abandonment

Rumpled gray cat staring with traumatized eyes, beside a tree.

Trauma & witness – lessons from a frazzled cat

Post published:February 21, 2026
Post category:Trauma and Grief
Post last modified:February 22, 2026

How a cat that crash-landed into a treetop helped me see the difference between distress that is silenced and distress that is witnessed.

My mother lies in her nursing-home bed, her upper body and head elevated. I sit beside her bed, reading her a psalm. She knows who I am, and she watches me, but not with delight.

Newborn: Search for a parent’s love

Post published:June 22, 2025
Post category:My Story Trauma and Grief
Post last modified:September 24, 2025

Mama’s story ended where it should have begun – with so much lost in the chaos of trying to rewrite the start. And both of us still looking for a parent’s love.

Pink flower with long green stem, fallen, bruised, petals closed, lying on strange green soil

People of God, befriend the forsaken

Post published:March 8, 2025
Post category:Knowing and Going with God
Post last modified:October 7, 2025

I’d seen it in Scripture, yet had not seen: How strongly God commits himself to defend the forsaken. How strongly he urges his people to befriend the forsaken.

Pink flower, hanging down, petals closed, but encircled by a very green leaf bed

Defender of the forsaken – this is God

Post published:February 20, 2025
Post category:Knowing and Going with God Trauma and Grief
Post last modified:October 7, 2025

The Lord sees when the vulnerable are wrongly rejected. He hears when the helpless cry to him, and he champions them. Defender of the forsaken – this is God.

On a map of earthquake activity in central Oklahoma in February 2024, a stunning array of overlapping circles of three colors and various sizes arc from northeast to southwest.

Earthquakes, trauma – and silences that erase

Post published:March 7, 2024
Post category:My Story Trauma and Grief
Post last modified:November 28, 2025

Any eerie silence that minimizes or denies an earthquake - or any other trauma someone is facing - shouts to those willing to hear: Look deeper. Ask, Why?

Divorcing: Orange-handled scissors cut apart a marriage certificate with a long-stemmed orange-yellow rose lying across it.

Divorcing: When God does what he hates

Post published:July 7, 2023
Post category:Knowing and Going with God Trauma and Grief
Post last modified:October 2, 2025

Repeatedly, in Scripture, the Lord reveals the anguish that divorcing his people causes him. Yet at times, he’s responded to nonstop betrayals in just that way.

The face of the betrayed: wilted sunflower "face" seen through shattered glass

Treachery and divorce: When God sees betrayal

Post published:June 15, 2023
Post category:Healing from Toxic Church
Post last modified:May 19, 2025

If you have been betrayed by a spouse: The God who sees you has been there. He hates treachery. He calls out the treacherous - and he defends the betrayed.