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I could still feel the woman’s tears on my shoulder as she wept about her failing marriage and her husband’s rebellion against God. The sound of another woman’s sobs echoed in my mind from when she had wrestled between staying with her unbelieving husband or leaving him for a man she met on Facebook. Sometimes ministering to women is gut-wrenching, especially when their stuff bumps up against mine and I wonder if my heart and soul have any wisdom to spare. I thought God must be out of His mind when He called me to write and speak into women’s…

One of the most consistent struggles in my life can be summed up in one word: identity. I first became aware of it in my early teen years. I stopped eating to see the numbers on the bathroom scale drop. I worked tirelessly to get all A’s and please all of the grown-ups in my life. Everything looked great on the outside but I developed stomach ulcers by the time I was 16—so great was the pressure to become a person of worth. Through the years, I’ve transitioned into and out of many identities: wife, daughter, mom, psychologist, author, friend,…

Q: My husband used to be a believer, but now he says Jesus was just a man, not the Son of God. His lost faith deeply saddens me, and our growing differences have created a lot of tension between us. How can I strengthen our marriage even though we no longer believe the same thing? A: Resist the urge to compromise your faith in order to find unity with your husband. Although marriage is a high calling, it does not trump the fact that Jesus is Lord of your life. Nurture your spiritual life, clinging to prayer, Scripture study, and…

There are things about me that are very predictable. In 5th grade, I ate the same salami and mustard sandwich every day, when I’m driving and the radio is on I am usually singing along or tapping my foot, and I can’t help but to talk with my hands when I’m telling stories.  Sometimes I will make an expression or say a phrase and my husband will say it at the same time. I mentioned a few months ago that I happened to catch an interview with the founder of “Ashley Madison,” an on-line dating site for married individuals with…

God says hope comes through His Word and through the Holy Spirit (Romans 15: 4, 13). Wherever your marriage is today, there is hope because God breathes hope through the Word and the Spirit. He is the God of hope! Every couple travels on a journey through the changing seasons of their marriage. Some seasons we skip through as they are joyous and filled with delight. Other we stomp through, hoping they are quickly over. And some we walk through on tippy toes because we long to embrace every moment of the tender intimate oneness. Jody and I began our…