MerlinBernetWrites

  So… I’m starting a new series here called “God Stories.”  Think of it as my way of sharing the crazy, surprising, and wonderful ways God showed up in our lives.     I got married three months ago. My husband and I honestly saw God’s hand everywhere—from how the proposal came together to the tiniest details of the wedding prep. There are so many stories I could tell, but here’s one that still makes me smile every time I think about it. When we were venue-hunting in Chennai, I had one very specific dream: a wedding by the beach with a lawn. Basically, I wanted to see the waves without sinking into the sand. Sounds picky, right? But somehow, we actually found a place that was exactly what I wanted.I was over the moon once it was booked. Fast forward to two months before the wedding.I visited the venue with my décor team around 4:30 p.m.—the same time we planned to hold the ceremony. And guess what? Instead of the soothing sound of waves, I was hit with blaring music a...

Language and words may be the greatest gifts we can offer ourselves. At 28, I find myself torn between gratitude for discovering this insight relatively early and a quiet regret that it took so long—because I know my childhood and adolescence could have been much different had I used the right language to name my emotions. This realization stands as one of my most necessary lessons, one I am deeply grateful to have learned from my mentors. I was raised in a household, much like many Indian families, where processing emotions was not a thing (though thankfully, that is gradually changing). Yet, by grace, I have been guided to essential lessons, and among the most important is the power of naming my emotions. This simple act has been life-changing. We, as humans, feel a sea of emotions. It could be a long, long list—curiosity, awe, wonder, exhaustion, resentment, and so on—but most of the time, we tend to put them into just two or three buckets. It’s either “I’m happy,” “I’m sad,” or “I’...

when nothing around me bends toward changes.. when the world stays still and favors none of my plans,   I look inward, really look! so much has shifted inside me, in that most holy room where the living God lives. he's at work there, in the quiet and the dark, rearranging, schooling, refining. He does not rush the outside; he tends to my heart. Here's a temple inside the most holy place and God is there, working in the dark. not rewriting headlines, but rewriting me. new priorities. new dreams. new eyes. i am becoming someone i barely recognise. He is alive within that secret place, rivers start to rise there slow at first, then pouring rivers of life that carry goodness outward, making change from the inside until the world must follow.