From the Abundance

Sometimes you meet the greatest people in the most unexpected places...  This past week I had the pleasure of meeting two!  I was on the plane headed home for Thanksgiving and noticed the lady next to me sniffling and coughing.  My initial thought was, oh great she's sick and hacking all over the place. When I looked over at her I realized that she wasn't ill but she was wiping away tears my first thought was to talk to her.  I didn't want to pry and ask what was wrong but I just hoped to lighten the mood and maybe take her mind off of things for a minute.   I stuck up a conversation and just asked if she was going home or visiting friends.  I was so unprepared for what she would say next. She told me that her one and only son had passed away 6 weeks ago and she was flying back to Lexington to meet her brand new granddaughter for the first time.  She couldn't quite explain the cornucopia of emotions she was feeling all at once.  How can you fe...

There's something about being in a quiet place that allows the enemy to think it's his time to shine.  I don't know about you but whenever things are real quite it seems like her grabs a megaphone to yell his lies like a cheerleader.  It seems like everything he said gets louder and louder, like he's hosting his own pep rally to cheer on his starting lineup of lies, doubt, and deceit. This is one reason I always keep some music close by.  My mom and grandma always talk about me for keeping the radio on in my car but they don't understand the power of music to quickly reach and influence the soul.  If you stop and think about it, I bet there are 5 songs you can quickly recall all the lyrics to but for most, the same can't be said about passages of scripture (I know my word though!).  The right song can completely change my attitude, lift my spirits, encourage me, or give me that push I need to go on and drown out the voice of the enemy.  The devil ...

A lamb is often a symbol of innocence and purity.  Precisely why I chose to create the image I did for this post.  If you notice the word UNCOVERED is hiding in the grass.  That too is intentional.  I want to take some time to shed light on a topic that is probably one of the most taboo and hushed of all topics... sexual abuse.  More specifically within families and the church. According to   NSVRC   63% of the assaults are never reported and 8 out of 10 victims knew the person who assaulted them, which is why the enemy needs to be exposed in this area. Even more disturbing is the fact that only 12% of child sexual abuse cases are reported. Historically there's been many scandals involving young boys being molested in the Catholic Church but nobody likes to talk about the wives being raped by their husbands, or husbands being raped by wives.  Nobody mentions the aunts, uncles, family friends, neighbors and parents that creep into little kids'...

As I continue my journey of discussing mental health I wanted to take some time to tackle the big bad wolf that is often in disguise.  A lot of people don't think of depression as a mental health matter because it has become a norm.  That's a lie from the enemy...it is a mental health issue and a big one at that. Depression is the most common of mental health issues probably because it sneaks up so suddenly... Depression can stem from many many things.  Loss, failure, feelings of abandonment, loneliness, a bad day, being overwhelmed, feeling like you haven't accomplished anything, comparing yourself to the world's standards, chemical imbalance, hormones, medication and many other things.  The enemy has slipped it in so subtly that we don't even realize we've been attacked until we're already sinking in feelings of despair.  The sad part about it is that people can walk around and function without even realizing they're depressed.  You don'...