I have been taught in my Christian circles to put my feelings in their proper place through the truth of God’s Word, the Bible, and I absolutely believe that to be valid and wise. My emotions are often a runaway train heading toward certain destruction, so pulling back on the brakes of those and letting…
I confess. I love shoes. They were the last thing I bought before the pandemic hit. But they were bought in secret. With a credit card. An expensive pair of sandals I had been eyeing for a while. While on vacation in a city with my favorite store, I caved in. It was the last pair…
Chores on our farm have been rarely routine since a batch of four male kittens was born in our barn a few months ago, delivered unceremoniously in the corner of one of the horse stalls by a first-time mother. There was a horse occupying the same stall and the new little family was staying warm…
A few weeks ago, my husband, Rick, and I were on our way to New Hampshire to be with a sweet friend of ours who was graduating from a discipleship program. I wasn’t in the best of moods because I was in a bit of pain due to my recently diagnosed spinal stenosis (spinal column…
…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is. (C.S. Lewis) I experienced the impossible in the twilight of a morning….
As a physician-in-training in the late 1970s, I rotated among a variety of inner-city public hospitals, honing clinical skills with patients who were grateful to have someone, anyone, care enough to take care of them. There were plenty of street people who needed to be deloused before the “real” doctors would touch them, and there…
I was led into the conference room and seated at a massive table that filled most of the room. The solitary item on the table, a tissue box, was the first thing to catch my eye. Foreshadowing shows up in real life too, not just the movies. I didn’t want to be sitting in this…
I was 14 when I was first pressured to have sex with my boyfriend. As a young impressionable woman without the moral guidelines of the Bible, I allowed romance movies and novels to provide the lens through which I interpreted the meaning of sex. It was clearly 1) always passionate and 2) the best indicator…
I sneak out early to the deck, before anyone is awake. There’s an old plastic lawn chair, and beside it an antique white and black enamel table where I set my first cup of coffee. I bring my Bible, but instead of reading, I watch the lake and talk to God. There is a slight…
There is a significant age difference between my boss and me. Me:17. Him: I don’t know, really, maybe in his 40s—old enough to be married, to be a manager, to have his own office. Still, I consider him a friend. We chat, banter, and sometimes things get a little too flirtatious. But I don’t mind….
Not all stories need to be told on the public stage. My story first needed to be told in a therapist’s office. Lying on the couch in my living room. Crying with my husband. Punching my pillow. Breaking glass on a country road. All stories, however, need to be told; we need to be known;…
My mother gave me the sex talk in fourth grade, only after my public-school teacher had shown the class an educational video on the topic, to my evangelical parents’ horror. So, to correct my public school’s overreach, my mother planned an excursion for her and me: she would perform her due diligence as a good…
I woke to the song of mourning doves. Their soundtrack seems a part of the landscape here in the Texas Hill Country, along with the buzz of locusts on hot summer afternoons and the chirp of tree frogs in the scrub that separates our home from a fairway often inhabited by golfers with a penchant…
The blue lines on the pregnancy test appeared within seconds to form a bright, blue cross: we’d never done this before, but we knew exactly how to read it. I waved the stick with glee at my husband: “Positive! We’re pregnant,” I squealed. I looked down at the test again: our family was definitively plus…