no condemnation

Eyes unwavering from the ground. She was in awe of the words he was carving into the dusty ground. And there was sudden peace, as her heart, fearful and raging, slowed to a normal pace. 

She watched what he wrote, used to those who drew lines, this man was writing words. He was different than the disappearing crowd before them. And then they were gone, the whispers were gone, the accusations were gone, finally.

As she lifts her eyes to this man,

there is something she has never seen before.

The embodiment of gentleness,

the kindness of love.

And for the first time in her life, there was no judgment in the eyes before her, there was no raging desire for the body she had to offer, there was no disgust at her lifestyle or condemnation for her actions.

There was only grace. 

And then he spoke, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

She looked around, lightness in her chest. "No one, Lord."

And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more."

This man who had every right to condemn her, every right to throw the first stone, every right to carve her sins in the ground and throw her into an eternity of condemnation, set her free and forgave her. He knew of her sins, the adultery, the lying, the deceiving. He knew. 

But when he looked in her eyes, he did not see her sin. He saw her heart. When she looked in his eyes, she did not see condemnation. She saw his heart, gentle, kind and loving.

How have we been like this woman, eyes frozen on the ground, afraid to lift our eyes to the Savior, terrified that in His eyes we will see a condemnation for all that we have done wrong?

How have we been like the Pharisees, first in line to throw our stones, angry and judgmental at lifestyles we do not understand, pain hidden by sin, demanding that Jesus give us permission to throw our stones?

Guilty of both, fearful of the stones and ready to throw them, I look into Jesus' eyes and only see gentleness. I hear his voice, as clearly as this woman did, and it is just as kind.  

In the past few years of my life, I have ventured on this journey of examining my stones, examining my own sin and dropping them. Jesus said, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." This line has been so convicting. How can we throw our stones when we also have sinned?

When all of the judgment falls away, what is left is me and Jesus.  His gentleness and kindness is an invitation to be safe and to love well. Others actions do not matter as much to me as the call to love them, to be a safe space for them, to be an invitation to meet Jesus.

you are enough

Who was it that told you about this imaginary timeline?
Tell me who it was that told you that you missed it.
Was there a specific person or was it this cruel society that robbed you of your joy?

Let me explain. I see fire in your eyes.
A burning when you tell me of your passions.
How you want to bind the wounds of the hurting hearts,
How you want to share the truth with the broken,
you want to bring Jesus to the lost
you want to guide the lonely mothers,
you want to bring an end to depression and anxiety
you want to break stigmas
Your eyes light up when you talk about this,
your voice gets lighter
and your cares dissipate
I see what you were designed for.

I also see the glaze in your eyes when you look around and everyone seems to be arriving.
Oh, sweet friend, each journey is so different.
Can you not see that the one who has been pushing herself since she left her hometown is crumbling?
Can you not see that the one who is following her dream has lost her passion?
Can you not see that the one who has fallen in love has lost her calling?
There is no place to arrive, there is no one destination for all.

When did this disconnect happen?
The serpent crawled in on his belly
whispered lies about your worth
gave false definitions of happiness
stole the joy from the calling of the Lord

he stripped truths and twisted them around your neck into lies
this one you are dying under:
you are not enough

I feel the quickness of your hammering heartbeat as you lay your head on my chest
I can see the floodgates behind your eyes
pleading with me: is this really all there is?

But it didn't start here, did it?
It began when your childhood wasn't a childhood
and there was trauma
and abuse
and hard work

when the suffocation first began
don't dress that way
don't talk like that
smile, don't cry
be quiet, we're in church
They never gave you a chance to be who you were

When you grew, it was a choice
put on the corset
follow your dreams
but do it right
go to college
get married
have kids.

but that wasn't you.

I am so sorry they made you believe this.
I am so sorry they made you believe that being you was not enough.

I have to tell you. You are enough. Exactly as you are. Whether you finish the degree or not. If you take a break or not. When you quit your job. You are enough. You were created in the image of God and he made you enough, not for your salvation, but for you, for your passions, for your dreams. You are not too much. You are not too far gone. You are not too far off track. You are completely and wonderfully enough.

What I need you to know is this: it is okay to stop. It is okay to breathe. It is okay to slow down. There is no race. The only important thing is this: God. He has no timeline and he is gentle in his call. He asks us to take his yoke upon from him for his yoke is easy and light. Let us take a moment to know how kind he has been to our weary hearts. It is okay to slow down, my friends. Take time for you, take time to heal, take time to play. We serve a God who calls us to gentleness and patience, who calls us to different times and places. Please stop rushing, please stop racing.

this is for you

maybe New Year's was not a joyful celebration but a deep sigh of relief: you are still here. you are stronger than you thought.
maybe it was a small smile of hope because you knew that on your own you were not capable.
But those people, those stubborn, beautiful people you call your friends won't let go of you.
and maybe you went to sleep happy but you woke up and it was the same.

the same messy thoughts.
the same family.
the same hellish confusion.
the same school.
the same problems.
the same you.

maybe you're discouraged,
because maybe, like me, you battle lies that tell you that you barely moved forward.
that it was a waste of a year. that you didn't make an impact.

oh sweet friend, I know what it's like.
the lies get so loud sometimes, and it feels like you've fallen off the mountain that you have baby stepped your way up.
you spend all this time letting your heart be healed, but just when you think you are ready to expose your scar to the world, you realize, the skin wasn't yet strong enough and you are bleeding again and it hurts the same and you wonder if you will ever be whole again.

if I'm being honest it was a long year. it was a hard year. I spent a lot of nights breathing prayers into my pillowcase as my exhausted mind drifted into sleep. there was a lot of anxiety, pressing heavy into my heart, for silly little things, evidence of a much deeper pain. There was the constant voice of my therapist in my head: "Leah, lean into the anxiety, you are not in control." There was a release of shame that I even saw a therapist, to admit my need and put it before other things. and there was a whole lot of trust. an opening of my clenched fists, realizing nothing was there in the first place and a filling of hope. I convinced myself I was holding onto things only an omniscient God had the ability to hold together. I convinced myself that I was protecting everyone I loved by being everywhere all the time, constantly having my phone on, sacrificing my sleep, my time and myself.
this is not selflessness.
I learned that self-care is putting others first. I learned that it isn't always bubble baths, but its journaling my mess of thoughts, its stepping onto an airplane and walking straight into the unknown, its admitting that I'm broken too. And its a long long long walk, finally letting my thoughts slip into silence and my heart calm.

Let me tell you. I am in awe of you. The way you keep shining after the night you didn't think you would survive. The way you stand after the panic knocked the breath out of your lungs again. The way you love the broken with all your broken pieces. I am amazed by you. The way you pursue your degree. The way you stepped down from a promotion to take care of you. The way you donate to charities even though you barely made ends meet. The way you fall in love even when your heart has been broken. The way you courageously talk about the light, slicing your darkness to ruins. I am so proud of you. You feel like you haven't made any progress but look at the mountains you have conquered. Turn around and see their power and splendor. You didn't let them stop you. I am in awe of you. You have such a beautiful soul.
Please realize that so many people are in awe of you. Please know how lovely you are. Please don't let the world tell you any differently.

If the lies are winning, look up.

If the lies have your eyes tethered to the ground, reach out.

If the lies locked your hands in chains, cry out.

Because my love, the truth is for even you.

magic for majesty

We put the car in drive and found ourselves meandering through the streets, searching for the lights that used to enrapture us as kids. Pleading with the streets to open up to the bright lights. Was it the test of time and a lack of lights or had the magic dissipated with our age we wondered? The lights were less, our tree is leaning, decorations cost more than our paychecks and we wrapped our gifts in newspaper, why has our age robbed us of the magic of Christmas? 

Have our hearts grown too cynical? Have our weary souls closed eyes because we have seen too much? The broken pieces of this world seem so much louder, my heart requiring a gentleness I never needed before longs for the simplicity of my childhood, the joy I once encountered. 

In an attempt to bring back the joy, I bought Ann Voskamp's The Greatest Gift. An advent devotional like no other. She begins with Adam and Eve, taking us through the joy of the gift of life, to the heartbreak of the first sin, to the new start with Noah and the faith of Abraham and the brokenness through it all. 

I appreciate the book, because she is not demanding that I find the magic in Christmas, she gently uncovers my wounds and my hesitations and invites Jesus in. 

Ruth is one of the two women mentioned in the lineage of Jesus, both not of Hebrew descent. Rahab, a prostitute, put her faith in the God of the Hebrews. She did not know the rituals she needed to follow, she had not sacrificed a lamb for her sins and she did not know what it would take to follow the Lord, but she put her life on the line for the Hebrew spies and declared the truth she had seen and taken faith in and she asked them to save her life. This choice was not one of fear for her life, it was one in faith and fear for the powerful God that she longed to know. This was Boaz's mother. The one who would be the Kinsmen Redeemer of Ruth. 

Ruth married a Hebrew who had fled to her land because of famine. When her husband died, she was left with her mother in law. She told Naomi she would return with her. And she did. In faith, she like Abraham, walked away from her family to make Yahweh her God. And in her faith, married into the family line of Jesus.

"There are no brazen miracles to be seen in the entire book of Ruth. No angels appear stage left, no visions shatter the night, no heavenly hosts are overhead." - Ann Voskamp

But the storylines of these two women are miraculous because of their inexplicable faith. Faith in a miraculous God without seeing miracles. Faith in God without knowing or understanding all of the details. Faith in God without having a theology set. Faith in God with an abandon to their life and a desire to know him. Much can we learn from these women. 

They came to know God not because of their theology, or knowledge, or miracles and signs and wonders, they came to God out of pure faith. And God rewarded them for this, a reward they would never know this side of heaven. How marvelous. 

Christmas is an invitation, not to magic, but to majesty. I am learning the bright lights may not shine as brightly and the world will never feel as light. But when I turn my eyes away from temporary things and am filled in eternal, I will see the majesty. Christmas is an invitation to know Him. Not to better my theology of what it means for God to come to man, but to rest in the truth that God came to man and it was for the simple fact that his heart is for us.

Like Ruth and Rahab, I may not see the miracles in daily life.

But Oh Lord,

that I would have eyes to see your majesty. 

I'm not asking for the magic, I'm asking for your majesty.

I'm not asking for Christmas spirit, I'm asking for the gentle joy that sits in my heart during the darkest of days. 

I want You this Christmas, not the lights, or the gifts, I want You.

Come majestic Lord, come. 

and if not, He is still good.

 And if not, He is still good.



Six months ago, I made this my phone background. I wanted to believe this truth with all my heart. I was pleading with my heart to believe it, looking at my Savior and believing in his perfect goodness. But my eyes kept wavering, I couldn’t help but see the evidence and hear the screaming doubt from my mind.


So I made it my phone background. And every day I unlock my phone and I look at that blissful, peaceful, unrelenting truth and I preach to my heart that it is still true.

Because every day I kept waking up to this fiery furnace of reality and I looked at the flames and said: “My GOD will deliver me from these flames but if not He is still good.”
And the hope is not in the circumstance as those words slip like water over my heart, it is in this God I come to know even more as I put my trust in him.
Because each time I read those words fear loses his power. Each time I let them cycle on repeat around my heart, it becomes a pleading prayer.


I dwell on the “if not.” But God, what if you don’t? What if this fire gets bigger and the flames scorch my skin? What if these wounds that have not yet healed get burned again? What if it is not true? How will I know you are still good?



“He is still good.” What if He is still good? What if I look past the fear and the pain and I see Him. What if everything else fades away because His goodness washes over the bleeding places of me and He reminds me of His promises.



These two conflicting statements are daggers to my heart. One that evokes fear, one that preaches truth. Together, they bring peace. Because it does not matter what is taking place or who is on the line, the only peace is that He is still good. The only peace is that He gives value to those things and those places.



Oh for a heart like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego as they stared into the flames of a fiery furnace,

"King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty's hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."



They believed and knew that our God was able to deliver them from that place

“King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us[c] from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”


They believed and knew that our God was able to deliver them from that place of pain and death. They had unconditional faith and belief that He would deliver them from the fire. But even if He didn't, they would not bow.

Even if He does not deliver me from this place, even if the flames continue, even if things do not make sense, I will choose to continue to praise Him. I will continue to look to my God, not turning to fear or other things because I believe in His steadfast, eternal goodness.

My God is able to deliver me from this, but if He chooses not to, He still has my surrender, He still has my heart. 

filled with hope

not only that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us

we rejoice in our sufferings.
I watched my world burn. I watch fire burn those I love. I have let control slip through my desperate fingers, surrendering to the suffering that ravages my soul. The fires started small and I did everything I could to extinguish them. But they kept getting bigger and pouring water on their source only seemed to cause them to grow bigger. Was I more wrecked by their power or my inability to stop it?
I see the ruins. Sometimes still smoking, sometimes still burning me when I touch them, hoping to find hope still intact. I see them and my heart sinks because the heaviness is unbearable. The brokenness of my soul barren, the holes in my heart visible.

in this we rejoice.

how contradictory to my nature. it is not "we ignore our sufferings and we rejoice." It is "we rejoice in our sufferings. In the rubble. In the pain. In the fire. We rejoice.

knowing that suffering produces endurance

this is not endurance in my ability to withstand the pain.
this is the creation of my very faith. this is the truth that surpasses my suffering.
this is the rest in who my God is.

we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

not only that,
we rejoice in our sufferings.

my suffering seems everpresent, all-encompassing, the center of the table.
my prayers revolve around suffering.
my life encircles around this thing I have deemed most important.

we rejoice because of who Christ is.
who am I? justified by faith, in peace with God, a rejoicer because I rest in grace
who is he? the justifier, the giver of grace and access, the glorious God who gave Jesus Christ

we rejoice in our sufferings
this rejoicing is not a smile plastered on my face declaring my happiness from the rooftops.
no, this joy is the deep peace in my heart that reminds me of who Christ is. this joy is because of the river of grace that keeps replenishing my burned and ruined soul. it is the rest in my soul, not the smile on my face.

suffering produces endurance
it reminds me who He is, a continual faith and trust that God is who He says He is.
the daily lifting of my head, the act of putting one foot in front of another, knowing it is Him I continue to live for.

endurance produces character
as I rest in this hope, in this truth, he creates me. I am the clay and he molds me into his own.

character produces hope

and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 

I have hope because my sufferings are not everything. this is not the end. the endurance that seems to be the end of me, the tiredness in my feet that comes from moving forward, the heaviness of my heart opening myself up to hope. This hope will not put me to shame because God keeps pouring his Spirit into my heart, he keeps pouring his love into me and for that reason, I am filled with hope.

doubt becomes wonder (in romania)

the doubt had become as constant as my heartbeat
it pulsed like the blood in my veins
i was blindsided by the depths of these questions
shaking to my core
because it wasn't hypotheticals anymore
this was about a living, breathing person.

and with my doubt came this fear
he was as wild as a lion
crippling me to be as timid as a lamb.

God said go.
He was kicking me out of the country.
Suddenly, I knew how terrifying it was for Abraham to leave everything.
how could he leave his family?
his friends?
his safety?

this surely was the most absurd thing i had done.
leave the country when everything was falling apart?
they told me to trust God
to believe what he said when he claimed his goodness
suddenly i was David,
distressed and broken and demanding God of where he had been.
but just like David, i knew it to the core of my being.
he is so good.
he is so kind.

i have never known doubt like this
i begin to wonder if this doubt is robbing me of my faith
or if it is very thing that is creating a deep communion with my God

is this doubt turning me into a jaded Christian
or is it allowing me to be shaped, pressed and molded by my Father?

Audrey Assad, a Christian songwriter, who I believe is a pillar in modern-day faith. She is unafraid in writing her honest, painful lyrics. She is unafraid in sharing with a strict community how her faith has fallen, yet grown. Been destroyed, yet made new. In her recent album, she has a song called evergreen. the lyrics have been haunting me.

Out past the fear,
doubt becomes wonder,
rivers appear,
and I'm going under.

just beyond the fear is faith.
when my fear is so deep,
it becomes faith.
my doubt becomes wonder.

because in this deep place of uncertainty,
the terrible darkness that comes with being lost at night,
my fear that he will not save me,
my doubt that he is not there,
becomes wonder because he comes.

like the ocean that changes so quickly,
one moment my shore is covered in grace
and the next I'm lying bare before the sun.
one moment i'm proclaiming it from the rooftops,
and the next I am John the Baptist in the prison cell sending word to Jesus,
"are you really who you say you are?"
this doubt has pushed me deep into the embrace of my Savior
I have journeyed a road I did not ask for
I questioned his kindness,
again,
I doubted his love,
again,
 but he remained who he said he was


I left the country about a month ago. I didn't understand how leaving was the best thing, but I was obedient to the call. I went to the beautiful country of Romania where he reminded me of his goodness. He gently whispered promises of his faithfulness. He told me he did not need me, instead, he wanted me. The people of Romania demonstrated this truth to me. I was helping in a VBS and I didn't know the language and oftentimes, I felt more of a hindrance than a help. The Romanians constantly had to translate for me, but they chose to make me feel wanted and accepted. They knew they could function without me, but they made a place for me to belong. They reminded me that trusting God was about the process and I didn't have to have it all figured out. They showed me that missions is exactly what I'm doing at home. It happens naturally and intentionally. it is a demonstration of who Christ is and living that out practically and faithfully. Romania was a safe place for me and for that I am grateful. It was different than every other trip I have taken. I observed and learned a lot. My heart was given space to breathe and my mind a place to wrestle through my doubt and confusion, to find safety in where I was at in the process, to connect with Jesus. I don't have any wild and exciting ministry stories, I don't have any particular stories that changed my life, but I did witness faithful missionaries loving the people they are called to. They reminded me who I want to be and gave me a glimpse into the future I might hold.
Thank you to those who supported me in this journey, for those who threatened to drag me to the airport, for those who prayed for me and ultimately to Becca and Lucian who I stayed with and made it a remarkable experience for me.

Thank you, Romania.