from people.
People are imperfect. Even well-meaning Christians can cause wounds. But Jesus—He never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. When people have failed you, He hasn’t. He still sees you. Still loves you. Still draws near. The church is meant to reflect Him, but when it doesn’t, He still remains good and trustworthy.
Lean in and feel the pain. Let it suck, and grieve it. Don’t minimize it.
Jesus never told us to pretend things are fine when they’re not. There’s space in his Kingdom to cry out, to lament, to question. Just look at the Psalms—David was constantly bringing his raw, unfiltered hurt to God. You can too. Your pain is valid, and God can handle your honesty.
Next, find community—but wisely. Not all churches are the same. Not all people are the same. It might take time, but there are places and people who will love like Jesus does—gently, kindly, humbly. Take your time, pray for discernment, and know that your healing is not rushed.
Finally, let Jesus be your healer.
No church can save you. No pastor can fully carry you. That’s not their job—it’s His. He came to bind up the brokenhearted, to carry burdens, to restore what was lost. Let Him do that for you. Day by day and layer by layer.
Faith after being hurt in church looks different.
It might be a quieter faith. More cautious. Less tied to the buildings and programs and activities, and more rooted in the secret place with God. That’s okay. Sometimes, when everything falls away, we finally see Jesus more clearly. Not through the stained glass of others’ opinions, but for who He truly is—gentle and lowly in heart, full of mercy, slow to anger, rich in love.
If you’re struggling, let me say this clearly: Jesus is not the one who hurt you. He weeps with you. He walks with you. And He is still worth following, even when His people fall short.
Your pain matters. Your story matters. And your faith—if it’s still there, even if it’s in pieces—is something beautiful.
You’re still seen. Still loved. Still held.
And most of all, you are not alone.
Kindly leave me a comment; it lets me know you’re listening!
I reach my desperate hands toward the heavens from where my help comes. I cry out to God because I know He will hear me.
How long God, will I watch my family crumble? Why do each of my children have to suffer so hard? How long will we wait for our redemption story? Have you forgotten us?
Please strengthen my hope, it is weary within me. Please redeem your people with your mighty hand. Restore to us the years the locusts have eaten.
I remember full well the days you stood me firm on a mountaintop. I remember your deep compassion for me, and how you saw something in me I could not yet. I remember the glimpse of my story you gave me, and it is a good, good story.
I will continually praise you, because not a moment of my life is hidden from you. You know full well what the finished picture will look like, and you are trustworthy to take me there. My thoughts are but chatter compared to the steadiness of your all-knowing mind. You have led me this far, and I will yet trust your kind and compassionate heart to bring my story to completion.
Thank you friends, near and far, who have prayed and loved and carried me through this hard few weeks. May God richly reward you for your faithful kindness.
I love giving gifts, and I enjoy receiving them, yet I struggle to accept one of the greatest gifts offered to me; the gift of receiving. It is a humbling place to exist, needing others’ love and care, and I find it difficult at times. I have realized because of my love of giving that it takes far more grace to receive than it does to give.
After years of priding myself on my strength, being humble is difficult for me. It’s hard to ask for help. Do you find yourself agreeing with me? Yet we are all in need in one way or another; broken and struggling but putting on the best brave face we can muster just to prove we can go it alone.
In this long, loooooong season of needing to accept the help of others I find that the luster of having it all together is wearing thin. I see the depth of brokenness within me and around me, and I long to connect in my brokenness. I long to be known and to know the true hearts of others around me.
At my core I am a doer. A server, a giver, a wear-myself-down-to-nothing all in the name of love kind of girl. Accolades for me, right? What if I told you it’s just a ruse for my pride and need for control? Control that blares I’m not needy, I can do it myself, I don’t need anyone— unless someone needs /me/, and then I’m there.
I have spoken with enough people to know that I am not alone in this. Well, maybe I’m alone in admitting it, but I’m not alone in feeling it.
For 35 years I basked on the pedestal of being able-bodied, capable of doing anything that needed doing. I spent decades believing my purpose was to wear myself out pleasing those around me. I knew the truth, but it was easy to ignore when I had strength on my side.
Culture convinces us that our success is measured by our strength. It’s a bold-faced lie that what we are capable of is what we are loved for. This isn’t living in the truth of the gospel. Thankfully God is continually gracious to keep showing me the sin of my pride and need for control. He patiently loves me back to the foot of the cross and reminds me of my need to be needy and not just needed.
It took the stripping of my strength by this awful disease to expose this to me, and I still have to seek grace often because my heart’s bent is on proving myself instead of letting myself be loved in my neediness. Jesus is breaking me of my strength and showing me the grace to be found in embracing my weakness, and the joy that it gives others who want to help.
I hope that you can find this truth in your own life. Don’t settle for being loved for your abilities instead of being loved for your heart. Resist the temptation to keep yourself busy in order to feel accepted. Look for the ways to slow and find your significance in something more real. Then notice how you find peace and rest in giving others the gift of helping.
I met Sandy when we both signed up for the Women’s Bible Study at University Baptist Church. We ended up in the same small group that met to discuss what we had read and watched. Being an introvert, and still fairly new to UBC, I gave myself over to the very extroverted woman who had an answer for each of the questions, and I did a lot of “soaking in” during that time.
By September 14, 2022, Sandy and I somehow talked enough to become Facebook friends, and from there she discovered that I was collecting nail polish to paint nails for women experiencing homelessness in town.
Sandy wanted to help, and generously donated to my small little mission.
From there my busted up short term memory doesn’t quite fill in all the blanks correctly, but I do know that Sandy started showing up for me again and again. In ways others hadn’t, and in quantities others wouldn’t.
There was nothing that she would not do for me; sit and patiently teach me all of the wise bits about marriage she has learned over the years, vacuum and mop my floors, pray and read scripture over me from a hospital bed, let me vent about a horrible day that didn’t really stack up to her hard day. Remind me in kindness when I need to reframe my thinking, or go back and ask someone’s forgiveness, and hours and hours of holding my hand and praying over me.
Sandy disciples many different women, and I was always aware how much that filled her plate, but it took me awhile to realize what she was doing was disciplining me too. Guiding me in love. Teaching me in wisdom. Loving me with grace.
For years I have prayed for Godly women in my life who will mentor and guide me, and I think I had all but given up on that ever happening by the time I met Sandy. Yet she walked right in and took the job. None of my mess mattered to her. My life expectancy didn’t matter to her. She was simply there for as many days as God would allow us to have together.
We have gotten to serve together, laugh together, pray together, and have hours upon hours of conversations about every topic under the sun, including the hardest ones that no one much wants to talk about. I can only pray that I will have the opportunity to be someone’s “Mama Sandy” some day, because what she has given me has been something I’ve needed more than half my life, and came at the most impeccable of times. As I tell Sandy, “Our hearts have been friends for a very long time.”
Moving methodically around each raised bed of my garden I parted prickly leaves to get the clearest view where any new produce was ready for harvest, or any weeds that had sprung up among my vegetable plants. I plucked thin blades of grass and clover-looking leaves attached to flexible stems that had popped up since the last rain. I counted the pumpkins that were forming and twisted a cucumber vine back around its trellis. I was snipping off young okras when I noticed the difference, and it was profound.
Standing tall right between the towering cornstalks and the fuzzy buds of okra there was a different plant. Its stems were a rhubarb red, and flat pointed leaves grew abundantly from matching branches. As I examined these plants I noticed the leaves were close, but shaped differently than the neighboring okra, neither did they have any evidence of bearing anything of edible value. That’s when it hit me. These were weeds! Standing just as tall as the okra plants, and almost in neat little rows, it was clear why I had thought these had come from the seeds that I planted. I had been deceived from the time of tiny seedlings to these now towering plants.
I grasped the thick woody stems and yanked, but no matter how hard I pulled, most of them would not budge. The ones that did come up had impressively massive roots.
With these crawling tentacles beneath the surface of the soil I had to worry about how entangled they might be with my healthy plants, and many of them I had to just hack off above the ground, knowing they would need to be watched closely for regrowth. I was frustrated with myself that I had not noticed them and put a stop to them when they were seedlings. That made me realize how much this is like us missing the mark of God’s design in our lives.
When the wrong things we choose to do are disguised as something good; healthy green leaves in straight lines, it’s easy to overlook them. They creep in, and unknowingly we water and fertilize them, allowing the roots to grow deep and take hold. By the time we recognize there is something that shouldn’t be there, it is already so tangled around the healthy roots that it is sucking the nutrition from the fruit that is growing, and there is often no way to remove it without casualties.
So how does one prevent this kind of sneaky invasion? We have to be attentive, distinguishing what does not belong in our lives and uprooting it before it takes hold. The best defenses we have are spending time regularly in God’s Word, and faithfully in prayer, as well as having friends we can trust to hold us accountable; then we will be so immersed in truth that anything not of Him will be easy to recognize.
This week I had to be moved to inpatient hospice again as the struggle to breathe spiraled me into unconsciousness. Thankfully I am now back home with my people, breathing a little easier, but I just keep replaying in my mind the moments where my good friend sat on the side of my bed in the shadows of the afternoon the day I arrived there.
I did not have many words, partly due to my being on my ventilator, and partly because it felt like there was nothing left to say. I was discouraged and hurting. My “fight songs” playlist of music was playing through my phone, and my friend came and sat tenderly on the bed next to me, taking my hand in hers and lifting her other hand to Heaven as she swayed to the words of the praise music that was playing. I’m sure she asked me a few questions that afternoon, but the only thing I clearly remember her saying, as tears slid down her cheek, was “this just sucks.”
When someone is going through something painful we often do not know what to say, and the result is we say too much. We have the best intentions to lend encouragement, but in these situations being the “fixer” is not what’s needed. It takes some restraint to not say things like, “you’re going to be ok, you’ve got this, I believe you are going to be healed, etc,” but being present in the pain is a far greater gift.
My dear friend sat there and allowed herself to feel what I felt. She did not try to give me the easy answers or platitudes that would have taken less sacrifice than sitting in my grief. And no doubt it is costly to enter into someone else’s suffering.
The reality is those pat answers are just empty words at a time like that. Suffering is hard, and setbacks can take the wind right out of you and leave you wondering how you are going to move on from where you find yourself. I urge you to learn from my friend and be willing to love your people well in their need to acknowledge that it just sucks.
This grieving what is and what’s been taken is part of the healing that is coming, and it can’t be skipped or ignored regardless of how badly we want to have the answer to the fixing.
The next time you have the privilege of being allowed into someone’s hard, hold back the urge to find the most encouraging thing to say and listen and feel and acknowledge the obvious. This sucks. I’m so sorry you are going through this. This isn’t fair. This is hard.
Today a nurse and doctor from hospice came out to my house and assessed my condition and the things that have declined for me over the past few months and weeks. We talked in depth about my goals and my family’s needs, and the reality of the days ahead of me. They interjected hard conversations with compassion and kindness and humor, and in the end as they admitted me under home hospice care, I felt as though I had been given a great gift rather than something to grieve.
How perfectly that word describes the jumble of days that has been this week… “the period between daylight and darkness.”
Thank you for hanging in there with me this week. I realize now that I dropped off the planet in the middle of conversations, appointments, and even in the middle of uploading a photo to Facebook! I know many of my friends and family members were wondering what on earth was going on and why I wasn’t answering.
Rendition of a photo I posted this week without knowing it. No one knows what it is… to me it looks like twilight.
This weekend my respiratory drive decided to take a vacation, and my family found me unresponsive. For my medical peeps, I had a GCS of 3 when paramedics arrived. I spent the first part of the week intubated in the ICU.
In the haze between sedation and full consciousness I was so blessed to know that some of my dearest people were there with me praying over me, reading scripture over me, and just holding space for me on some very scary and unsteady ground. Unable to talk, all it took was me scratchily scrawling out a name or two on a piece of paper, and my people came running to be by my side. I am so incredibly thankful.
My medical team worked hard with me, but it was obvious my body was tired. Each time they turned off the ventilator to try to get me off of it, my chest remained silent, and they had to turn it back on. What changed this was overhearing my husband ask what the next step would be, and seeing my doctor motion to his neck that I would get a tracheostomy. I scraped up what fight I had left in me and scribbled out “try breathing again.”
For the next hour I breathed, but it was like trying to come up for air when the pool cover has already been put back on. I fought and fought, but eventually I heard the doctor order the medications be drawn up for rapid sequence intubation; they were getting ready to intubate me again. Somehow in that moment of defeat I sucked in a thin stream of air, and then another. Little by little I was able to take each next breath on my own until I was finally resting back against my pillow, only a bipap mask supporting me.
I made it very clear to my doctors that my daughter was graduating high school on Thursday, and I would be leaving the hospital by then with or without their blessing! Thankfully my team was very supportive and worked hard to get me out of there in time. That seemed an impossible feat at the beginning of the week, so my heart was overjoyed to be able to celebrate with my girl.
Sola Gratia!
I was there to listen to her beautiful singing voice peal across the arena in perfect harmony, and my heart sang. I was there to hear her name announced as she walked forward for her diploma, and my pride thumped swollen in my chest. I was there to giggle at the cute, triumphant face she made as she walked by the cameras with her prize in hand, and my spirit soared. The joy of the Lord is my strength, and he truly has shepherded me through some of the deepest valleys and the highest mountaintops this week.
I also delighted in the fact that my little sister and a few of her littles drove out for the graduation and I was able to spend time loving on them.
Seester LoveThankful for my girls helping me get fancied up! 💕
This will be the way forward for now, and we are grateful for the help to better manage things that have gotten frightening and difficult, like my weakness and breathing. I am grateful for this roll in seasons that brings these beautiful blue skies and warm breezes; ready to soak them all up with my people! And I am thankful for each of you who have faithfully walked us along this journey in so many ways. ♥️
There is a saying we have probably all heard at one time or another that goes something like this: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” Compassion being one of the gifts I have been graced with, this quote always struck a cord with me and helped focus my thoughts on some important perspective through my early years. No situation has brought a more resounding agreement with these words however, than the one that hit closest to home.
His friends saw him become disinterested and standoffish; he started declining play dates in favor of spending time by himself at home instead of being the outdoorsy social butterfly that everyone was accustomed to knowing. They did not know that he was battling a suffocating depression.
His teammates saw him gain a lot of weight and struggle with his endurance and speed, and they teased him. They did not know that the medication that is keeping intrusive suicidal thoughts at bay has caused him to put on the weight.
He got in trouble for picking on one of his peers, and he was labeled as a bully and a “ring leader.” They did not know that he was relentlessly being bullied day in and day out and was keeping it to himself.
His classmates noticed him disappear and started sharing rumors that he had been expelled. They did not know that he was experiencing such toxic levels of stress that something was going to give, and so we stepped in to offer him the solace of homeschool; where he is now thriving.
His teachers saw him not give his full attention and best effort, and assumed he was unfocused and not willing to work hard. They did not know that nearly every minute of the day he was being tormented by the fear that today would be the day his mom’s terminal illness would take her away for good.
He got scoffed at for being too tired to go on a bike ride or run around outside. They didn’t know that for his entire life he has been sleeping on the floor by his mom’s bed to make sure she is ok, and it doesn’t provide the most restful sleep.
They saw his gruff, sarcastic exterior and chose not to pursue friendship; they did not know that those are just the masks he wears to protect one of the most tender, intuitive, and compassionate hearts they’ve ever known.
How many times do we jump to conclusions instead of loving big and giving people the chance to show us the beauty that lies behind the hard battles that we each fight? I am guilty of it too. Let’s not miss another opportunity to know someone incredible because we are too quickly assuming we know their situation. Take a chance; offer acceptance. You might be missing something big.
**This was posted with permission from my little man— one of the strongest warriors I know.
Choosing Hope 