Caregiving, Snow Globes, and Stress Tests

Caregiving, Snow Globes, and Stress Tests

Life is made up of changes. Whether your transition is exciting or difficult, chosen or forced upon you, change brings stress.  I’m in the middle of an ongoing transition that I didn’t choose, would never choose, and had no choice but to accept. I am a caregiver. To...

One Degree of Freedom

One Degree of Freedom

Fifteen-year-old Adriana Nicu lives in the sheltered world of Bucharest, Romania, in the year 1987. Under the rule of Communist president Nicolae Ceaușescu, citizens of Bucharest live with the eyes and ears of the government ever present. Adriana’s future, which will...

Our Holy Artist

Our Holy Artist

The Holy Spirit is the member of the Triune God whose role is hardest to define. Can it be that part of his job description includes creating art? He convicts us of sin, guides us into truth, draws us toward Christ, transforms us, and hides the Word in our hearts. He...

The Flawed Women in Jesus’ Genealogy

The Flawed Women in Jesus’ Genealogy

The women who were Jesus’ great-great-great-ancestors had issues. Their problems might not necessarily qualify them as bad (as in Liz Curtis Higgs’ Bad Girls of the Bible) or even lost (Lost Women of the Bible by Carolyn Custis James), but they had their shortcomings....

Not Wrong, Just Different

Not Wrong, Just Different

Before I moved overseas as a missionary, I learned a phrase guaranteed to help with those inevitable collisions with my new culture and the way they did things. “It’s not wrong. It’s just different.” That one-size-fits-all saying worked for everything. I whipped it...

Learning Gratitude

Learning Gratitude

I sat at my laptop, thinking about the many ways I’ve changed by looking at the world through cultural lenses. One thing’s for sure: I couldn’t remain the same. I’ve experienced love from people who valued relationship over agenda, who wouldn’t hesitate to give up...

Vertigo Taught Me Balance

Vertigo Taught Me Balance

Balance has always been important to me. I thrive on variety and fear being one-dimensional, so I dabble in a host of things, contorting myself as I try to keep them all suspended mid-air. Until just recently, I felt almost cocky when it came to balance. I thought I...

Do You Hate Mother’s Day?

Do You Hate Mother’s Day?

“It was the Sunday I hated most of the whole year,” writes Marlo Schalesky in Empty Womb, Aching Heart. “There was a huge vase at the front of the church filled with dozens of beautiful long-stemmed pink roses. . . One rose for each mother in the congregation.  Of...

When Writing Is (just) a Part-Time Gig

Women’s lives are busy. You came to this website because you suspect God has called you to write. But what if you work 40+ hours per week? How do you squeeze one more thing into your already-bursting schedule? We fantasize our best-seller enabling us to hire a...

Taryn Hutchison
Taryn grew up in a town with 75 people, three million chickens, several dogs, and two imaginary friends. She went on to live in two other countries and visit a host of others on six continents. Taryn started writing in mid-life and has authored four books: One Degree of Freedom and Two Lights of Hope are young adult historical fiction set in Cold War Romania; Sentenced to Life is the story of a prisoner who finds redemption; and We Wait You: Waiting on God in Eastern Europe is a memoir about her years as a single missionary in Eastern Europe. Taryn and her husband live in a sleepy town in North Carolina. She recently obtained a master's degree in writing and is an adjunct writing instructor at a small university. She has come full circle, minus the imaginary friends.

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