Posts with the tag “alina-sato”

You’ve walked courageously with me through some painfully honest processing of what it’s like to get a cancer diagnosis. Sometimes our prayers for optimal outcomes are not answered the way we want. He...  Read More

In the first post of this series, I shared the story about how I received a breast cancer diagnosis just a few minutes before my friend Susan announced her benign results from her own recent biopsy. I...  Read More

My friend Susan and I both had biopsies to investigate ‘suspicious findings’ on our mammograms and ultrasounds within a week of each other. As a result, we and our concerned circle of friends were awa...  Read More

In a perfect storm of circumstantial stressors, our own sin and pride in wanting to please everyone, a real spiritual enemy who comes hard after our souls, and trudging through a world that is not kin...  Read More

This season of Lent, reflecting Jesus’s 40 days in the desert, allows us to consider who he is and what exactly he came to do....  Read More

We live in a world where we’ve gotten used to being the ones in control of light – flip a switch on, put a fake fire up on the TV. Because of this, when I think of God as our light in the darkness, I’...  Read More

It has been a season of enduring significant hardships and experiencing very real losses. We are learning some deep lessons around key factors shaping our life and identity that we may not have chosen...  Read More

One of the most curious effects that traveling to another country can have on us is the illumination the time away brings to deeply embedded cultural mindsets we’ve developed in our current country of...  Read More

About a decade ago, I read up on the descriptions of introverts and extroverts and exhaled a big sigh of relief. I finally had some concrete understanding and descriptions of why I as an introvert wou...  Read More

Life is showing me I have a much stronger desire for quick fixes to my suffering than I typically care to admit. For example, as a mother, I struggle a great deal with joy in parenthood on a daily bas...  Read More

I’m afraid of failing.I imagine most of you can resonate with me to some degree. There are a lot of emotions tied into the experience of failing – embarrassment, shame, disappointment, anger, discoura...  Read More

As the season has turned from Summer to Fall, aggressive marketing strategies are sometimes too quick to remind us of fast-approaching holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Many of us may not ...  Read More

In his book “12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You,” Tony Reinke adeptly explores spiritual struggles that use of our smart phones can potentially reveal and exacerbate in us if we are not careful. As I ...  Read More

“Moving through necessary justice towards a spirit of compassion, mercy and forgiveness, even for the most vile of perpetrators, is what allows us...to display the scandalous, beautiful, life-changing...  Read More

“We don’t always have the presence of mind to figure out what to say to the Lord when we are spinning.”It was a beautiful Friday evening at sundown, and I was out walking my dog, reflecting on all tha...  Read More

“...in many ways, prosperity actually highlights my need for Christ even more.”In recent months, I have experienced the curious adventure of dreams coming true. In my growing passion to give voice to ...  Read More

I was out to dinner with a group of non-Christian friends one evening when I was suddenly and unexpectedly put on the spot.“Alina, if an atheist is really, really good his whole life, can he go to Hea...  Read More

"Celebrating [God] by loving my imperfect child who made an inconvenient mistake was just as important as celebrating Him with my words and songs about grace at church."    I am, by nature, so many th...  Read More