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What God’s Awesome Grace Can Do: Here’s My Testimony
My grace story is my testimony. It’s a testimony of what Jesus can do, how He can take someone’s mess and turn it into a beautiful message. It’s a message of radical love and radical empathy. My life has been made up of a million little testimonies. I just didn’t acknowledge God in them throughout my whole life. Instead, I chalked them up to a million little coincidences and brushed them off. But the closer I get to Him, the more He opens my eyes to His presence. This was a rescue I didn’t deserve. I loved Jesus at a young…
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The Artist’s Showcase: Christ in Us, a beautiful glimpse into Eternity
How does God use art to display Christ in us? Eternity? That’s what God put on my heart recently. Photography is something I just love. It’s exciting to play with light and angles, to experiment, create scenes, or to capture candid photos at the right moment– to capture a moment in time and preserve it. And when someone orders a print from me, it’s almost as if I’m gifting someone a piece of history; I’m giving someone a still frame of their life. We recently had an amazing pottery demonstration at my church. Before everything began, I was sitting in…
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What happens when we radiate like Moses: our first love testimonies
Testimonies are what I call love stories. What better time than the same month of Valentines Day falls, to talk about their power. As Christians, Valentines Day takes on a whole new meaning. In light of Valentine’s Day– a day dedicated to celebrating love– I started thinking about the different “loves” I’ve had throughout my lifetime: boyfriends, best friends, family members, family pets, the blossoming love story between me and my Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru order… But, a few weeks ago while driving home from a church meeting, in the midst of the cold, dark highway, flecks of white snow dotting…
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To the adventurer: what my anxiety taught me about faith
I’ve always loved adventure. Where others see obstacles, I see opportunity– sometimes, to a fault. See: local 18-year-old girl comes near-death during a long-boarding accident. But suffering from anxiety made me feel stuck. Nothing helped. That is, until I found freedom in faith. Anyway, as a young child, I was the one who would convince the other kids to take the mysterious trail home, or to walk the “long way back” for sight-seeing or in hopes of finding a wounded animal to nurse back to health. I created Survivor games in my backyard where my sister and I would play…
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Turning 27: A message on love, faith and perseverance
I’m 27 and only now understanding what real faith and perseverance actually looks like. If you feel lost, I wrote this for you; if you’ve recently had a birthday, I wrote this for you. I rang in my 27th year here on Earth stuffing my face with my father’s famous baked ziti and a sweetly layered bucket of trifle that my mother and niece made. Layers of chocolate cake, pudding, cool whip, and candy. Dessert heaven. Prior to this, each of my early-to-mid twenties birthday parties were charged with massively loud crowds of people, alcohol, and illegal fireworks. The type…
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How to let go: when holding on hurts more
I am finding that this season of my life is demanding I learn how to let go. Things I wasn’t prepared to let go of: a job, a comfy, codependent relationship, a sense of security, the ease of grocery shopping without covering my face… But I’m giving in a little more each day. And by “giving in,” I mean I’m coping. I’m praying “Thank you” to God instead of “Can you please bring this back to me? I think you messed up…” I’ve even been able to ask myself if these things were even good for me before they were…
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I Wrote this for you: to Women living alone in quarantine
Last night I went for a long walk through my neighborhood, down to the seawall and back. It was the first time I’d taken a walk by myself since the beginning of the Coronavirus quarantine. As a woman living alone in such an uncertain time, I’m finding new ways each day to become a better version of myself. The sun started to set as I popped my earphones in and set out, unusually carefree about what time it would start getting dark. It’s getting harder to know exactly what day it is. I think we’re somewhat conditioned to track time…
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If You Feel Lost I Wrote This For You
If you feel lost, I wrote this for you… “So, what do you do if you don’t know what you want–where do you go?” You decide that you want happiness, and then you go wherever you find that is. You find it in the rattling of your bones when you hear a good song; you find it in the tiny hairs on your arm that reach out in ovation when something inspires you; you find it in words, pressed between your favorite journal pages like poppies; you find it clinging to the soft parts of your body like sand after…