church

Messy Homes and Open Hearts: An Article For Deeply Rooted

September 11, 2018 by Ann Leave a Comment

We were new to the area, and I was getting desperate for some friends. After the proverbial dust had settled from our move back to my hometown, I found myself more displaced than I expected to be. Sure, I hadn’t lived here in over 15 years, but it was my hometown. Why did it feel so hard to connect with other women? Why did settling in feel suddenly foreign?

Well, for one thing, I had changed—I was returning to my hometown now as a wife and a mom, and the unspoken rules for friendships had drastically shifted. In high school, friendship had been based off of mutual passions and pastimes (mine had been volleyball and poetry). We had weekends and weeknights to spend together, studying and laughing and driving around our mid-size town until we made it to Steak N Shake.

But here in these early years of motherhood, friendship was much more opaque. There might be other women in town who loved writing, but where would I find them? There might be other moms who loved to discuss books and theology, but how would I discover them? No, friendship in these years, I knew, was probably going to stem from being in similar stages of life. I needed some other moms who were on the same steep learning curve of figuring out how to care for the little ones at our feet.

But I needed someone to let me in. Although I was back in my own town, I was the new girl, and for the first time in years I felt unsure about how to start friendships.

Read the rest of the article over at the Deeply Rooted blog!

Filed Under: Baby, God, Guest Post, Motherhood, Parenting Tagged With: Ann Swindell, church, Church life, Deeply Rooted Magazine, How do I find friends, I need friends, Messy Home, motherhood

Why Christians Need Lent: 4 Reasons it Matters

February 10, 2016 by Ann Leave a Comment

This is the start of my newest piece for RELEVANT Magazine.
You can read it here.

Historically, Lent is the season preceding Easter in the church calendar, and it is often observed as a time of reflection and repentance. It is a season of preparation, a time of waiting and remembering.

But is Lent important? Is it worth observing—or at least acknowledging—especially if, like me, you’re not currently part of a liturgical church tradition?

I think so. Here are four reasons Lent matters—and how it can point us to the truth of the Gospel in practical, important ways:

Lent is a Reminder of Our Need to Repent

Repentance is not a sexy word; repentance is a call to turn around and away from our sinful ways. It means first acknowledging that we are sinners, and then saying no to our sin. But repentance is at the very heart of Christianity: we cannot, in fact, follow Jesus without repenting of our way and choosing His way instead (Acts 2:38).

Lent is a season of acknowledging our consistent, daily need to repent. Share on X

Lent is a season of acknowledging our consistent, daily need to repent—and therefore, of our consistent need for a savior. It’s important to remember how desperately we need to be saved from our sin, and that Jesus is the only hope we have to be saved; that reality grounds us in His kindness and goodness.

During Lent, We Pare Down Our Excesses

Traditionally, Christians have understood Lent to be a time when unneeded things are stripped away in order to remind us of our neediness before and for God. Christians still do this today, giving up meat or chocolate, or abstaining from alcohol or watching television.

By taking away things that divert our attention and feed our desires, the season of Lent invites us to attend to what is really happening on the inside of our souls—and to have our needs met by God first and only.

Read the other two reasons why we need Lent here, at RELEVANT Magazine.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Ash Wednesday, christian lent, Christianity, church, Lent

The Gift of Celebration, The Gift of Friendship

January 14, 2015 by Ann 16 Comments

I’m a celebrator by nature. I love throwing parties, surprising people, and making up excuses to celebrate the people I love. I love being the one to gather friends together to show them why they are worthy of encouragement, attention, and time. Celebrating is a love language for me.

But my birthday falls in January, which, I’ve found, is not a great time to have a birthday if you like celebrating. For most of us, January is recovery month. We’re tired, we’ve used all our vacation time, we’ve made New Year’s resolutions that forbid us from eating sugar or carbs, we’re sick of seeing people, and we just spent a lot of money at Christmas. We’re tired of celebrating once January rolls around. We want to hibernate. We want to hole away.

Therein lies my problem; birthdays are special to me.

But then, last year, a friend asked me how I would feel most loved for my birthday. She wanted to celebrate me, she said. Even in her asking, I felt loved. And I told her the truth: I wanted to be with my closest friends, and I wanted to share a meal together. No gifts, no songs—just time gathered around the table.

And that is what happened, in the cold and dreary month of January. Ten of us shared a meal. We paid for babysitters so that our conversation could go deep; that in and of itself was a precious gift of time and money. Each friend surprised me by sharing an encouragement for my coming year of life. They told me how they saw Jesus at work in me, and they prayed for me. I sat there and felt deeply celebrated, and deeply welcomed into the new year of my life by the friends I loved the most. In my memory, it remains a holy and beautiful night.

To me, I have come to realize how that night encapsulates what is meant to be at the center of every gathering; in fact, what is meant to be at the heart of friendship. For true friendship is a kind of gathering. It is pulling people together around a shared table or on a soft couch, and it will cost us in time and even in money. True friendship means giving those things that my friends offered to me on my birthday night—time, encouragement, intentionality, welcome, love. And true friendship is celebration; it is seeing what is worthy of encouragement in those we love and declaring those things over them. It is seeing the presence of Jesus in the other and acknowledging his beauty through them.

Birthdays only happen once every twelve months, but gathering to celebrate those we love—to speak truth and hope and encouragement to them and over them—that can happen any time of the year. We can gather in coffee shops and pray for one another. We can gather on playgrounds and encourage one another. We can gather around kitchen tables and welcome one another. We can gather in restaurants and celebrate one another. And we can gather, always, and love one another—no matter where, no matter when.

If this blog post was encouraging to you, I would be honored if you would consider partnering with me as a writer! Click here to read more!

Filed Under: About, God, Life, Writing Tagged With: birthday, birthdays, celebrating, celebrating well, celebration, Christian, Christianity, church, faith, family, friendship, God, God's faithfulness, Jesus, joy, love, Writer

Climbing: A Piece for Weavings

December 1, 2014 by Ann 2 Comments

My most recent article is up at Weavings blog–a reflection on my time in Meteora, Greece, and what it taught me about relationship with God. Meteora is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and the monasteries that sit on the tops of mountains have been a reflection, for me, of what it means to seek God.

I’d love for you to click over to Weavings and join me there!

Filed Under: God, Guest Post, Life, Writing Tagged With: Christianity, church, climbing the mountain of God, faith, God, greece, guest post, Jesus, meteora, meteora greece, monastery, monk, nun, Turkish Delight, Weavings, Weavings blog, Writer

Relationship with God: My Newest Piece at RELEVANT Magazine

November 28, 2014 by Ann 6 Comments

My most recent piece about relationship with God is up at RELEVANT Magazine. I’d love for you to check it out!

“Having a personal relationship with God”—it’s a phrase that gets tossed around in many Christian circles. But what does it actually mean to have a relationship with the Savior of the Universe?

Knowing God is going to look different from any other relationship in our lives. We can’t see God. We can’t look across the table at our favorite coffee shop and talk with Jesus in bodily form. So, in a world where we cannot text God or send Him an email, what does it look like to be in a relationship—to be in a friendship—with the one who created all things (Colossians 1:16)?

Intentionality

No deep relationship happens apart from intentional cultivation. Even the relationships that seem to happen “organically” in our lives—those friends we click with immediately—need to be nurtured to one degree or another. We reach out to the people we care about, and we have to seek to be intentional in order to get to know one another. Determining that we actually do want to grow in our friendship with God—and then setting aside intentional time to spend with Him—is an important first step toward getting to know Him better.

No deep relationship happens apart from intentional cultivation.

But while we may be intentional about growing in relationship with God, it may seem challenging because we may not feel God’s intentionality toward us. Still, His intentionality in loving and knowing us is always, always there. The One who created us—the One who “knit [us] together” (Psalm 139:13)—has never wavered in His intentionality toward us. He made each of us specifically and with great love. We are worth a great deal to Him (Luke 12:6-7).

We don’t have to ask God to pencil us in to His calendar—He always has time for us. Whether it is 15 minutes in the morning where we read the Bible and pray, an hour-long jog while appreciating His creation, or a weekend retreat spent worshiping Him, consistent, intentional time spent getting to know God is one of the foundations of a deep relationship with Him.

Communication: Talking

But what do we do during the time that we’ve set aside to connect with God? As with earthly relationships, the hope is that we will communicate. Communication with God looks both similar and different from communication with earthly friends, but it includes what all healthy relationships include—sharing, confessing and praising.

We share our hearts with God through prayer and tell Him what we’re excited about, what we’re worried about, and what we are thinking about. We open up about the places we have fallen short and confess our sin to Him. And we praise Him for who He is and what we love about Him. We thank Him. We worship Him. Just as we tell our earthly friends how much we appreciate them and are thankful for them, we do the same with God—to the highest degree.

Read about another two aspects of relationship with God, Communication: Listening, and Acts of Love and Service over at RELEVANT!

Filed Under: God, Guest Post, Writing Tagged With: 4 ways to know God, Christianity, church, faith, God, hope, Jesus, knowing God better, Relationship with God, RELEVANT, Relevant Magazine, what does it mean to have relationship with God

Honoring the Sabbath Like a Command: My Newest Piece for RELEVANT

October 16, 2014 by Ann 4 Comments

My newest piece is over at RELEVANT today–a consideration of the importance of the Sabbath in our modern lives. I know that God’s heart is for us to be a people who rest Him and trust in Him, and I believe that observing the Sabbath is one of the key ways we can do that practically in our increasingly full lives.