Marisa Donnelly

So much in life competes for our attention but Marisa Connelly reminds us that God’s love outshines it all. Just as Rebecca Simon’s Finding God Every Day, turning our focus from the temporary to the eternal allows us to embrace faith that fulfills beyond comparison. Read to see how God’s love rises above all else.…

You might be curled up in a ball on the couch right now, sipping some tea and snuggling in your fuzzy socks, watching the sun dip behind the clouds, feeling purposeless and small. You might be stuck in traffic, reading these words as horns honk ceaselessly around you, feeling stagnant in the monotony of the…

1. Your need for control. You love when life falls according to your plan. You crave organization. You crave order. You obsess over having life work the way you want it to. When things make sense, when you can have or find the answers, or when you’re in complete control over what’s happening to and…

Pain is of this world, not of God. These are the words I must remind myself of when I’m burdened by guilt or heartache, when it feels like everything around me is falling apart, when I give all of myself to a person, to a passion, and end up with nothing in the end. Things…

Will I recognize you when I see you? Will you still remember me?

Sometimes the greatest gift is the one we didn’t know we needed—the person who walks into our life by surprise when we’re caught up in feelings for someone else, the job we land in the wake of the one we didn’t get, the happiness we find after a different door closed in our face.

We’re all searching for love, searching for happiness, searching for a place where we can belong or another person to understand what we’re going through. We’re searching for answers, searching for understanding, searching for some sense of balance in this crazy, spinning world. So often it feels like we’re lacking, like there’s a part of…

God didn’t give us a simple path; He didn’t tell us exactly how to navigate our days. But He did promise a perfect plan—one that is continually unfolding with our every step, every breath.

Sometimes God uses the tough moments to teach us. That we do not have to exist here on our own. That we should never carry burdens without help. That we are infinitely valuable, even when we don’t believe or see this worth.

This morning I woke up and didn’t quite feel like myself. Sure, my throat was sore and my nose was a little stuffy, but beyond that, there was this ache in my chest. I felt unworthy. I felt hesitant. I felt, for lack of a better description, just off.

Do you ever sit there and start to imagine how a scene will play out? Or how you would react to a hypothetical, totally-created-in-your-head situation? Or what you would say/do if ____ happened? Welcome to a large chunk of my brain. I blame the writer in me, but a solid amount of the time, I’m…

There’s a beautifully comforting phrase, “God never gives you more than you can handle” that I’ve loved and found peace with, many many times. But way back when I attended a wonderful faith-based women’s conference, IF Gathering, and was given a completely different perspective. One of the strong speakers took that quote and spun it on its head. “No,” she…

Faith is not conditional, not something that changes when the world doesn’t go your way. Faith has a foundation—so build yours in Him and don’t let it be shaken.

Being a Christian is not about putting on your Sunday best and sitting in a pew. It’s not about folding your hands in prayer before you fall asleep or eat a meal. It’s not about memorizing scripture, going to confession, or shoving your religious beliefs down the throats of anyone who will listen. Being a…

You walk through your days with your head low, hands balled into fists. Though you try to feign this sense of confidence, you so often fall short. You’ve got it in your mind that you must pretend everything’s alright, put up this façade. So you close your eyes and take deep breaths. You do yoga,…