Cruciform Hope Ministries

07/14/2026

Before you were anyone's parent, you were somebody's child. Whose face taught you about God?

07/11/2026

“Read that again if you’re an anxious parent of an anxious kid. The thing you are most ashamed of, that you lose it, that you get it wrong, that you could list your failures by heart, is not what disqualifies you from forming your child’s faith. How you come back is the curriculum.”

You don't have to be the perfect face of God. Attachment science and the cross agree on that, and it's good news.

07/11/2026

Every parent ruptures. You snap at dinner. You go cold. You miss the moment your kid finally worked up the nerve to say the hard thing.

That's not the failure. It's not even close to the failure.

The repair is the curriculum. Coming back and saying it plainly, "I got that wrong, I'm not going anywhere," teaches your kid the truest thing there is: love is not fragile, and the bond survives the breakage.

That's not a parenting technique. It's the shape of the cross.

Full essay, link in comments.

06/18/2026

For the person in the pew hiding their chart. And for the pastor who wants to serve them better but hasn't found the theological ground to stand on.
This essay is for both of you:

Good News from Jesus for the Anxious and Weary

06/11/2026

Four men carried their paralyzed friend across town on a mat. When they reached the house where Jesus was teaching, the crowd was packed too tight to get through. So they climbed onto the roof, tore a hole in it, and lowered him down, right in front of Jesus.

They could not heal their friend. So they carried him to the one who could.

If you have ever loved someone who was sinking, into depression, into anxiety, into a thought too dark to say out loud, you know that helplessness. You can see it happening and you cannot reach it.

After almost two decades in pastoral ministry, and my own history with anxiety and depression, here is what I have learned: it is almost always love that leads us astray. When someone we love is suffering, we want to fix it. The impulse is right. What we reach for is often wrong.

The fixing is not your job. The carrying is.

New on Cruciform Hope: The Mat Is the Ministry. https://read.cruciformhope.org/p/the-mat-is-the-ministry

And if you are the one doing the carrying right now and do not know what to say, there is a free guide for that too: You Don't Have to Fix It.

06/08/2026

Found this on a post between two palm trees in Costa Rica.

Most of us were never taught what to do after someone says the hard thing out loud. So we try too hard. We say the wrong thing. We offer the right theology at the wrong moment.

You do not have to fix it. You have to know what to say, what to skip, and how to stay.

I put what I have learned in almost two decades of pastoral work into a short free guide. For pastors, parents, and friends: cruciformhope.org/fix-it

05/27/2026

A word for anyone whose morning starts by laying out their medications.

The Beatitudes are not eight personalities you have to perform. They are eight blessings Jesus is already pronouncing over real, particular, suffering people. People in dairy aisles. People in waiting rooms. People who got up today and could not summon enthusiasm for prayer.

The blessing is not a test you pass. It is a place you are already standing. It’s a reality that has been created by the Kingdom Jesus came to announce and enact.

For the anxious, the depressed, the weary, and the people who love them. Follow along. There is a lot more coming.

05/25/2026

Today is Memorial Day.

It's easy for the day to blur into the unofficial start of summer, the long weekend, the first cookout. There is nothing wrong with rest. But the day was set apart for something heavier and worth pausing over: to remember the men and women who died serving this country, and to sit for a moment with the families whose loss did not end when the rest of us moved on.

Grief like that does not keep a calendar. It shows up at the cookout. It's waiting in the empty lawn chair next to the drinks. If today is tender for you, you are not being dramatic, and you are not alone.

To everyone remembering someone today: we remember with you. The God we know in Jesus has never been far from the grieving. He has always been nearest to them.