During my first two months or so in China, I lived in three different cities and in five different apartments or hotel rooms. As a girl who has had the same home address for more than twenty years, I found it difficult to adjust to being a stranger and a pilgrim. I know we are…
Tag: fear
Meeting Day, Part 2
I waited patiently for the phone to ring again, and it did. This time a voice I had only dreamed of hearing was on the other end. “Hello, Mari, I am Evonne, and I have been searching for our daughter.” Tears of joy and fear filled both mother’s hearts. For eighteen years, Evonne had dreamed…
Meeting Day, Part 1
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” Proverbs 3:5 Our life with our daughter, Alyssa, has been a joy at every turn. She has grown into a very lovely young lady. Never did I realize what a blessing she would be when we fondly called her our…
Trust During Fear
And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ. And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto…
Faith in God
During our recent stay in southern Florida, we were in the middle of orange grove country. I naively thought that we could buy oranges and make our own fresh orange juice. I took a juicer and just salivated thinking of the delicious drink we were going to enjoy. The first day there, we went to…
In Trials Like These, Part 2
On April 26, 2019, around 6:30 in the morning, I suffered my first seizure. It occurred while I was sleeping so fortunately, I do not remember it. This seizure caused me to fall out of my bunk at college which was about five feet off the ground. I fell directly on my head and continued…
In Trials Like These, Part 1
I fell asleep that night as care-free as a 19-year-old sophomore in college at the end of the semester could be able to. With finals coming up and a ton of packing to do, I went out for donuts a few hours earlier with my roommate, Taylor, and another friend to shake off the accumulating…
A Very Present Help
“Your baby is not going to make it. She will eventually die.” Sitting behind his desk, my gynecologist gave my husband and me this difficult news. It was my nineteenth week of pregnancy. Having had only one child after seventeen years of marriage and several miscarriages early in pregnancies, my husband and I were surprised…
Nurturing A Quiet Heart
Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of…
Bold Yet Humble
And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. But all that heard him were amazed, and said; Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests? But…
The Beautiful Spirit 