Journeying Home Together
I remember the morning clearly: I was driving my daughter to Mother’s Day out, crossing an overpass near my house, when a song carried me away from my present reality. With lyrics that penetrated my heart and touched something in me that needed to be reached, the song carried me into worship and brought tears to my eyes. The truth is, this happens to me a lot. Not as
This post was originally published on October 17, 2014, when the Ebola scare was in full swing. Recent events – though different – have stirred some of the same emotions in our collective heart, so I thought it might serve us all well to revisit this message. We’re in this mess together, friends. The other night I woke up in tangled sheets, damp from sweat and disoriented from a dream.
On a Thursday night about a year ago, I sat at the softball field waiting for my daughter’s softball game to start. I wasn’t watching her team warm up, though. I was watching for my parents to get there and claim their spots on the metal bleachers. They arrived just as the kids took the field. “How are things tonight?” my mom asked. That was what I had really been
It was my fifth trip to Belize before I ever really understood why I was there. Traveling with my church mission team, I knew the purpose of our trips: to work alongside our sister church in the capital city to reinforce the work they are already doing. That meant we provided for basic needs like food and shelter and beds and clothing, but it also meant that we led Bible
My husband was waiting for me to finish my nightly bedtime routine as I filled him in on all that had happened at a writing workshop I’d attended earlier that day. I leaned on the bathroom counter, my face lathered with soap, and said, “I just don’t want to be ‘the depression and anxiety girl’.” The workshop had done its job: it clarified my niche in writing and helped me to narrow my
A couple of months ago, while the world still slept in gray and brown here in Georgia, my husband carved an intricate network of biking trails through the woods behind our house. (I use them for walking, though, because the one time I ventured out on my bike I was scared to death. I’ll do it eventually. Just not yet.) It’s been so good for me to have a natural
I had a dream last week in which I was driving a huge truck. It wasn’t just any truck, either, but one of those massive ones they use in the rock quarry down the road from my house. One of those dump trucks on steroids, that dwarf school buses and make semi-trucks look like toys. One of those whose gargantuan spare tires require a police escort down the interstate. One of those. I drive
These words have been simmering for almost three weeks now, and even as I sit ready to tell the story I’m not sure they’re ready. It’s a story that must be told, though, and because time has a way of smoothing out the edges of what cuts us deeply – in good or bad ways – I need to make sure to get these words down while I can. The
She has always been a collector. (We try not to use the word “hoarder,” but yeah….let’s call a spade a spade.) Even now, as a more mature eight-year-old, she has boxes and baggies fully of miscellaneous treasures stowed away: leaves, tiny sticks, interesting rocks, beads. If it’s tiny, you can bet she has it squirreled away somewhere. When she was very little, she treasured each little handful of odds and ends
Light streamed into her darkened bedroom from the hallway as she asked the question: “Mommy….how….how is God three people? I mean…He’s God…but He’s Jesus and the Holy Spirit, too. How does He even do that?” If you’re a mom, you’ve been there. It was after 9:00, she should have been sound asleep, and she was hurling deep unanswerable questions of theological truth at me. I don’t think I have to tell
