Real Men Cry, Too (A final message from my late husband)

While sorting through things of my beloved late husband, Hank, I stumbled across what appeared to be notes he was writing for a sermon. He had titled it, "Real Men Cry, Too". The haunting words on the paper both inspired me and broke my heart, as my children and I still grieve the loss of...

God in the Valley

I was reading in 1st Kings chapter 20 this week, not a passage I usually frequent. (I'm four years into my quest to read the entire Bible in one year, haha!) As a teenager, I vaguely recall hearing a preacher talking about this moment in Israel's saga, but now, forty years later, this historical account...

Highlight Reel (Most Popular Posts)

Hello, readers of Inspiring Hope Blog! Becky here, grateful and humbled by the response of readers to this blog. As you read this, I will be driving seven hours from the St. Louis area back home to northeastern Oklahoma, so those who get this by email on Sunday afternoons -- it may not arrive until Monday....

Streams in the Desert

In the United States, there are not many hot spots that compare to the heat of a Texas summer day. On one of the "milder" days, only in the high 90's, we'd taken our family on a train ride from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth. We'd wanted to ride the train, the Heartland Flyer, for years, and...

Fierce Love

"Mommy, come outside and see the baby bird in the rose bush!" My ten-year-old daughter was thrilled to discover a baby cardinal, camouflaged carefully inside our backyard rose bush. Out I came, camera in hand, whispering so as not to scare the young chick. As we approached the bush, however, the apparent parents of the...

Tell Me Something Good

It was October 11th, 1995. Unfamiliar with the song the worship leader selected, I was concentrating to read the notes accurately as I accompanied him on piano at church that evening. My heart was heavy, though, as I dreaded the anniversary that tomorrow would bring: the death by miscarriage of the baby we'd waited so long...

Sheerah: Grieving Woman… Builder of Cities

I was reading last week in a perhaps not-so-frequented passage of scripture in 1st Chronicles chapter 7, and was literally stopped in my tracks at one particular verse. In the plethora of hard-to-pronounce names of men, grandsons and great-grandsons, an unexpected name in a paradoxical moment of history was revealed. Describing the lineage of Ephraim, who was one of the...