More than ten years ago, my husband Mark went to a conference at a church we love and have been deeply shaped by. At that conference, one evening involved a ministry time featuring a man who had become well known for giving accurate words of knowledge. (Words of knowledge are among the spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12. A word of knowledge is information about another person that you could not know except that God tells it to you. Think of Jesus telling the Samaritan woman she’d had five husbands.)

During the ministry time, this man would call out a name, and when the person stood up, he would share details about their lives and give them a prophetic word. Out of a crowd of nearly a thousand people, the man called our names. My husband stood up, and the man shared several details about our lives, including the number of kids we have, two different places we’d previously lived, Mark’s birthday (but one day off), and several other details. He then gave us a prophetic word about our lives and the church we were pastoring.

None of us is lucky enough to avoid disappointment in this life. The question is, when we meet disappointment, will we let it through the door, listen to its mollifying words, invite it to stay? Or will we slam the door in its face?

It is so easy to listen to and agree with disappointment, because it seems to make sense. It appeals to our logic and tells us to judge life and others and even God by the fairness of our circumstances. But disappointment is ultimately a liar. It may make some good points, but its judgment is flawed. If we listen to it long enough, we end up in despair, joyless and sick in heart. 

For years, I’ve felt frustrated by the ideas surrounding what it means to be masculine or feminine. So many teachings in the church rely on stereotypes to define these ideas—and that bothered me, because many of those stereotypes don’t fit me. Often, I felt like I had to suppress or change who I am in order to fit what it seemed I was supposed to be as a woman.

I found it easier to talk with men about theology than to discuss homemaking with other moms. I felt like so many of the women I knew were content with family life, but I wanted more—and I felt guilty for that.

Now, years later, I know I’m not alone in that.

Gratitude has the power to change your life.

So often we look for the next promotion or breakthrough or provision to be the thing we need to change our lives for the better. I love those moments when what we’ve been praying for manifests in the natural. They are beautiful, and we need them. God loves to bless us with his goodness. But while these breakthrough moments often change our external lives, they do not necessarily change our hearts.

If we’re not careful, not long after one breakthrough comes, we begin looking for the next breakthrough as the one that will really change our lives. For some of us, it’s a cycle we live in. We end up there because we’ve forgotten how to be content.

I’ve heard a lot of conversation in the last few years around the idea of purity culture and the damage it caused to so many. When I first heard this term, I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant. Purity, after all, is a good thing. As followers of Jesus, we want to live with pure hearts, minds, and actions. So what about purity culture made it so harmful?

 As I kept reading, I discovered not only what purity culture was but also how deeply it had impacted me. I graduated from high school in 2000, right at the height of purity culture in the evangelical world, though no one I knew was calling it that back then. And as I unraveled the core teachings of purity culture and why they were damaging, I landed on a few key principles that informed the whole thing.

When bad things happen, many Christians explain these difficult-to-understand events by saying something like, “It must have been God’s will.”

But is that really true?

Does being God mean being in control? This is the default definition for godhood that many of us hold, but this understanding of God’s sovereignty does not align with what the Bible says about God’s rulership over the world and in our lives.

The question is: Is God in control, or is God in charge?

While in college, I met a female amateur heavy weight lifter. Of all the things I could have thought about during our short conversation, the one thing I remember being most struck by was the realization that this woman was physically stronger than most men. 

As random as it is, I found myself returning to this fact repeatedly in the days and weeks that followed, because I’d grown up believing in female weakness as a key reason for male leadership in marriage. 

In one of the verses often used to teach hierarchy within marriage, the apostle Peter tells husbands to be understanding or considerate toward their wives “as with a weaker partner” (1 Pet. 3:7 CSB). I’d always heard this taught as proof that women are not as strong as men—not just physically but also emotionally.

Several years ago, while my husband, Mark, and our son, Evan, waited to pick up our car at the dealership, the salesperson told them her story of pain and disappointment. She had been a teacher at a Christian preschool for many years. It was her passion, and she loved it. Then, her brother died unexpectedly, and it shook her world. Though grieving, she pushed on and continued to invest in her kids at school. Then one day, the superintendent of the school called her into her office and told her that several parents had complained that her countenance had changed, that she seemed depressed and unfit to teach their children. They fired her that day. No second chances, no sympathy for her grief, no help in healing.

That’s how she ended up at the dealership—needing work and willing to do whatever she had to do to support herself, even something so far from her passions. She shared with Mark how the experience had shaken her faith. Why had God brought such tragedy and loss into her life? she wondered.

“God didn’t do this to you,” Mark said. “It’s OK to blame the people responsible.”

“It is?” she said, leaning forward, looking at him intently. “I thought it was wrong to blame them. I guess I blamed God instead.”

When Mark and I made our wedding vows before more than two hundred friends and family members, we had no idea what comprised a healthy marriage or the hard work required to attain it. We’d engaged in premarital counseling, attended a retreat for engaged couples, and read the most popular Christian marriage books—but none of those gave us an accurate vision for what a godly marriage should be and could be.

Of course, the primary reason for that disconnect was our immersion in a Christian culture that taught male headship and female submission in marriage. So many of these teachings on marriage started with Genesis 3 as the foundation for understanding godly marriage, but they missed the ideal that God lays out in Genesis 1–2.

Loneliness isn’t the absence of people; it’s the absence of belonging. I can feel desperately alone in a room full of people if I feel like I don’t belong—if I feel invisible and unimportant.

We all know what this kind of loneliness feels like. And we are wired to actively avoid those spaces. God made us for deep and intimate connection. To know and be known. Just as the trinity lives in perfect communion, we too are designed to live in community with one another.

About a year ago, one of my marriage posts went semi-viral on Facebook and got shared by some fairly well-known names among those advocating for a healthier view of marriage in the church.

The graphic said: A mature husband does not fear the strength of his wife.

While this statement seems obvious and should be a baseline standard in marriage, it clearly hit on a point of pain and frustration with many people.

Recently, while reading the first chapter of Luke, I found myself pondering Mary’s previous life—her ordinariness and insignificance before God chose her for something great. I doubt she ever imagined her name would be remembered two thousand years later.

Most of us don’t expect that either. Usually, only the most powerful individuals get their names in the history books. The ones who fight to achieve top positions or do something remarkable to be remembered by.

But God finds his heroes differently.

Recently, while praying for a woman I’d never met before, I heard the words “The prodigal is coming home” in my mind. I didn’t hear an actual voice, but I heard the words in my mind as clearly as if someone had said them out loud.

I’ve prayed over a lot of people in my life, and I frequently receive prophetic words of encouragement from God for others. Even still, I often feel nervous about speaking what I hear—especially when it’s a word like this one that will clearly be right or wrong.

A few weeks ago, while driving, I realized I’d been feeling deeply sad. I couldn’t connect with joy, and that scared me. Jesus, help me find my joy again.

I’ve been processing a lot of past pain and trauma in therapy. The weight of all our family has walked through—all the losses we’ve sustained—sometimes feels so heavy. I also just finished homeschooling our kids, and next year, they’ll all be in public school. And alongside that, I recently realized it’s time to close the door on my editing business, at least for a time.

That’s a lot of letting go, and even though it’s what I want and how I believe God is leading me, it has also felt much harder than I expected.

A while ago, I attended a women’s meeting at my church where two pastors—a married couple that co-pastors their church—shared about the importance of empowering women (and not just men) into positions of leadership within the church and family. At the end, they had a question and answer time, and one woman shared that she had wrestled with feeling like she was always “running ahead” of her husband because she is more naturally visionary and has more leadership gifting than he does. She asked how she can steward her gifts without running ahead of her husband.

I’ll never forget what one of the speakers said in response. She shared that she had felt that way in her marriage for years, until she realized that it was OK for her to “run ahead,” because that’s just being a leader.

Last summer, our family bought season passes to a local amusement park. We’d arrive in the morning, full of energy and excitement, ready to get in as many rides as we could. But by mid-afternoon, our strength and energy were usually lagging far behind our earlier enthusiasm. One day, we stayed even longer than usual because we’d brought some friends along to the park. It was very sunny, high nineties, and humid. We walked more than six miles. And by the time we left, many hours later, I felt deeply exhausted. As we walked from the park exit to our minivan, I found myself focusing on each step, just willing my body toward the air conditioning and a place to sit.

In the natural, we go from strength to weakness. From strong to weary. The longer we walk, the more tired we become. Walking six miles in the sun on a hot and humid day will rapidly drain our strength. But the Bible says spiritual strength works differently.

Many Christians believe in male headship and female submission in marriage based on a few isolated Bible verses (see Eph. 5:15-33; 1 Cor. 11:3; 1 Pet. 3:7-8).[1] But there’s more to the idea of wife-only submission than just the question of what submission means.

If, as many churches teach, the biblical ideal of submission means obedience, and wives owe it to their husbands (but not husbands to their wives), then we (intentionally or unintentionally) equate a wife’s ability to obey her husband with her holiness before God.

And that comes with all kinds of baggage.

About a year ago, a friend gave me a simple prophetic word that hit hard. She told me I have a backbone of steel. She didn’t know it, but over the years, I’d received that word repeatedly. In fact, I’d received it so frequently that for a time I resented it. I didn’t want to be the one who could take anything without breaking—because I didn’t want to walk through hard stuff. I had actually gotten so frustrated that I’d complained to God about that word, and from then on, no one had given it to me again. It had been at least fifteen years—until that afternoon last spring chatting and enjoying roasted milkshakes at an ice cream shop with a new friend.

When she said those words, they hit differently. And I felt gratitude.

In those fifteen years, I’d faced several deeply hard events in my life. I’d faced grief and loss on a level I could not have imagined previously. And I found I could stay on my feet in the fight for my child’s life and mental health—not because I was OK (because I wasn’t), but because God breathed his strength into me every single day.

People often ask me how I came to be egalitarian, or to believe in co-leadership between men and women in marriage and the church. I always tell them, “Well, my husband Mark became egalitarian, so I submitted to him and became egalitarian too.”

And I’m only half joking. Mark took a class on women in leadership during his studies at Elim Bible Institute, and it opened his eyes to what the scripture truly says about women in ministry. It wasn’t hard for him to convince me. I was an eager convert.

Life often thrusts us into weary spaces. Spaces weighed down by grief, trauma, and loss in which life feels out of control, and we feel helpless to create change. Spaces where stress dominates, we’re carrying too much, and we’ve lost track of self-care and self-compassion. Or spaces of boredom and monotony, where the absence of adventure and excitement threatens to suffocate us.

We’ve all visited the weary spaces. Whatever the cause, weariness drains the joy and hope from life. But Jesus wants to meet us there.

Jesus knows the weary spaces, too. As a human, he experienced the burdens and weariness of life. He saw how his people suffered and struggled—and how years of oppression can defeat a person’s soul.