In the middle of that dark-valley time, I often found myself alone with God, crying aloud and writing passionately in my journal. During that time too, I came to identify with David, the shepherd-poet-warrior-king, in ways I had not before. For David was also ostracized by people he trusted. And he cried out in distress - and in faith.
Thirty years after I first heard this song - and visited these places - I'm listening again and crying and praying again for the peoples of Ukraine and Russia.
Real rest is so different from what I had thought. It’s so much more expansive, and desirable, and enjoyable. And it’s so very vital. Thing is, I desperately needed real rest long before I knew I needed it. I had no clue how rest-deprived I was.
At times in this world, all eyes turn toward what seems most important, invincible, extraordinary. If we look further, the Lord will remind us what actually is.
As we struggled to reach another hemisphere and to connect with the people of Russia and Ukraine, hindrances just kept coming. Then, the breakthroughs began.
The day I woke to news that tanks rolled through Moscow’s streets, I wrote, “I don’t plan to beat down any doors. But what God opens, I will walk through.”
Why, in midlife, did I suddenly find my boundaries battered and my adulthood denied? The answer hinged on the skewed view of womanhood in my church culture.
Two weeks after I asked readers to pray with me for wisdom and strength for a final push, my updated e-book is live! It tells my story of all the ways God answered, from the moment I finally asked him: “What about women, Lord? What do you say about how women in your kingdom relate to other people and to you?”
When the "threat alarm" goes off in an abusive church system, the response is orchestrated and brutal. But it's church: Appearances must be kept up. People loyal to the system confuse while pretending to clarify, cover-up while pretending to address, attack while seeming to answer, put-down while pretending to help.
Behind the scenes at Living Proof Live, I'd found a celebrity culture - not the "one anothering" of the church of the living God. So with all my heart, I cried out for change.