NIKI FLORICA

Maybe this goes without saying, but isn't negativity the worst? I mean, you're just rolling along, enjoying God's grace and goodness, and someone just can't help trying to bring you down. Grumbling. Complaining. Poking holes in everything good. Sometimes we can resist that gravity, buoyed by thankfulness and love for the Lord. But sometimes, thankfulness isn't enough to keep us floating. Negativity is contagious, and the grumbling of others, more often than not, can drag us d

All right, y'all, who watched The Chosen Christmas Special on Sunday? If you did, please accept my fist bump through your computer screen. If you didn't—well. It's worth a watch. Powerful, beautiful stuff. In addition to stunning musical numbers and an excellent Christmas episode, several of the actors from The Chosen cast performed monologues on the names of God throughout redemptive history. Ironically, it was Judas Iscariot's (or rather, Luke Dimyan's) words that packed th

Christianity asks us to do a really hard thing when it comes to how we feel about ourselves. On one hand, we need to be brutally honest. The key to, well, everything is looking at ourselves with truth-coloured glasses and acknowledging all the brokenness that comprises us, which we alone can do nothing about. That key unlocks Jesus, because only when we truly acknowledge what we are can we give ourselves fully to him, ask for his help to make us something different. After tha

Sometimes I feel like a Lost Girl. Like I took a wrong turn at the second star on the right and ended up a thousand miles from Neverland, in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure out if I'm where I'm supposed to be or if I'm supposed to course-correct and if so, where to? I've never heard God's voice giving me GPS directions. Some people have, and I think that's an incredible blessing, but it just hasn't been my experience. Looking back on the past few years, an outsider lo

Want to hear a secret? Just kidding—it's not really a secret. I'm a smidge of a pessimist. Just kidding—it's more than a smidge. I think it stems from my fear of being caught unprepared for an emotional blow; I hate having hopes dashed or high expectations crushed. I hate being let down, so my subconscious coping mechanism is to lower my expectations on all fronts so I can't be disappointed. The problem? It also makes it much, much harder to get excited. School starts tomorro

I bombed my first driver's test. And, no, before you say, "Oh, I failed, too!" believe me when I say that mine was probably worse. In fact, I'm almost 100% sure. It's okay, I've accepted it . . . mostly. Failure was not something I was overly accustomed to, and I don't say that with any kind of arrogance or conceit whatsoever! Academically speaking, I just always worked hard and saw good results, and generally speaking, I don't spend much free time doing things I'm not okayis

Yesterday I turned the last page of C.S. Lewis', Miracles. Maybe it's an English major thing, but trudging through Lewis' spiritual musings just gets me going, tickles my fancy, turns my crank if you would. Here's one I dog-eared (which is only acceptable in books of this nature: I'd NEVER do it to a novel): "But behind all asceticism (*basically just severe self-denial—think puritans*) the thought should be . . . Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control ev

Surprise—I'm still here! Although normally I try to post blogs even while I'm on vacation, this year, I decided to give myself a break for a week of rest and relaxation in Northern Ontario. The time away was such a blessing, y'all: I even scratched some new items off my never-done-before list, INCLUDING swimming in black, weedy water infested by living creatures. Be proud of me. There are a few topics I could delve into for this post, but one in particular stood out to me whi

Ideas. Why is that such a scary word? Don't get any ideas. She's been filling her head with ideas. I think sometimes we forget that life is a process—a never-ending progression of ideas—and that living in this world means exposure to all kinds of them, just as living with Christ means being changed by the ideas he brought into the world when he came. I've lived most of my Christian life on the defensive. I knew what I believed and when I came against something that contradict

I'm usually pretty good at laughing at myself. You know, when the stakes are low. When things get stressful, though, and nobody else is laughing? Yeah, that kills my good humour. The past couple of months have marked a struggle to build competence in what I do. New tasks are always daunting, but new tasks along with the weight of dozens of people's expectations are crippling for someone like me. I wish I could say I'm a cauldron of confidence, but that would be a bald-faced l

Perspective is a gift. God knew we couldn't handle the full, grandiose scope of everything He's doing in our lives, so he gave us limited sight. A piece of the puzzle—our small, incomplete, but seemingly all-consuming perspectives of life. They're a gift in that we are not crushed by the overwhelming weight of the big picture, but Satan can use that gift and twist it to his advantage as well. C.S. Lewis' Screwtape talks about time as a spiritual thing. The present is where ti

Job training is no one's idea of a good time. All the uncertainty and awkwardness, the stupid mistakes, the overlooked details, the insecurity of comparing ourselves to the seasoned workers around us, the waking up at seven a.m. thinking about those lemon squares you left in the fridge last night without dating them . . . As first-world problems go, it's got to be a top contender. On a small scale, it's a glimpse into a mechanism God uses to grow us in life. It's a time of de

May 6th was the National Day of Prayer and Day of Reason—a thought-provoking combination. Benjamin Franklin once said, "The way to see by Faith, is to close the eye of Reason." Now, I respect Ol' Ben and can see his point in some respects. But I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all answer to the question of whether Reason and Prayer can be compatible, not only on May 6th but every day of the year. Upon searching further, I found a wide range of opinions in the faith vs. reaso

I recently saw a post that said something along the lines of, "Be the best at whatever you do," and it struck me as slightly far-fetched. How can we all be the best at our jobs? Wouldn't it be more realistic to strive for hard-working, dependable, competent? Maybe. But it reminds me of our objective as followers of Christ, who very specifically instructs us to "be perfect" as God is perfect. Rest assured, Christ knows this goal is eons beyond our reach. We are innately flawed

Don't you just love it when your daily devotion reaches out to slap you in the face? I certainly do. Well, mostly. Some of the time. It kind of depends on the slap. Sometimes a spiritual message targeted to what we're going through can be incredibly encouraging. Other times, that bible verse, song lyric, or line from a devotional is a hard wake-up call we need, but don't necessarily want. In both cases is evidence of God's intimate involvement in our lives, but if you ask me,

“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary ... It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't ... you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.” Why did I choose

I'm trying to start a new habit. I love going for walks down my country road when my head feels crowded with the things of this big ol' world we're just passing through. Sometimes I pray while I walk, but sometimes, especially lately, I listen to worship music. And though part of me itches against the idea that I need tunes to go for a walk—(FYI, I don't always)—most of me is thrilled about a new discovery I've made. The discovery that worship can happen anywhere, anytime, to

Life threw me for a loop this week, y'all. One minute I'm rolling along, feeling reasonably in-control of my routine, and the next I'm buying a car, job-hunting, preparing for my driver's test, and frantically trying to ready my latest manuscript for this year's #PitMad event—just to name a few of the surprises that, of course, had to fall within the same seven days out of 365. Naturally. At various points in this week, I felt absolutely out of control. Even now, I'm not too

Funny thing about toast—when you smell it, you want it. Ever notice that? I mean, there was a time when I would sooner eat dirt than toast, and I still can't deny its magical property of being appetizing in any and every context. It's just one of those things. Innately appealing, we need only to experience a whiff of it to crave it. Something in us just wants toast. What if I told you that Jesus and toast have a lot in common? See, the Word of God calls us to follow Jesus, bu

I am a Truthwatcher. I know because the very thorough results from my "Official Knights Radiant Order Quiz" told me so, and we book nerds take our fictional quizzes rather seriously. Now, Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive (and its 10 orders of Knights with different attributes) may be fictional, but I can't deny that my results gave me a little thrill. Maybe because a Truthwatcher is exactly what I want to be. What does it mean to search for the Truth, to shun deceptions