Tag: mental health
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Help and Hope: Stop Walking Around the Furnace
Most people pray for God to remove the furnace. Few stop to consider that sometimes God is waiting for us to walk toward it. And if we’re being honest, most of us spend a great deal of our lives trying to avoid discomfort. We avoid difficult conversations, grief, doctor’s appointments, forgiveness, change, we even avoid…
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The Healing Arts: When Creativity Becomes a Lifeline
Some of the most creative people I have ever met… were also carrying some of the heaviest burdens. Not always visibly. Not always in ways the world immediately recognized. But quietly, beneath the surface, many of them were navigating things most people around them never fully understood. Things like chronic illness, rare diseases, disability, grief,…
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Peace in the Storm: The Voice That Came at the Right Time
The rain had been falling most of the afternoon, though from inside the hospital it was difficult to tell where one hour ended and the next began. Everything there seemed suspended in artificial light and exhaustion. The halls were too cold, the chairs too stiff, and the silence somehow never truly quiet. Machines hummed. Elevator…
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Tea Time with Mandy: The Quiet Between Words
The room was quiet, but not peaceful. It was the kind of quiet that settles in slowly, almost unnoticed at first, until you realize it is not absence… but restraint. Three of us sat at the small round table near the window, the late afternoon light stretching long across the polished wood floor. The tea…
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Help and Hope: Learning to Stand After the Storm
When Life Doesn’t Pause After the Storm The storm ends… but life doesn’t slow down. That may be one of the most disorienting parts of walking through a difficult season, because somewhere in us, we expect a pause. We expect a moment to sit, to breathe, to gather ourselves before stepping forward again. But life…
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Caregivers Cozy Corner: Rest Is Not Betrayal
The Small Mercies That Keep Us Going There is a kind of weariness that settles into a caregiver long before anyone else notices it. It does not always announce itself loudly. More often, it comes quietly — in the ache behind the eyes, in the heaviness of the body, in the way even a simple…
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Peace in the Storm: When Grief Is Complicated
People can look at a woman lying quietly beneath the trees and assume she is resting, when in truth she may be trying not to come apart. Amanda Sherrell There is a certain kind of grief that does not come dressed the way people expect it to. Sometimes grief comes as panic. Then sometimes it…
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Life’s Lessons: Power Under Control
There is a moment in every heated exchange when you can feel it rising. Your pulse quickens. Your thoughts sharpen. Words gather at the edge of your tongue, fully formed and ready. In those moments, using language can feel like swordplay. We parry. We defend. We anticipate the next move. We prepare to strike before…
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Tea Time with Mandy: Trusting God With the Outcome
Before we begin, let’s slow the moment. Put the kettle on and make yourself a cozy cup of tea. I recommend Twinings Orange & Cinnamon Spice, mixed with a bit of English Breakfast for warmth and a gentle lift. If you can, slice a piece of warm lemon cake or prepare a small snack, then…
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Life’s Lessons: Assume Nothing, Know Everything
I have always lived by a simple phrase: “Assume nothing. Know everything.” Not because I believe it is possible—or even wise to know everything. Scripture warns us plainly against becoming arrogant in knowledge. But because the prideful assumptions of mankind have always been man’s greatest folly. Time and again, it is not ignorance that wounds…
Country Girl Gone City 