by Bekah Wertz | Nov 15, 2019 | Self Care
Painful truth is better than a pleasant lie. – Bryant McGill Almost two years ago now, my family received some unexpected news. A painful truth, if you will. And it felt how I imagine a tsunami would feel. Frightening. Suffocating. Powerful. Inescapable. And for...
by Miriam Tate | Oct 10, 2019 | Self Care
My husband, Steve, is a master gardener. He has created wonderful beauty in every garden of every house in which we have lived. Most of our marriage, I did not contribute anything to the gardens. My shame would not allow me to even participate because I had no...
by Heather James | Oct 3, 2019 | Hope, Longings
Some days you will feel like the ocean. Some days you will feel like you are drowning in it. – Lora Mathis Aren’t there moments when this is absolutely true — we feel like the ocean! Powerful. Strong. Unstoppable. Floating easily with contentment and joy,...
by Ingrid Ransom | Sep 27, 2019 | Parenting
Working with children, teens, and families has taught me many impactful lessons throughout my years of practice. One lesson that rings true for me more than ever is: parenting is not for the faint of heart, but the strong and courageous. They say it is the hardest job...
by Heather James | Sep 19, 2019 | Longings, Needs
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen.” Beuchner If ever a human being summed up existence in fifteen words or less, Frederick Buechner does it here. The world is full of beautiful things. Sunset at the beach The laughter of...
by Christen Johnson | Sep 6, 2019 | Trauma
There is a song by Lana Del Rey called “Summertime Sadness”. It’s a love song bidding someone we love farewell. It’s stuffed with loss, adrenaline, and recklessness. The video, in as heartbreaking as pop music can get kind of way, encapsulates what it feels like to...
by Jenay Kennedy | Aug 15, 2019 | Parenting
“Mom, I am so sad.” On the way home from tax-free weekend shopping, my son, gazing out the window as we passed his old middle school, said, “Oh Mom, I’m so sad. I will miss my old middle school.” In that moment, I realized that I was sad too....
by Abby Combs | Jul 24, 2019 | Change, Heart
For the majority of my life, I’ve felt drawn to change. Not the dye-my-hair-every-season type of change, but a voracious hunger for new surroundings, new roles to explore, new relationships to replace old. I moved across the city, the country, the world; I changed...
by Chip Dodd | Jul 17, 2019 | Heart, Identity, Self Care
by Christy Hughes | Jul 10, 2019 | Anxiety, Depression, Trauma
by Chip Dodd | Jul 4, 2019 | Feelings, Heart
Years ago I wrote a book titled The Voice of the Heart: A Call to Full Living. It is about feelings and living how we are created to live. That was almost twenty years ago. I have continued to work in the field of “living life on life’s terms” and continue to...
by Kate Prevost | Jun 20, 2019 | Feelings, Longings
by Sage Hill | Jun 15, 2019 | Feelings, Longings
by Chip Dodd | Jun 12, 2019 | Anxiety
We do not truly fear the unknown. In reality, we fear a recurrence of painful events we have already experienced, seen, or know have happened to someone else. This fear of recurrence is experiential and understandable. Nevertheless, it can trap us in a cycle. The...
by Chip Dodd | Jun 5, 2019 | Relationships
When people get hurt in relationship and do not receive healing from the wounds, they have a logical and defensible tendency to become protective against more pain. A wound that does not receive attention remains sensitive; a person becomes wary of being relationally...
by Chip Dodd | May 29, 2019 | Heart
What do you say when you don’t know what to say? What can be said that helps when you are presented with another person’s loss, pain, grief, and struggle? When we are presented with pain over which we are powerless to repair, the words that truly fit the circumstance...
by Chip Dodd | May 22, 2019 | Parenting, Relationships
Children are human just like parents, except that they are younger. A great separation between the parent and the child, however, is that children neither know, nor have they experienced all that the parent has found out or been through. With that reality in mind,...
by Chip Dodd | May 15, 2019 | Feelings, Needs, Relationships
Boundaries in relationships are the markers that help differentiate you from someone else, or communicate where you “begin” and “end.” Using an analogy of land ownership with fences and gates, boundaries are the fences around your land. Gates are the passageways that...
by Chip Dodd | May 8, 2019 | Feelings, Needs, Relationships
A primary responsibility of a healthy family system is to help develop children into capable human beings. Two hallmark expressions of the emotionally and spiritually capable human being are the ability to work and to love, i.e., to be able to live fully in...
by Chip Dodd | May 1, 2019 | Change, Needs
As an external description, maturity is the evidence of reaching full natural growth or development. As an internal description, maturity is the emotional and relational capability of living fully and loving deeply while experiencing life on life’s terms. By being...
by Chip Dodd | Apr 24, 2019 | Keeping Heart
The best we will ever become is Works in Progress (WIPs). No matter what we do, we will always be like giraffes running on ice — clumsy. Our dreams really will always exceed our grasp, no matter how perfect our plans. I believe that God likes that we dream. We carry...
by Chip Dodd | Apr 17, 2019 | Heart
The need to belong is met by having a place where you can be yourself, in all the struggles that entails. A place where you can be accepted as you share and deal with feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope. You belong when you know that you can be celebrated in...
by Chip Dodd | Apr 10, 2019 | Feelings, Needs, Relationships
A famous rock star said that she never felt more alone than after a performance in front of thousands of admirers. After the performance ended, she had no one to turn to who met her need to belong. Heroin became her closest companion and the counterfeit experience of...
by Chip Dodd | Apr 3, 2019 | Keeping Heart, Longings, Needs, Relationships
What is a need? To put it as starkly as possible, needs are deficits that require biological, emotional and spiritual gratification for fulfillment. Deficit fulfillment keeps us fully alive. Needs have to be gratified to be alive. The specific needs we have are the...
by Chandler Ross | Mar 20, 2019 | Spirituality
When I was in grad school, I became “highly focused” (read: obsessed) with hot peppers, and my tolerance for heat quickly outgrew the pepper selection at my local grocery. Soon my addiction had me driving across town twice a month to the Patel Brothers for their thai...
