Tag: faith
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Starting the New Year with Intention
Welcome to my NEW weekly blog for 2026! As a new year begins, many of us feel the quiet pull to start differently. Not with pressure or perfection, but with intention. With a rhythm that steadies us. With a pace that allows us to breathe. That is the heart behind my new Mindful Mondays: Time With…
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Preparing Our Hearts for Joy and Love
Advent invites us to open our hearts to the joy and love revealed in the arrival of Jesus. Joy is not always loud or exuberant. Often it is a quiet strength, a steady gladness rooted in the nearness of Christ. Love is not simply a warm feeling but the very character of God poured into…
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Preparing Our Hearts for Peace
Advent invites us to pause in the middle of a season that often feels hurried, noisy, and full. While the world around us moves quickly toward celebration, many of us carry a quiet longing for peace. Our minds feel scattered, our schedules stretch thin, and our hearts grow tired beneath the weight of what this…
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Preparing Our Hearts for Hope
Advent invites us into a season of waiting, listening, and watching for the God who comes near. Hope is not a fragile wish or a thin optimism about the future. Hope is the confident assurance that God is who He says He is and that He will do what He has promised. For many of…
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Surrendered Seasons, Eternal Seeds
There is a moment in the sunflower’s life when it stops turning its face toward the sun. Its petals fade, its bright crown softens, and its head begins to bow low to the earth. This is the stage known as senescence, the final phase of the sunflower’s life cycle. It begins only after the seeds…
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Beholding the Light, Becoming the Light
There is a moment in the life of a sunflower when all the quiet, hidden work beneath the surface begins to reveal itself. After months of rooting, stretching, strengthening, and turning toward the sun, the flower enters a phase called anthesis. It is the season when the sunflower fully blooms. Its face is open. Its…
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When the Soul Forgets to Turn
Every sunflower begins its life by learning to turn toward the sun. In its young and tender stages, it follows the light faithfully from east to west, letting the warmth guide its growth and strengthen its stem. But there are times when a sunflower becomes weighed down by weather, wind, or the sheer heaviness of…
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Following the Son
There is something quietly beautiful about a sunflower’s daily rhythm. At dawn it lifts its face toward the light, and then, without hurry or strain, it follows the sun as it moves across the sky. Scientists call this heliotropism, but the spiritual parallel is what captures me because underneath that gentle turning is a truth…
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Preparing the Soil
(Matthew 13:3–9, 18–23) While preparing to lead a women’s retreat up in New Hampshire – a gathering themed around sunflowers – I’ve found that God has just as much to show me about my own heart as He does about the beautiful plants we’re learning from. Sunflowers may be known for their bright faces and…
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The True Light
(John 8:12, John 15:4–5, Psalm 1:3) As I’ve been preparing to lead a women’s retreat up in New Hampshire – a gathering themed around sunflowers -I’ve found myself learning as much about my own walk with Jesus as I have about the life cycle of the sunflower itself. Each stage of its growth tells a…