These days, less really is more. I’ve found that when I carefully thin out certain parts of my life, I can breathe deeper and notice more details and am all around a more healthy human.

To all the boys I’ve ever thought I loved before,

I wonder how things worked out for you. How long did it take you to realize that vague intentions and stringing girls along don’t end in lasting relationship? Or that manipulation and secrecy is where darkness resides?

How many girls did you take from more than you gave to? Did you ever apologize? I wish I knew what a genuine apology from you sounds like. But it’s too late. It doesn’t matter now.

As we wait for healing, we are to be content. As we wait for healing, we can endure because He gives us strength. As we wait for healing, we know that it comes through Him and Him alone. As we wait for healing, we know that the Lord’s not empty-handed. As we wait for healing, we will exercise gratitude. It's our greatest weapon in this fight.

We weren’t made to live lives of scarcity, nor were we for irresponsibility. An abundant life is in that in-between of stewardship, of paradoxes, and of knowing we don’t control the future, but we can both be prepared and splash in the river for a bit while we wait for it to unfold.

The world seems more fragile this year, as if someone found a secret fracture in its foundation and decided to drive a pin into it, spreading a web of separation further around the already delicate sphere. And at any moment a gust too strong could make the whole thing cave in. But if you look close enough, you’ll see bits of light are seeping through.

So what if it’s taking you six or eight years to get your college degree? Or that you got married right after high school? Who cares if it takes more time for you to land a career than other people your age? Or that you were in training bras before the rest of the girls in your 4th grade P.E. class?

I'd told God I couldn't take another one. This was the one that was supposed to work. This baby was supposed to be ours.

What do you do when the joy that had ignited in your core only months before is suddenly snubbed? How are you supposed to pass the hours as you lie in bed and wait for your body to let go?

Little did 11-year-old me realize that I'd continue to wrestle with those sentiments for the next decade and a half. My insecurities and struggle with food would follow me into adulthood.

I saw not one, but two Ophthalmologists, to reach the conclusion that I have Optic Neuritis. They don’t know what causes it, but the second opinion I received ordered an MRI on my brain to make sure I don’t have Multiple Sclerosis. Well that’s certainly not the news you’d expect to hear as you leave an afternoon eye appointment and head back to work.

Sometimes I think we expect God to write us messages in the sky. Other times, we hope he'll speak audibly, but the most common way I hear from God is in the little voice that gives me an idea or suggests I do or say something good that I wouldn't have thought of on my own.

I get it. I know what it's like to think that leaving this world is the only way out. I've lain in bed at night unable to sleep because the dark thoughts of suicide are back. Depression isn't a joke. It's not a word to toss around carelessly.