Sally Anne Gist…born in the summer, raised in the South. I’m all the things my readers are, needing twice the helping of grace.
What’s that feeling, a kind of gnawing dread, that we’ve somehow missed our purpose? It’s not depression. Not grief. Not boredom. This is different. The Bible calls it futility, and when it finds us in the dull quiet of idle time, it can really mess with us. For the creation was subjected to futility… ~ […]
We tried so hard. We used the formula that worked: peaceful, predawn quiet; hot coffee; highlighters. Maybe a guide of some kind written by a tightly wound, beloved author whose own frantic eyes seemed to be screaming, Help me! It worked perfectly for a long while. The Lord met with us there, patient with our […]
I was sitting beside Uncle Marty, kind of shyly humming along as he played hymns on his guitar. We were in my Great Aunt Laura’s living room, the three of us. All of Daddy’s family can sing beautifully—even he can, but don’t tell him I told you. Suddenly, I heard myself singing out loud with […]
Something draws their attention: a sagging fence gate, a hole in our shirt, a strange noise coming from our car… I can fix that, they say. Everyone who loves us, as far as they’re able, wants to help. But what if it’s a heart that’s broken. What then? Sometimes I hear myself say, We’re all […]
Once upon a time, there was a little songbird who knew her purpose in life was to sing joy into the forest. There was a time when she could hardly wait to wake, perch on her favorite branch high in the forest canopy and sing her heart out. All the hopping, fluttering, bouncing critters would […]
I was you. A list of offenses stewed in my thoughts on repeat. Seeing the underbelly of church operations and branding left me cold and disillusioned, and social media rants showcased the worst of what we had become. Or so it seemed. For several reasons,”church” felt like the most un-loving place I went, and so, […]
Maybe it was always there, waiting. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, anxiety wasn’t something anyone talked about. I do remember having sudden, inexplicable episodes of something I couldn’t quite describe. My mother certainly would’ve listened, but back then it didn’t occur to me to tell someone, “Every now and then, for no reason […]
A week ago today, I was sitting on my couch with my family, sleepy with contentment, when my brother texted, inviting me to Alaska. Alaska. By week’s end, I was climbing a mountain with him, overlooking a glacier at Portage Pass. Surely you know how laughably impossible this is, and yet, here I am. My […]
Would you like to help write a book? Want to help solve homelessness? You can do both, if you have a testimony about hearing God’s Voice! Ways we hear God’s Voice: We all hear His Voice in different ways: while listening (hearing with our ears) while praying (hearing with our spirit) while reading Scripture in […]
We were the only two waiting for the other funeral guests to arrive when my brother told me a story he’d read. It was about a little child that could only crawl, who died of starvation and exposure just a few hundred meters from a ministry that was there to find and feed the starving […]