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If I Were the Devil

by Anneliese Wahlman
I had a couple of big fears as a kid: 1) boa constrictors and 2) quicksand. As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve happily realized that neither quicksand nor boa constrictors are the everyday struggles of adulthood that I…
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How Ellen Went from Fearful to Faithful

by Anneliese Wahlman
“This is so dry,” Ellen thought to herself as she looked at her Bible, feeling shame for thinking such a thought about the Bible and the simultaneous urge to let her eyes glaze over the words. Though raised in a loving…
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The Unexpected Cure for Loneliness

by Anneliese Wahlman
“You can do this. You have a good reason to be here,” I assured myself as I walked over to our new neighbor’s house. My family was new in town and my brother Nick, who has the social anxiety of Spongebob, had already…
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Now You’re Speaking My Language

by Anneliese Wahlman
There’s a joke that says if you speak two languages, you’re bilingual. If you speak three, you’re trilingual. If you speak one, you’re American. During a recent…
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Bridging the Gap: Reconnecting Youth with the Gospel

by Anneliese Wahlman
“Ty, your presentation made me angry,” the young woman said, her brow furrowed. The large beams of the auditorium towered over them as they talked, like a mini cathedral. …
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How Jared Found His Deep Gladness

by Anneliese Wahlman
Most people are thrilled when they’re told that they’ve been accepted into medical school. Jared was disappointed. He tried to be excited as he shared the news with friends and family, but he felt like…
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The Best Way to Answer for Your Faith

by Anneliese Wahlman
Normally, if you’re just meeting someone, it’s awkward if they cry in front of you. Maybe extra awkward if they’re crying over a Zoom call and you can’t hand them a tissue and mumble, “Sorry.” But when I spoke…
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Don’t Look Where You Want to Go

by Anneliese Wahlman
A few months ago, my boyfriend told me he hated me. Well, actually, he said we should go hiking, but it’s the same thing. After work, we drove to the Manitou Incline in…
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No, You Don’t Study God’s Love Enough

by Anneliese Wahlman
My mom is one of those off-the-grid, homesteading types. She has a garden, a root cellar, and even a composting toilet that utilizes sawdust, which actually isn’t as weird as you’d think. Unless, of course, you get…
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God Didn’t Show Up, You Did

by Anneliese Wahlman
It was a hot, muggy day in the Kenge territory of the southwestern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) when Yanvu Joseph saw a tent flapping in the breeze. Maybe he overheard people talking about the tent in one of the six…
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Freedom From Uncontrolled Chaos

by Anneliese Wahlman
“I’d been drinking and I was involved in an accident where a life was lost,” Edgar’s voice is somber but clear. It’s hard to picture Edgar and his wife, Nicole,…
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Why Your Struggle Is a Good Sign

by Anneliese Wahlman
“When I first arrived, I thought, ‘This is the worst decision I’ve ever made!’” At 23, my oldest sister, Becky, enlisted in the army and soon found herself in hot, sticky Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for basic…
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You Were Made for Freedom

by Anneliese Wahlman
“My addictions are my comfort zones and, if I leave them, well, I'm scared I won't know how to handle myself.” You might not do cocaine or meth, but, on some level, we…
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The Request God Never Made

by Anneliese Wahlman
“I. Want. To. Go. Home,” the pastor exclaimed to the auditorium. He wasn’t talking about returning to his bungalow in the suburbs. He was preaching about Jesus taking us to heaven. He used his pauses dramatically,…
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The Secret to a Happy Life

by Anneliese Wahlman
You probably don’t know many four-year-old children with depression, but when my grandma was that age, she was depressed—so depressed, in fact, she stopped eating, laid in bed, and only spoke when necessary. She should…
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Patrick, the Patron Saint of Dreamers

by Anneliese Wahlman
When you think of Saint Patrick’s Day, you likely think of shamrocks or sporting green, but Patrick’s life was full of drama and adventure rather than luck and leprechauns. …
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Think Different.

by Anneliese Wahlman
Back in 1992, IBM launched an ad campaign with a single word: think. It was brilliant because who doesn't want to be regarded as a thinker? But then, in 1997, along came Steve Jobs and Apple who launched what is regarded as…
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When a Movie Teaches You About the Bible

by Anneliese Wahlman
As a species, we’re kind of obsessed with love stories. They’re in everything we read, write, watch, and talk about. We can’t help but root for the guy to get the girl or for the girl to finally be noticed and for them…
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Double-time Distribution in Zambia

by Anneliese Wahlman
Mimi ni mwanadamu aliyechanganyikiwa. Je suis un humain confus. Esmu apmulsis…
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Am I a Bad Christian if I Don’t Feel Like Praising God?

by Anneliese Wahlman
“You’re obsessed!” My friend Elise laughed at me as she sat down on my bed. The month before, my mom, step-dad, and I went to watch a movie called JoJo Rabbit for my twenty-eighth birthday, and I fell in love…
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How Literature And a Prayer Changed the Future of a Prostitute

by Anneliese Wahlman
There were no child services to take care of Margret and her brother when they lost their parents. Two of the hundreds of thousands of orphans in Tanzania, they grew up along the shores of Lake Victoria. Margret managed to…
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TikTok, the Gospel, and the Future of Light Bearers

by Anneliese Wahlman
YouTube was founded in 2005. Today, 16 years later, 82 years worth of video content is uploaded to YouTube every day (or 500 hours every minute). To put that in perspective, you could grow up, go to school, get married,…
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She Found Her Voice

by Anneliese Wahlman
“So, what do you think is going to happen in the future?” The guy sitting next to Maria in one of her classes at the University of California in San Diego turned to her abruptly and asked. “I feel like an apocalypse is…
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God Is Like a Mom

by Anneliese Wahlman
When it comes to metaphors of God’s love, Fathers often get the spotlight. They no doubt communicate God’s love in an irreplaceably unique way. But Scripture tells us that it takes both genders to understand the fullness…
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Love Matters Most, Part 12

by Anneliese Wahlman
Love Brings Us Face to Face with Ourselves “This is true weed whacking!” my roommate said as she attacked the two forests that were my eyebrows with a pair of…
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How to Communicate During Election Season (and Other Situations Where You’re Tempted to Be a Jerk)

by Anneliese Wahlman
“What is that? It smells like something died in here,” my friend bellowed after we got in my car. I’d definitely noticed an odor coming from my car’s…
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Love Matters Most, Part 9

by Anneliese Wahlman
Love Believes the Best of Others When you see _ _ NNER, what’s the first word your brain makes? BANNER? TANNER? Heaven…
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Love Matters Most, Part 6

by Anneliese Wahlman
Love is Not Self-Seeking I have a friend who wears a t-shirt that says, “I have gone to find myself. If I get back before I return, please keep me here.” …
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Love Matters Most, Part 3

by Anneliese Wahlman
Love Does Not Envy Kids believe weird stuff. For example, I have a friend who, when he was young, didn’t think girls pooped. I guess, for him, femininity and bodily…
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What to Do When You’re Accused of Stealing Organs: A Literature Report from Zambia

by Anneliese Wahlman
“They don’t want to teach you about the God of the Bible. They just want to harvest your organs and use them for witchcraft.” When you’re holding an evangelistic…
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If You Feel Like Giving up on Your Resolutions…

by Anneliese Wahlman
“Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I just sit down until it goes away.” I found this snarky saying printed on a little plaque, stored in a box of my junk from high…
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Weekend Warriors: ARISE Intensive Report

by Anneliese Wahlman
We typically think change has to take a long time, but you can actually accomplish quite a lot in just a few days. Like traveling to the moon if you’re Neil…
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How Can I Share Jesus and Not Make It Weird?

by Anneliese Wahlman
A while ago, some friends and I who were raised going to church were discussing an important question: How can you share Jesus with secular people and not make it—for lack of a better word—weird? …
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Releasing Resolutions

by Anneliese Wahlman
It’s the New Year. Time to make plans to lose weight, learn a new language, become a new you. Just look on Instagram and you’ll find people who can teach you how to…
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How to Get a Life

by Anneliese Wahlman
In case you didn’t catch the story, recently, a group of guys from a YouTube channel called Yes Theory, a channel created by four friends who spend their time doing crazy feats and documenting their experiences, challenged actor Will Smith to…
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When You Need to Know God’s Will but You’re Scared of Making the Wrong Choice

by Anneliese Wahlman
For my eighteenth birthday, my mom gave me a card that read, “I used to live each day as though it were my last. But people got tired of hearing me scream, ‘I’M GONNA DIE!!! I’M GONNA DIE!!!’ Hope your birthday’s a scream.” Funnily…
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What A.A. Taught Me About Church

by Anneliese Wahlman
Note: some names and minor details in this post have been changed to protect privacy. Lots of people complain about millennials: we’re shallow, entitled, lazy, we don’t know how to do anything useful. We’re pretty much the equivalent…
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Honest Gabe

by Anneliese Wahlman
The best policy I’m not a parent, but from watching my sister Catie and her kids, it seems to me that it is a truth universally acknowledged that a mother trying to maintain a semblance of control is in want of a child who will keep…
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From Here, We Can Go Anywhere

by Anneliese Wahlman
We all have a moral compass that guides us. It keeps us from punching the people who upset us and lets us know we need to apologize for telling our sister she’s fat. But we also experience a sort of silly guilt for things that aren’t really…
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When the Wedding Is Over

by Anneliese Wahlman
To some of us, they were Aunty Carol and Uncle Dave. She was small like a bird and sweet as honey. He was tall, practical, and kept a hundred stories tucked away in his pockets to share with the students assigned to him during the work period. They…
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Silly Me, I Thought I Was Good

by Anneliese Wahlman
Besides things like rolling my brother down a hill in a cardboard barrel and convincing my sister to ride our pet goat like a horse, a lot of my childhood memories are framed around stories. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad reading to me…
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The Great Big Power of Teeny Tiny Things

by Anneliese Wahlman
In 2005, a fresh-out-of-prison graffiti artist was asked to paint some murals in the office of a small startup in Palo Alto, California. As payment, the artist was offered thousands of dollars in cash or company stock. Eight and half minutes of…
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Convocation Report

by Anneliese Wahlman
There are certain times in life when it’s important to be committed, to not stop halfway. Like when you’re getting married or shaving your beard. Then there are other times when it’s important to have the freedom to change your mind, like when…
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God, Weed, and Greg: An ARISE Story

by Anneliese Wahlman
It’s the middle of August, 2015. Greg Fisher steps onto a Greyhound bus, takes a big whiff of recycled oxygen, and quickly scopes out his seating options. The plastic armrests feel like they’ve been painted with popsicle juice and the air is…
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The Lost Art of Evangelism

by Anneliese Wahlman
What I Take from the Compost Bucket I’m one of those people who can eat whatever is on my plate even if it looks like it was scraped from the bottom of the compost bucket, and I’ll still enjoy it—as long as it tastes good. I figure…
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A Reality Check for Valentine’s Day

by Anneliese Wahlman
His eyes were blue, like an October sky. His hair was the color of sand off the beach, the kind you put in a bottle and take home for memories. I won’t mention his name, but it rhymes with schmichael. When he and I talked, I literally felt…
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God in the Hood

by Anneliese Wahlman
Have you ever had one of those Christmases where your entire pajama-clad family is gathered together, the tree is wrapped in lights that shine à la star of Bethlehem, and mugs are filled with hot chocolate and freckled with…
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God in His Underwear

by Anneliese Wahlman
When I tell people how many siblings I have, their eyes usually grow to unflattering proportions and they say something like, “Wow. That’s a lot of kids.” You don’t say. None of us is adopted and no, we’re not catholic. My mom…
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Surprised by Gentleness

by Anneliese Wahlman
I find it quite paradoxical how, on a given day, I can clean my kitchen so well you’d think I was Cinderella, but then the next day it looks like the shared apartment of a couple phlegmatic bachelors. Something tells me this shouldn’t happen,…
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Share the Wealth: A Mission Update from Madagascar

by Anneliese Wahlman
The United Nations Development Programme’s most recent data ranked Madagascar 154 out of 188 countries on the Human Development Index.1 That’s basically a sterile way of saying that, as a country, Madagascar doesn’t seem to have…
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With the Flip of a Switch

by Anneliese Wahlman
As a kid, I suffered from the quintessential childhood fear: I was scared of the dark. I could be in a room that I knew like the back of my hand, and if the lights turned off, my fear turned on. It didn’t help that my older brother would come into…
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A Wall Against Sexual Assault

by Anneliese Wahlman
If righteous indignation were a tub of gasoline, then the recent Stanford sexual assault case has been the match. There’s nothing more infuriating than seeing someone suffer unfairly and justice go unserved, and this particular story has caused…
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