Suffering, Featured, Family, Faith
Courtney Reissig
Sin is Like Cancer

One of the scariest things in the early days of my diagnosis is that the pathology was unclear. Best case scenario, the cancer was contained. Worst case scenario, it had spread beyond what they could imagine. This fear was heightened by the fact that all the normal tests that catch cervical cancer failed to detect mine. I was diagnosed long after they usually diagnose women. And that terrified every medical professional I saw.

Sin is Like Cancer
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Modern Medicine and the Temptation of Babel

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Modern Medicine and the Temptation of Babel

Over Thanksgiving last year, I got strep throat. I haven’t had strep since college and it reminded me quickly why I hope to never have it again. It’s awful. But antibiotics are God’s gift to humanity. I only had to endure the effects of strep until the antibiotics kicked in, but every hour the pain lasted, I thanked God I live this side of modern medicine. Within hours, the pain subsided and I could at least drink a smoothie. Within days, I started feeling like a human again. Modern medicine is a privilege I don’t take for granted. It’s a blessing to live on this side of human ingenuity in medicine. In the days following, I started thinking about how in our strongest moments we tend to think very little of these modern medical advances. We can even begin to think they are unnecessary.

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Good Friday and My Fear of Death

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Good Friday and My Fear of Death

“I don’t want to die,” I said to my friend last summer, hooked up to a baby heart rate monitor and overwhelmed by the constant intrusion that is life in a hospital room.

Not wanting my baby to die was a given. I’ve faced those fears with every pregnancy. My worst fears were realized twice. But never had I also been hit with my own mortality. Pregnancy is safe and routine in America—until it isn’t.

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Psalm 23 and The Valley of The Shadow of Death

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Psalm 23 and The Valley of The Shadow of Death

I’ve said before that the only thing I could read during our hard days in the hospital this past summer were the psalms (and a few other things). I read them every single day, journaling, thinking, praying. In the psalms I had a language for what I was feeling. I had a language for my fears. But in the psalms, I more importantly had a language for who God is in spite of those fears and feelings. The psalms showed me God, even when everything was uncertain. My hope in spending my days in the psalms was not only that I would be sustained in the moment of waiting for Ben's birth, but that I would also be sustained if (or when) the dark moment came to deliver Ben unexpectedly.

That moment did come, but my mind went blank.

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Finding Glory in My Ordinary Year

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Finding Glory in My Ordinary Year

One year ago next month my book, Glory in the Ordinary, was released. It feels like an eternity has passed in a way that I didn't with my first book. In large part, I think it’s owing to all that happened the weeks leading up to Ben’s delivery (and the weeks following). Our plans for the book launch didn’t include three weeks of bed rest, a premature delivery, or a hard recovery. But God’s did, and it completely changed how I viewed the book as a result.

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Do You Value Paying Your Pastor?

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Do You Value Paying Your Pastor?

Money conversations in the church can be awkward, especially when it comes to giving and paying church staff. We don’t want to be perceived as greedy or ungrateful. We value the ministry of the word, so we don’t want to sound like we are in it for the money (and not the fulfillment that comes from preaching the word). The temptations that can arise when money is on the table are legion, and often go unnoticed until money is actually on the table. So I get the concern (and the tendency to move as far away from money as possible).

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Raising Sons in a "Boys Will Be Boys" World

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Raising Sons in a "Boys Will Be Boys" World

Men who behave badly are all over the news these days. In fact, it’s been so much a part of our national conversation for the last year that I’ve had this post (most of it, anyway) written since we found out that we were having another boy—raising the Reissig boy total to four. I’ve been mulling over these thoughts for the better part of a year and finally got around to editing them. Unfortunately the national conversation about men doing bad things hasn’t changed one bit. It’s only gotten worse, which has only increased my desire to process what it means to raise four sons in a world where men behave badly.

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A Short End of Year List for a Hard 2017

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A Short End of Year List for a Hard 2017

The end of the year is the time for list making. I’ve read (and been encouraged by) many lists of books, blog posts, and favorite things. I’ve even created those lists in years past. But instead I am going to share the three things that the Lord used to sustain me this year. As I’ve shared before, this is the year that took us through the ringer in so many ways. Ben’s arrival into the world was traumatic (a word I don’t use lightly) and hard on our family in ways we are still processing. But even in the difficulty we have been encouraged by the Lord through people and through his word. I know that many don’t come to the end of the year with the mental or emotional bandwidth to take in a lot of lists and book ideas. Life is just too relentless, so if you find yourself in the midst of a difficult year, I pray these resources encourage you too.

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Mary's Suffering is For Us

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Mary's Suffering is For Us

I have either been pregnant, nursing, or grieving a lost baby for the past seven Christmases. Whenever December rolls around I find myself reflective about the incarnation and what it meant for Mary. I find myself encouraged by what it means for the effects of this broken world, especially the pain I’ve experienced in childbearing.

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Christmas in a Minor Key

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Christmas in a Minor Key

One of my favorite Christmas songs has always been “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” I love the words. I love how it tells the tale of expectant longing for Christ’s first coming, and drives us to long for the second. But I also love it because it’s in a minor key. I have a soft spot for songs in a minor key. I grew up loving music for many reasons—one of them is how music is evocative. Music makes us feel. And as one who feels deeply and also tends towards melancholy, a minor key suits me.

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On the Stomach Bug and Mothering Limitations

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On the Stomach Bug and Mothering Limitations

A couple of months ago we had the stomach bug in our house. Whenever a parent mentions the stomach bug, collective groans of sympathy usually follow. Adults don’t fare well with the stomach bug. Barely verbal toddlers do worse. In rapid succession, all of our non-infant children succumbed to the stomach bug’s fury, and I was left weak, cranky, and dousing Purel on my hands every few minutes.

Few things confront you with your lack of God-like abilities like a multi-child case of the stomach bug. Someone is left to suffer alone when mommy can’t get to everyone. When one kid is sick, the others are left to fend for themselves. When multiple kids (and the parents) are sick it’s almost like Lord of the Flies.