When God Has Other Plans
“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it,...
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Faith & Trust
114 articles gathered under this theme.
The Relevance of Truth
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, it turns out that its value may be much less. Fake photos on social media showed captured U.S. Soldiers and Tel Aviv in shambles. They...
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Faith During Troubling Times
Our grandson drops his arms and ducks his chin. His despair comes from missing a soccer goal, a basketball shot gone wrong, or a race not won. His feet drag. He is disheartened. Unfortuna...
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Clean Slates And New Beginnings
A white board hangs on one of the walls of our basement. On it scribblings mark the agenda of the day, that is, those perceived as most important through the eyes of the last grandchild t...
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Thankful Hearts Are Tied to Trust
Long before America created an overflowing and beautifully sophisticated Thanksgiving table, thanksgiving was a thing. Before pilgrims gathered around a rough wood hewn table, or a sweet...
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Thanking God For All I See
“Thank you for the sghetti,” the little voice said. My daughter’s hands, folded in prayer sat against the edge of the kitchen table. Those first prayers were so pure and yet so very contr...
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Does God See Us Where We Are?
“I don’t know where we’re at,” Phil’s dad used to say from the front seat of his handicapped van. In his later days my father-in-law, sweet and intelligent seemed to live in an anxious st...
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To Strengthen And Encourage In The Faith
She sat in front of me, a crumpled mess. Words halted and poured again like the start and go of a sputtering fountain. Lines furrowed her forehead. They drew the portrait of a weary soul....
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Have You Been Living A Scammed Life?
A message on my phone encouraged me to contact a certain Margaret. It seems she wants to recruit me for a job. I have great potential to earn an amazing amount of money. In fact, my name...
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Does Jesus Always Answer What We Ask For?
“If Jesus wanted to,” my little seven-year-old fellow classmate declared, “He could flatten my thumb and make it big enough to go around the whole world.” He held his thumb inches from my...
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Do You Need Faith Supplements?
I’m not sure how old they were, but to me the title “ancient” applied. My parents, had an entire cabinet of dietary supplements. Every morning they’d pull them out and a ritual began. The...
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Certainly There is Uncertainty
“There is certainly a lot of uncertainty,” the television news commentator reported. Well…that pretty much sums up life, doesn’t it? The reporter went on to elaborate on his statement, al...
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Patterns of Life
I am sitting in a waiting room again. Waiting…’cause, that’s what people do in a waiting room. Wondering…which goes with the territory. Worried…it’s part of the package too. It will be a...
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A Pivot in Time Marks Eternity
His eyes lighted when he saw me walking toward him in the crowd. My grandson headed straight toward me with a smile, and sidled up against my side. He stretched his arms around me and squ...
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February And Life Snowballs
It’s a snowball of sorts. Little things turn into bigger things, the list of to-do’s explode until there is simply no way to accomplish all of it, and a minor set back becomes a nearly im...
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Who Wants the China?
We sat in the old farmhouse dining room, around the table where my mom had hosted generations of family. And we divvied up the old pictures, bits and pieces of written history, and trinke...
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Are You a Quitter?
When my daughter woke up on the day which changed all of our lives, it started pretty much like every other day. She felt a bit dizzy. She checked her temperature, but she didn’t have a f...
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God’s Beauty On The Journey
It’s a crisp November day outside. Up until now the warmth of late summer has hung its hat on Virginia’s autumn. But, fall chill descended last night and the breezy gusts feel polar in co...
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What Pillars Do We Stand On Today?
It’s Wednesday morning. I am writing this blog five days before November 5. Election Day, 2024. Likely, a winner will have been decided when it pops up in your email or feed. Your world w...
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Do Autumn Leaves remind you of Life in Christ?
It’s autumn. I’ve gotta admit that I am not a fan of fall. I see the beauty in the Virginia reds, yellows, and oranges. I love the floating leaves in the air. I like the sound of their cr...
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If God Is With Us?
Does it seem at times like the whole world is a powder keg about to blow everything to bits and pieces? Yet, it’s the personal kind of powder kegs, when life feels out of control, that sh...
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Jesus Meets Us Where We Are
It was back in the day of big over the lap Rand McNally Maps. One lay across my legs while I sat shotgun on the front bench seat of our 1966 Chevy Impala. Across the two big pages, lines...
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Are You Running Well?
I have some dear friends, whom I love very much even though they run. I mean really run. On purpose. Because they like it. They have a few years up on me, yet they are forever completing...
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Do You Greet or Meet With Jesus?
Our church has started a meet and greet time during the service as many churches do. It is one of those things which make introverts run for the bathroom. Although it is a good practice f...
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We The Fickle
The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:1 ESV...
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Do you Worry about What Might Happen?
So, my husband moved the big trash container outside, you know the move-once-a-week hunker on wheels? It’s a job he accomplishes without thinking much about what might or could happen. We...
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Safely Shadowed Under His Wings
A shadow, long and wide, interrupted the sunshine for just a moment and then glided over the bright green foliage. My grandson and I squinted into the blue above us. We saw the outstretch...
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God Moves Behind the Scenes
We all have them, markers of good and bad in our lives. April marks our spot. It’s another anniversary of when life altered through our daughter’s illness. I often wish I could box up our...
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Is It Too Heavy?
“It’s too heavy,” he whined. His little hands strained to lift a fat rough log. He wanted to imitate his grandpa who seemed to hoist them like twigs into a wheelbarrow. The red cheeks of...
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God Never Needs Updating
“It needs an update,” my husband says. He wasn’t talking about me, which is a good thing. For us both. Phones, computers, thermostats, security systems, clocks, TV's, GPS systems. I mean...
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The Best Kind Of Love
His little fingers dripped with orange greasy pizza oil and stuck together with chocolate fudge-vanilla. I checked his face and found it wreathed with those same streaks of orange and bla...
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Can God's Children Trust God's Gifts?
How is it that a man who hates shopping finds some unexplainable driving challenge in riffling through one bottomless brown bin after another? I watch the man I thought I knew so well, be...
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Look Beyond Your Own Table
Long before America created an overflowing and beautifully sophisticated Thanksgiving table, thanksgiving was a thing. Before pilgrims gathered around a rough wood hewn table, or a sweet...
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Who Really Owns My Time?
“I don’t have time” is one of those ridiculous things we say pretty much all the time. As if time can be owned. As if we could take charge of it, I mean really, “who’s got the time?” Righ...
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If Jesus Wanted To
“If Jesus wanted to,” my little seven-year-old fellow classmate declared, “He could flatten my thumb and make it big enough to go around the whole world.” He held his thumb inches from my...
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How Old Are You?
“How old are you?” my grandson asks again. It’s a regular question which I try to regularly dodge. “How old do you think I am?” I ask back. His little forehead wrinkles as his eyebrows dr...
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What Do You See?
Our refrigerator died. Second fridge demise in six months. The next week my computer met its maker. It went like an apple with a bite out of it. Sometimes life is like that. “Grandma,” my...
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Did God Show Up?
“…for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” Hebrews 13:5 ESV Recently I was asked how I feel now about God’s response to our daughter’s illness in the past. We prayed fo...
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Kings, Prophets, and You
If I say, “Micaiah,” what comes to your mind? Nothing you say? Well good. But, I hope you never say that again after you read this post. Let’s just start with: Incredible Bravery. Immovab...
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Who Do You Trust?
“Ahh! Salaam and good evening to you, worthy friend. Please, please, come closer,” our tween-aged daughter motioned with her hand. From the movie Aladdin, she knew every word, every gestu...
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When you are powerless how should you respond?
Welcome to this guest post from my husband Philip Schroeder. One of the transformers serving the office building where I worked blew. There was no power in most of the building, including...
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Old Backgrounds, New Creation, and A Happy Father’s Day
What is a “new creation?” Am I one? Are you? “…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV). Who Gets What? B...
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Precious Scars Invite Faith
Two favorite features on my nose are little grooves that criss cross the surface. They are barely distinguishable, but I’m proud of them. Both remind me of people I love. One reminds me o...
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Where to Set Our Attention in an Attention Shifting World
Thor belongs to four of my grandchildren. He is a Vizsla with a beautiful brown coat and liquid brown eyes which clearly speak dog-beg. He knows exactly how to sit at your feet and patien...
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What's Beneath It All?
Things were bad, dire in fact. A line which separated life and death grew so slender at times I thought she was already gone. My forehead found a resting spot on my daughter’s still one,...
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Incomprehensible Faith
It is often the incomprehensible pieces about God and His Word that bring us back to the rudiments of our faith. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things no...
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Are You Walking In the Mire?
Mud, thick red goop clumped his little shoes like melted cheese oozing out of a sandwich. Hunks of it fell in globs I tried to avoid as I scooped him up. Briefly his legs swung from side...
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Is It Too Difficult For God?
“I am so ready for an angel to come,” Phil said that morning. I’d been thinking the same. I got up from my cot next to our daughter’s bed and joined my husband where he stood at her side....
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Measure Your Heart of Thanksgiving
“We will be measuring your daughter for a wheel chair at 3:00 this afternoon,” the nurse told me with a cheerful smile on her face. Befuddled images traced vellum pages on my mind. A brid...
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Whatever State You are In Today
Whatever State You are In Today “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.” Philippians 4:11 NKJV So what state did you wake up in? Red...
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Is The World Getting Better or Worse?
As a kid in grade school I often heard a debate about whether the world was getting better or not. “Better,” my teachers said. “Better,” my T.V. screen told me. “Worse,” my parents said....
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Are We There Yet? Finding Purpose in the Miles
“Are we there yet?” little voices once asked from the back seat. Years slipped by, like miles passing underneath. Complaints changed, the questions grew more sophisticated, and the voices...
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Are Your Eyes on the Right Goal?
Lined up side by side, ready to take off, my grandson’s restraining arm shoots out across his little brother’s stomach. “Go!” Big brother shouts. They take off across our grass. It’s a du...
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Finding Courage and Resolve When a Line In the Sand Demands It
If Humpty Dumpty and I sat down for a heart to heart, I think we’d find we have a lot in common. The first and most obvious is the state of our brokenness. The thing about the king’s hors...
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How to Activate Triple A When You Need Help from God
Today I’m delighted to introduce you to Jeannie Waters. Besides being an accomplished writer, she is always ready to help and encourage me in my own writing journey. Jeannie is an award-w...
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Defining Peace When We Have None
If you have been disturbed by current events, you aren’t alone. We’ve had weeks of images difficult to forget. Wouldn’t it be so nice to turn on the TV and find the world at peace, evil c...
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To Share or Not to Share
Have you ever wondered what to share, how to share or even if you should share something? I have. We see this paradox in Asaph. He authored Psalm 73 with a conflicted heart. He admits to...
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Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Ah, Spring. You’ve been a long time coming. The day was perfect as I walked the neighborhood. The depth of the sky’s blue called me. Azaleas bloomed in vibrant bush bouquets. Every bird’s...
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God Sees The Whole Picture
As a child I loved working with dot to dot pictures. I pondered them before I put pencil to paper, trying to form in my mind the whole picture, wanting to unravel the yet unknown. With a...
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Going Beyond Boundaries
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” -C.S. Lewis, The Lion,...
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Hidden Temper, Undeserved Grace
“Thar’ she blows,” a friend quipped of his late wife. A sweet soul and my dear friend, she apparently hid a temper under her skin, not easily aroused but impressive to its recipients. He...
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Enviable Comparable Endings
Asaph, King David’s talented musician had issues. He agonized over life’s inequality and unfairness and fell prey to a common problem. “For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the p...
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Do You Like Me?
“Do you like me?” the elder three-year-old asked his little brother. He rolled onto his side and hugged the little body of his two-year-old brother lying beside him. In a world of Faceboo...
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If a Tree Falls in a Forest?
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" I’ve not lived a long time in Virginia, but in the time I have, I’ve seen a lot of trees. Coming from...
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Do You Know Where You’re At?
“I don’t know where we’re at,” Phil’s dad used to say from the front seat of his handicapped van. In his later days my father-in-law, sweet and intelligent seemed to live in an anxious st...
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When Heads Come Together
Two heads are better than one the saying goes, but besides the obvious intellectual melding of minds, a much sweeter truth is communicated when two heads come together. A mommy rests her...
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Recognizing You on Father’s Day Even Though Your Hair Is Gray
“I didn’t recognize that gray haired man,” my husband and I squinted together at the photo on his camera’s screen. I saw him immediately in the group picture. He wasn’t so ready to claim...
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Going Beyond Clouds That Hide the View
I’m a cloudy kind of person. Something in my soul shuts out the light inside me like clouds that hide the view. But when the shadow passes suddenly it’s as if the glory of the sun explode...
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Catching Up with Life
My mother-in-law, Esther Kangas Schroeder went to be with Jesus last night. Life has a way of spilling one thing onto another, and stuff can end in a big heap. Yes, even for almost-retire...
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Are You Looking High Enough?
Are you looking high enough for connection? You know that wonderful feeling of finding someone with your same interests, passions or thinking? “She gets me,” you say. Or “he knows exactly...
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Little Boys, Escape Artists and Cunning Hearts
We have an escape artist in our family. The kind that scales double safety gates across the stairway, the type who climbs out a crib in a sleep sack, through open windows and sneaks out l...
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Mistakes of Grasshoppers and Other Regular People
“We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” Numbers 13:33 (ESV) It’s impossible to read about the Israelites’ long exodus from Egypt without being convicted of s...
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Do You Want to Change Course?
“…my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.” Ps. 73:2 (ESV) I feel like a lot of us are walking into a log across our path, or maybe on quick sand. The Psalmist Asaph writ...
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Storing Ahead
Our first child cried a lot. Understatement. New mom terror of that piercing cry and the absolute certainty it brought reinforced my insecurity. I had no idea what I was doing. In the rar...
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How to Build a House that Speaks the Right Things
“For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.” 1 Cor. 3:9 (NIV) “A house tells a lot about the person who lived in it,” my husband, the carpenter mumbled....
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What to Do When Life is Miserable
“What to do when life is miserable,” I suppose there are those of you out there that don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve never had a miserable day in your life. I will not tell you...
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Is God Absent When He is Silent?
Our middle daughter was about the sneakiest two-year-old imaginable. Quiet, sweet and oh so cunning. But the one sneak I never got used to was the tip-toe out of bed escape. Because she d...
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How to be Ready Before it Takes Place
Sometimes I just want to see to the other side before I get there. I confess to reading the last page of a book to calm my nerves in the middle, or wanting to know the end of a movie befo...
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A Perfect Tree and Its Reminder to Be Thankful
This week when I was out walking, I saw a perfect tree. I paused to look up and appreciate the sway in the wind, its colors moving in and out of sunlight, its form and height. Under its o...
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Who Really Has the Power to Fix It?
I know well my husband’s furrowed brow. I am well acquainted with the set of his jaw and the far away focus of his eyes. His spinning thoughts, the ones that talk louder inside him than s...
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How Do You Want COVID-19 to End?
The long marble hallway stretched like a tunnel ahead. I remember the wavy lines narrowed to another corridor where doctors and nurses passed like a hospital thoroughfare of workers inten...
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How Do You Define Faith in the Coronavirus Pandemic?
Maybe now is actually the right time to doubt your faith. How can I say such a thing in the middle of the biggest global crises most of us have experienced? Why would I bring more uncerta...
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Unsettled Times
I don’t know about you, momma, daddy, grandmama, and granddad, but the last few weeks have fogged my brain and tattered my thinking. If today could be superimposed like tracing paper over...
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But What if God Doesn’t Do What I Ask?
How is your, “But even if He does not” faith? My husband, Phil, and I have been reading some of those New Testament verses that beg childlike faith. Verses like, “if you ask me anything i...
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The Panic of Going Below the Waves
What would it have been like to reach a hand to Jesus’ shoulder where he slept and shake him awake? We relate well to the waves of Mark 4 splashing into the boat, the wild winds and terri...
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The Armor, Your Battle and His War
They come, a little bewildered, some heralding children yapping at their ankles and running in circles, some almost newlyweds with blank-slate futures while others brave it alone. Obedien...
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What’s Hiding in the Window of your Soul?
Recently our family, kids, spouses and grandkids got together at an airbnb for three days of togetherness. It took the form of lots of games, food, and hours of conversation. Kids ran thr...
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When Clouds Hide the View
I’m a cloudy kind of person. Sometimes something in my soul shuts out the light and then the cloud passes and suddenly it’s as if the glory of the sun explodes inside of me and everything...
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How Wet are Your Feet?
They come, like the Israelites in Joshua 3-4, instructed to stick a foot into the water, and trust God for the next step. Testing, poking and prodding Jesus’ calling on their lives, they...
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6 Questions That Will Center your New Year
New makes me skittish. While everyone else revels in the thought of a blank-slate New Year ahead, I’ve always anticipated a new beginning with a bit of fear and dread. When others see pos...
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Looking for Immanuel in the Christmas that Almost Isn’t
When sparkling lights are only beeps and monitors on a hospital screen. When money is lean and gifts few. When a bucket sits next to a miserably fevered child. When uncertainty shrouds ho...
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Strengthen the Souls
She sat in front of me a crumpled mess. Not a particularly deep conversation quickly turned into infinity pools of tears. Words halted and poured like the start and go of a sputtering fou...
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Will You Still Know Me
“The doctor will just take this itty-bitty part,” my finger taps my daughter’s birthmark. I wear an intentional mask of cheerful confidence. “It won’t take long and it will be all over,”...
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The Father That Loves Me
A fistful of trousers yanks in my grandson’s little hand. “Dadda,” he urges. His little face is upturned. Longing and hope fix his expression. My grandson expects response. After all, thi...
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Stepping Forward With God
I’ve never been one to jump with two feet into a new year. I don’t even take giant steps boldly into the future. Let me tip toe into it with baby steps, slightly fearful and hopeful not t...
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The No. 1 Way to Resolve Your Insecurities
Sometimes I’m Leah and sometimes I’m Rachel. Sometimes I soar confidently, secure in my position and exhilarated by life. Sometimes I sink in a mire of insecurity and doubt. Sometimes I f...
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When Faithfulness is Truly Great
The crowd raises to its feet around the auditorium, a representation of a myriad of countries. Former missionaries who served in Brazil, Mali and Russia stand to sing. An elderly man, his...
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When the Dots Don’t Line Up
Sometimes the dots line up, and we connect one to the other and the picture is clear. We see what God was trying to do and we say, “Oh, I get it. That’s why that had to happen that way.”...
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Three things Harvey and Irma Teach us About Prayer
“…He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.” Daniel 4:35; NKJV In anticipation of what could be one of the worst storms of modern history...
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Comforting arms of hope rescue from a snarled life
I watch my grandson knee high as he bumps from one trousered pair of legs to another across the crowded room. His vision fills with legs knee high. Unless he looks up, they are like a for...
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God Goes There
I am into the fear of God. It seems to neon-light itself at me throughout Scripture. People have turned it into an undesirable emotion, but the fear of God is a good thing. The book of Pr...
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Soak It Up
Sometimes being a mommy was like the ocean that disappeared into sand. Vast and unmeasurable, mommy-hood was never completely accomplished or satiated. Its demands drained, yet its beauty...
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Lovingkindness
Lovingkindness. I linger over the word like a morning cappuccino. I lean my head back, close my eyes, and savor it. “Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning; for I trust in You” (P...
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Nobody told Me to Bring a Rocking Chair
“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15; NKJV. When Phil and I left for Italy with a two-year-old, a four-year-old and...
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Thanks for your tip driver
My husband and I get a kick out of mistranslations, written instructions or explanations into English from another language. Perhaps it's because we have been on the other side. Language...
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The Good Life, Arrogance and Audacity
“For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Ps. 73:3 (NKJV). Asaph, King David’s talented musician had issues. He agonized over life’s inequality and unf...
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Paralytically Speaking
If people would ask me how I feel about the event of my daughter’s paralyzation nine years ago, I might want to say a lot of things. One is that it makes me sad in waves of sorrow. Period...
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Perspectives
My perspective has been askew recently, I think. The airplane dips its wing to the right in a slow descent arc above Genoa, Italy. I lean forward and gaze through a tiny oblong window. Be...
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Good Hate
“What did Dad give you that for?” my son asked when I pulled out a bright yellow circular sander from a beautifully wrapped box. “I asked for it!” Bewilderment drew his brows together int...
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Can thankfulness really be commanded?
Can thankfulness really be commanded? “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thess. 5:18 (NASB) Well, yes, apparently it can. It is the season of g...
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Miracles
“I am so ready for an angel to come,” Phil said that morning. I’d been thinking the same. I got up from my cot next to our daughter’s bed and joined my husband where he stood at her side....
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Asleep with Angels
Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child…” The air mattress lay like a rubber raft in the middle of the living room, calling me to a short ni...
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God beggar
“I am a God beggar,” I think, looking down into the hopeful eyes of my two-year-old grandson. I reach down and pull the tiny dimpled arms from around my leg, hold his chubby hands in mine...
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Watch and Pray
Jesus’ admonishment to the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane is intriguing. “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mar...
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