Dr Paul Allen

Your darkness can one day bring someone light. A person who’s been through a divorce has the compassion and words needed to help somebody going through a divorce. A person who’s been through abuse, rape, or an addiction can genuinely understand how to help someone else in a similar situation.  And because you made it, God will cause your wounds to glow in the dark of somebody else’s life. And when you begin to share your story with them, hope will get in their soul, and they will start to believe that they can make it.   Don’t waste what you’ve gone through or allow it to make you bitter. If God lets you walk through it, it’s because He’s still God and has a plan. On five different occasions, the Apostle Paul was beaten with 39 stripes. That’s 195 scars on his body. Paul said, “Three times I was beaten with rods.  One time, I was stoned and left for dead. Three times, I suffered shipwrecks. I knew what it was to be afloat in the ocean a full day and night. I thought I would die, but I’

Despite the Paul McCartney jingle echoing through our department stores this season, many of us will not be “simply having a wonderful Christmastime.” Much of our Christmas joy will be met, and made to sing, shoulder to shoulder with dissonant sorrows. I’ve had cancer since 2018. I received my Stage 4 diagnosis in December 2020—just in time for Christmas to be included in that year's crookedness. This blow came just a month before our third child, Jane Ridley Wright, was born. We soon learned our “baby Jane” had been born with a regressive and rare gene mutation. I bear witness that the hope and joy of Christmas are not easily held in hand with the harshness of life under the sun. It’s a weary task to unify everything: birth and disability, sacred and profane, transfiguration and tragedy, cancer and Christmas.  But, as Leo Tolstoy observes, “All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” Samwise Gamgee agrees: “It’s like in the great stories, Mr Frodo. The ones that really

On the last day of his vacation, Rob Moll leaned in to kiss his wife, Clarissa, before heading out for a hike in Mount Rainier National Park. “Have fun,” she whispered. “I will,” Rob said. He never returned.  On July 19, 2019, Rob Moll fell to his death on that mountain. Clarissa was left to raise four children alone. She writes, “All of the life we loved together vanished in a moment.” In the three years since Clarissa has walked honestly with Christ and pointed fellow sufferers to the hope that is both here and now as well as for heaven. In her book Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss, Clarissa Moll offers the bereaved much-needed empathy and seeks to show them and those who would walk beside them how grieving souls can flourish after loss. Sorrow is a dark and painful road. You don’t need to walk it alone. The Bible says that “God is near to the brokenhearted,” but what does that look like when you’re lost in the darkness of agonizing gr