Despite the chaos and uncertainties 2020 has brought with her, we’re still in a hopeful and notable era when women are increasingly valued, heard, and esteemed. There’s movement both in our country and in the Church, and even if more tortoise-like than hare, progress is reason to celebrate. But, as opposed to a “Girl Power”…
Confession is something I used to do only in private. While I publicly confessed “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” when I was baptized and occasionally confessed to another person a sin I’d committed against them, I otherwise considered confession to be a purely personal matter. Oh, I confessed my sins…
My Christian upbringing taught me the gravity of sin. I knew I was a sinner. Knowing the joy of forgiveness, not so much. My parents herded me and my four siblings to church every Sunday, usually twice. I attended Sunday school where my aunt lined up her pupils against the wall and instructed us to…
Confession is humbling, embarrassing, and at times, even mortifying. So why bother? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply hide our sins and pretend all is well? Denial might be easier, but if we want to get free from sin, confession needs to become a regular part of our lives. Confession helped me break my 40-year…
I remember the day I met Jesus. It was in a basement in Chicago. I was invited by a friend and when I got there and swung the door open I saw other 20-something people like me. They were sitting around long tables that had Bibles piled on the ends. There were bowls of snacks…
My personal library is full of books on how to deal with difficult people. Pages in these books are dog-eared so that I can easily find sections in times of crisis. Sentences are underlined multiple times for emphasis, and exclamation marks and notes fill the margins. The humbling part of reading these books is recognizing…
Too many nights, in the quiet of my bedroom, I’m an unwilling actor playing a part in my own private drama. It’s like a movie set where the raucous din of the beer-swilling ringside crowd fades away and the bright arena lights dim, leaving a solitary, naked bulb suspended over the ring. And there, trapped…
It started off so innocently. After hearing about it from what seemed like every person on the planet, I listened to the first season of Serial. Then I started listening to a few other podcasts that were recommended to me. Then I started subscribing regularly to a few political and comedy podcasts. I listened to…
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. Only five women are mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew 1:1-16….
Just then a woman who had hemorrhaged for twelve years slipped in from behind and lightly touched his robe. She was thinking to herself, “If I can just put a finger on his robe, I’ll get well.” Jesus turned—caught her at it. Then he reassured her: “Courage, daughter. You took a risk of faith, and…
I wish I were that gal who regularly rose before the roosters to spend hours in Scripture and prayer. And when I wrestle with the fact that I don’t seem to be her, I vacillate between making weak excuses for why I don’t just get my poop in a group and feeling shame for not…
“Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark.” Isaac Bashevis Singer Some nights never end. Alone in my head, I replay stories and the future seems dark as it dominates the landscape. I feel small and gloom overwhelms eight hours of space…
Sitting in the waiting room with dilated eyes, I could only make out pictures and headlines in the magazine I thumbed through. I saw a set of bullet points—some sort of symptoms—and as I squinted I recognized one after another. Feeling more sad than usual; Often aggravated; Crying easily; Experiencing a loss of meaning and…
Of all of our friends, my husband and I were most looking forward to the empty nest. We were going to be great at it! We’d travel. We’d go to the symphony. We’d eat out every night. We’d take romantic long weekends at least once a month. We were planning a wonderful post-kid life. My…