Encourage-[en-kur-ij] to inspire with courage, spirit, or confidence.
The enCourage Blog is weekly dose of encouragement in a world that is often filled with bad news. We offer life-giving entries each Monday and Thursday written by gifted women from across our denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). You can subscribe below to have them delivered to your inbox. With hundreds of blog pieces, you can search on a variety of topics in the search bar above to read and share with friends. Christina Fox, a gifted author, serves as our enCourage General Editor. If you are interested in submitting a piece, you can contact her at cfox@pcanet.org.
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Graduation: The Right Time for Ambivalence
CHRISTINE GORDON | CONTRIBUTOR I remember the first time I felt the terrible grief in my chest. I was sitting on the black couch in my living room where I always sit, reading an email about move-in dates for fall 2023 at Western Kentucky University. My husband and I discussed possible dates while my oldest, still just 17, waited for the verdict. A minute later, the date had been chosen. I entered “Elliot Move in” to Tuesday, August 15 at 1:40 on our shared family Google calendar. Then I started to sob. A Mixture of Feelings Seventeen years felt like a very long time right up until I had an end date. Suddenly, all of the realizations began to come to mind: I would no longer hear his Sonic Bomb alarm clock along with the vibrating extension under his pillow that woke him up and made me laugh out loud every morning. There would be no more calls from a rushed boy between school and work asking me to “pretty please make me a quick grilled cheese.” I wouldn’t hear his voice yelling with his dad as they watched Tottenham Hotspur games (Premier League soccer) together in the living room. He was moving 289 miles away, to another state, where I knew no one. Neither did he. Of course this had always been the goal. My job, like any mom, for the first part of his life had been to get him ready to make it in the world apart from me. And in many ways, through a miracle of God’s kindness and a whole lot of help, we had accomplished that goal. But all the practical plans faded as I worried through the days and nights. Would he ever make friends? Could he handle the load? Would God take care of my baby when I couldn’t? These were my thoughts and feelings as I walked into the school gym for my oldest son’s high school graduation. But I also felt a surge of pride, joy, relief, happiness, and gratitude. I was thrilled Elliot had made it so far, and thankful for his work and perseverance. My heart was an absolute mixture of so many conflicting and different emotions. Graduation, I came to understand, can be a time of ambivalence. Whether your child is moving from the simple days of elementary to the complicated years of middle school, from a vocational school to their first professional job, or through any other graduation, we as moms are bound to feel a ball of emotions that a friend of mine appropriately calls “mixy.” A graduation is a pivot, a landmark, and a rite of passage. It signifies change, which always involves loss. Graduations are a very good thing, and a very “mixy” thing. For moms, they often bring up an emotion that cannot be avoided in this unpredictable world: fear...
Jesus’s Invitation in the Midst of Stress
STEPHANIE FORMENTI | CONTRIBUTOR April showers might bring May flowers, but the month of April also ushers in unique busyness. Between Easter celebrations, graduations, end-of-the-year school trips, filing taxes, open houses, baby showers, final exams and projects, bridal showers, sports tournaments, and summer planning, April fills up fast. It’s probably no accident then that April is also National Stress Awareness Month, set aside to bring attention to the negative effects of stress. National Stress Awareness Month began in 1992 before smartphones, 24-hour news cycles, and social media were part of the daily vernacular. Now, with very little to buffer us from constant demands and worldwide problems, it is easy to understand why we experience stress on a regular basis. Stress and anxiety are close friends; stress is a state of worry or mental tension caused by challenging or difficult situations. It is a natural human response which can be helpful in addressing those challenges or threats. In fact, God designed our bodies to respond to stressful situations, for our own safety and wellbeing. The problem is, instead of stress being an occasional thing, it’s almost a daily thing for many Americans. There are many resources to help us manage stress, and we ought to utilize those that are helpful. But what if stress also presents a unique opportunity to for us to meet Jesus? What if our experience of stress is an invitation to a deeper relationship with him?...
The Brevity of Life
SHARON ROCKWELL | CONTRIBUTOR My mother was known in our family for her pithy statements which were intended to impart wisdom. One of her favorites was “Life is short and then you die.” That may have been a child’s version of a verse from the book of James, “yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). As children we would appeal to mother for sympathy when something earthshattering occurred in our world. Complaints like “My fort fell over,” “My sister hit me,” and “I forgot my lunch money” would be met with those words of wisdom. “Life is short and then you die.” We received little sympathy but learned not to make the same mistakes a second time. During my college years, a neighbor who had already raised her family passed away after a long illness. The woman seemed so old to me. But I recall my mother commenting that her life seemed so short. At our neighbor’s funeral, the pastor talked about life being a dot on a line that extended to eternity. My mother’s words came back to me: “Life is short and then you die.” But this time those words had a broader meaning to me. I had watched our neighbor live her life knowing that she would die sooner than she expected. She used her time to pray for others, to encourage others in their faith, and especially to remind anyone who would listen that life is short and getting right with God was of vital importance. She once asked me if I was living a godly life while I was away at college. Her awareness of impending death made her bold in her conversations with others. She knew life was fragile. She knew life is short and then you die...
Spiritual Mothers Point Us to Christ
AMY SHORE | GUEST She grew up in a small West Virginia town near the Mason-Dixon that changed hands between the North and the South 56 times during the Civil War. Her family reflected that instability. It wasn’t until college that I started to see and understand the evil and dysfunction that my mother survived as a child. It wasn’t until early adulthood that I saw it as evil and dysfunctional. And it wasn’t until recently that I comprehended the notion that she survived childhood. But if I’m being honest, she did more than survive. The very fact that I had clothes on my back, grew up in church, and was loved bears testimony to that redemptive fact. She showed me a kind of love and affection that shouldn’t have been possible for a woman with her past. I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t relate to her in so many ways—and still can’t. But I’m beginning to see the grace that was poured out by a benevolent Father in both our lives reflected in that love that was never modeled to her. Her love is imperfect. And that’s probably the part I wrestled with the most once I left home. An 18-year-old has grand visions of how she will rise above her parents and be better, be different, be free. 18-year-old me grew to 20-something me who came to resent all the ways my mother did not meet my needs. So, I decided to have no needs. I would rise above. I would pull myself up by my proverbial bootstraps and make my own way. I decided the best way to keep my heart intact would be to need no one. I excelled at my new-found independence. I soared, really! I quickly rose from the ranks of the needy, to the self-sufficient, and then graduated to White Horse Specialist First Class. I became the one who met other’s needs. I became all things to all people. To my siblings—I was their stand-in mama. To my students—I was the teacher who made learning fun. To my best friends—I was the ever-present pillar of strength. To my church—I was the tireless volunteer. Until I began to encounter circumstances that were larger than the persona I had mustered...
