whitney dziurawiec

And so we are back "home" (whatever that means), working and resting and preparing for the school year. We've had a little bit of a reprieve from the heat, which PRAISE THE LORD because body parts are starting to seriously swell on this pregnant lady, and I'm already craving all the fall comfort food so, autumn, you have my permission to arrive. The news is out now, and I'm flooded with the question: the " how are you feeling?" Which I don't particularly mind because I'm not exactly prepared to answer questions like how do you feel about being a mom? What are you going to decorate the nursery like? What type of birth are you going to have (which to this my answer is a confident, "Baby. I'm going to have a baby birth"). Of course, the only problem with this question is what I've found to be a common reaction among some mothers after I answer. "Well, my first trimester my hormones were out of whack and I barely slept a...

In many ways I feel worlds different than the last time I posted. I am wrapping up a summer of living in a staff communal house, with chaotic dinners and borrowed cereal and shared bowls of popcorn. Our room is a constant tornado of clothes, papers, books, and sand. Sand, everywhere. For the first time in a long time, I felt known. I didn't feel the need to smile when I was with them, which is how I define true friendship. I had four girls whom I discipled this summer and three of the four are criers. We're talking every Bible study, every discipleship, crying. Every time. I made it through somehow, helping them navigate their wild emotions and bridle them to be used by Christ, rather than being a hindrance to Him. And my prayer still is that 2 of my 4 women would go to the nations. The nations. God gripped my heart with His heart for the world this summer. He reminded me why I'm on staff with Cru. Not just to help students, not just to reach the students on my campus, ...

When I think of every trial and hardship I have faced in my life, I am able to count at least one or two products of redemption that the trial grew into. Oaks of righteousness that have grown from seeds of suffering, a small forest of them from my short life. They have bored the words of Romans 8:28 into my soul, the hope for good, the heart-check of "do I truly love Him?", the waiting in anticipation. But, honestly friends, there is one seed from which I have yet to see redemption grow. It started terrorizing my innocent 10 year-old self, who beforehand had no idea that sleep could be something so unattainable. A whole year of staring wide-eyed into the darkness. I realized at that age the loneliness of late hours while the rest of the house breathes in slumber. I prayed because they told me to pray. I was prayed over. I remember shifting from the futility of waking my parents each night to bearing the sleeplessness on my own. And at ten years old, I was forc...

All through high school and college we find our friends in our surroundings. We look to our left and right at the desks next to us in Algebra. We find them down the hall in the dorm. From elementary school to college, we experience our life changes alongside our friends. We started puberty and endured the hormones together. We got our licenses in the same year. We talked about classes and homework and everything was the same, no wonder it felt so easy to make friends--we had the same lives with the same timelines. And I somehow assumed that's how it would always be. I first began to feel this disconnect when the first bestie got married, right after our sophomore year of college. As someone who could not have been further away from marriage, there was a foreignness of watching one of my best friends experience this major life change with which I could not also partake. I remember something actually stinging inside me as I watched her walk down the ai...

The sun shines and my coffee grows cold and of all the thoughts swirling around my head on this Good Friday morning, the thought of barrenness is what comes to mind. This theme throughout the Pentateuch of God intervening in women's wombs, His insertion of new life where before there had only been barrenness, is at the head of Jesus' genealogy. The wives of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob:  Sarah. Rebecca. Rachel. Barren, barren, barren. All three of these could not in and of themselves produce the new life they so longed for. These women cried out with anguish for life to grow inside them, life that they could not themselves create. For these women, new life was only possible through spiritual intervention. This is not coincidence. This curse extends beyond infertility, it bores into our hearts. With death as humanity's curse, barrenness is the sign of our inadequacy: we cannot produce new life on our own. We are dead, we are barren, we a...

My arms feel flimsy and floppy from a makeshift workout because I'm boycotting outside until I don't need three layers to go running (even though I am well aware of the reality that people who go outside more enjoy the weather more, and I do not care). The semester is half over, so I'm 3/4 done with my first year of full-time ministry. More than anything, more than skills or relationality or hard work or charm, I have realized my need to be full of Him, absolutely bursting. To seek and thirst and drink up all of the Living Water from the Word before I walk on campus. I've realized the war that is waged on the souls who have given their lives to full-time ministry. The wars of doubt and fear, the anxiety that is living on support, the gifts and talents that we lean on more heavily than Christ. There is a tension we walk in each day as we trust Him for our manna in more literal ways than we ever have before. He has given me a heart for the world. Because let's be ...

Spring is sneaking up, melting the gray snow, making our days golden once again, sunlight dancing around the living room. We await eagerly but soberly because this is not our first rodeo and we know there will be at least one more snow as winter continues to grasp at its last straws. The wind whirls around as the branches shake with the anticipation of new life. Yes, new life is on its way, but there are no traces of it yet under the wet, dirty snow. Perhaps underground the seeds are taking root, the buds are beginning to awake, but I forgot that spring isn't all flowers and green grass. Spring begins with the mess and the mud of melting snow. It begins with the days we are too optimistic to wear a coat and end up shivering all day. The beginning of spring can be more frustrating than the whole winter, as it teases us, ruins our shoes, surprises us with snow. As the miracle of life that grows from death begins, here we all are: frustrated, muddy, shivering, impatient. Sloshing we...