Soaking in the Source of Life By: Susan Deborah Schiller There is a reservoir of beauty and truth hidden beneath the surface of outward life. It can be tapped into, like a tree taps into the underground springs. I call it "soaking" because in those moments of solitude, silence, and seeking God in the darkness is like tapping into an […]
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Light Will Come Bursting In By: White Dove During a period when I was surrounded by people intent on slandering me, when even some of my closest friends betrayed me, I had to face the fact that I could not please these people, no matter what I did. I laid down the ministry that I […]
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An Uncommon Peace By: Susan Deborah Schiller When I write, I write in peace. I write from a peaceful place. Peace is a weapon. To find that peace, I must retreat, rest, and re-examine all my promises. I must re-evaluate my position, check my compass, and listen for God's quiet voice amidst the thunderous roar […]
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A Lesson from Jeremiah about Racing Against Horses By: White Dove To love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength during the normal times is a good thing. To love him with the same passion (or more) when it seems the whole world stands opposed to you, is a whole different level of […]
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Looking Deeper, Looking Beyond the Natural By: Susan Deborah Schiller Photo Source Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist. — Madeleine L'Engle There's a friendship with God that is so deep you can only get to it on the same path Christ Jesus took when He was betrayed, falsely accused, […]
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The Most Powerful Weapon to Defeat a Smear Campaign By: White Dove The best part of life is creating memories with our friends and family. We laugh at old jokes and tease each other for past escapades. Who doesn't like to reminisce about the good ole days? It's like a fountain of neverending life, and […]
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Evil's Silent Accomplice By: Deborah White Dove "In my hands I have a piece of piano wire and I'm going to slice off your breasts with it… Next, I'm going to put a bullet in the back of your head and watch your body drop into the rock quarry," threatened my husband, as he emphasized […]
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Tell your story, heal your world. By: White Dove "It may be that when we no longer know what to do, We have come to our real work, And when we no longer know which way to go, We have begun our real journey." – Wendell Berry We have enough victims in this dark world; […]
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By: White Dove Some enemies are meant to return to us as friends. Others are "tares" or "children of the devil" and they have committed themselves to destruction. We cannot align ourselves with them. We cannot forgive them, give them grace, or have any type of fellowship with them. We are not even to pray […]
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In the PTSD Zone: The Anti-Happiness Plague Have you stepped down from a career? Feel like your life will never be normal again? Unable to take normal environmental noise and stress anymore? Are you asking, "What happened to me – I can't think straight anymore!" Do you have feelings of having lost identity? Are you […]
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Moving that Mountain to Find Your True Self By: Susan Deborah Schiller The journey to freedom tests everything in you. We're talking miles and miles of torturous, narrow paths that point you straight up steep mountain cliffs and across jagged precipices. Sharp rocks and dizzy heights are the unnegotiables on this path. I don't […]
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Freedom "Leave me here freely all alone In cell where never sunlight shone should no one ever speak to me This golden silence makes me free." Part of a poem written by a prisoner at Dachau concentration camp I used to dream every night about escaping concentration camps. Inwardly, a concentration camp is our […]
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"You need intensive care. Why don't you go lay on a beach and listen to the waves!" said caring church members who had been watching me slip away into the fog of PTSD symptoms. Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and a host of other diseases plague victims of abuse, like flies on a carcass. It's a form of […]
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A Different Kind of Peace By: Susan Deborah Schiller “Ask me and I will tell you some remarkable secrets about what is going to happen here.” ~ Jeremiah 33:3 I asked God to show me the future – what I should be believing for and working toward. The first thing I saw was a company of […]
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My Magical Life: The Day I Broke Up With Normal By: White Dove I tried very hard to conform to this world, but I broke up with normal. Like a porcelain statue, the world of illusions shattered around me, some of the shards piercing my soul. Pain inside and pain outside, no nonsense sentinels alerting […]
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Creating Beauty out of Chaos By: White Dove Photo Credit Chaos… descending upon an elementary school in Oklahoma where children huddled, terrified and battered by an horrific tornado. Children and teachers dead. In Ohio, three teenage girls kidnapped and held captive for ten years just a few feet away from good people. In Florida, a church […]
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The Power of Beauty By: White Dove “The world will be saved by beauty.” — Doestoevsky Since I moved out West the majesty of snow-capped mountains, rushing white-water rivers, and the beauty of wild flowers and trees have rejuvenated my weary soul. Beauty has seemingly magical power to cleanse and illuminate the dark places in our […]
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The Code: Making the Dark Light By: Susan Schiller "All Truth is God's Truth," was the first lesson I learned in college. Truth is the code that unlocks our inheritance – that launches us into a radical lifestyle – the one that Jesus modeled for us, and then told us, "You can do even greater […]
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How Will We Make it through the Night? By: White Dove Snippets from the writing of Brennan Manning "When tragedy makes its unwelcome appearance and we are deaf to everything but the shriek of our own agony, when courage flies out the window and the world seems to be a hostile, menacing place, it is […]
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You are not meant to hide in the dark and hope for an escape By: Susan Deborah Schiller The world's system cries through the media, "There's not enough!" Whether it be money, food, or other commodities, the cry reverberates throughout the whole earth. Fathers and mothers begin checking their bank balances, thumbing through their wallets, […]
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