When Your Suffering Has No Easy Answers: Why Christ's Presence Matters
Sometimes, a meaningful first step in counseling is shifting the goal from solving the problem to finding the person of Christ. This doesn't mean abandoning biblical truth, practical help, or the hard work of understanding what has happened and what to do now. But sometimes the first step is simply turning toward Christ, even when we cannot immediately address the grief, anxiety, or paralyzing confusion.
Thoughts on the Nervous System, Emotional Regulation, and the Spirit’s Gift of Self-Control
Every command in the Bible was given to a human being with a nervous system. What does that mean for the way Christians understand emotional regulation, human weakness, and the Spirit’s gift of self-control? As a biblical counselor, I’ve been thinking about how to take both physical realities and the commands of Scripture seriously without allowing either to eclipse the other.
When I started counseling formally, the language of trauma was only beginning to become mainstream. We were talking about trauma in the body, neuroplasticity, and the ways chronic stress affects the brain and nervous system. Since then, I have continued to learn about the physiological effects of prolonged stress and the ways trauma can affect a person's thoughts, emotions, relationships, and responses to perceived danger.
What to Expect When You’re Grieving: Three Things I’ve Learned
I was 39 when I received a group email asking for urgent prayer for my daddy, who had just been rushed to the hospital.
I don’t think the pastor of his church ever knew that’s how I found out my daddy was dying.
My mom had forgotten their cell phones in the rush to the hospital. It was a small town. Someone saw them, called their pastor, and the pastor emailed the whole church address book.
That is how I learned.
Death, whether expected or shocking, is always our enemy. Grief, in all its forms–agonizing, numbing, excruciating, disorienting, is a fitting response to the brutality of the rending of soul from flesh….
How Do You Move Forward After a Difficult Season? Finding Hope When You Feel Stuck
A woman I counseled asked a question that many people quietly wrestle with after a season of deep hardship:
"Were you ever stuck for a long time after everything you went through? How did you begin moving forward?”
If you are in a season where you feel stuck—whether because of grief, regret, loss, betrayal, or circumstances you cannot change—you may find yourself asking similar questions. My hope in sharing this conversation is not to offer quick answers, but to help you think biblically about what it looks like to grieve honestly while learning to move forward in faith….
On Worrying and Setting Right Priorities
So far this year it seems like I’ve had more conversations than normal on the issue of setting priorities. Or at least that’s where we end up. We often start out thinking through anxiety, overwhelm, and a compulsion to control. Women are worrying. About a lot of things. An aging mom‘s…
A Psalm of Lament for a Parent Estranged
In the pattern of Psalm 13
How long O Lord, counted nights turned into years?
The face hidden,
The name not mentioned,
Even tainted joys forgotten.
How long will I sink beneath the waves,
Regretting what was,
Fearing what might be?
Hear me, help me, hold me,
Or I will sink beneath the grief.
Good Endings: 5 books I Reread as a Biblical Counselor When Hope Feels Hard
I’ve noticed the last few weeks that one of the advantages of bleak midwinter is that keeping the blinds closed to hold in the heat means the stainless steel appliances in my kitchen looked clean. Now that I live in a place with winter, I’ve realized that maybe the reason spring cleaning is “a thing” is because when you throw open the curtains and let the spring sun in, it shows the smudges on your microwave and the spots you missed with the mop on the wood floor.
There is a very loosely connected analogy in there somewhere for hope. I want to be a hopeful person. Although reluctantly, I admire optimism. And I do believe God has promised to do us good. But I also know that in winters of the soul, desire it though I might, hope seems as elusive …
Rethinking Self-Compassion
When Instagram tells me I should be practicing self-compassion, I feel unsettled. When a woman I’m counseling fills in the blank of my prayer prompt, “God help me…" with “Give myself grace,” I pause. Why?
For one, in the moments I presumably need it the most, I can’t muster it. How can I give myself grace when there’s no grace in me to give? And second, when I try to find self-compassion in the Bible, it remains elusive.
And so, I want to trace compassion through the pages of Scripture and understand how we are to respond when we are suffering and tempted to be too exacting of ourselves or when guilt lingers even though we know we are forgiven.