God with us – Erin Ulerich

When Younger Me Started Talking

This post is part of my Exploring Angkura series. Come behind-the-scenes with me as I introduce my newest project, Angkura: Hesed, my soon-to-be-released YA Christian Fantasy novel.

How’s your relationship with your younger self?

When my son was in sixth grade he had a pizza business. My parents owned a bakery, so they would help him make the pizza dough, put the pizzas together, and freeze them. He would sell them frozen from a deep freezer at our house.

A couple of years into his business, my son turned to me and said, “When I am working in the kitchen with Mama Lane and Pappy, I feel alive.” He paused and smiled. “I feel like I’m doing what I’m meant to do.”

In May we attended his Chef pinning ceremony and he asked Mama Lane to pin him. It was a beautiful full-circle moment. A moment where I realized that my son is still walking side by side with his younger self. He listened to that feeling of this is what I was made to do and pursued a degree in Culinary Arts. In that ceremony he could fist bump his younger self and say “Hey, we made it.” They will walk into the future together.

My relationship with my younger self is very different. I made choices in my teen years that I regret. I put my younger self into a perpetual time-out. She’d made too many mistakes and couldn’t be trusted.

I didn’t realize that’s what I had done until later. Life got busy and noisy with marriage, career and raising three kiddos. My younger self and her wounds were easy to ignore.

I began writing Angkura: Hesed as an adventure story for my children in 2014. In the beginning it was structured like a Magic Tree House book. Twelve chapters. The main characters were children. Non-stop action. In this early version, there were two older teens that represented me and my husband and three younger kids to represent our three children. But it wasn’t finished. The story wasn’t quite right.

The more I wrestled with the story, the more my character’s story rose to the top. And in the struggle I realized, it wasn’t my character, it was the voice of my younger self, the one I’d been ignoring all these years.

She wanted her voice back.

I did not welcome her with open arms. I was resentful about decisions she made years ago, and in the next few drafts of the story, her character was not very likeable. She was moody and angry. An early reader commented that she didn’t really like my main character.

That’s when I realized I didn’t either.

Then I read Running Away to Home by Reni Bumpas. Simply put, this book is about a young girl who made bad choices. Getting to know the main character and understanding her reasons for her terrible choices helped me feel compassion for the decisions made by my younger self. As I read this book, something happened.

Healing.

I began listening to my younger self, journaling her words. I began asking why we made the choices we did, and I listened to her answers for the first time.

After years of ignoring her, I embraced her. I forgave her. I forgave us. We began working together to shape Elizabeth’s character in Angkura: Hesed. Maybe that’s why it took me 12 years to write this book. I wasn’t just creating a world and a storyline, I was rebuilding myself.

Angkura:Hesed is our fist bump. It is our “Hey, we made it.” And I am looking forward to walking into the future with my younger self.

But there is also more to consider. My older self can look back along the span of my life and trace God’s redemption in spite of my foolishness and mistakes. I can see the beauty of the story He has been weaving this whole time. Older me can point out this beauty to younger me, because she hasn’t learned to see it yet.

Angkura:Hesed also honors the bigger story, the one God where God is weaving all of our stories together to accomplish His plans for redemption. This is where hope comes from. No matter the view from the moment where you and I are right now, we know that there is more. We know that God has good planned. This is how we walk through a broken world with hope.

We need both sides of ourselves.

Where are you today? Are you on speaking terms with your younger self? Our younger selves are messy, I know. But they have something to say, and we have something to teach them.

*****

Erin Ulerich lives and writes in a rural Mississippi community beside the beautiful Natchez Trace Parkway. She is the author of In Unexpected Ways: Christmas in Everyday Life, a devotional that encourages readers to notice God’s presence in the ordinary moments. Her first YA fantasy novel, Angkura:Hesed is coming soon. Connect with Erin at erinulerich.com

Connect with Erin at erinulerich.com, on Instagram and Facebook.

What Does Love Look Like?

This post is part of my Exploring Angkura series. Come behind-the-scenes with me as I introduce my newest project, Angkura: Hesed, my soon-to-be-released YA Christian Fantasy novel.

I used to be a hopeless romantic.

Between fairy tales with princesses searching for true love’s kiss, Sweet Valley High books in Junior High, and 80’s Rom-coms, I definitely had my ideas of what love should look like.

Sleeping Beauty is my favorite fairy tale because in this story the prince fights for the princess. He fought a fire-breathing dragon to rescue her.

He thought she was worth fighting for.

This shaped my definition of what love should look like: To be found worthy of fighting for.

What does love look like? is an important question because our answer drives the ways we think and act in every type of relationship. It determines our reactions when people treat us badly. It drives the way we treat others.

It is such an important question that I made it the theme of the first book in the Angkura series.

Before a YA reader picks up my book, they will already have an idea of what they think love should look like. They will probably have experienced betrayal of some kind, and I suspect they will have made some mistakes and need to know forgiveness and redemption are possible.

I can say this because we are all looking for worth, acceptance, love, and security in a broken world filled with broken people. The people in our lives don’t always fight for us, do they? Even those who love us sometimes step away when we need them most. Sometimes they look at the fire-breathing dragon and choose self-preservation instead. When that happens, we feel rejected and discarded. We hold onto destructive relationships in hopes that one day that person will see our worth.

The search for worth, acceptance, love, and security is not uncalled for. We were made to experience those things. We just look for them in the wrong places.

And that is where hesed comes in.

I was well into adulthood and parenthood when I discovered the word hesed. And I was stuck. Stuck in the gap between what God’s Word said and what I felt. God’s Word said He knew me, but I did not feel known. The Bible said I was chosen and cherished, but I was not feeling that at all. So in a moment of frustration, I told God exactly how I was feeling and asked Him to help me.

He used hesed to bridge the gap between His truth and my feelings.

Hesed is a beautiful Hebrew word. Simply put, it is God’s promise to show mercy and steadfast love to His people just because they belong to Him.

Hesed is love and action combined. Because God promises to love His people, He also promises to be loyal to them. It is faithfulness within relationship. God’s generous sense of compassion, grace, and mercy is at the heart of hesed.

Hesed is the prince picking up his sword and fighting the dragon to get to Sleeping Beauty. Hesed says I will fight for you because I love you. You are worth whatever the cost.

This grown-up little girl had been looking for that prince my entire life. I looked for him in friendships, in boyfriends, and in my marriage. I twisted myself into a human pretzel hoping to convince others that I was worth knowing and worth fighting for.

Hesed helped me see that I had it backwards. I was already chosen. I was already cherished. I already had a Prince that fought for me.

Hesed provides the things we are all searching for: worth, acceptance, love, and security because it points us to the place we were meant to find them. It points us to God. God’s love for His people is the perfect example of love.

This is what love looks like.

Discovering hesed bridged the gap between God’s truth and my feelings. It helped me see God’s tender, unfailing love for me and brought me into a closer relationship with Him. It changed the direction of my relationships. I didn’t put unrealistic expectations on those around me, because I was experiencing hesed with God.

Studying its meaning and pouring over the ways it is used in the Bible completely reshaped my definition of love. It grounded me, giving me the strength to push away the lies about my worth.

Since we are made in the image of God, we have the ability to show hesed to those around us. We can show mercy and forgiveness to someone who doesn’t deserve it. We can show compassion to those in need. Every healthy relationship we have mirrors an aspect of God’s hesed to us.

By the time a YA reader finishes my book, I hope they will know their worth and that this will guide them in their friendships and relationships. More importantly, I hope that they will have a deeper understanding of the depth and tenderness of God’s love toward them.

I am no longer a hopeless romantic, because hesed is filled with hope.

Why I Wrote A Christian Fantasy Novel

This post is part of my Exploring Angkura series. Come behind-the-scenes with me as I introduce my newest project, Angkura: Hesed, my soon-to-be-released YA Christian Fantasy novel.

Back in the late 1970’s, when there were three television stations, and my sister and I were the alternating remote controls, I remember a few shows that came on once a year: The Wizard of Oz (the flying monkeys terrified me), the Sound of Music, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in Claymation, and a cartoon version of The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe. I also remember the 1970’s version of The Hobbit, but I honestly don’t remember if it came on more than once or if the weirdness of it just etched itself permanently in my brain.

This was before streaming, before DVDs, before VHS, and the only way to watch something on TV was to be on your couch at the exact time the TV Guide told you to be. It was a very bossy little magazine.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fascinated me. Four children finding adventure by going through an ordinary piece of furniture? Sign me up, please!

I was young, so I didn’t catch the depth of the story the first few times I watched the movie, but I knew I did not like the scene of Aslan on the stone table and I asked questions right along with Lucy and Susan “Why doesn’t he fight? Why is he letting evil win?” Moments later, I shed tears of joy with them as Aslan came back to life.

I wasn’t a believer, and my family didn’t go to church back then, but I did go to church occasionally with my grandmothers, so I recognized the parallel of the scene of Aslan on the Stone Table and his resurrection with the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Year after year I watched the movie, and as I grew older different things stood out to me. Every time I watched the Stone Table scene, it was powerful. It brought me to tears in a way that the accounts about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection in Scripture didn’t. It captured my imagination.

And as I grew in my faith, the scene from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe helped me feel the range of emotions surrounding this historical event of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

It sounds a little crazy that a fantasy story could help me understand a historical event, but that is the power of story. Facts give us the framework of an event, but story captures our imagination and helps us feel the moment.

Story also lowers our defenses, so that truth can be seen. The account of King David and Nathan in 2 Samuel 12 is a perfect example of this. In the previous chapter, David, who already had numerous wives, slept with Bathsheba, another man’s wife. When she discovered she was pregnant, David tried to cover it up, and when that failed he had her husband killed.

David knew he was in the wrong. And Nathan, as a prophet, could have walked in with a list of David’s offenses. Instead, he came in with a story. A story that completely slipped through David’s defenses and brought him to repentance before the Lord.

That’s the power of story.

How does this connect with my latest project?

I love writing that traces the beauty of redemption in our stories. I love writing devotions that help people see God’s presence in the everyday moments of our lives. This project contains all of that plus adventure in story format.

Angkura: Hesed is a YA Christian Fantasy that explores the importance and the ripple effect of our decisions to hold on or to let go. It follows the story of Elizabeth and her process of trying to decide to hold on to, or let go of a relationship. But it is not just about her, because her story intersects with the stories of those around her, who experience their own battles of choosing to hold on or let go.

It is also the story of Elizabeth getting to know God and learning to trust Him.

It is Christian fantasy, because I wanted to explore the wonder and creativity of God. I wanted to describe moments when Elizabeth hears His voice and feels His presence.

It is Christian fantasy because I don’t just want Elizabeth to know Him. As the author I want every reader to get a glimpse of God in the pages of this story. I hope that believers will read Angkura:Hesed and grow closer to God. I hope non-believers will read it and be drawn in by His kindness and tender love.

I could have written articles about how to get to know God. I could write persuasive blog posts about when to hold on in situations and when to let go. I could write about building resilience. Or the importance of Biblical hope in this broken world.

I could have. And one day maybe I will. But for this project, the Lord led me to build an entire world that points people to hope. He helped me develop characters readers can cheer for and weep over as they travel through their struggles of holding on and letting go. Characters that resonate with readers and characters that help them see things in their own lives they might need to hold on to or let go of.

That is the power of story.

Trusting God When Things Feel Uncertain

The Virtual Reality headset was firmly in place and doing its job.

I stepped onto an elevator, and it traveled up, up, up to the highest story of a skyscraper. When the doors opened, there was a single plank of wood. The assignment was easy – take a few steps across the plank.

There was just one problem. I don’t do heights.

I looked down, which was a mistake. People, tiny as ants, hurried along the street below me.

As I tried to talk myself into stepping out of the elevator and onto the plank, I had all the physical reactions as if I was actually standing stories above a bustling city street. My heart was beating like crazy, my breathing was shallow, and my legs started aching, like they do when I’m in an actual real-life situation involving heights.

I knew I wasn’t really standing on a plank above a city street. I knew I was in a library standing on solid ground. But I threw logic out of the virtual window, got down on all fours and crawled across the plank.

Can you picture this? I crawled across the library floor in full panic mode.

What in the world? I am a capable adult, a grown woman. Why couldn’t I convince myself that I wasn’t really standing on a plank high above a city street? I let what I was experiencing override reality. It felt real, therefore it must be real.

Walking through this crazy broken world can be exactly like this. We let what we experience override what we know to be true. Things feel shaky and uncertain. We feel alone. Anxiety rises. We make decisions based on our feelings. It’s a mess.

The truth? We are not alone. We are not left on our own to figure things out. God has promised to be with us, and He keeps His promises. God is certain and steady. God is trustworthy.

Proverbs 3:5 describes this reality: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” The word for trust here is the Hebrew word batach. Batach is placing one’s full weight upon someone or something with calm assurance.

Calm assurance. I love the sound of that.

God is reliable. We can have complete confidence in Him. We can trust Him.

When we trust God in a batach kind of way we are surrendering, we are letting go of the things we cling to and placing them into the hands of God. That relationship you are holding onto? Trust Him with it. Your college kids that are running around living life all willy nilly? Trust God with the plans He has for them.

The idea of surrender can be scary.

Proverbs 3:5 isn’t telling us to give our full confidence to God without evidence. The evidence of His faithfulness is overwhelming. Because of God’s hesed, the love and devotion He has toward those in relationship with Him, He has committed to be faithful to His people. He has promised to be unwavering, to be trustworthy. He has committed to be with us, to work things for our good, to grow us in our faith, to finish the work He started in us.

God does not waver in His love and commitment to His people. People in our lives may waver, circumstances will change, but God is steady.

Like me in the VR headset, we tend to trust what is right in front of us. We put our full weight and confidence in people and circumstances, which is just as foolish as me crawling on my hands and knees on the library floor. In contrast, trusting God is never foolish. He is worthy of the full weight of our trust.

Are you feeling uncertain today as you look at what is in front of you? Are you standing on the edge of changes in your life, or looking down at a situation that you can’t see a clear way to resolve?

Take a deep breath. Ask God to show you His faithfulness in your life. Ask Him to help you trust what He is doing right now, even if you can’t see how it will turn out.

When we ask for His help, He responds. He wants you to trust Him. He wants you to live with the calm assurance that comes when we trust Him in a batach kind of way.

Psalm 13:5 says I trust in your unfailing love. I batach in your hesed. I fully surrender to your loving devotion. I place everything in my life in Your strong, loving, wise, capable hands.

People change. Circumstances change. If we place our trust in those, there is no stability. In contrast, God never changes. Never waivers in his love or commitment to His people. You can rest in that today. You can walk in confidence, in trust, with calm assurance.

This is the truth we can walk in as we live in this broken world. This is reality. No headset required.

Where is Jesus When…..?

Have you ever asked Where is Jesus when (you fill in the blank)?

Sometimes the brokenness of this world presses in too close and we forget the beautiful truth that Jesus is with us in every moment of every day. We forget that He is our Everyday Emmanuel.

Or maybe we know it’s true, but it doesn’t feel true.

There was a time when I struggled with feeling alone and, to be honest, sometimes abandoned by God. Even when I read His Promises in the Bible, those promises didn’t feel true for me. My head knew the truth, but my heart didn’t believe it for a second.

One day I got really honest with God and told Him, I know You say it’s true, but I don’t feel it. I need you to show me that you are with me.

And He did.

In big and small ways, He began showing me that He was with me. And over time, my head knowledge became rock-solid truth in my heart.

Now I KNOW He is with me, and it has changed my life.

One of the ways He helped me see His presence was through the stories of His presence in the lives of other people. When we see the tangible ways He is working in others’ lives, it helps us look for Him in specific ways in our own life.

I am trusting He can do that for you too. With that in mind, I am launching a new series on Mug to Mug with Erin, Where is Jesus When….?

Where is Jesus When….? is a collection of interviews where real-life people tell about a time when they walked through a difficult situation and felt God’s presence. Their stories are powerful, and broken, and encouraging, because no matter the brokenness, our God is weaving the beauty of redemption in the darkest places.

I will release an interview on Wednesday of each week. If you subscribe to Mug to Mug with Erin on YouTube, you will be notified as they are released. (Go ahead and subscribe so you won’t miss a single interview!)

I am so excited about introducing you to some new friends. I am praying that their stories will help you see and feel God’s presence in your life.

A Little Truth About Temptation

“Sometimes I feel close to God and I want to read the Bible and pray.” She sighed. “But sometimes I don’t. Sometimes He feels far away. What If I die when I feel far away from Him? Will I go to hell?”

It was a big question. An honest one. Maybe you’ve asked similar questions.

Let me reassure you. Once we’ve stepped into a saving relationship with Jesus, we are His and no emotion or lack of emotion can change that.

This ebb and flow is a normal experience, especially in our early years as a believer. Our relationship with the Lord fluctuates more than it is steady. There are times when we are consistent with praying and reading the Bible and there will be times when we aren’t. There will be times when we feel close to God and times when He feels far away. It’s just the way it is.

For many years I operated under the assumption that God’s love for me depended on my behavior. I thought that if I was praying and reading my Bible every day, God was pleased with me.

But if I messed up, I believed God was mad at me and let me know by causing bad things to happen. I pictured God cheering for me on the sidelines when I was doing great spiritually and being distant and disappointed when I failed. In this view there was no room for making mistakes and certainly no compassion when I fell.

And I definitely fell.

But how could I fall? Jesus conquered sin and death on the cross. I should be able to live without being bogged down by sin. Right?

He did his part, I reasoned, but I wasn’t living up to mine. I felt like I was failing at being a Christian.

The truth? Jesus did defeat sin and broke the eternal claim it had on us. He rescued us from the clutches of His enemy in the greatest rescue mission ever.

And this is where we fail to tell new believers that our rescue comes with a price. We don’t explain how salvation causes us to switch sides in a cosmic battle, or how when we accept His rescue, His enemy is now our enemy. When we step into a relationship with Jesus, our souls are safe, but the enemy will try every way to keep us from growing closer to Jesus.

He is out to get us. And he will try to distract us in any way possible. This is called temptation.

When it comes to fighting temptation, the Christian life can feel like the lyrics of a Chumbawamba song. “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never going to keep me down.”

But after a while, we wonder what if I don’t get up again, because this is exhausting.

When it comes to living the Christian life, we don’t talk enough about the pull of temptation – the absolute war that goes on inside of us – how to get back up when we’ve fallen, and what God thinks of us along the way.

The Pull of Temptation: The Struggle is Real

Everything broken in this world goes back to Genesis Chapter 3. If you’ve ever wondered how the Garden of Eden applies to your life today, buckle up! This is where brokenness began.

Simply put, Adam and Eve chose to believe Satan’s lies instead of God’s truth, which brought sin and brokenness into every person born after them. Their son, Cain, grew angry and jealous of his brother, Able.

Just as God went looking for Adam and Eve when they were hiding from Him after they sinned, God went to Cain. And just as he asked them “Where are you?” to begin a conversation, He asked Cain “Why are you angry?” even though He knew what Cain was thinking and feeling. Cain didn’t answer, but God offered him some advice – a warning that his parents had not had.

God said to him. “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

In her Bible study, Good News, Caroline Saunders calls this the first definition of sin. In this one verse we learn two things about sin straight from God.

Sin is out to get you. God described sin to Cain as crouching, ready to pounce. The idea is of an animal ready to pounce on its prey. Think of wildlife videos and the tension that you feel when you see the cheetah hiding in the tall grass as the gazelle herd walks peacefully by. You know what’s about to happen and it’s not good.

We must rule over it. If Genesis 4:7 is the first definition of sin, it is also the first description of what we are to do with sin. We are to rule over it. The word used for rule is mashal which means to rule, to have dominion, to have power over.

This would have been a perfect time for Cain to ask a few questions. “What do you mean?” “How do I do that?” And most importantly, “Can you help me?”

But Cain chose his own way, and instead of ruling sin, it ruled him.

God told Cain that he must rule over sin, but the truth was that Cain was powerless to rule over it on his own. He needed God’s help. Like Cain, we can’t fight sin on our own. And, like Cain, we find ourselves being ruled by it.

What should we do when we fall? Is there a way out?

Getting Back Up Again

When we give in to temptation, we expect God to deal with us the way people respond when we’ve disappointed them. But if we feel like God is disappointed in us, we will avoid Him. See how sneaky the enemy is? He tells us lies about God to keep us from running to God because he knows that we will find forgiveness in His arms.

Thankfully, Cain isn’t the only example the Bible gives us of responding to sin.

David was a man who knew God. He also knew about being ruled by sin and about getting back up again. Even though he was God’s man, he fell to some serious sins: lust, adultery, lying, murder (2 Samuel 11-12). There were consequences in David’s life due to those sins, but there was also a way back.

David wrote Psalm 51 as he repented for these sins. You see, the way to get back up is to run to God. Getting back up is found in repentance, in turning away from sin and turning back toward God. Later in his life David wrote Psalm 19. In verse 13, he is an older, wiser man as he prays these words:

Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me.

David used the word mashal in this verse. He asks God to help him, in essence, asking God to rule over him. “David comes under the rule of the Lord to prevent sin from mashal-ing him. He does not want to make the same mistake Cain does.” (Steve Phillips Livingwordin3d.com)

When we give into temptation, when we fall, the way to get back up is to run to God. Running toward God does not come naturally to us. After all, we’ve broken His rules and ignored His warnings. Surely He is furious at us, or at the very least thinks that we deserve to suffer. This is exactly what the enemy wants us to think.

What God Thinks When We Fail

Remember that picture of God cheering for me on the sidelines when I was doing great and being distant when I failed? My view of God was skewed. Caroline Saunders says, “If we don’t know God, we assume he is like the world.” We assume that because the world is all we know. Thankfully, God’s response is filled with compassion and mercy.

God was never on the sidelines in my life or in yours. Jesus left heaven and jumped on that field, lived in this broken world, experienced everything you and I experience. He is on the field, in the middle of our messy lives. He is with us. And if He is with us, then we are not alone.

Hebrews 4:15-16 tells his thoughts toward us:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

These words are open arms. We can hear him saying, “I know the brokenness. I know the pull of sin. Let’s walk through this together.”

He helps us fight temptation because we can’t fight it without his help. And He draws us back in when we’ve fallen. He helps us up and He draws us back in. Every. Single. Time. And each time we get up again, we fight harder out of thankfulness, instead of an effort to earn His love. Knowing that we are not facing difficulties alone, but that God is with us, builds our faith.

That is the Christian life in this broken world. We get knocked down and He helps us up again.

But it doesn’t end there. There is a day coming when he will make all things right, and when sin will not exist. Until then, we can have courage and lean closer to our compassionate Savior, because we are not fighting alone. He is always with us.

The Tiny Light that Lit the World

Light broke through deepest darkness when God put on flesh and stepped into our world.

He came as a tiny light, wrapped in the most vulnerable package.

He came in a way that we could receive Him. He came so that we could know Him and know the joy of walking through life with Him.

Read more about the Light of Christmas here: Those Walking in Darkness Need the Light – Erin Ulerich

Jesus Is With Us in Our Joy and Pain

God’s desire from the beginning has been fellowship. To be with us.

God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Face to face. When sin entered the world, that relationship was broken, but God’s desire did not change. Throughout the Old Testament His heart cry is repeated, “I will be their God and they will be my people.”

This desire is also found in the language surrounding the reason God offers us salvation through relationship with Him, that “they will see his face.” (Revelation 22:4)

That is the goal. Connection. Intimacy. God created each one of us with the need for connection, the need to know and be known by Him.

And then he opened the folds of time and stepped into our world as one of us. Jesus, Emmanuel, which means God with us.

With us. Not watching from a distance. Not a kind but powerless force hovering around us. With us, experiencing life in this broken world.

Jesus knows the pull of this world on our heart. He experienced every emotion that we have felt or will ever feel. And he has experienced one emotion that we will never experience—abandonment by God.

We often feel alone; I am not discounting that. But the reality is that God has promised to be with us and to never forsake us. Jesus willingly experienced complete abandonment on the cross to offer us peace with God.

Why is God being with us important? What difference does it make?

We have an enemy that works overtime to make us feel isolated, misunderstood, abandoned. He knows that when we feel alone and vulnerable, we are more apt to listen to his lies. We were made for connection and intimacy, so when we feel alone it is easy for our hearts to make this false conclusion: I am not known, therefore I am not loved.

Jesus is with us, out of love for us, to draw us into relationship with Him. In Jesus we are known, loved, connected—the very things we were created to experience.

Because Jesus experienced life in our skin, He is with us in our joy and in our pain.

Pain is part of living in this broken world. We feel pain on many different levels, and we usually work hard to avoid pain on every level. We avoid it by staying busy, numbing out on Netflix, eating, not eating, drinking alcohol, shopping, working, working out … the list is endless. We want to avoid pain so much that we even take good things and twist them to keep numb instead of stopping and looking our pain in the eye.

And the main problem with all the numbing that we do is this truth: We were not made to live life numb. We were made to push through the fear, look our pain square in the eye, and live life in full.

Does that sound scary? You bet.

But we don’t do it alone.

Jesus stands with us when we face our pain. He guides us into healthy ways of living and thinking and acting. His resources are not limited, and He will provide what we need to face our pain.

Jesus stepped from the perfection of heaven into the broken chaos of this world to walk with us. Our God is with us every step of the way.

– Excerpt from In Unexpected Ways: Christmas in Everyday Life

Heritage Ukraine Knows How to Pivot

Pivot is a word that pops up from time to time.

During the pandemic businesses had to pivot to stay open. Many began offering curbside pickup. Churches began streaming church services. Drive-through doctor appointments became a thing.

But what does it mean to pivot? I think it means identifying a need and changing what needs to be changed in order to supply that need.

To pivot, the goal or mission of a business or organization doesn’t change, but the way to reach that goal needs to be adjusted slightly.

Pivot.

My friends at Heritage Ukraine have been pivoting constantly for the last 100 days. Beginning February 24, they’ve had to pivot in order to care for those God has placed in their path. The ministry plans they had for the foreseeable future ended as the Russian army moved into their country.

Overnight they began meeting immediate needs. Helping families evacuate, gathering and delivering food to those who couldn’t leave, making thousands of sandwiches to give to refugees at the train station.

At a time when they would normally be planning for the weeks of summer camp at CAMP LELA, they gave away their camp supplies to those who needed it.

Slavik and Alyona and their team at Heritage Ukraine know how to pivot. And the Lord is using their flexibility and their obedience to His leading. God is working in the middle of this horrible war. He is providing.

And, as a wonderful surprise, God has opened a way for CAMP LELA to happen in July. Their Facebook post shows their excitement – Look at all the exclamation marks!

Camp LELA 2022 in Romania!

As the war began we didn’t even think of the camp for this year as Heritage is so focused on war relief around its region. However, God opened us an opportunity to do a camp in Romania for Ukrainian refugees!

Three camps will take place in the month of July! We need your help to make it possible! Click here if you would like to support camp LELA 2022 for Ukrainian refugees in Romania.

If you want a glimpse of what is happening on the ground in Odessa, if you want to see ways that God is providing things that seem impossible, if you need encouragement in your day, or want to know what you can do to get involved, follow Heritage Ukraine on Facebook or Instagram.

I designed a wallpaper for my phone to remind me to pray for my friends in Ukraine and I would love to share it with you! The original painting was done by our talented friend Miss Allie McCoy. Click on the image to download these beautiful sunflowers for your phone!

Four Things That Are Saving My Life Right Now

A few weeks ago on her podcast, The Next Right Thing, Emily P. Freeman shared 10 things that are saving her life right now.

I loved the simple way she flipped the script. It’s easy to list the things that are driving us crazy, or the ways we are so crazy-busy. We tend to hold those things like they are a badge. It’s a little harder to look at our lives with the lens of what’s saving our life right now. But it’s encouraging and life-giving.

I began looking for those things in my current crazy season, and I want to share them with you.

The first thing that is saving my life right now is taking a few minutes after I take the kids to school to sit down with a cup of coffee and read one entry of Heart Aflame by John Calvin. These are daily readings from the writings of John Calvin on the Psalms. The book begins with January 1, but I’m being a little rebellious and started it in March. At the beginning. The devotions are less than a page long, and I write a little prayer in the space at the bottom of each page. It has been a great way to begin each day setting my mind on truth.

The second thing that is saving my life right now are green spaces. I don’t really know why but driving past green pastures and rolling hills makes me happy and peaceful.

The third thing is breaking my to do list into smaller, bite-sized pieces. I tend to get overwhelmed in the crazy-busy, and dividing tasks into smaller tasks keeps me from getting paralyzed and not getting anything done.

And the last thing that is saving my life right now is having one clean space in the house to sit in. I have piles of writing projects, end of the school year things, scrapbooks (any other Senior moms pulling out all the pictures, or is it just me?) Having one space clutter free gives me a place to start my morning (see number 1) and to have friends sit when they swing by.

Over the next few weeks this pace will morph into summer pace, which has a completely different feel. I want to keep up the practice of naming the things that are saving my life instead of focusing on the things that are keeping me busy. It helps me appreciate and savor moments of peace in the middle of the chaos.

What about you? What is saving your life right now?