Biblical lament is grief spoken in prayer. It is what happens when sorrow, confusion, disappointment, anger, and longing are no longer hidden or swallowed, but carried to the Lord instead.

There is a gap between expectation and reality that often doesn’t get spoken about. We sit in that gap, looking back at what we thought would be and forward into what is. No one prepared me for sitting in that gap, and the grief of realizing that life didn’t turn out the way I thought it would.

We rarely talk about the cost of healing . . . the people we lose along the way.

We talk about healing from unhealthy dynamics.

We talk about boundaries.

We talk about standing up against abuse, verbal attacks, disrespect, manipulation.

But we don’t often talk about the aftermath.

When the Five Stages of Grief aren’t enough.

If you are struggling with your faith, questioning religion, grieving institutions and systems, this is for you . . . . for those trying to believe again.

For the past several years, I have entered each new year with a single word in prayer. Not as a goal to achieve or a theme to perform, but as a way of paying attention to what God might be inviting me into. It is less about choosing a direction and more about listening for one. A word becomes a lens, a quiet thread that runs beneath the months, often revealing its meaning slowly, sometimes not fully understood until much later. It is not something I strive to fulfill, but something I learn to recognize as it unfolds in real time.

As my 2025 word of the year, Beauty revealed something I never expected. It revealed the cost of living without walls.

As my 2025 word of the year, Beauty revealed something I never expected.

Instead of ease, the year was marked by pain. Loss. Abandonment.

Strain . . . both personally and within the vocation and work my family carries.

Beauty did not arrive as I expected it to.