New Year, same God; on one hand that is a comforting thought and on another, well frankly not so much. I think when January 1 rolls around each year I welcome the opportunity for a fresh start. I am tempted to double my efforts to change all the nagging habits that are dragging me down and emerge around January 3rd as a thinner, healthier and holier me.

My self-help tendencies only get me so far and I quickly realize that they may not have anything to do with what God has in mind for my year. The calendar may have started over but God is still at work on the same issues that lived in my heart at the end of last year. New Year, same God and oh yes, same me, too.

Having a New Year’s resolution is not a bad thing but I wonder if I haven’t used these goals as a way to escape the consistent invitation of God to stay with the deep issues that He is working on and that often cause me to feel uncomfortable and even painful emotions. Invitations that usher me into the reality of my heart...

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I wince at the mental image of a tree being ripped from the ground it's been anchored in.   Without the ground, the very place that supplies the tree with  life,  it will surely die.     As I read the word, Uprooted, I can feel tangible pain. 
 
Perhaps this is because my life has been uprooted.  The roots that were sunk deep into soil for 40 years were recently relocated.  God has moved our family several states east.  This state, although nice enough, isn't familiar.  The roots of my life are still exposed and raw.   And what God has shown me is that I have chosen to react to the pain of this uprooting in a very familiar way; I’ve...

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