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3 weeks ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey
Hi friends,I’ve been writing and breathing my way through a new handful of prayers over the past few weeks and so I thought I’d share those with you today. (For our newer subscribers, writing breath prayers is a relatively daily thing for me personally and every few months, I share a small batch of them for you to borrow or adapt.
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1 month ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey
Hi friends,Lately, in your comments and emails and even a few old-fashioned letters or postcards, I’ve noticed a running theme of exhaustion, grief, fear, and anxiety for many of us. Good gracious, we are in it, aren’t we?
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1 month ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey
Hi friends,It was May Long1 this past weekend here in Canada and all we did at our house was work. There are many things that can make a marriage flourish over the long term, but one that has served my husband and I well over twenty-four years of wedded bliss is that we match each other’s freak - and by “freak,” I mean “work ethic.” We are the do the things and keep doing the things people.
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1 month ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey
Hi friends,Since I wrote that essay/howl into the void called “Are we still calling ourselves Christians?,” I’ve been overcome by the responses. The emails are still coming in, the conversation is still unfolding, and many of you have reached out to share your own wrestlings with that question along with your stories. Basically, if you wondered if you were the only one who was asking that question, I can assure you: you are not alone.
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1 month ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey |Emily Freeman
Hi friends,One of my favourite books from last year was How to Walk Into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away by Emily P. Freeman. As I said in my ‘official’ endorsement, “In a time when so many of us have lost old pathways of belonging, Emily met us right in the middle of our anxiety and uncertainty with practical wisdom, gentle companionship, and good questions.
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1 month ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey
How are you feeling about the election? Grew up with purity culture era, not scarred but not sure what I want to impart to my kids. Help? What do you miss most and least about having little kids? How can I open up to friends at church about my changing faith? I worry it’ll change things. I’ve given my adult life to ministry and about to stop out for 1000 reasons. What’s next? What’s it like navigating so much American readership without being a US American?
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2 months ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey
Hi friends,At church a few weeks ago, one of our teenagers was feeling under it all. It’s been a heavier season, with a lot on her plate and a lot happening in the lives of people she loves plus, you know, the apocalypse around us. She sat through every song, quiet, her head drooping with exhaustion. I checked in quietly, offered to slip out of service with her if she needed to talk, but it became apparent that she simply needed to sit. After a while, I felt her hand steal into mine.
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2 months ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey
After many requests from long-time readers, I am occaisionally bringing back some old favourite essays, which had disappeared from the Internet when my blog shut down. This particular Good Friday essay was originally written in April 2015, when I was just a month postpartum with our youngest baby. Since it is Good Friday today and many of us are feeling a bit lonely and scared, I thought that this was a good time to republish it.
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2 months ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey
Hi friends,These are unusual days, many of us are carrying a lot, and now it is Holy Week. Rather than offer forth a hot take on atonement theory or whatever is keeping the theo-bros busy this week, I personally needed a re-centring on the beautiful and glorious story of Jesus’ final week through scripture, prayer, and a few deep breaths.
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2 months ago | 
sarahbessey.substack.com | Sarah Bessey
Hi friends, I’m currently 30,000 feet in the air, somewhere over the western United States on my way home to Calgary from Texas. I was in Houston and Austin this weekend to support our friend Jeff Chu’s Good Soil book tour. I was rather nervous about the trip and sure enough, my entry to the USA was more fraught, complex, and tense than ever before, so …
