Christina Fox, Author at Women.pcacdm.org

Joy in the Mourning

KENDRA KAMMER|GUEST My mother was a treasure. She was fun-loving and unapologetically loud. She was God’s gift to me. Her delight in others, her embracing of her calling, and her faithful submission to God’s will taught me the character of God. God, in His goodness, places people in our lives who unlock His character for us. This is one of the unexpected graces of being human when our lives and legacy are temporary, fleeting, like “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). But some individuals, even for the little time they spend on Earth, are a reflecting mirror of aspects of God’s goodness to the rest of us. My mom was one of them. But I have to say “was” when I talk about my mom, because that’s how we talk about people who aren’t with us anymore. Three and a half years ago, my mom lost her battle with cancer, and now Mother’s Day is an exercise of joy in the mourning. “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Psalm 30:5 When my mom passed away I felt breathless with grief, but I also felt the joy of one grieving with hope. The pain of loss was real, but the hope of seeing her again— free from pain and regret—that hope bolstered me, even as the tears kept coming. During that season, God walked with me through the bittersweet duality of weeping and joy, loss and love, brokenness and comfort. My mom lived her life as an exercise in joy, so as the Holy Spirit works in me to remember her life on Mother’s Day, I shouldn’t be surprised to find that he is preparing the soil of my heart to grow the fruit of joy in the Lord, even in mourning. Joy in God’s Delight My mom enjoyed things enthusiastically. She never kept her delight to herself; it was always shared. What a gift when the delight she expressed was a delight in me! I wasn’t always worthy of it— I was a typical teenager with sullen moods and bad attitudes—but my mom delighted in me because it was in her nature to find joy. Our God is like that. Isaiah 62:4 says, “You shall be called My Delight Is in Her… for the Lord delights in you.” Even when we’re distant or difficult, God draws near. In Christ, we are His beloved children. He looks past our rebellious inclinations and delights in us, even on our worst day! Joy in God’s Calling My mom lived her life on mission as an ambassador for Christ, but she wasn’t concerned about her name or her fame. She saw the beauty of the Gospel and felt compassion for the world that didn’t know that peace. She took the opportunities she was given to shine God’s light into people’s hard places. Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” In an act of God’s great kindness, He lets us experience the joy of serving in His kingdom, based on the unique knots and threads of the personality He’s knitted into us (Psalm 119:13). I am thankful for the privilege of living out His calling among this world that needs to know Him....

Joy in the MourningChristina Fox2025-04-21T20:00:52+00:00

Facing Temptation with Scripture and Community

KATELYN ROSS|GUEST What would happen to my kids if I wasn’t here? I resent my husband for letting me be the default parent (even though he’s a good husband and dad). I secretly feel like I’m more spiritually mature than my husband. Staying home with my kids is killing me inside. Isn’t there more to my life than this? I can’t forgive myself for what I did before I was a Christian. Am I even saved now? I hear these sentiments multiple times each week in my biblical counseling sessions. Women are often embarrassed for thinking and feeling these ways because they assume they’re the only ones experiencing their own particular kind of suffering. I’m here to tell you they absolutely are not alone, and neither are you. Motherhood and marriage are difficult in a fallen world in which we daily encounter our own sins, the sins of others, and the realities of life lived in a broken world where even the creation groans for release. Not to mention, Satan’s temptations! The Lord in His kindness has provided means for us to thwart Satan’s attacks, including knowing Scripture, knowing our identity as a child of God, and being known by others in our church community. Knowing God’s Word We often forget that our Savior faced temptation Himself. The author to the Hebrews tells us: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (4:15). Although He did not sin, and He never struggled with the thoughts that many of my clients and I have, Jesus Christ lived in this fallen world just like we do. He understands the temptations we face. Even more, He faced those temptations for us and defeated them. In Matthew 4, we read of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Immediately, we see that Satan caught Him at the end of His time in the wilderness and used Jesus’ humanity against Him, not unlike the way Satan uses our physical limitations against us. Jesus was hungry after forty days of fasting in the wilderness and Satan tempted Him to turn stones into bread to eat. What did Jesus do? He quoted Scripture, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (v.4). Then, Satan questioned Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. What did Jesus do? He again turned to God’s Word. Lastly, Satan offered Jesus the whole world if He would just bow down and worship him. What did Jesus do? He quoted Scripture, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” (v.10)...

Facing Temptation with Scripture and CommunityChristina Fox2025-04-21T19:44:11+00:00

The Lord’s Provision in Foster Care

JORDAN PAINTER|GUEST In February 2024, I arranged my neat little set of watercolor paints at our annual church Galentine’s event. My plan was to paint a picture, have some tasteful hors d'oeuvres, and chat with my friends. God's plan for me was to challenge much of what I had previously written off in my own pride. I simply couldn't have predicted how that one light-hearted night would thrust me toward the chaos in which I now sit a year later. Before the activities began, a woman in our church was asked to speak on her experience with foster care. Although it was probably a wonderful message, I remember nothing she said after this statement: "If every church just had one family willing to foster or adopt, there would be no child left waiting in the system." Just one. I looked around the room and I realized that we all probably assumed someone else would be the "one.” At that moment, a seed was planted that I absolutely did not want to nurture. I had seen foster care from a distance and knew it was not for me. To welcome a child, invest in them, love them, and then return them, was not something I felt I could do. I knew foster kids have messy pasts, difficult behaviors, and deep trauma. With two toddlers at home and a husband who travels for work, I was not equipped to handle that. God Establishes Our Steps Proverbs 16:9 says, "The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” I had planned my way. It was a very average-American-middle-class way, and it sounded fantastic: I would have two to three well-behaved children, and our days filled with play dates and various groups. My husband agreed with my plan and frankly, we loved it. But the Lord established our steps. As I type this, I have two foster sons asleep in their beds. One will wake up in about thirty minutes and then continue to wake every hour or so through the night. The other will sleep well and wake with plenty of energy to scream at me when his favorite shirt is dirty. This was not my plan. The Lord established our steps...

The Lord’s Provision in Foster CareChristina Fox2025-04-21T19:33:06+00:00

The Article You Don’t Want to Read

LAURA PATTERSON | GUEST For the third time in five months, I found myself at the bedside of a dying family member. Yet again, I watched the regimented push of morphine and changing respiratory patterns that led to the death rattle. Apneas increased and lengthened, extra morphine was pushed, and that final breath—ready or not, it came. She went to her Father’s house on Father’s Day. My precious Granny was 86. Spoon-feeding her those final bites on earth felt so inadequate when I thought of all the ways she had fed me in my lifetime. Holding her cold, clammy hand on her deathbed could never match all the ways her hands had tenderly held me and my children. I felt helpless to provide the comfort and peace I longed to give her. She had lived a long life, but death still felt like an armed intruder. Death will always be an enemy in this life. But, to the one who will listen, death is perhaps the best teacher there is. The author of Ecclesiastes tells us this when he says, ”the day of death is better than the day of birth. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind and the living will lay it to heart” (7:1-2). What can we learn from death and how can we pursue its instruction?...

The Article You Don’t Want to ReadChristina Fox2025-04-12T18:16:45+00:00

Content in Suffering

KC JONES|GUEST My children and I were recently reading the children’s classic story, Pollyanna, when I was struck by the many themes and motifs that run parallel to Scripture. I finished the tale with an epiphany I had never considered before. The story of Pollyanna revolves around a little girl who beams with joy and wholesome goodness. After she is orphaned initially by her mother and then by her father’s passing, Pollyanna moves in with her Aunt Polly who lives by a strict code of legalism which she refers to as “her duty.” Life is as you would imagine it would be for a young child moving in with a spinster who has never dreamed of, let alone entertained precocious, young children she has been tasked to raise alone. Holding on to Joy Pollyanna sets about revolutionizing the small town of Beldingsville by spreading the innate joy she feels with each individual. It is not long before it becomes evident how she impacts each resident, one at a time. Pollyanna’s secret is a little game her father taught her to play called the “glad game,” a personal challenge to come up with something she is thankful for despite the hardship she feels, no matter how small or insignificant. As Pollyanna lives out this model, members of the community, who at first had remained reticent, begin to grow curious, then find themselves playing the game as well. A measure of grace soon pervades the residents who were once broken and embittered by the trials of life—which end up being the very catalysts for moving them to a deeper place of joy. Pollyanna’s genuine good nature compared with the resident’s hardened hearts, reminds me of the Apostle Paul who knew firsthand what it meant to remain content during suffering. Consider what Paul tells the Corinthians regarding suffering, “For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17-18). Paul not only understood the depths of human misery, but also maintained joy through such suffering because he knew God was using it to strengthen his faith. Like Paul, Pollyanna tenaciously holds onto joy despite the various difficulties she faces, both large and small. She refuses to lose the game...

Content in SufferingChristina Fox2025-04-12T18:13:08+00:00

God’s Faithfulness in a Winter Season: The Gift of Weakness

MARISSA HENLEY|GUEST “I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness enters into my bones; my legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us.” (Habakkuk 3:16) When I battled a rare cancer in 2010-2011, the effect of the chemotherapy on my platelets caused me to need a clinical trial and receive treatment hundreds of miles away from my home and my young family. I was suffering in a way that I never had before, and I was completely powerless to change my circumstances. A friend of mine read about a study in Greece that found that eating purple grapes would boost your platelets. It was on the internet, so it was probably true, right? I started eating large amounts purple grapes. You can probably guess how much impact it had on my platelets. That’s right—none at all. It was one more reminder of my weakness. I was suffering, everyone I loved was suffering along with me, and there was nothing I could do but sit in a beige recliner, passively receive the chemotherapy that made me feel awful, and beg God to heal me. When we’re in a winter season of suffering, we often feel weak and powerless to fix our circumstances. If we could change things and get ourselves out of that season, we certainly would. This feeling of weakness is an unavoidable part of our experience of suffering...

God’s Faithfulness in a Winter Season: The Gift of WeaknessChristina Fox2025-04-12T18:21:40+00:00

The Lamb of God

SHARON ROCKWELL | CONTRIBUTOR Every year for Easter dessert my mother would use a special mold to create a cake shaped like a lamb lying down. The cake would be frosted with white icing and covered in coconut to resemble the lamb’s soft wool. This cake was eagerly anticipated by all of us kids, especially with hopes that one of us would get the head – it had the most frosting! The tradition that came from my father’s family was that the youngest child would be asked why we had a lamb cake for Easter dessert. One by one, each of us learned the proper answer, because “Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” I admit that early on, I did not make the connection between the lamb cake and Jesus. I knew the story from Exodus. God orchestrated the Jews’ escape from the Egyptians by sending plagues to change Pharaoh’s heart. The last plague was the death of all of the Egyptians’, and only the Egyptians’, first-born. The Jews marked their door posts with lamb’s blood so that Death would “pass over” their homes. The plague convinced Pharoah to free the Israelites. Later I came to understand that God did not let the destroyer kill any of His people who believed (Ex 12:23), foreshadowing a time when Christ would protect His own who believed in Him. Much detail was provided to the Israelites regarding the preparation of the lamb to be sacrificed. Exodus 12:1-6 explains that families were to get a lamb on the tenth day of a certain month, examine it, and sacrifice it on the fourteenth. The lamb was to be without blemish. The Jewish families were to assure their lamb was perfect, a picture of what God demanded of their sacrifice in grateful thanksgiving for their deliverance from Egypt and a foretaste of the sacrifice of His sinless son for believer’s deliverance from sin and death...

The Lamb of GodChristina Fox2025-04-03T15:54:01+00:00

Finding Our People

LEAH FARISH|GUEST Abraham was called to leave his birth-land and go to a new place, to be the father and founder of a great nation. After a long life on this mission, he “died in a good old age” (Genesis 25:8). Then Scripture says he was “gathered to his people” (Gen. 25:8). What people? He was the first of a new people. True, his wife Sarah had preceded him in death, but that’s not much of a crowd awaiting him on the other side. He was buried far from his earthly relatives, so the phrase doesn’t just refer to being buried in a family cemetery. Quickly we wade into theological depths I am not able to navigate. But what’s clear is that Abraham was gathered to people who are alive in God. Isaac and Jacob are also said to have been “gathered to [their] people.” Much later, Jesus was talking to the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the resurrection, in Luke 20:38. He said that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Then He followed with a surprising statement: God is “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” All three were dead at the time! The Pharisees twice said that Abraham was dead (John 8:52-53). Why didn’t He say, “God is the God of you, and me, and Caesar, and the shopkeeper over there”? Instead, Jesus explained this paradox to the confused Sadducees in Luke 20:38: “for to God all are alive.” These are the people Jesus calls “sons of the resurrection,” who “cannot die anymore” (Luke 20:36). These are our people. We believers are members of a people, some of whom live this side of death on their way to glory, and some rejoicing on the far shore. Hymn writers and preachers have derived comfort for centuries from this truth...

Finding Our PeopleChristina Fox2025-04-03T15:50:02+00:00

The River Approach to Women’s Ministry: Part 2

STEPHANIE HUBACH | CONTRIBUTOR Welcome to Part 2 of “The River Approach” to Women’s Ministries. . . In Part 1, we discussed how flying over Scripture from an aerial view is akin to the “river approach” flying into Reagan International Airport in Washington DC. When the pilot navigates along the Potomac River, it provides a stunning, overarching, panoramic picture of the whole Washington Mall and all of its monuments. A biblical theology approach to Scripture allows us to see how Scripture connects as a whole as God’s Grand Story. The Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation (or New Creation) framework connects in a vital way with how we conduct women’s ministries in the local church. On a very practical level, this same framework ties directly to essential questions we encounter in walking alongside women. As a refresher, here is the chart that was also presented in Part 1...

The River Approach to Women’s Ministry: Part 2Christina Fox2025-04-03T15:40:47+00:00

How A Prayer Calendar Changed My Prayer Life

JANE STORY |GUEST I have never met a Christian who didn’t struggle with prayer at some point in their life. Most want to pray more or gain more from their prayer life. They may feel dissatisfied with this part of their faith or feel guilty that they don’t pray enough. Many find their minds distracted while praying and wonder if there’s any way to stay focused. Still others may want more practical guidance. In my own prayer life, I’ve struggled with forgetfulness. I often think of things when I’m busy and send up a quick supplication in the moment. Later, I forget about it and don’t continue to pray for that situation. Maybe you too know that sinking feeling when you realize you promised to pray for a friend but later forgot. Beneath these struggles is the understanding that prayer is important to our faith and our walk with Christ. Even more, it is one of God’s commands to us. Prayer is God’s Will We often wonder about God’s will for us, but He spells out part of that plan clearly in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19...

How A Prayer Calendar Changed My Prayer LifeChristina Fox2025-03-26T14:22:36+00:00

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