At some point, as it has for many of us, life probably has confronted you with the devastating truth that it was not going to live up to your visions and dreams. You had plans for the way your daily life would look, expectations of what your church life would be, and assumptions about the […]
When I was growing up, we lived far away from one set of grandparents, who had retired from Washington, DC, to Florida. They enjoyed traveling, and they visited us a handful of times. But despite the fact that they were our grandparents, we didn’t know them well. And every time we saw them, they expressed […]
This Thanksgiving, in keeping with family tradition, to grandmother’s house we’ll go. We’ll go over the river and over the woods and over some more rivers and likely through some traffic once we land in Denver. We’ll have plenty of horsepower but no actual horses involved. While we’re there, as many people do, at some […]
I hope you’ll find encouragement in this guest post by Bethany Smith. Bethany is a writer, an educator, and a creative person. If you’re facing a creative challenge, I hope you’ll be inspired by her hard-won advice. Work, especially creative work, does not always come easily. We may have day jobs, families, mental or […]
Our society is frantic with worry. You’ve probably noticed. Worry is expected of responsible people. We equate worry with good citizenship and awareness. We actually pressure each other to keep worrying. We are expected to remain on emotional “high alert” as evidence that we care about the world around us. Other people want us to […]
My new book, Blessed Are the Unsatisfied, makes a counter-intuitive, counter-cultural claim: when we embrace our lack of satisfaction in this life, rather than try to deny or overcome it, God blesses us. And he blesses us not just in spite of the lack of fulfillment in our lives, but also in and through our […]
Last year, on one of my speaking trips, I stayed in a hotel room that gave me the impression I had stepped back in time. I don’t mean this in a good way, like when you stay at a bed and breakfast in a lovely old house from the Victorian era, with lace curtains and […]
When my husband and I were dating, we spent some time living 1000 miles apart. I was in college in Illinois, and he was attending seminary in Colorado. During those months, we sometimes felt desperate to be close to one another. No matter how many much time we spent on the phone, there was no […]
So if you’ve been paying attention to my writing this year, you know that I’ve been writing a lot about the topic of my newest book, Blessed Are the Unsatisfied: Finding Spiritual Freedom in an Imperfect World. I’ve been talking about various reasons that embracing our unsatisfied condition is the best way to live. But […]
On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality inventory, my type is INFJ. Among other things, this means I struggle with idealistic perfectionism. Here’s a quote from 16 Personalities, describing INFJs like me: “INFJs are all but defined by their pursuit of ideals. While this is a wonderful quality in many ways, an ideal situation is not […]
© 2018 Amy Simpson.