My first stars in your eyes, goosebumps on your skin, giddy for days, butterflies in your stomach crush occurred when I was 18 years old. He liked me, and I liked him, and that simple truth lifted my emotions to a level of euphoria that I had not known before. But this story isn’t about that. It’s  not even about the heart-wrenching, gut-twisting, feel-like-I’m-going-to-vomit moment when he told me he had fallen in love with someone else. This story begins with how I treated the woman he loved, whom we both worked with. It’s been 11 years, and I still think about the way I treated her, and I feel horrified at myself, ashamed, and compelled to ask for her forgiveness. Essentially, I held a grudge against her for stealing my crush. That grudge lasted about 4 years — the entire time I worked with her. I can safely say […]

After my daughters saw The Beauty and the Beast for the first time, they watched it on repeat over and over again, as is typical of a four- and two-year-old. Every time they watched it, they were absolutely terrified of the Beast. I reminded them that they knew the end of the story so they didn’t have to be scared, not realizing until the words were out of my mouth that I was sharing with them a spiritual truth. As believers in Christ, even when it looks like evil is winning, we don’t have to fear. We know the end of the story. This Easter, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, we will likely read verses like 1 Corinthians 15:54b-55: “‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’” We will sing songs about sin and death being defeated, declaring […]