As we're a little less than a week out from Easter, I'd love to take this week's post as an opportunity to slow down and truly reflect on why Easter matters. Growing up as a "church kid," I always knew that Easter was about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, and then resurrecting from the grave, defeating death. And that's absolutely true, but sometimes, when you hear it for so long, it's easy for that message to lose it's power - which it never should. Year round, we need to fix our eyes...

For Christmas I was gifted a new Bible - a beautiful NIV Bible with room for notes and journaling in the margins. But that night, I sat in bed holding this Bible, and cried. My heart was saddened at the idea of putting my old Bible away - the one I had for at least five years and walked through so many seasons with the Lord. God had taught me so much through that Bible and brought me freedom in many areas, and it was with that Bible that my faith was tested and refined in both heartbreaking...

In June of last year, I wrote a post about how it's okay for your prayer life to go through seasons. I still wholeheartedly believe in what I wrote and that God gave me that encouragement filled with so much grace: that God isn't judging us based off how many times we pray throughout the day, that our prayer life isn't a checklist, that it's normal for us to naturally feel like praying more times than others. All of these things are still absolutely true, but recently God has revealed to me...