Author Archives: merckaylin

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, We bless you because you are our home. From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.Your faithfulness to us in Christ is a safe space of unending love, enduring delight, constant provision, and quiet rest. And so we bless you for this house and the tangible expression it was of youContinue reading “A Liturgy for Leaving a Dearly Loved Home”

Almost four years since we arrived, Jordan still doesn’t quite feel like home. Right before we left to come back to the US for the summer, it was finally feeling like it. I could feel roots growing deeper and a sense of hope about living there. But over the past few weeks since arriving inContinue reading “When home doesn’t feel like home”

I often say that union with Christ is saving my life. But I don’t often share how. On this post I finally get to this. After decades of experiencing religious OCD, anxiety and fear in my relationship with the Lord, I came to a significant turning point. If you remember, when I went through deepContinue reading “On How Union with Christ is Saving my Life”

Soaking in the goodness of the gospel, I started dating my husband. He too had grown up in a similar spiritual community to mine, and he too, through other ways, had been awakened to the gospel in his mid-twenties. Together we rejoiced in all the ways the gospel was changing everything for us. Still, IContinue reading “A Story of God’s Nearness in Anxiety, PPD & Religious OCD, part III”

It has been 15 years since the Lord started me on this journey of knowing his nearness and consistent rescue when fear runs amok, and anxiety attempts to overwhelm. I really don’t want to downplay the role that therapists and counselors have in helping with mental health disorders like OCD or religious OCD (I haveContinue reading “A Story of God’s Nearness in Religious OCD, part II”

In my childhood and teen years I developed a disorder that involves persistent or sticky thoughts about morality and religiosity. It is driven by intense anxiety and fear in our relationship with God and moves us to engage in compulsive behaviors to calm the anxiety. This is called scrupulosity or religious OCD. It is aContinue reading “A Story of God’s Nearness in Religious OCD – part I”

Dear mama, are you fighting shame today?  Shame… …in knowing all the ways you’ve sinned against your kids & failed in parenting?  …in the sting of the brokenness you feel in motherhood that seems to be affirmed by the lack of appreciation from your kids? …in the insecurity that comes from remembering childhood hurt &Continue reading “For the mama fighting shame on Mother’s Day”