I grew up homeschooling in the 1980s. Homeschooling was a bit of an anomaly back then and though I knew it was a good fit for me, I found myself developing a long wish list as I became a teenager. My desires for experiences grew quickly...wishing I had more friends, or for the ability to go to "extracurricular activities", or just to be more independent. I felt uncertain about my future and longed to know what God had in store for me…

I like to put Bible verses to song, to make them easier to recall. This Psalm has been very meaningful to me over the years and I love to sing it to myself. We need to be reminded of God’s goodness to us, during the hard seasons of life when circumstances fail us, during the seasons of hard choices, and during the times of joy and “ease”…

Something I have struggled with all of my life is fear. From when I was a child I was always afraid something bad would happen to my family. When I was a teenager I was afraid that I would not be good enough at sports or smart enough in school or liked enough to be popular…

Some battles have odds that seem overwhelmingly stacked against us, but this verse reminded us that any situation we face was not ours but belongs to Jesus. The fight, the outcome, and the glory - it all belongs to Him.

Times of trial expose the condition of our hearts. Are we willing to trust God, in spite of not knowing all the ins and outs of His plan, or will we be the god of our own lives because we only have confidence in the things we can understand…

Finally, I was out of the riptide and back on my feet, standing in chest-deep water after what seemed like forever. I was exhausted. I didn’t know it but Jill had jumped in too and, as I looked to my right, she was in the riptide now and struggling hard toward the beach. In spite of her best swimming, she was moving steadily backward toward the open ocean and would be out of reach any second. My first instinct was to swim over to her as fast as I could…