Join the quest and Accept The Love Challenge!
![Godly Mamas and Good Water… [one year later]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/CAE93EFB-3332-4651-9FD9-F2F5993AFF1E-1024x1024-1.jpeg)
It was the Clifford women who gathered early that second morning to sing as we waited the arrival of others. Her favorite hymn was Rock of Ages. Mama knew (and sang) every word of each stanza. She likely played it on the piano thousands of times over her lifetime. “While I draw this fleeting breath,…
![Returning Home… [and gift(s) from the sea]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CBE06D9E-B7C8-4F4D-826F-25E68F9EBF89-1024x1024-1.jpeg)
Recently, I spent a glorious three days with the fam on the beaches of Alabama. And although we weren’t able to make it all the way to our beloved 30-A, just being in Alabama and Mississippi rendered a strange sense of being back home!? Although, we’ve never lived in those places… Even stranger, as we…
![Prayers of Blessings… [and tears]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/66796F73-C7C9-40E4-8FE7-D9292EE0D441.jpeg)
Anybody who knows me at all, knows I’m a crier. As my family will attest, one risen lump in my throat and it’s ‘water works’ city. My grandmother, Nellie, was a crier. So much so, her crying became folly for a long-standing, ‘inside’ family joke… Around the late seventies, at the end of a very…
![Being Equipped and Finding DELIGHT… [in the journey].](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/3F96D7C6-E8A8-492A-9E3E-37451C9640FB-1019x1024-1.jpeg)
I’ve been working long days on a passion project with a hard deadline… So, one day last week when I skipped my usual, extended-play version of Bible study due to time constraints, I felt comfortable with the shortened edition. Because my heart longed, instead, to be in the Word. Truthfully, I’ve grown to LOVE this…
![A Trusted Friend… [in a time of need and grief]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/E7A52A7C-6019-4BBA-B2C2-38A427304C1A-915x1024-1.jpeg)
One year ago, I made a new friend. But not the kind you’d expect, I met my new Target store. I sat in this Target shopping center while my mama braved a calcium drip at twice the speed. (Although, I told her not to do it.) We were becoming regulars at dropping her off at…
![How to Walk in LOVE in Hurt or Trauma… [learning to love those who’ve hurt us.]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/762FCE60-F649-4CCA-938D-0B959142E838-1021x1024-1.jpeg)
Acknowledge the Reality of Hurt. The reality is we live in a fallen, imperfect world full of messy, broken people and it’s only a matter of time before we are hurt by someone or we inflict pain on another. We are even told in God’s Word that we are to expect trouble in this world….
![How to LOVE others… [a #TLCjourney]](https://rachelwrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/92966B60-6ED6-4E8B-A776-D439BDC53C5F-edited-scaled-1.jpeg)
The Love Challenge is a strategy for tackling the greatest challenge ever set before us—loving one another! If the world is our mission field as Christ followers, then the Love Challenge is our field guide; prompting us to be ‘so full’ of God’s love. But the world isn’t only a mission field, it is a…
In those hard, early crime fighting days, we called ourselves the Three Amigos. This past winter, I had planned to slowly unpack our story of combatting crime and evil for all of you. But God had different plans… It was almost a year ago when I pulled The car aside into a North Dallas park…