There were so many things I looked forward to before having children, but one that couldn’t come fast enough was getting to enact the nightly ritual of story time again. (Seriously, not fast enough. I think we started reading books to our firstborn when he was five weeks old and his eyes didn’t even open…
One of the interesting things about becoming an adult is that I find myself asking fewer questions about the meaning of life. When I was a child, I lobbed a constant barrage of “whys” at my parents from the backseat, the dinner table, or our nightly check-ins before bed. Why is the sky blue? Why…
I love to lead and teach. It’s a part of my natural gifting, the way I’m wired. These traits have been evident from an early age. My mom recalls with fondness the authority with which I lined up my stuffed animals in my bedroom after school, demanding their attention and presenting the new material I’d…
On my first day of student teaching I met Jerome. I was training to work as a special education teacher and was assigned to a summer school class of fourth and fifth graders with autism and other cognitive impairments. It was a lively place. Jerome moved like a bouncing ball, limbering from one part of…
Recently I read Ann Voskamp’s beautiful, heart wrenching post about the situation in Iraq. In it she outlines the impossible choices children face there – girls sold into sexual slavery, forced to have their virginity surgically remade only to be taken again and again. Children denied an education. Babies as young as three years old…
I am insecure. Way more than I’d like to admit. Way more. When we get home from parties, I replay social interactions in my head because I’m afraid I might have said something strange or wrong or unintentionally hurtful. Often I find myself hesitating to initiate conversations because I convince myself that the other person wouldn’t…
I was single for most of my twenties. I was hopeful about finding Mr. Right but it seemed like a long shot because I was a campus pastor. Most of the men in my life were college undergraduates or married colleagues in ministry, neither of which were appropriate pools for mate selection. After reading a…
I got rejected this week. It was an article, a story I was a really proud of, submitted to a prestigious magazine where a couple of my friends have been published recently. I’d polished the prose, even had someone look it over before I sent it in, only to receive a not-unfamiliar response. “Thank you…