Journey Archives - LUTHERWOMAN

How to Navigate Grief during the Christmas Season

Broken relationships. Sickness. Miscarriage. Death of a loved one. Loss of a pet. There are so many different things that might contribute to a feeling of grief throughout the Christmas season. During this time of year, grief sometimes feels unwelcome or misunderstood. It seems out of place with the joyful decorations and parties and parades that occupy the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think the stark opposition between grief and joy only serves to intensify the feeling of grief for one who is sad. You’re not supposed to feel unhappy during the holidays, right? But what if you do? Is it wrong? Should Christmas just pass you by?

In December of 2015, I experienced a miscarriage. It was my second in six months. Medically, I needed a D&C to help my body complete the

The Idea of “Ideal”

I can't remember the day. It wasn't like in the movies where the girl slowly brings her face up to the mirror and she suddenly feels different. It did not arrive suddenly, and I didn't even see it happening. I noticed it more and more, that I looked in the mirror and I hated what I saw. When I looked, I cringed. I did whatever I could to do to get away from that mirror and move on with my day. As I went on with the mundane chores I had on my agenda, I felt a heaviness. I felt a weakness. It transformed from “well….It will have to work for today” to “I can't look at myself at all today”. Looking at the mirror and hating what I saw was starting to turn me into a different person. I didn't want to be around people anymore. I stopped caring about myself. I would stop doing my hair and my makeup, I wouldn't

What Do We Do When Worldly Advice Fails?

“Just Be Positive.” “If you achieve it, you can do it.” “Pray harder.”

Have you ever heard one of these popular self-help phrases or maybe even said them yourself? If you’re like me, you’ve dealt with these phrases one or more times in your life. You may have thought that you would be able to encourage and uplift someone. Later, you walked through a tough moment, and someone told you one of these phrases and instead of leaving you comforted, it left you feeling alone and maybe even worse than before.

For me, there is one phrase that I found myself thinking about: nails on a chalkboard. It’s a phrase that to this day, I cringe over.

A Constant Amidst the Change

Fall has always been my favorite season. Maybe it’s the beautiful colors that appear in the world around us; maybe it’s the warm and comfy fashion. Maybe it’s because my birthday is this time of year. But for whatever reason, this season has always held a certain joy for me.

In a lot of ways, fall is a contradictory season. We start so many things in the fall— new school years, new seasons of television shows— and yet fall is caused by endings. F. Scott Fitzgerald said that “life starts all over again” in the fall, but really, things don’t restart until spring. This season is the beginning of an ending and the next beginning is months away. And yet it always feels like something new is stirring, doesn’t it? It truly feels like life has the chance

Home Sweet Home

I’m a sucker for those cute signs one hangs in their house, like; Home Sweet Home or Home is where the heart is…but those signs, as cute as they are, are just one more thing.

In all seriousness, what does Home Sweet Home mean to you?
What do you define as home, where do you define as home?

These days those signs might be more accurately read.

Home is where all my stuff is.
Home is where I hole up after work.
Home is where I binge watch… and the like.

Muddling through the Messy Middle

My longest Messy Middle was a span of five years. When my son was about one year old, my husband and I began to hope and pray for another child. After two miscarriages in the span of six months, my body began to deteriorate. I collected a list of seemingly unconnected symptoms. Chronic fatigue. Brain fog. Muscle pain. Joint pain. Migraines. Blurred vision. Digestive distress. Painful Bloating. The list went on and on.

For three years, every three months on average, I was diagnosed with a new autoimmune disease or other condition. Hashimoto’s Disease. Celiac Disease. Ulcerative Colitis. C-Diff. Carbohydrate Malabsorption. Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO). Histamine Intolerance. I had a growing

In the Darkness of the Valley of the Shadow of Death…there is Light

My husband’s alarm goes off and I pretend I didn’t hear it - convincing my body to ignore it and go back to sleep. The bed is warm and I know if I move the day will begin and I’m not ready to face it. And yet I know if I don’t get up I will be angry with myself for being ever behind on the never-ending list of things that must get done.

My body doesn’t move. It’s like my brain doesn’t know how to function and moving is one more decision too much for my brain to handle. Trapped by the bed and my own self, I lay there frozen in position. The longer I stay, the more stressed I feel, but the inertia needed to move the heavy mass on my shoulders and heart is too much.

Finally, once the level of stress is comparable to

Why Can’t I Fix My Child?

It’s a dark crisp fall morning. The street lights are still on and there is hardly any traffic on the roads.

It is time to wake up my teenage daughter for school. My daughter is not a morning person much like her Dad and really struggles to get out of bed every day. However, her struggle to get out of bed is even harder as she wrestles with major depression and other mental health problems. I dread waking her up most mornings because the struggle is real. The struggle isn’t only on her but for me to encourage and motivate her to get ready for school. If you have any experience with depression or anxiety, getting out of bed can be really tough. It is challenging even as a parent to motivate myself in a loving way daily to get her out of bed.

Margin Matters

People often say to me "You must be so busy!" The truth is, I'm not busy. My life is very full, but it's intentionally not busy. In fact, my days, weeks, and months have a lot of margin — (and yours can, too.)

As we look around, it seems that living in a state of near-chaos has become the norm in our culture today. People map out their days down to the minutes. They shuffle their kids (and themselves) from place to place, filling the calendar boxes with a whole array of extracurriculars like they’re hoping for a “bingo”. A friend of mine often jokes that when she spends time with friends, the conversation quickly devolves into people giving her their “resume” — a detailed list of “all the things” they’re accomplishing. Busyness has become a societal badge of honor, and we’re all guilty

Praising God Through Pain

It was mid-December, and we were in the throes of Christmas preparations. Each year I make a list of each person I want to give gifts to, plan a budget, and write out some ideas. I was studying the list, feeling completely overwhelmed that we could hardly afford gifts for our children let alone anyone else on the list. The days were counting down quickly, and it felt so hopeless. Our family was in a difficult financial situation, and this was just one more thing added to that list. The anxiety was coming over me like waves as I imagined Christmas morning with nothing under the tree.

In the darkness of this moment, I felt the Holy Spirit ask me, “Can you praise Me right now?” I was dumbfounded and just sat there as I considered the question. My ultra-convicting, brutally honest answer was,