Can I tell you something?

I didn’t write this book because I felt so good about my life, so confident about my past, or hopeful about my future.

I wrote this book because I felt so broken. Was so broken.

And Jesus healed me. He made my steps secure.

Even though I grew up in the church, even though I had verses memorized and knew prayers to pray and sticky notes around my house pointing me to God’s Word, His secure love was not something I could feel in my heart.

It took hitting rock bottom – it took being so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed anymore. So angry I couldn’t control my outbursts anymore. So afraid of people I loved leaving that I couldn’t control my neediness anymore.

But that’s when RESTORATION happened. That’s when God rescued me. Not because I’m so good. Or so holy. But because I was so broken, and He that’s what He does – He loves to put broken pieces back together.

My new book, Restore: Remembering Life’s Hurts with the God Who Rebuilds, is God’s story of putting me back together. It wasn’t an easy fix.   Or a seven step program.   It was a long obedience in the same direction using the time worn tools, the raised roads of honesty, confession, repentance, lamenting, and remembering, and prayer – telling God where I was every single day – what the pit felt like and why I was there – and then letting Him tell me my story back in whole new ways – with new possibilities – through a new lens – the lens of His Word.

This same journey is available to you, my friend. It is. If you:

• Are stuck in a pit of depression
• Have walls up in your relationships with others – including the people you love the most – but don’t know where the walls come from or why they exist
• Can’t remember your past without waves of shame or the sting of rejection
• Suffer from waves of anxiety and often feel overwhelmed
• Pull people close to you only to push them away for reasons you don’t understand

Then can I tell you something? THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU. This book isn’t for the whole-hearted. It’s for the broken-hearted. It’s for those who don’t have any way out unless Jesus comes to rescue them.

Restore tells you my story, and my daughter’s story, and our way out of the pit of depression, anxiety, and an orphan heart, and the path God set us on to make us whole, restored, new, secure, free.

Restore, the seven week companion Bible study, is your story. That’s right. I couldn’t simply testify to all God has done in me; I had to give an invitation for Him to do the very same thing in you.

And that’s what this Bible study is for. Every page helps you to tell your story and use the very same tools, walk the very same road of restoration, God used with me.

My gift to you this week is a sneak peek of CHAPTER ONE of the book. If you want to see if our journeys are similar – if the same pit I was stuck in looks anything like your pit – if you want to taste hope of the way out – then you can start your journey now.

Restoration is coming, friend, for you – I can feel it in my bones. Because that’s who God and that’s what God does – He restores our souls. He pulls us out of the pit of depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and despair and makes our steps secure in His comfort, His presence, His possibilities, and His Word.

So don’t let your brokenness keep you from restoration – let your brokenness invite you into restoration.

 The Rescuer is on His way.