When I heard my dad’s voice on the other side of the phone, I knew something was terribly wrong.  A fatal disease I knew nothing about was about to change everything. The world where my dad was invincible shattered with three simple letters — ALS.

It had been nine short weeks since God had held out His hand and asked me for my time.

My small group was in the middle of a Bible study called Living Beyond Yourself. God had prepared my heart with His Word using 5 straight days of personal study on His faithfulness. Under “How does God want you to respond to what He showed you today?” I wrote: “Faith is necessary to follow God and it must be based on the faithfulness of His character and who He is, not what He does.”

From a DVD in my living room the day after that fateful phone call, Beth Moore taught us this:

“Always associate ‘through’ with ‘faith.’ Faith always goes through.”

With one hand on my shoulder and the other wagging a perfectly french manicured finger inches from my face, she boldly declared, "God told me He is going to tell you something you are going to KNOW and you are NEVER going to forget."  

I was not one to make confident claims about hearing from God outside of general revelation of Scripture. But I was always intrigued when people would share about how God had spoken specifically to them. And, I was confused about what He sounded like and how on earth they were so sure it was Him.

The sidelines felt safer than stepping into my own lane and starting to run. I had never felt special enough for special revelation.

Nevertheless, I was excited. If God was going to speak, I certainly didn’t want to miss it.

I heard recently that the hardest years in marriage are the ones after the wedding. That may be hard to believe on this very perfect day where everything went as planned. As you gaze into each other’s smiling eyes, you might not be able to imagine that at some point, you will stare into those same eyes, only all of a sudden, they may look quite angry.

Unpleasantly surprising thoughts like, “this is not what I signed up for,”  or, “this is not what I expected,” or, “it was not supposed to be like this,” might wander through your mind.

When you find yourselves with your fight faces on, I want you to remember this: Choosing to fight for each other, rather than with each other, will change the climate of your marriage.

So, let this be your fight song. Your take back your life song. And your prove your marriage is alright song, because I know you’ve both got lots of fight left in you.

How hard can it be to start a fire? 

This was my thought the other night as I planned to enjoy a quiet fire in our backyard pit. The garden hose was close by in the event it became too excited.

My pile of dead lilac branches and my few crumpled pieces of paper seemed full of promise as I took the lighter to them. The paper went out as quickly as quickly as my confidence without a single branch catching the flames. Apparently, sparks come easy, but starting and sustaining an actual fire is an entirely different story. 

Determined, I marched back inside and rummaged around until I found plenty more paper and several chunks of cardboard. Back outside, I placed them underneath the twigs and branches providing ample opportunity to ignite.

This time, the spark was sustained, and I enjoyed being captivated by what fires do: consume. 

As I sat, my thoughts wandered to spiritual fire. Experiences with God seem to spark fires of faith, but after the weekend retreat, the end of the blog post, the conclusion of the conference, the last chapter of the Bible study, or the closing song of the worship service, why are they not easily sustained?  

As we made our way home from school, my littles began noticing the plethora of hockey sticks decorating the front porches of many of the homes in our neighbourhood. I explained that people had put out their hockey sticks for relay a message to Humboldt: "We're with you."

Another why followed and I explained that when you're hurting, the biggest thing is you want to know you aren't alone.

In pain, our first need is presence.

I held up my hand like a stop sign, warning him not to come any closer to this ticking time bomb, along with a verbal warning declaring I did not want to talk in that moment. I continued my cleaning storm around the kitchen, bulldozing over my own marriage LESSONS #1-7 in record-breaking time. He was trying not to laugh aloud at his wife-turned-Hulk -meets-Tasmanian-Devil. His obliviousness to why I was upset in the first place only fueled my fire.

I refused eye contact, staring only at the ground, my thoughts returned to the mounting pile of verbal dirt I wanted to throw. But even in my rage, I knew I would have only seconds of satisfaction before we would both pay the price. Sin is expensive that way. It would bulldoze the hard-fought love, safety, and closeness in our relationship to the ground.

But I wanted to throw dirt, because I was feeling hurt.