It all started on a Tuesday night. My husband and I had been on our daughter about completing her school work, and since it was the end of her quarter, I’d been on her like white on rice about her “missing” assignments and such. So, she suddenly realized she had a couple of things due…
When I was 18 years old, I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. I could not make a phone call without sweating. I could not sign my name with someone watching. I could not speak to strangers without turning red. I could not go to school without a knot in my stomach. Coupled with depression,…
Knocking 22 years’ worth of dust off a resume stretches the definition of “creative writing” to its limit. After giving my time away for two decades, can I convince even myself that my skills are marketable? Am I still capable of holding my own in the workforce? The questions hang in the air like a challenge. My…
Anxiety likes to hang out in waiting rooms. If you’ve ever waited in a doctor’s office to hear the diagnosis, or in a surgical area to learn the results, or in a hospital room to get your pain meds, you know what I mean. Anxiety rumbles in the waiting room like tremors before an earthquake,…
If you are fearful and anxious, you may be able to mask it very well for years, as I did. In fact, you may mask it so well that you don’t even recognize it as being a problem, but it will eventually catch up with you and affect your emotional, spiritual and physical well being….
We’ve all heard news stories about “free-range children,” those unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on who you ask) children who are allowed to BE OUTSIDE WITHOUT THEIR PARENTS! One news story involved 6- and 10-year-old siblings. Their parents dropped them at a nearby park with instructions to be home for dinner at 6:00 p.m. When 6:00…
We’ve been invited to a church member’s home for a meal just three times in three years. As an accidental experiment in the Colorado city where we moved three years ago, we visited 17 churches, landing at 2 for about a year, 3 for a month each, and visited the others once or twice. Not…
I edged to the front of my folding chair, bobbing and weaving my head to find a view through the heads in front of me. “Do you have a child there?” an older woman sitting next to me asked with a slight accent as she pointed toward the stage. “I do!” I beamed. “She’s there,…
I love face-to-face conversations with friends—long-time friends or brand-new friends. I do not prefer large social gatherings, mingling with people I barely know and engaging in shallow conversations. I also love extended time alone with a good book. You guessed it. I am an introvert. A major part of my job, though, is people. Lots…
I grew up in an Italian family in a predominantly Italian community in the western suburbs of Chicago where I learned how the pillars of my ethnic heritage are open hearts, open doors, warm hospitality, and the sacredness of the table. My grandparents emigrated to America in the 1920s. My maternal grandmother, my Nonna Pierina,…
I encountered Ecclesiastes long before I knew much about God. My honors English teacher forced our roomful of ambitious high school juniors to dig through the King James text to figure out what the word vanity means. “Vanity of vanities … all is vanity” (Eccl. 1:2, KJV). Meaningless was among the synonyms our class came…
I love the story my mom tells of my first dance recital. Of course, as memories go, it is augmented by the photos: pre-Instagram squares of naturally occurring haze. I am onstage for the tap show in a fringed pink satin leotard with about 20 other preschoolers. Because of my height, I am in the…
Not long ago, I found myself walking with a small team of missionaries along the rubble-filled streets of Mathare, the second largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, with a population of more than half-million people. We stepped over ditches filled with raw sewage and held hands as we walked to the homes of students who attend…
Authority is a hard topic for women, especially women in the church. What does it mean to have authority and to act in our authority as women? Too often, a woman in authority is called bossy rather than authoritative. We don’t want the bossy label, but how do we act in our God-given authority? More…