Hello friends!  I’ve missed you.  It’s good to be back. The last time we met it was the beginning of Lent, the season of sacrifice and reflection on the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

As I reflected, I sensed the need to fast from my familiar routine. This meant pressing pause on my weekly blog posts and having less social media interaction.

Thank you for meeting me here as I return.

Initially, taking a break from my happy habits felt awkward. But as I folded each task and placed them in God’s hands, His presence reassured me. The sacrifice gave me greater focus and more time to seek Him.

“One of the great needs of the Christian life is to have a place where we deliberately attend to realities. That is the real meaning of prayer.” – Oswald Chambers

Chambers encourages us to attend to realities deliberately — or we may avoid them indefinitely. It’s a sobering thought.

Some realities are harsh, requiring us to acknowledge a loss, fear or failure.

But other realities are hopeful, requiring us to stretch our faith into the possibility of God’s plan. Sometimes I struggle with acknowledging and stretching, but the realities still exist.

God’s grace still waits. Jesus still calls. And so I came.

As I attended to reality in prayer, the harshness was met by His healing and the most hopeful reality emerged.

“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:1 NLT) .

The invitation to know more of God often comes with the realization that I need to do less.

Less worrying.

Less complaining.

Less trying to control the details of His plan.

While I was away, stillness meant sitting in biblically based devotionals. I prayed unhurried prayers and asked uneasy questions. I listened. I learned from and leaned on God’s promises.

And yet, while I was away life went on for each of us. It went on behind our closed doors and in our common spaces. At times, it felt like the world was tilting off its axis; especially, as another school shooting shook our nation with a painful reminder:

Brokenness unaddressed multiplies.

The impact is felt by those closest to what’s fractured and by those who courageously respond to the chaos.

Before I went away and even today, political posturing continues. People wonder how policies or scandals will play out in the days to come. Going through a news feed is like sorting through a pile of what makes our nation free and what makes us flawed.

But being free and flawed wasn’t just seen in my news feed. It was also seen in me. Faith in Christ frees me from my sin and the system of this fallen world.

However, parenting challenges, marital missteps and the tensions of my purpose-driven heart, punctured my peaceful reflection.

Each puncture created anxiety until it was treated by God’s grace. Grace applies the Messiah’s medicine to every wounded soul. It gives strength to the weary and peace as we trust Him.

As grace restored me, I deliberately (and desperately) attended to each reality in prayer. The needful things were no longer tucked behind the trivial, selfish or trendy.

The crowded spaces in my mind emptied.

The broken places in my soul begin to heal.

The rewrite of my next book became words on a screen.

But enough about me. I’d love to hear about a discovery you’ve made during a time of reflection. What’s brought hope for your heart or what’s bringing joy to your soul?