Ever since I started working on a feature article on domestic abuse, I have been mulling over the topic of repentance: What does it mean? How does it look? In a situation as destructive as spousal abuse, should the abuser refuse to repent, is that grounds for divorce in God’s eyes? 

On Jan. 27, 2015, T—to protect privacy we are using only an initial—emailed leaders of her nondenominational church in western Washington state: “I’m asking for HELP! I’m desperately asking for help.” She said her husband had abused her with threats, lies, blame-shifting, and manipulation throughout 24 years of their marriage. She felt lost, afraid, broken.

When people ask Little Rock, Ark., resident Roosevelt Simmons about his five children, few are prepared for his answer. “I have a 20-year-old, a son and a daughter who are both 18. I’ve got a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old.” When a follow-up question about the 18-year-olds comes, he explains they are two months and 10 days apart, but they’re not twins. The startled questioners “don’t know where to go after that,” he says.

This January’s women’s march didn’t make as big a splash as the one a year earlier, but it drew impressive numbers, an abundance of pink hats, and a sea of signs, some of which can’t be reproduced in a family magazine. One popular slogan is printable and worth considering, though: Well-behaved women seldom make history. Curious about the origin, I discovered that it first appeared in a scholarly essay about (of all things) Puritan burial customs in 17th-century New England. Then it became a book title and eventually a rallying cry for fourth-wave feminism.

I’ve figured out a quick and easy way for WORLD to instantly boost its following from Christian millennials. 

TAIPEI, Taiwan—On a sweltering summer day with a heat index of 110 degrees Fahrenheit, a man and a woman in formal attire posed on the steps of Shan-Chih Hall in Tatung University. The train of the young woman’s blue gown fanned behind her as her fiancé—perhaps near heat exhaustion in his three-piece suit—held her waist, obeying the direction of the photographer.

February brings Valentine’s Day, and the Christian writer whose advice 21 years ago left lots of valentines unsent has revised his thinking.