We lean in closer. We need to hear it again. "You are loved. I will love you outrageously all the days of your life."Graham Cooke declares it. He declares it with the Voice of truth singing loud and strong: "You can only love Me as much as you love yourself. So my love comes to set you free from yourself, to set you free from how you see yourself, to set you free from the smallness of your own thinking about yourself."Our Father comes and frees us from the smallness of our own thinking because of the abuse, the self-contempt, the despair, the shame, the pride, the fear.The six of us sit in a circle around the small portable speaker placed on the ottoman in the center of the room. We are hungry, searching. We are missing God. We are tired and want to lay ourselves down.We gather, the six of us, because the lies have come again. Silently. Stealthily. They have crept in, and we didn't even see them. But they are tangible. They are dark. We can feel them on our skin, our minds, our hearts. Read More . . .

"How are you doing? How is your heart?""I'm good. Not awesome.""Yeah. Me too."We check in over text, me and the friend I used to see face to face. The one who came from Colorado and went back again. The friend I didn't know I needed. The friend who wants the best for me, who is candid and raw and sweet, who goes on walks in the rain and lets water splash full in her face.I am in a coffeeshop, Justin in his black beanie by my side, watching rain drive sideways in sheets. The pavement is shiny black, and my boots are damp. People in raincoats or no coats at all jump out of cars pulled up to the curb, running in through the coffeeshop door, heads ducked down. It is glorious, the rain falling down.A few days ago, Justin and I skyped with our mentors--an awesome husband and wife team. My friend connected us with this couple after she left. Through their words, their example, we feel God rescue us again. God uses people who are free. People who are able to offer wisdom because they not only know they are loved, but they know the battles we face in this world are not against flesh and blood. . . Read More . . .

On that night when the rain poured down in my little California bungalow, and I was tucked inside, so happy to be home and warm and dry, I wrote a post over at Loop's page on Facebook, asking if Loop devotional readers would want to have a place to get to know one another, share their hearts with one another, and pray. And nearly two hundred women said yes.