Alongside this month’s posts, we considered all the ways many misunderstand mercy. When you hear that mercy never fails, you might believe it’s there to erase your mistakes. But there’s more. Some view it as a reward for remorse. As a reset button that cancels consequences. Maybe as something extended to people who have suffered […]
There’s a chapter of my story I don’t tell often. I’m not still ashamed of it, though, because I’ve genuinely made peace with it. It’s a fantastic story about mercy and second chances, but it involves other people whose privacy matters to me. And some stories aren’t entirely yours to tell even when they’re about […]
Eight years ago, a relationship that mattered deeply to me got fractured and couldn’t be repaired quickly. I had done everything I knew to do. Apologized, given space, prayed, waited, tried again. But nothing moved. The silence on the other end stayed silence, week after week. I had run completely out of next steps. That […]
For about eighteen months I carried a decision I had made. One I couldn’t undo, one that had affected people I loved, one that I had genuinely repented of and made as right as I possibly could. And I kept picking it back up anyway, putting guilt and grace in the wrong order. Not consciously, […]
There was a woman in my life a few years back who made it difficult to choose compassion over judgment when she spoke to me. She had a gift for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment. I don’t believe she did it maliciously. She just had a consistency that made every interaction feel […]
Eight years ago, a close friend said something about me to someone else. Something that wasn’t true, that found its way back to me through the worst possible chain of people and in a season when I was already running low on reserves. Forgiving others was the last thing on my mind! I know she […]
I missed a deadline last spring. By four days. I had committed to the piece months earlier, for an editor I respected deeply. Unfortunately, I had let the chaos of a brutal homeschool project and three overlapping writing projects convince me I had more time than I did. And I thought I’d blown it. No […]
For a lot of years of my adult life, receiving race did not come easily to me. Even today, I catch myself starting to brush it off. That’s when my mind goes back to when a friend showed up at my door once with dinner, flowers, and two hours of her time during a particularly […]
There was a season in my life when I stopped praying. It wasn’t really a conscious decision. I just quietly withdrew, the way you might stop calling a friend after you’ve done something you’re too ashamed to explain. My guilt had me believing I was unforgivable. Knowing what I’d been told for years that mercy […]
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