Suffering & Doubt – Page 2

To my brothers and sisters in the trenches

Welcome, new readers! This blog has grown a lot in the last two weeks, and I am really, really grateful that you are here, however you found your way. Many of you have chimed in with wonderful, supportive comments, and I am so glad to know that you have identified pieces of yourself in pieces…

What really happened in the baths at Lourdes

Awkwardness! Confusion! Doubt! Our time in the baths was the beginning of the story, not the end.

Suffering, redemption, and standing in the gap

The darkness never wins. The suffering cannot prevail. But that does not mean the suffering is not real, that it did not happen.

In God’s hands, or how to live in a state of chronic hypervigilance

Research has shown that people who multitask suffer huge performance hits. My whole life is one long multitask. I live in a near-constant state of hypervigilance.

The way of the mustard seed: Dying to the self you thought you were

Something good is stripped back, and back, and back, until all that remains is a tiny, unrecognizable fragment of its barest essence. But from that tiny, barren beginning, something good may yet grow.

3 ways to live Lent when you are already in the desert

If you, like me, are in the desert this Lent, consider a different kind of spiritual practice for the next 40 days. Hold on to the ice cream, but work on the attitude.

The girl in the bubble

Lately, a troubling situation has been occurring with some regularity. Many of my friends, enduring trials and suffering of their own, explicitly downplay the seriousness of those situations in recounting them to me. They use phrases that are meant to acknowledge the profundity and difference of what we have endured this year; that acknowledgment, I…

On miracles

“How’s your prayer life?” This question was posed to me four separate times within the space of three weeks. When something like that happens, I assume that God is trying to get my attention.

The sweetest suffering

Did you know that sanctification is not often a beautiful process?

The beard and the veil

Over the Christmas vacation, my dearest friends from college dropped in for a visit with their family. Most of the conversation revolved around faith — what weightier questions are there? At some lull in the conversation, my friend asked why Todd had grown a beard…