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This weekend is a very special one for most of your congregation. But there may be a small (yet larger than you think) group of women who will sit in your pews and chairs, in silent pain.

You've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times, pregnancy and motherhood is different for every woman. I think that's true, until it's not

With every song we write, we pray it would transcend culture and generational gaps, for the purpose of the Church worshipping as one voice.

As a generation, we believe the distress and terror is awful. As a generation, we believe the sex trafficking must cease. The homelessness and poverty can be mended. Clean water is a basic dignity of life. The widows must be cared for, the orphans welcomed into families, and the youth educated.

Some call church scary, some call church home. How can one place be perceived so drastically different?

5 words changed my philosophy on strangers.

I don't know about you, but rods and staffs, those were tools of discipline in my home. Ok well not exactly a rod, more like a wooden spoon but when you're on the tail end of it, it's pretty much the same thing.(Can I get a witness? Yup, that just happened.) But in the phases of life, there are transitions.

Don't give up. Run hard after God, trusting that He is fashioning you into the likeness of Jesus.

I was abused as a child, by my biological father. I was very angry as a child, mostly at him and his family. I stopped seeing him in visitations when I was seven because all I could see when I looked at him was a liar, an abuser, and a stranger. I felt nothing for him.

The Hebrew definition of DELIGHT is: to be of dainty habit, be pampered; to be happy about, take exquisite delight; to make merry over, make sport of.

He was telling me to do something about the girls who didn't get to wake up from my nightmare. Girls who live day in and day out, not ever knowing how beautiful and valuable they are. Girls whose families betrayed them and others who abused them. Girls whose lives might never know freedom in this lifetime. That was not okay with me.

Did you know, Jesus, when He wept in this story, His weeping was a juxtaposition? The obvious tell of His weeping was for Lazarus. They were friends and Scripture tell us he was "the one whom Jesus loved." (11:3)

If you don't know Jesus, you will experience fear. If you do know Jesus, you will still fear. But you don't have to.

Broken people heal when sharing their brokenness and I believe broken people heal when they hear of someone else's brokenness. But brokenness, in and of itself, is not the power. Relationship is. Relationship is cultivated on commonalities and commonalities are discovered by engaging in relationship. It's a beautiful cycle necessary for humanity.

I committed to journeying with my husband in his addiction to porn. That was the beginning Jason’s road of recovery. I’ve found that although this was Jason’s problem, the solution takes both of us owning it.

"By the grace of God, our honeymoon stage was short lived."

There are times when you’re exhausted, when you’re at the end of your rope and getting naked just might put you over the edge. That’s a movie-view of sex.

Leadership isn't promised, given, mandated or inherited. It is earned. Somehow society has adopted the idea that leadership principles play differently in marriage. As if, in all other avenues of life leadership is merited but in marriage its entitled because I am a man and she is a woman.

Submission (Definition) The action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person. An act of surrendering to a hold by one's opponent. No, thank you. In the Church, submission has a bad reputation. Mostly because of the Church, but that is not to generalize every church. Christian women think of submission as a gender specific religious role in society. We often hear, that because we are women, we are naturally under authority of men.

The raw beauty of marriage often gets "covered up" in Christian conversation. As a Christian community, we have become afraid of the struggle that illuminates the very purpose of matrimony. We don't talk about failure. We cover up shame. No one can know our honeymoon phase never existed.