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I slid the tater tots into the oven as our thirteen-year-old bounded down the stairs. When he saw his dad in the easy chair by the fireplace with a Bible laying open on his lap, he said, “I already did my Bible reading this morning.”

“What did you read?” I asked casually. Asher opened his mouth to answer only to realize that he didn’t actually remember. So he closed his mouth, turned on his heel, and darted back up the stairs to retrieve his Bible from his bedside table. A few minutes later, we were seated together at the kitchen counter, the pages of Exodus 22 splayed open between us.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “Look, I wrote in the

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Friend to Friend

My earliest memories of being taught from the Bible include Ruth Gosting. Her flannel board stories were the building blocks of my young faith. Ruth was the director of the children’s ministry at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in the late seventies. On Sunday mornings my friends and I played games, sang the books of the Bible, and listened to Ruth’s Bible stories. She had an animated, high-pitched voice that was full of inflection and wonder. Her eyes were always wide open, as if she were perpetually surprised. Every time she saw me, she exclaimed, “Oh, Wendy, I’m so glad you’re here!” And she was. And so was I.

I loved church because I was loved at church, and the

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Friend to Friend

My grandpa read through the Bible four times before he believed it. Though he attended church during his growing up years, he hadn’t yet put his faith in Christ. Truth be told, the main reason he went to church at all was because, in his own words, “That’s where the pretty girls were.”

All was going according to plan until Grandpa asked the pastor’s daughter out on a date. She asked him, on the spot, if he had put his full faith in Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. When Grandpa couldn’t say that he had, she told him that she wouldn’t date him, then held to her conviction as he read through the Bible, cover to cover,

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My father gave me a white, leather-bound Precious Moments Bible when I was young. If you weren’t raised in the church in the eighties, you might not know that Precious Moments characters are cartoon-like drawings and porcelain figurines of little children in various poses, always with a Bible verse communicating the main theme of the scene. I had half a dozen of these statuettes atop my bedroom dresser. My Precious Moments Bible was filled with darling pictures, and I loved it with all my little-girl heart.

While the gift was from my dad, who took me to church on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, I don’t actually have memories of opening that Bible with him. No one in my

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Friend to Friend

My eighteen-year-old son found me in the kitchen with my hands in the sudsy sink and my mind bubbling with deep thoughts.

“Mom,” the man-child began, “I understand the idea of the God-shaped hole inside every person. I’ve heard so many pastors talk about it. I get it and I agree. Inside each person is a place that only Jesus can fill. Only He can satisfy. But if I’ve already accepted Jesus, why am I still so hungry? I turn to so many things that aren’t good or godly to fill my hungry. How can that be if I’ve invited Christ to fill that God-shaped empty place?”

I turned off the steaming faucet water and dried my hands, then walked

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Friend to Friend

Most everyone experiences hard seasons during their life. Sometimes, painful present realities make it difficult to see past the cloud-cover to brighter days. I’ve had a handful of hopeless times over the years. As a matter of fact, our family is just coming out of one such season right now.

Three months ago, our family moved from California to Texas. With three teenagers in tow, it seemed like a crazy time to transition, but we were stuck in some unhealthy patterns and needed a radical refresh. While there were other issues in the mix, from politics and continued school closures to the cost of living, the main reason for our relocation was to give our family a do-over. Nothing

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Earlier this spring I realized that I had grown lazy: lazy physically and lazy spiritually. That’s why I decided to take a social media sabbatical. I know it sounds a little radical, but I needed to get my priorities back in check. Given how many hours I was giving to my online scrolling, I thought taking those hours back was a great place to start. Before I even logged offline, I made a list of the things that I had simply been too busy for:

Consistent prayer and Bible study
Daily exercise
Time with friends
Healthy meals

The list went on and on. Which is why I decided to make specific plans to be more consistent in the areas of my life I

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Friend to Friend

When my children were young, I spoke words of life into their little beings. They cooed and I cooed back. I whispered blessings over them as they slept and told them “you are SO BIG” when they were so tiny. I had no intention of ever berating my babies. But before long, my toddler proved defiant, difficult, and demanding — and I found myself reacting in anger rather than responding in gentleness.

OK, maybe you’ve never lost your cool with your kids, but you struggle to hold your thoughts (and your tongue) captive with your spouse. Or maybe your biggest triggers don’t reside under your roof, but in the next cubicle at work. Only you know what your triggers

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When my children were young, most mornings I walked them across the street to our local neighborhood park. Sometimes we returned in the afternoon for one more push on the swing. With a preschooler, a toddler, and a baby in diapers I had my hands full. Though I had a flip phone shoved into my overloaded diaper bag, I never heard it ring. It was a point of contention in our marriage. “Why do you even have a phone?” my husband asked. “You never answer it.” The simple answer was that I didn’t have a free hand. And I didn’t keep it in my pocket because I didn’t want to be distracted. The needs around me were too

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