My God, In this stagnant season in my life where it feels you are stripping me of everything I know, I will look to You as my only strength. As I am struggling to understand many things, I won’t lose faith in the fact that you are my number one supporter. You are the mediator between myself and my emotions and You comfort me in every battle, big and small. I look to You because my eyes don't even dare to wander anywhere else. Your beauty is too beautiful and vast for me; I am so overwhelmed. I am longing for Your presence and Your guidance. I am giving You all I have, longing for all that You are.

At the start of a new year, we tend to think that we should be living amazing lives. If you are, that’s great! If you aren’t, I want to first tell you that it’s okay, but I also want to challenge you with a question: What are you measuring your success by?

Prayer is my jam this week. Why? I was challenged by a new friend to take part in a seven-day prayer challenge, designed to deepen and enrich prayer life by focusing it past all the requests and drivel that tends to bog down our time with God. Over the past few days, changing and repurposing certain details of my prayer time has reignited my desire to share my heart and time with Jesus.

My grandmother has had the same morning routine for years. She wakes up and makes herself a cup of coffee, frothed with piping hot milk because that’s how she likes it. Once she has that all-important cup, she sits down at the kitchen table with her iPad, a notebook, and her Bible. As she works her way through her morning coffee, she worships, reads devotions, takes notes, and prays.

Why don’t more people talk about Hannah? Found in the opening chapters of 1 Samuel, Hannah is one of two wives to Elkanah the Ephrathite, and in just a handful of short verses, she quickly becomes one of the most relatable women in the Bible. First, you might be thinking, “Hold up, did you say Hannah was one of TWO wives?” Yeah, you read that right, which might not be helpful in my case that Hannah was super relatable, but stick with me.

I don’t think I have ever read anything more beautiful, pure, challenging, and fulfilling than what this verse says. Just think about that: as a deer longs for his source of life– water– so I long for my God. It’s basically saying that God is our one and only source of not just life, but life to the absolute fullest.