Our Miraculous Home—And God’s Call to Steward It Well
Our heavenly Father knew exactly what every living thing would need to survive and created the Earth with these needs in mind.
Cultivating Our Imagination in Marriage
The late Yogi Berra, famed manager of the New York Yankees and master of nonsensical one-liners, is reported to have said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” This is both ridiculous and profound, particularly as it pertains to life at the half-way point. One of the ways not to…
Living Out Loud
After my husband, Christopher, and I teach together, people often approach us and say, “You two are so vulnerable!” Their feedback is infused with equal parts awe and trepidation. Their responses are correct. We do share vulnerably. In fact, we do more than teach out loud. For whatever reason, God seems to have called both…
My Journey with Side-stepping the Truth
Confession is humbling, embarrassing, and at times, even mortifying. So why bother? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply hide our sins and pretend all is well? Denial might be easier, but if we want to get free from sin, confession needs to become a regular part of our lives. Confession helped me break my 40-year…
Defend or Reconcile?
My husband and I process conflict from opposite ends of the spectrum. When I’m angry, I become a hedgehog who curls up in a ball and tries to become invisible. He morphs into a loud, intense rhino with defensive tendencies. Without really being aware of it, we were following the same broken patterns that our…
10 Ways to Tame Your Social Media Craving
Loneliness in the United States has now reached epidemic levels. A recent study by Cigna Health Service Company revealed that “two in five Americans sometimes or always feel that their relationships are not meaningful… and one in five report they rarely or never feel close to people.” This is curious given the unprecedented opportunities we…
Fighting for Joy through Gratitude
Throughout my 27-year marriage, my husband has encouraged me to get away at least once a year. I typically drive to a friend’s cottage, heavy laden with more books than any human could possibly get through in three days and spend my time reading, walking along the beach and praying. It restores my soul and…
Moving Beyond Defensiveness: Conversing About Race
If my experience of trying to root out my racial bias and racist tendencies is at all normative, one of the most significant barriers is defensiveness. Though it makes complete sense for whites to feel defensive when the topic of racism comes up, if we want to bring this systemic sin to an end, we…
When It Seems God Doesn’t Answer
Our all-powerful, all-loving God encourages us to ask him for what we want. But sometimes, after we’ve put it out there, he seems to ignore us. We are then left with the unmet longings and needs that inspired our prayers, as well as questions about his purported benevolence. I have repeated this course multiple times….
10 Components of a Godly Apology
The apology seems to be at an all-time high, and simultaneously, an all-time low. Thanks to public figures such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anthony Weiner, Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, Kristen Stewart, and David Petraeus, Americans have a grid for fallen humans admitting their mistakes in front of others. This is good. What’s not so good is…
Entering into God’s Joy Through Celebration
My husband and I had the honor of officiating our eldest son’s wedding this summer. After the ceremony, all one hundred guests gathered under an enormous tent in our front yard where tables laden with hundreds of sunflowers and cosmos, heaps of perfectly prepared barbecue, and ice cold root beers awaited them. We toasted, feasted,…
Eight Dangers of a Writer’s Life
When I recently transitioned from pastoring to writing, the learning curve was much steeper than I anticipated. I foolishly assumed that since I had been crafting sermons and talks on a weekly basis, I would be able to seamlessly redirect my creativity. I been warned about how insanely competitive and arduous a writer’s life could…