Welcome to The Peony Vale

Here we are again. Or perhaps, if you haven’t followed every website I ever created and read every story I told, this is the first time we are meeting. If so, hello. It is so nice to meet you. Come in and enjoy a cup of coffee with me. Let’s talk our way through this new, but also old and familiar, door together, shall we?

We can squeeze next to each other at our small kitchen table. If its lack of comfort feels too unappealing, we can move to the couch. It is big and cozy enough for our family of five. Yes. Let’s meet there. I am already curling my bare feet under me and sinking into the soft cushions.

I like to imagine this space as everything a true home is meant to be. Not walls and windows, but warmth and welcome. A place where we can finally exhale. Where stories of restoration and hope are spoken out loud, and beauty grows from what once was broken.

For the Lord, in His infinite goodness, never leaves us (Deuteronomy 31:8). He finishes what He starts (Philippians 1:6). So if loss, betrayal, chaos, fear, pruning, or crushing are your current reality, know that this is not the end. He has beauty for ashes. Rest. Renewal. Redemption. Restoration. He has you (Psalm 139:10).

When we have been pressed so far that we cannot possibly see how life could be okay again, He is fortifying us. Just as peonies sometimes need a touch of ash mixed into their soil to strengthen their roots, He is at work - even, and perhaps especially, in the dark.

The Peony Vale is that place for me and, I hope, for you too. It’s a return and a beginning all at once. Familiar soil, freshly turned. Strong, aged roots beneath it and sprouting forth.

So, whether you’ve read my words before or this is the first time our paths cross, I’m so glad you’re here.

This is where beauty takes root again.