Let’s explore the tough stuff together.

Hearts have eyes — if not literally, then definitely metaphorically. Our hearts hold our innermost beliefs, and they reveal how we see and resultantly treat our Black Neighbors. If we allow our hearts to be examined, they reveal how much (or little) love we have for those neighbors and the ways our love needs to be purified. Our hearts house our fears, our insecurities, our pride, and the parts of us we don't wanna acknowledge.

Blackness is my mother tongue, my very first love language.

I was birthed in a Black Pentecostal church. My dark-skinned body was birthed into choir rocks and hand claps, my spirit reborn in the cool baptismal pool. My speech refined with new tongues,and my future prophesied into being.

For centuries, the Samaritan woman at the well has been read as a scandal. But if you take a closer look at the text, something shifts. Historical context and scholarship reveal that she was far more likely a survivor than a sinner — and reading her through a Western lens has distorted the story. The real story is far more compelling — and it tells us everything about the heart of Jesus.

Three women. All named Mary. All present at the moments that changed everything. We tend to blur them together, or worse, reduce them to a single supporting role in a story we think belongs to someone else. But their stories are among the most dramatic of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection—and definitely worth revisiting.

BY REBECCA CARRELL:

Rebecca Carrell has spent over a decade researching, praying through, and teaching on grief and lament. Here she shares a fabulous DTS chapel talk and the beautiful, gut-wrenching piece she wrote after losing a sixteen-year-old girl named Brooklyn. This is your permission to grieve.

BY MARY DEMUTH:

To surrender the healing journey is to let go of the expectations for how the pathway will look. It means looking realistically at what happened back then, then giving God permission to do something new.

BY MARY DEMUTH:

What if our act of patience, fueled by the Spirit within us, was not merely so we could endure our adult children’s choices, but for our betterment? What if this is not about our kids at all, but about our relationship with God? 

BY MARY DEMUTH:

With anxiety reigning, it’s no wonder we believe if that one conundrum was solved, our lives would sing. And yet, our minds naively hang our hopes on an outcome, and we forget that God is working in and through every circumstance, even when things don’t go the way we wanted or planned.

STORY BY CHRISTINE CRAWFORD: I was in the throes of grief from the unwanted end of my marriage when a friend recommended I go on a silent retreat. So, naively hoping the experience would expedite my healing, I wandered into the desert for three whole days. Completely and utterly alone. In complete and utter silence.

A RECOMMENDED RESOURCE: I've been sitting with silence a lot the last two years—learning to embrace it, to let it teach me, to serve as an invitation from God himself, waiting for us just beyond the noise of our lives. As we close out the Draw Near Dwell Well series, consider these resources as companions on your journey.