Thank you, Leah, for sharing your story with us! Tell us about yourself! My name is Leah Kaiser and I am a 42-year-old wife and mother to 3 teenagers. We currently reside in Tucson, AZ, but have lived in various places all over the country. I am a former Navy Nurse and currently homeschool all […]
How much do you know about the place called Ephrathah in the Bible? The ancient name for Bethlehem and the region around it, Ephrath or Ephrathah first appears in Genesis 35:16-20 as the place where Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachel, died. The only Ephrathites mentioned by name in Scripture are Elimelech, his wife, and their two […]
It was a dark and stormy night. In my soul. It had been another day of relentless fatigue, weakness, headache, and other symptoms. I spent the morning in bed, didn’t go to work in the afternoon, and stayed home from the evening Bible study. I finally broke under the attacks both physical and spiritual I […]
A few weekends ago, my parents and I watched the NCAA women’s basketball national championship: the Connecticut Huskies vs the South Carolina Gamecocks. The power, speed, and agility on the court showed a stark contrast to me sitting on the couch with my blanket and cup of tea, my head aching and my stomach trying […]
By Jasmine Originally published on The Gospel Coalition Australia Author’s Note: I wrote this article just over a year after having to leave my job overnight due to the onset of serious chronic illness. As I write this note in April 2022, I’m blessed to have finally received a diagnosis (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome), which […]
This week is our last week in this series on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure. I hope these chapters have been a blessing to you as much as they’ve been a blessing to me! Today we’re going to look at two of the book’s last chapters, Chapter 19: The Peace […]
By Emily’s encouragement, here is a post and poem, inspired by Lamentations 3, that I originally published on my personal blog. As I studied the book of Lamentations–chapter 3 in particular–Charles R. Swindoll’s little book The Lamentations of Jeremiah (Swindoll, 1977) opened my eyes to the depth, beauty, and poetry of this section of Scripture. […]
Over the past three weeks, we’ve studied Jeremiah’s personal lament over Jerusalem’s destruction and Israel’s captivity, his intentional journey from hopeless to hopeful, and his humble introspection and call to repentance. This week we look at the rest of Jeremiah’s lament and some general considerations for us in chronic illness. Note: I studied this section […]
Some of my friends have named Lamentations 3 as one of their go-to passages during tough times–or the regular tough days of chronic illness. I’ve always seen Lamentations as a beautiful (if not a little depressing) book, but it wasn’t until October when I read it in my devotions that this passage became that life-giving […]
New Year’s is the time when we set goals for a new life, a new “me,” new habits, new this and new that. We can even plan ways to grow spiritually and improve in our walk with God. But setting goals–and keeping them–can be really hard with a chronic illness, especially when it comes to […]
The Valley