Words usually come so easily for me that I have a hard time stopping somewhere, but here I am in late-January struggling to find words to put on paper to Boast in the Lord. This past year, my father was diagnosed with a combination of vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and is already well into the moderate stages of his cognitive decline. His diagnosis came with a range of emotions, and it...

I went back and forth a million times trying to figure out the perfect thing to share to “boast” and glorify the name of the Lord. But the truth of the matter is, that everything single good thing about me and in my life, is because of the Lord, because He chose me, because He dug me out of the pit I was living in....

My boast is not bound by 2024 or any year. It dates back almost a decade now. While long past, the overwhelming joy surrounding the gift God gave me is very real today. I can’t speak it or think about it (or write about it…as I am finding out right this moment), without being emotionally overwhelmed....

My Boast is a partial continuation of last year's, where God gave us a new back deck, which ended up being a perfect backdrop for the pre-wedding photos for our son Christopher and Karen's wedding in October....

On November 3rd at 11:15pm I was in the back room and Cathy was asleep in the master bedroom on the first floor in the front of the house. Suddenly there was a large BOOM and the sound of the fire alarm going off. I jumped up and tried to open the door to the master bedroom, but there was debris all over the floor, which prevented me from fully opening it....

Jesus shared His last (& perhaps most important) words to His disciples before He ascended back into heaven after His resurrection from the dead. So… How do we faithfully obey His great commission to us today? What if we had a tool to aid us in these mandates that would change the hearts of people for good, in only 20 minutes a day? Would we use it? ...

While I cannot say 2024 was a bad year, it was not without its notable disappointments. After identifying an opportunity and two-plus years of nights and weekends working in my garage, I developed a product that I was ready and excited to bring to market. After two years of positive feedback and open and bilateral communications with a major customer (in which we regularly exchanged specification...

I’ve been pondering on the faithfulness of the Lord... And I’ve discovered that, shockingly, sometimes His faithfulness doesn’t look like what I think it should look like. Because I think that friend shouldn’t have cancer; she loves the Lord and we’ve all prayed for her repeatedly. Or that divorce shouldn’t have happened; after all, they’re both believers. Or that child shouldn’t have died; hi...

In it All – God is Faithful. I started thinking back over the years, about the important times in our lives that decisions were made by us, yet now I can see it was God directing our steps all along. This May, James and I will be married 34 years and have completed 15 years at Grace Chapel. It feels like yesterday, yet so much time has flown by. When I reflect back, all I can say is that I have ...

The Antidote for Fear is Trust... Christians often times take an interesting posture towards the current events in their lives, often unnecessarily. I am no exception. We are assured that our sins of the past are forgiven through the cross of Christ, therefore our future in eternity is assured. What’s left is the present, and that’s often where we struggle with the issue of fear....

I have been carrying the burden of shame for far too long. I am 59 years-old now, but when I was 19—in 1984—I had an abortion. For nearly 40 years, no one knew this except my husband, David and one dear friend, whom I only confided in a couple of months ago. Imagine carrying that shame for 40 years Please know, that even now, this is not easy to admit. For many years, I suffered through this and w...

As a teen and young adult, I remember holding onto these verses during various seasons. It was such a comfort to me knowing that know matter what I might face, suffering in big or small ways, that God Himself would make me whole again, strong, and able to stand firm. It was a relief to know it wasn’t all on me…but that Jesus would be everything I need. ...

I have an English accent - one of the many benefits of growing up in England It may then come as a surprise that my mother is a New Jersey native - born in Manhattan and raised in Maplewood. As a teenager, she attended Long Hill Chapel, the planting church of Grace Chapel. This I only discovered after my wife and I had attended Grace for a couple of years, and it came as a pleasant surprise...

As I was spending time thinking about what I was going to write, for a few moments I thought, “I don’t have much to boast about this year”. This year felt at times like an eternity. I had on and off health problems I was figuring out. I was helping run crisis intervention at my job which was rewarding but took a toll on my physical and emotional health. There were heartaches and broken relationshi...

The older I get, the more I realize I am hopeless and bereft without God and His Word. While that bit of self-reflection may initially seem so defeatist and depressing, the Spirit has worked on my heart and head to show me that the opposite is actually true....

New Year’s has been difficult for the past few years, as it marks the anniversary of some significant losses. Every year, I feel confident that I have moved further in my journey through grief, but when I approach the days immediately following Christmas, the heaviness of the traumatic memories always hit harder than I expect them to....

After listening to this past week’s message on depression, I felt compelled to share a bit of my battle regarding this issue. Although I was no stranger to mental illness, (being from a family that has many members that struggle with varying degrees of challenges relating to the mind), I personally had never really felt the burden of mental illness. I did not think it was a made-up thing, nor some...

The start of 2024 was, without a doubt, the lowest point of my life. Following a not-so-recent divorce, I felt utterly rejected by many people I thought I needed for guidance. On top of that, I faced relentless harassment that even targeted my children, a drastically slowing business, and an uncertain future. I didn’t know how I was going to pay my rent or support my daughters in the years to come...

I Can See God In My Rearview Mirror! I often tell people that if you want to see God working in your life, all you need to do is look in your rearview mirror....

At the beginning of 2024 the Lord put the word OBEDIENCE on my heart. I committed to spend the year in the Word truly seeking His face, and to step out in obedience when I felt the Spirit lead. No matter how difficult, no matter the sacrifice, no matter the cost. I committed to obey....