Nehemiah walked way from his job, his title, his security, his entire life and surrendered to the bigger plan God had. With a caravan full of the King’s best men, he arrived in Jerusalem and secretly went into planning mode. He told no one what He intended to do. (Partially because he hasn't figured it out yet!) Each night he went out and surveyed the damage done to the wall. Assessing the damage allowed him to know where the work needed to start first. When the time came, h

There is redemption promised for the broken things in our lives. Problem is, in our broken state they are often hard to recognize. Sitting brings Him near. Crying initiates His healing. Repentance realigns us with His bigger purpose, and our surrender allows Him deeper access into our spiritual formation. We invite Him into the building, giving Him permission to get His hands up in our mess. We let go – a lot. We trust Him, even when it’s hard. We spend massive amounts of ti

Sometimes changing direction is hard. Believe it or not I am the Dooley least likely to stop and ask for help when it seems we've lost our way. I prefer to pretend to know where I’m going even when I don’t. Pretending never seems to work well in the long run. Heartache has an extreme way of pulling your vehicle to the side. Paused on the shoulder of the road, with dozens of other cars racing by, things begin to look different. Nehemiah wasn’t doing anything wrong. He had a go

The reality is, God is already working in your life. He's already present and busy doing something. All the time. Our job then, when brokenness hits, is to realign our posture to be where He is. Sitting helps shift our posture because it calms us down and changes what we look at. Prayer isn't our opportunity to get God on board with our plans. It's actually our opportunity to get on board with His. When our weeping moves to praying our brokenness moves to bigger. If we will r

Rebuilding involves questions. You can't get to where you're going without recognizing where you've been. Our healing is not compartmentalized. It's not confined to space and time. This side of eternity, we do not have the capacity to know and understand it all, but we still have the invitation to seek and recognize what He has made available for us to see. We live in a world of answer givers. Not many listen to understand. Most listen to respond. We have all been guilty of a

The brokenness around you is never to much for the God within you. The world teaches us to keep it together, but Jesus invites us to let it go. At the end of ourselves, we are only ever at the beginning of Him because our God is not the Redeemer of all things fixed, He is the Redeemer of all things broken. In our hands, the painful pieces task us with an impossible rebuild. Without the proper resources, we settle for Band-Aids as a quick fix rather than the root healing neces