I close my eyes and, effortlessly, I’m a child again, sitting in my parents’ blue Plymouth Reliant, riding in the dark along WI-29. Heading home. Everything is perfectly still, except for the rhythmic thunk…thunk…thunk as our wheels speed over the seams in the road. My eyes are closed — I’m thinking as always — but I open…
Do you want to grow as a writer, but don’t know the next steps to take? Do you have great ideas, but they never sound as powerful on the page as they do in your head? Do you love to write, but feel stuck as a writer? Do you want to get published, but don’t know where to begin?…
Jeremiah 17:5—8: This is what the Lord says: “Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans and turn their hearts away from the Lord. They are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future. They will live in the barren wilderness, on the salty flats where no one lives….
“Conversations can get you into weird spaces.” –Judah Smith A while ago I joined a new Facebook group, which shall remain nameless. I’ll just say this: many old friends were a part of it and it was fun, initially, to reminisce about the past and talk about the old trouble we got into. But that’s…
I always realized only in part as though through a glass darkly. But still I assumed I could grasp I could know I assumed. But now not disillusioned but in awe amazed on my knees on my face Who are you? Can you be known? You sent prophets sent a Son But still, assumptions filters,…
We were raised to be timid, most of us. In the tiny white churches speckling the countryside, we were taught to be cautious, to be courteous, to be kind and good and avoid even the appearance of evil. Being a good Christian looked like wearing clean, pressed clothes to Sunday School, like going to grandma’s…
You move along a sidewalk in a busy city. You can see your breath with each exhale into the winter air. A homeless man comes into view leaning back on the building ahead. Do you… a) Avert your eyes and keep walking?It’s as if not seeing him, makes him not real. b) Drop a few…
Think about your good friends. How many conversations have you had over the last year? How many events have you attended together? In each conversation or at each event, you learned a bit more about your friend, right? Prayer, at its core, is a relationship-building tool—a way to build and sustain a friendship with God….
I have a little secret: I never wanted to be a mother. At least not in the conventional sense. And certainly not a mother to four. I wasn’t one of those baby-loving, babysitting girls who fawned over the little ones in the church nursery. I had more important things to do like schoolwork and have a…
I said something on Twitter the other day that made me stop and think. And made others stop and think. It was this: “Write bravely. Use up all those good ideas now, don’t save them. There will be more. Art comes from abundance.” The idea came in response to Glennon Doyle Melton’s post on “Forever Tries“; she…
Shalom. It was a word that in our college days we thought was odd and a bit funny and so when it came up so often that semester of college during chapel, we snapped. It was an immature inside joke that said, hey that word is funny and we don’t know what to do with…
I remember reading Kathleen Norris’ slim volume called The Quotidian Mysteries, where she talks about washing dishes as an entrance into the holy. And reading Ann Voskamp and her contemplation of the views outside of her kitchen window as moments of experiencing the goodness of God that she would number as gifts. It all felt…
I ease my body into this new body of water, the snap-and-go tub in our new home, 1000 miles from our last, the one under the cover of mountains. And I remember how I’ve eased my aching body into bathtubs: the one they finally let me get into when I was being induced with my…
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….