Fear has been a near-constant battle for me in the last few months.

Recently, my life changed significantly. When I came to grips with a number of difficult things I had been denying or minimizing over the years, it all led to making significant changes in my life. Suddenly, I found myself in a completely unfamiliar place, surrounded by strangers, battling constant doubts and fears, unemployed, and uprooted from almost every familiar or comforting thing I knew.

Every tomorrow seemed like a yawning chasm of the unknown.

If you're a married woman, here's a great list for including your "single sisters" in your life. If you're single, share shamelessly with your friends! They will enjoy knowing better how to bless you.

My journey toward an adoption mindset started a long time ago, but I didn’t realize it until I watched Hotel Rwanda.

I’d heard about adoption often. My friend told me that I should read Adopted for Life by Russell D. Moore, and asked me to help her brainstorm about how to begin a foundation that might be able to help families afford the cost of adoption. Another friend had a heart to work with orphans in third-world countries. A couple in my church, after years of infertility, successfully adopted an adorable little girl. Some friends of ours adopted multiple times from all over the world, combining a family of children with Asian, African, Hispanic, and Caucasian roots. My work at a crisis pregnancy center put me into contact with adoption agencies in the area, since adoption is a beautiful (and often undervalued) option for women facing unplanned pregnancies.

I had always considered adoption a wonderful thing, but it didn’t personally impact me until about a year ago.

This post has been adapted from an article by Yaasha Moriah that first appeared in the newsletter Incorruptible Beauty. Click here to learn more.

“I had my abortion yesterday.”

Hearing these words over the phone from a woman I had counseled just a week earlier, I felt as if my body had deflated. I had seen the statistics, I had done the research, I had personally heard the stories straight from the lips of post-abortive women. I knew what this woman’s future could look like. And for her child…there was no future. I immediately wondered: What could I have done to spare both mother and child from the painful consequences of abortion?

Somehow when I had become a counselor at the local crisis pregnancy center, I had never thought much about this aspect of ministry. In order to offer hope and healing, I had to be ready to bear another woman’s burden and to pray for her as earnestly as I would pray for a dear friend.

Single women and married women tend to move in different circles. The married women want to chat about their husbands and their babies with each other, and the single women form their own cliques around hobbies, school, ministries, or the single lifestyle itself.

I think that’s wrong. 

Just. Plain. Wrong.

After an afternoon of ultimate Frisbee and football, we were on our way to our friends’ house a short drive away. With a van full of friends, we maneuvered around frost-heaves and potholes, trading stories and laughter.

Suddenly, we became aware of a strange sound—a dull fwap, fwap, fwap followed by an ominous grinding. The friend in the front passenger seat leaned out the open window.

“Your wheel is flat,” she announced.