Elizabeth’s

I Wrote Letters and Never Sent Them

/ Elizabeth Trotter / 5 Comments

I wrote letters and never sent them. I’d heard it would heal me. But no matter how many letters I wrote and didn’t send, I never felt healed.

Maybe it’s because I have an obsessive personality. Maybe it’s because in my waking life, I already ruminate and rehearse. All I know is that this classic mental health tool did nothing for me. What I really needed was Paul’s instruction in Philippians 3:12-14 to press on, forgetting what is behind and reaching for what is ahead.

In the very next chapter, Paul shows us how to press on:

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.” (Phil. 4:8-9)

As a person whose brain tends to get stuck on loops, I need to make sure my loops are positive ones, not negative ones. Otherwise I will just spiral downward and fall into the black hole of despair. If I get stuck on sad, angry, or fearful thoughts, I may never find my way back out again. [Cue spaghettification.]

Our thoughts influence our emotions, which influence our spirits, which feed back into our thoughts. This cycle occurs regardless of the quality of our inputs, but the Holy Spirit through Paul directs us to fix our thoughts on true and beautiful things, not frightening or resentful things. 

I must put this principle into practice every single day from the moment I wake up. Some days I wake up in a dark cloud. I have to set my eyes on lovely things, or they will sink into a storm. Other days my brain wakes up blank, but as soon as my thoughts kick into gear, they swirl into a dark, depressed, and anxious cloud. My natural thoughts are not always happy ones.

Just a few verses earlier Paul says something else, something I never noticed before this year. I had of course tried to abide by Philippians 4:6: “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.” 

But this verse is only part of a multi-step command, which continues with: “Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done” (v. 6).

And the promise of peace comes after both parts: “Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7).

How exceedingly abundantly has God blessed me? And yet how often do I — like one of the nine lepers — forget to turn around and thank God for a gift? If I so repeatedly forget the source of our peace, is it any wonder when I don’t experience it?

For me, healing comes from putting into practice the words of Paul, not the remembrance of hurtful scenes or conversations. Not the rehashing of all my dark, depressed, angry, or fearful thoughts every morning. I still write those things out, of course, but it’s no longer the only thing I do. 

Because simply vomiting the rotten stuff onto the paper isn’t enough to cleanse us. We must also look to the past for reminders of God’s faithfulness. We must smile and thank Him for the good things in our lives, no matter how small. The way to reset the brain is to focus on the good, not the bad — even as we make our requests known to a Father who longs to hear from us.

There’s a reason the author of Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus Christ (12:2). Gazing on Jesus is the only way to endure the difficulties of this life. It is the only way to find our way out of the dark maze of our minds. 

So my task each morning is to write myself back to the truth. I present my requests to God. I thank Him for the things He has done. And I declare my trust in Him. I speak honestly to the Lord, but I also allow His truths, hidden in my heart, to speak honestly to me. 

Then I put the blue pen down. I set the journal on the shelf for tomorrow, when the peace of God will come to me again through words scribbled on a page. Not words of hurt and pain but words of hope and healing. For His faithfulness never ends — and His mercies are new every morning.

Reflections on a Quarter Century of Marriage {A Life Overseas}

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

Earlier this week I wrote about our twenty-five years of marriage at A Life Overseas:

“We hit a significant marital milestone this year, though the actual day of our anniversary came and went without much fanfare. We were at a missions conference and were only able to escape for a couple hours, skipping an afternoon session to take a walk together in the July heat. It didn’t feel special or remarkable, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. I had expected to feel something.

“It was only after I returned home that I was able to reflect on twenty-five years of holy matrimony. There are ups and downs in every marriage, but for the first eighteen years, I would have said we had more ups than downs. I didn’t really have a construct for anything different.

“The last several years have challenged my assumptions about wedded bliss. I thought we would always be as happy as we had been, and without much extra effort. Because those first eighteen years or so felt relatively effortless. We got along well, and we spent a lot of time together, and we enjoyed each other. We’d been friends since we were fifteen. We thought we knew each other, and we thought we knew how to do this marriage thing.

“Until midlife.”

Read the rest of the article here.

A Prayer for Marriage {shared during the Velvet Ashes Equip Conference}

/ Elizabeth Trotter / 2 Comments

Father in heaven who loves us, who longs to know us, who longs for us to know You and to know each other in marriage, we confess that we do not always see You or Your goodness in marriage.

But we thank you for Your good plans for us and our marriages. We thank you for Your good plans for Your church across the globe. And we thank you that your plans are not in conflict with one another.

Help us to see the image of God in one another. Help us to rejoice in each other and in our relationships. Restore the joy of first love to us.

Give us the courage to say no to the world and yes to each other. Give us the strength to seek healing from You that we may bring it to our marriages and thus to the world. Let our marriages shine the light of You to others so that they may ask where we found it and want what we have.

Thank you for giving us Your Son, who loved and blessed marriages. Amen.

(Prayer written and shared by Elizabeth)

Music and Midlife {some recommendations}

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I thought I would drop in with a mini “favorite things” post. Here are just a few things I’ve loved over the past few months. ~Elizabeth

The Upgrade: How the Female Brain Gets Stronger and Better in Midlife and Beyond by Louann Brizendine, MD. I saw this book recommended on a menopause website and was intrigued. I bought it on Kindle and practically underlined the entire thing. I have several other books about taking care of physical health in perimenopause and menopause, but nothing ever addressed the mental work of midlife like this book. It was also very hopeful about the second half of life – something I both appreciated and needed.

Inside Out 2. When the puberty button was pushed and all those new thoughts and feelings appeared out of nowhere, I felt like I could relate to Riley. Like her, I thought I had all my belief systems, thinking patterns, and emotions under control, then bam perimenopause happened, and I had to recalibrate. It’s been a lot of work to ride this emotional roller coaster, but it has certainly made me more reliant on the Spirit — which is never a bad thing.

Abide by Aaron Williams. I was seeking discernment about a few things in my life this spring, and one Sunday while we were singing this song in church, I felt like God gave me the answers I had been seeking. A beautiful song that draws us to the heart of God.

Christ Be All Around Me by All Sons & Daughters. At one point this summer I was really craving a prayer that could ground me. I love the prayer of St. Patrick (and I love St. Patrick) and had a distant memory of singing his words once in a song, so I went searching for it.

Same God by Elevation. This song ministered to me after a specific time of prayer about my identity. With so much in my life in flux, I felt adrift. God was basically saying to me, “I’m the same God I always was to you, and you’re the same girl you always were to me. Nothing about any of that has changed.” And I still need this God, the same God who has shown up for His people for thousands of years, every day of my life.

This is Our God by Phil Wickham. I get goosebumps with every verse. I remember the walls, the prisons, the giants – I’ve faced so many of them in my life. But look at what God does! And what a joy to be able to tell the stories of His faithfulness throughout our lives.

Olive Velvet Ashes Retreat image. This is the wallpaper on my phone now. The themes of this year’s retreat matched so much of what God was already speaking to me that I wanted to remind myself of it every time I opened my phone. Plus, those colors made me happy and calm.

Two Questions I Always Ask Homeschool Moms

/ trotters41 / 2 Comments

by Elizabeth

The early days of homeschooling are intense. You’re afraid of messing up. You haven’t fully settled into your teaching style yet. You’re still getting to know your children’s learning preferences. You’re still uncovering their abilities and their challenges.

And often, you have little ones running underfoot while you attempt to educate your older ones.

Older moms offer advice, and it’s good, but you don’t know how to apply it to your situation. You read books, and they’re good, but sometimes the requirements feel overwhelming. How can anyone do all these things and do them well? 

And sometimes the advice conflicts, and you don’t know which to choose.

Now, after 20 years of motherhood and over 15 years of homeschooling, I’ve become that older mom who has advice to offer and guidance to give. And the first thing I want to say is: let’s all take a deep breath. We make better decisions when we’re calm.

Beyond that, there are all sorts of things I could tell you. Things like figuring out your educational approach and your teaching preferences and your family culture and your students’ learning preferences. And those things are all important, and I talk about them with moms.

But the two questions I always ask young moms are the two questions they sometimes forget to ask themselves. They are:

What are you doing to take care of yourself?

And, if you’re married, what are you doing to take care of your marriage?

These two areas are the bedrock upon which a healthy, happy homeschool is built. If you’re burnt out, you won’t bring your best self to the task of home education. You’ll be tired and worn down, you’ll run out of energy and enthusiasm, and you might let too many things slide that shouldn’t be sliding. (What needs to slide and what needs to stay is a conversation for a future post.)

If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t have the love you need to pour out on your children. Your relationships with them won’t be as good as they can be because you aren’t as full as you could be. You’ll be snappier than you want to be, and you’ll regret those moments.

Answering these two questions can be really hard when you have young children. You’re almost always short on time, and you’re probably short on sleep, which means you could also be short on brain power. Hopefully you can take some time, either in the early morning before your children get up or in the evening after they go to bed, to get quiet and ask your soul these two questions.

Don’t be afraid to ask your husband for help with the children in order to discern these things. You might even need the help of a friend or coach to talk it out. But don’t discount the power of solitary journaling to help you figure these things out. Write out all your angst until the answers appear on the page. And then go live them.

**NEW BOOK COMING IN SUMMER 2025** 

The Hats We Wear: Reflections on Life as a Woman of Faith addresses six different aspects of being a woman of faith, with sections on spirituality, emotions, and embodied living, as well as marriage, motherhood, and homeschooling.