If You Didn't Have a Mom...
Some time ago I was chatting with a friend who does ministry with college students. He said to me, “I was surprised to find that the deepest issues these students have are not that they’re fatherless – it’s that they’re motherless.”
We Said It Enough
There are those families that reserve their I love you’s like expensive candy in a jar, bought overseas, limited and finite. When it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s not enough for us to eat it anytime we want. There are those parents who have a hard time saying it to their kids or to each other.
What You Wear to Your Mom's Funeral
I had made so many decisions over the previous days. How was I going to sum up the life of my incredible, larger-than-life mother?
Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)
There was a piece of my mother that remained absolutely her own. When I hear this song, I see her that way - not as a mom or a wife or a woman doing ministry.
If She'd Been Healed...
If she'd been healed, we would have had a great story. A great testimony. But the thing is, sometimes the testimony isn't that God gave you what you wanted - it's that He made you into the person you couldn't become without the tragedy.
4 Ways to Nurture Your Daughter's Ministry Call
Begin to open the door for her now. Begin to instill in her a boldness and an unapologetic desire for the advancement of the Gospel.
In Praise of Fat Little Preachers' Wives
How many women in my life have been so ordinary that the light inside of them was like a sweet, secret treasure - morsels of grace to be shared simply and quietly? Sitting across from coffee or pancakes much later than I planned has proven to me to be more healing, more life-giving than people living on a larger scene.
They Named Me Bold
Why pray for our daughters to be filled with the Spirit if we are not going to let the Spirit speak through them?
When Hosannas Turn Silent
I walked through the train station on Wednesday like I was in a fog. Everything seemed muted and fuzzy and I noticed an acute absence of that joy, that wild praise that had driven my steps earlier in the week. That bursting-with-love heart I had carried had been replaced with the sad bruised one. Even breathing hurt.
What to Get Your Teenage Daughter for Christmas + Peanut Butter Dream Bars
She had filled the pages with the recipes we had been raised on. Hot corn casserole from Thanksgiving dinners with the Padgetts. Mamaw's spicy potato soup that Dad still requests at every opportunity. Vinita's monster cookies that she made the dads for their early morning fishing trips. Grandma Marie's apple pie.
On Grief.
Some days she is there to remind me of favor and blessing. She sometimes slips in where I least expected her to remind me how very - lucky is not a strong enough word - lucky I am to have had something so wonderful, and it must have been quite wonderful to grieve it so strongly. Sometimes she holds my hand and won't let me forget beautiful things.
This Winter
In so many ways this winter has been a reflection of this journey through the valley of death. We wait for spring. Each day we open the door desperate to feel warmth where the cold has cut through. Just when we think it's over, it comes back again, just as bad as the worst day.
Grief is Awkward.
Words can't fix it and acts of service can't change anything. To dance on eggshells with someone hoping and praying that you don't say the one wrong thing is cumbersome. Do they want you to ask? Do they want to avoid the topic? Should you offer words of comfort or say nothing?
The Delp Women
I am favored beyond reason to be a part of a family with a beautiful legacy of redemption, grace, and intercession.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.
- I hear she is great to shop with, but I hate shopping. So, ask my sister or Lyndsay and Rachel’s mom.- She whines about her glasses always being dirty as she is holding them in her hands and rubbing them with her fingers.- She knows every song written by James Taylor, and with most of the hits of the 70s she can tell you right where she was when she listened to it.