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1 week ago | 
incourage.me | Jennifer Lee |Anna Rendell |Becky Keife |Dawn Camp
Our family will visit the cemetery today. Someone from the American Legion will hand us poppies. The pastor will say a few words to those who’ve gathered. And then, we will bow our heads for a moment of silence. No one will speak. The air will fill with birdsong and the sound of flags flapping in the breeze. In that moment, I will pray as I always pray: for peace to rule in hearts everywhere.
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2 weeks ago | 
incourage.me | Michele Cushatt |Anna Rendell |Becky Keife |Dawn Camp
Living on eight acres comes with both positives and negatives. For example, it’s amazing to sit on my back patio with a pine-covered mountain rising up to the sky and no signs of other people or city life. It’s quiet, wild, and deeply peaceful. However, the downside of that beauty? Someone has to take care of it. And it’s a lot to take care of. About 70% of our property is covered with pine trees and scrub oak — mostly scrub oak.
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2 weeks ago | 
incourage.me | Simi John |Anna Rendell |Becky Keife |Dawn Camp
If I had to choose a coast, I’d choose the West Coast every time. Living in a landlocked, flat state has made me deeply appreciate the beauty of towering trees, majestic mountains, and the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean. I know the East Coast offers similar wonders, but as someone with curly hair, the humidity and heat of the Atlantic are not for me. So when I vacation, I choose the Pacific, almost without fail. For the past four years, the ocean has become my sacred retreat.
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1 month ago | 
incourage.me | Anna Rendell |Becky Keife |Dawn Camp |Oghosa Iyamu
My first year living in Nashville was one of the hardest seasons of my life. It was like being caught in a storm that just wouldn’t let up. The winds of physical illness and financial strain sought to pull me under, while loneliness poured down like cold, unrelenting rain, soaking every corner of my life. I found myself staring up at the storm-darkened sky, asking the question so many skeptics and believers alike have asked. If God is loving and good, why does He allow evil?
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1 month ago | 
incourage.me | Michele Cushatt |Anna Rendell |Becky Keife |Dawn Camp
When I was a young girl, what I wanted more than anything else was to be a wife and mother. I spent countless hours imagining my future family, including two or four children and a handsome and romantic husband. And, of course, all of them would adore me. That was a given. As for a career, my aspirations change day by day. But my desire for marriage and children never wavered.
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2 months ago | 
incourage.me | Jessica Turner |Anna Rendell |Becky Keife |Dawn Camp
During the pandemic, my marriage of 16 years ended. After I took some time to grieve what I lost and became confident in myself as an individual, I found myself ready to date. While I didn’t expect it to be easy (it had been twenty years since I’d dated!), it was even harder than I expected. I felt like I was looking for a unicorn. I also didn’t anticipate how rejection and heartbreak would impact my mental health.
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2 months ago | 
incourage.me | Anna Rendell |Becky Keife |Dawn Camp |Jennifer Lee
Ask any Midwesterner about “fake spring” and they’ll surely have a story for you about packing away all the coats on a warm day only to have to pull the winter gear back out the next week. While I’m all for a shortened winter, I think these false-start spring days have something to teach us about the spiritual practice of living expectantly — even when we don’t feel particularly hopeful. We brought our newborn son home from the hospital on Easter.
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Feb 24, 2025 | 
incourage.me | Michele Cushatt |Anna Rendell |Becky Keife |Dawn Camp
“Lord, teach me to pray.”This was my first prayer for 2025. I’m not one who typically chooses a word or theme for the year. But on December 29, when I pulled out a fresh spiral notebook and started journaling thoughts around the coming year, these five words poured immediately from my pen. “Lord, teach me to pray.”A strange prayer, perhaps, considering I’m a 50-something woman who has been church-ing and praying for half a century. Don’t I already know how to pray?
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Feb 22, 2025 | 
incourage.me | Sarah Sandifer |Anna Rendell |Becky Keife |Dawn Camp
We’ve lived in this new home, this new city, for six months now — both no time at all and also an eternity. For six months now, I’ve attended anything and everything, all in an attempt to find a friend, plant some roots, belong somewhere. I don’t know any other way. I guess I thought it would be easier? I shouldn’t have, truth be told. I should know by now, as a military spouse, that things take time, even if you don’t want them to.
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Feb 10, 2025 | 
incourage.me | Becky Keife |Anna Rendell |Dawn Camp |Jennifer Lee
I can’t say with a hundred percent certainty, but I’m pretty sure my middle son’s first word was “Why?!” And certainly, if it wasn’t Elias’s very first word, it has been his most common. Since he was a rosy-cheeked toddler, this child of mine has had an incessant need to know why. Why does that tree grow so tall and why is that rock so hard? Why do I have to go to bed, why are dinosaurs extinct, and why does that tool fix that thing? Why is broccoli good for me? Why do dogs run that way?
