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God Doesn’t Have a Big Plan for Your Life
Living Faithful, Ordinary, and Obscure A Good Lie He was at least twenty years old the year he lead my 6th grade Vacation Bible School group, and I was twelve. But age was just a number, and I was certain that I would grow up and marry that man. Randy was going to Bible college to be a missionary. He loved sharing the gospel. He was passionate about people in other countries who had never heard about Jesus. My twelve-year-old heart was passionate about Randy. God had a big plan for his life and I wanted to be a part of it. Then he got married to a girl he…
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This is Me – My Heart for Gen Z
This is usually the week I podcast, but I’ve been fighting off sinus junk and my voice isn’t exactly podcast worthy. So I decided to do more of a personal update on life—like I used to back when I blogged. As you probably already know, I changed roles at school this year and went from being a teacher to a behavior specialist. My days go by quickly and I take nothing home with me (except for some children who live in my head and heart). This has allowed me a little more time to create and dream. It’s been a gift. One of my dreams is getting back into speaking.…
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The Same Old Lies
Thoughts from someone who left a Christian cult only to see the fundamentalist ideology continue to expand. I dodged through the crowds at Cedar Point hoping to lose the teenage boy following me, but he was persistent and eventually caught up. I’d gotten a cartilage piercing a few weeks earlier at the end of summer camp, and now an old friend was literally chasing me down. When he found me, I got a long lecture about the dangers of worldliness. I was twenty-one years old; he was four or five years younger. If I had to pick one moment when I knew I was done, this is it. I was…
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The God Who Is Here With Us
An Unexpected Discovery Last weekend my family went camping at Silver Lake State Park. Sunday was a windy, cooler day so we took advantage of the weather and hiked a mile and a half across the sand dunes to Lake Michigan. Sweatshirts went on, off, and on again as we hiked. We finally made it—panting and sweating—to the beach. The wind was whipping and the waves were huge. There was no one else in sight. It felt like we were the only people left on the planet. We watched the water crashing at our feet and wandered along the edge of the sand. In the distance I spotted something strange.…
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Perspectives, Jinger Duggar Vuolo, and Faith Deconstruction
The Duggar Family and Me I always know when something has come out about the Duggar family because suddenly some of my old blog posts and podcasts start being found again. Sure enough, Jinger Duggar Vuolo has written a book titled, “Becoming Free Indeed” telling her story of walking away from the legalism she experienced while being raised in a family who followed Bill Gothard’s cultic teachings. Jinger and I were part of the same cult; I’m just a good ten plus years older than her. She was starting to show up as a child in TV specials about the time I was exiting the culture and mindset. I’ll be…
