The Thorns
Since we know the end of the story, we can confidently endure, moreover embrace, the depth of suffering guaranteed in our own days. It is impossible to live in the joy of new life if we don't first internalize just how far we've been taken away from death.
A Short Story of Hope
As life continues and with it struggles and with them hope, we find ourselves losing our grips on the things we don’t even know we are holding so tightly. And yet, we finally find our rest, secure in arms more capable, more loving, more alive than our own.
Survival Guide: Melissa Niednagel Wolmarans
While I have experienced a fair amount of loss in my 35 years of life, I am not someone who is a victim of unjust suffering. am the person who has caused it.
Redefining Ability
We are not alone in disability. It’s a reality all of humanity shares at its core. But more than that, we are not alone in our disability because God is there with us, to show us himself in ways that are hard to see when we are blinded by the illusion of our ability.
A Mother’s Day Card
The simple words on that Mother’s Day card belied a deeper meaning, a revelation that James was developing into a little boy who recognized his life and his Mommy looked a little different from those of his friends.
My New Face
Now I know my face tells a story far deeper and richer and more intentional than good genes or expensive makeup. My faces tells the story of survival, second chances, and suffering strong.
The Scars We Have and the Scars We Give
Maybe the best way to parent my boys is to not to hide the hurt, but to show the healing.
Redefining Waiting
Romans 5:3 teaches us that suffering leads us to perseverance and to character and, ultimately, to hope, which will never shame us and will never disappoint us. There is a promise and a purpose in the painful process of waiting, which means we can learn to wait well.
The Identity of Hope
The transcendent world of a life-giving God tumbles in tandem with a creation utterly decaying into death. As believers, how do we not shy away from whole-hearted living while simultaneously holding our tenuous existence with open hands?
Survival Guide: Lisa & Eric Barlow
Life isn't over. It took me some time to figure that out, and there were moments when I had wished it was. Looking at it now, I realize that we have been able to fulfill so many of our dreams, it has just looked different than we had planned.
Survival Guide: Katherine & Jay Wolf
Hope Heals seeks to re-narrate the story of suffering by sharing the lives and lessons of real people—their honest answers, vulnerable struggles, and surprising transformations through enduring life's greatest storms.
An Abundance of Hope
As we suffer, we learn to depend, again, not on our own work, but on the work of Christ, and thus, we persevere, our focus shifts from ourselves to the reality of hope beyond.
The Good/Hard Life
When we choose to embrace the stories we’re living and release the stories we wished for, we can know in our deepest places that this good story is being written a God who can’t write any other kind of story.
Waiting Well
Our lives have been full of good things, which means our future is full of good things if we are willing to define and identify them rightly.
Glorious Scars
But when we allow our paradigm of healing to shift, her scars begin to look like badges of honor. She can proudly point to this old wounded place and say, “I’m scarred, but I’m still here.”
Post-Traumatic Growth
Trauma can be more than a dark pit of despair or a spiral of depression. It has the potential to be our deepest source of empathy, strongest point of connection, and most forceful impetus for growth if we bravely choose to let others into both the brokenness and the mending.
Joyful Rebellion
What if we could see celebration as a form of worship—a necessary, life-giving acknowledgement of God's goodness?
Redefining Everything
We often take definitions for granted, but the true or false definition of a word can be the lynchpin of life well lived.
Invisible Wheelchairs
Our limitations today are merely shadows of the ultimate limitation—death—which was exactly the limitation through which Jesus worked out our salvation. If Jesus can redefine death as the way to life, can we believe our pain can have a purpose.
Telling a New Story
What we remember teaches our brains what to expect. By remembering the past thoughtfully, we can anticipate the future with hope.