What if Jesus doesn’t want to keep us from pain? What if the Hard Things and Broken Places are where we come to know the Lord? What if he is growing within us a heart full of courage? What if he wants to grow this within our children as well? On April first, just before I […]
The Inhale and Exhale of Life
Today I am thinking about the Assyrian Christians. At the beginning of the Syrian Crisis I listened on NPR to a woman’s testimony of life in the war zone. Her voice comes to my mind today, and I wonder if she is alive, if her children are alive, if she has survived. These words that […]
Where Privilege Blinds, Love Sees
In a culture where “I was naked and you clothed me” means we donate used items to the Goodwill, where “I was hungry and you gave me food” means we offer a couple of bucks out the window to a panhandler, and where “I needed shelter and you took me in” only makes us cringe, […]
In which Ellen White never raises her voice
Part of my husband’s inheritance as a fourth generation Seventh-Day Adventist was a vast collection of red-covered books by one of the church’s key founders, Ellen White. Most of the books were passed down from his great-grandfather, and at one point we had two whole shelves of these tiny tomes. Now, I have had a love-fear relationship with Ellen […]
Should The Writer Write?
(The comments on this post are excellent and profound. They bless me again, years later, and offer a better answer than my own post to the question “Should The Writer Write?”) When these 31 days of writing have ended I will do a follow-up post about what I’ve learned–and I have been learning. But I want […]
Perform
There was a huge barrier to writing–and see, here I am writing about writing again, despite my noblest of intentions–that had its roots in a pressure to perform. One could say the same for living, for being. The pressure to perform draped my existence much the way a wet wool sweater might: heavy, weighing down. […]
The Writer Climbing
We hiked our favorite trail today before the sun arched high in the sky, and I remembered a hike we’d taken when Eddie was still an infant. It had felt like such a milestone then, to be out there on my own with five children. Now there are six, and somehow six seems easier than five. Today I had […]
The Writer Emerging
Emerge: move out of or away from something, and come into view. It was a day in May in Oklahoma, and 30 years had passed since shame had silenced her tongue. A mama now, that girl from long ago was lifting the window to listen to her children play in the spring-green field behind her […]
The Writer Coming Forth
“Lazarus, come forth!” –Book of John, Chapter 11 Where Adam had hidden, swathed by death’s foreshadowing, Lazarus laid literal, enshrouded within a tomb. Death had conquered completely, but when Jesus spoke, deep called unto deep at the sound of his voice, and Lazarus awakened. The magic is that when Jesus said come, he came. That’s where the magic happens for […]
The Writer Hiding
For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property, giving to one five talents, giving to another two, and to another, one. The servant who had received the five talents went at once and traded, making five talents more. The servant who had […]