Living on Coffee and Love

4/14/25 I was reading about planting seeds of faith this weekend. It was freeing to read about how it isn't really our job to save people, convince them, or secure their place in eternity. It's our job to plant the seeds. I have felt torn and disappointed over the last few years, that I haven't been in a God-focused relationship with a God-fearing and God-loving man, with a surrendered heart. I have churned and beat myself up over the way the faith of my children have been shaped and impacted by the relationship I have had with their father while they have had so many formidable years. It feels like the greatest failure that they haven't all verbalized they have personal relationships with God and that I do not see Him working in their daily lives. Then, this weekend, I read a perspective-shifting devotional, and it was beautiful. My grandfather planted his seeds of faith in me. I saw how he lived, loved, and served. I saw how he studied the Bible in quiet stillness and...

Today's devotional is about the courage of the Shunammite woman who has a pain and wound bigger than anything else- her desire for a child. The devotional says, "This wound is so painful that she dare not allow it to be uncovered." Oh, I feel that so bigly. Although I don't feel the pain of a woman unable to or trying to conceive, the pain in my heart does feel like a gaping wound that if I uncover it, surely will have the power to overtake me because it is so great and deep. Fear lives in that vulnerability and I've been asking God to heal my heart and let me receive love again. I feel that this wound of mine being covered and hidden, keeps me from hurting but also keeps me from feeling and receiving, believing in love. I know that fear is not from the Light. I know that fear is the opposite of faith. I wrestle with them both. I know and do not want to live a life in fear or because of fear. I want to live a life of faith. I know that we suffer because we love an...