God promises His peace to those who take their burdens to Him. But can we expect Him to act on our behalf?   Yes, we can.   Even when it comes to long-term, unexpected singleness.   I’m looking forward to talking more about the aspects of God’s nature—His sovereignty and redemption—that He uses when acting on our behalf. I’ve spent so much time focusing on our need to process emotions of disappointment and longing, however, because I think it’s a crucial prerequisite to accurately perceiving His nature.   While I don’t assume that every unmarried woman is living in the throes of...

Over the years, some lyrics I heard in high school by the band Out of the Grey have floated to my mind time and again. They’re from the song “He is Not Silent,” which deals with the question of whether God hears and responds to the prayers of His children. The line that always comes back to me is this:   He is not silent / He is not whispering / We are not quiet / We are not listening   As we consider bringing long-term disappointment about singleness or anything else to God, we may wonder whether He will respond to us. Hannah’s encounter with God helps answer that question. When she poured...

When was the last time you felt safe telling someone everything that was in your heart? It takes a lot of time and trust to reach that level of honesty with a person—someone with whom you hold nothing back.   God is that kind of person. He longs to hear everything, no matter how bad you think it is—even if it’s anger at Him for not fulfilling the desires of your heart. Jesus, who called Himself the Truth, said the truth would set us free.   We’ve been talking about God’s heart toward us in seasons of disappointment, revealed through Hannah’s prayer in the temple. She held nothing back when...

It’s Labor Day, cloudy and full of rain-laden wind and the cooler weather I longed for it to bring this weekend.   It’s so appropriately wistful.   I’ve been reading Robert Frost this morning. His autumn poems seemed to blow in through my open windows, settling around my soul with fresh understanding. I love poets: They express so well feelings and moments that might otherwise go unexamined.   In my last blog I wrote about my long season of “in between,” a characteristic of September simply and beautifully expressed by my lovely late mother—who did not often put her own spirit’s poetry...

This summer has been one long and challenging transition for me. So much has changed in my life over the past 18 months, and I’m still adjusting.   It may take me a while longer.   God is doing good things in my life, to be sure. But sometimes those good things are the result of hard things. I’m feeling a bit glad that the main months of summer have passed, hoping that my internal world will soon begin afresh like that first fallish morning with a hint of frost in the air. For that reason, I’m so glad it’s September.   Yet, I’m reminded that September is...