faith

Catch Me Up: Permission to Be Imperfect

faith, freedom, grace, Spiritual Growth

You know what my favorite feature in the Bible App is? It’s the “catch me up” button. When I open the app and see I’m 5 days behind on a reading plan, it can be really discouraging. It’s easy for me to start spiraling into shame and guilt. I start to feel like I’m not doing enough spiritually, like I’m not a “good enough” Christian. And that can pretty quickly snowball into to overwhelm. I start thinking about all the things in my life I’m behind on, that I’m not doing “well enough” in. But one tap of the gear icon and “catch me up” shifts the dates of the plan forward so…

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Are You There God? It’s Me Rachel

faith, Life Lessons, Spiritual Growth

“Tell them to go home and flourish in their planting, in the place where I have planted them, and if they do, they’ll change the world.” – Bobbie Houston  It was a sweltering Friday in July, but I was inside. I was sitting just outside of a hotel meeting room door anxiously waiting for my name to be called. It was my first writer’s conference and I had scored one of the few, coveted appointment slots with a publisher; during which I would pitch my book in hopes they would offer me a contract. I sat quietly, legs crossed at the ankles, my hands in my lap resting on top of the three…

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I Love Jesus, But I Cuss A Little

faith, freedom, grace, Life Lessons, Spiritual Growth

The first time I saw that t-shirt I was offended.  Like any good Christian girl should be. And I immediately started judging the person on my facebook friends list who posted it.  Of course she would post something like that. The recently-divorced single mom whose status updates were littered with F-bombs on the regular.  She was a trainwreck, so it was natural a post like that would come from her. (Nevermind the shirt was true about me; but I don’t cuss “as bad as her”, and I would never admit it outloud or gasp! post it on social media!) I scrolled past the garment disgusted and with an eye roll, but that shirt…

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Unfinished: Waiting for What’s Next

faith, freedom, grace, Spiritual Growth, Success & Motivation

“Not scared to say it, I used to be the one Preachin’ it to you, that you could overcome I still believe it, but it ain’t easy ‘Cause that world I painted, where things just all work out It started changing and I started having doubts And it got me so down…” -Mandisa, Unfinished Turns out Mandisa and I are practically the same person.  Who knew? Remember last month when I wrote to you about What to do with the Death of a Dream?  It’s not that I was being disingenuous at that time, but I have a confession: The reason I felt compelled to share that message with you is because I…

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Wherever You Go, There You Are: How to Stop Running and Start Facing Life’s Challenges

faith, freedom, grace, Guest Blogs, Life Lessons, marriage, second marriage, Spiritual Growth

“Wherever you go, there you are.” That simple, yet profound, quote is one of my favorites.  It plainly illustrates the truth that you can’t outrun your problems.  No matter how far you go or how hard you try.  Wherever you go, you will be there and until you deal with you, your problems won’t go away. When I was working on my book, I had a vision for the second half to be a collection of stories from other people who had also been through what I called a “Now What? Moment”.  A moment when everything in your life comes crashing down around you and you stare hopelessly at the sky asking, “Now…

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4 Things You Need to Know Before You Start Blogging

faith, Life Lessons, Success & Motivation

Have you ever thought about starting a blog? I toyed with the idea once or twice myself before I finally did. As much as I love to write, I hate blogs.  Everything about them.  My thoughts are, who has time to read blogs? …much less keep up with writing one?  AmIRight? Plus, there are just so many out there already!  As of 2013, there were 152 million blogs on the internet. [1]  As of 2:46pm on Feb 17th, 2017 there had already been 2.9 million blog posts posted THAT DAY alone.[2] I figured if I did ever start one, I would make it about two months and never remember to post again.  Fizzle…

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Hover Boards and House Shopping

faith, grace, Life Lessons, Spiritual Growth

[Clayton is the 9 year old boy who lives in my house with his mom, Jenny.] Last night, Clayton came home from his dad’s house, where he had been since our “Christmas morning” celebration on the 24th.  He left ecstatic about all the incredible gifts Santa brought him – books and DVDs, video games, a razor scooter, a hover board, even his very own .22 rifle! When he came home from his dad’s all he talked about was how much better the hover board he got there was than the one he got at our house.  This hover board is so much smaller than the one I got at my dad’s house.  The…

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Do Everything Before You’re Ready

faith, Inspiration, Life Lessons, Success & Motivation, Writing

“Do everything before you’re ready.”  -Jodie Fox, lawyer turned entrepreneur, co-founder of shoes of prey I read this quote today as I finally began #therechargechallenge. (A guided reflection/goal-setting program hosted by The Rising Tide Society on instagram) Ironically, as I was reading the introduction in the guide, I was already thinking about my big takeaway from this year being: the year that I finally released my book was the year I was least prepared for it.  And then I read those words above and laughed at the irony. This is EXACTLY what the last two years has been about for me.  On my journey to publishing, I learned that I needed a platform…

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Connecting Santa and the Savior

faith, Guest Blogs

Jennifer Moye – Guest Blogger of the Month Around this same time a couple years ago, our boys were sitting in the living room floor creating their Christmas lists to send to Santa. The lists consisted mostly of cut out pictures from the Toys-r-Us catalog pasted sloppily with glue sticks on poster paper. They jumped up and down with excitement with every page turn as they found a new must-have toy. In all the fun of that day, I noticed that our oldest boy had only 3 things listed on his paper. An IPad, a phone like mommy’s, and crutches. Crutches? Yep, that’s right. Those were his must-haves of that Christmas. As Christmas…

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Promises, Promises

faith

Just shy of two years ago, while holding a completed manuscript in my hands asking, “OK God, what’s next?” (Because I had no idea how to take the three-ring binder full of word documents I had and turn it into a real book). God made me a promise that He would bring “joyful and influential women” into my life who would help champion my book and my message. It was only a week or two after that I received this fortune cookie. For whatever reason God speaks to me quite regularly through fortune cookies, and that might be a sign I eat way too much PF Chang’s.  But the promise was reaffirmed. It’s…

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