Journeying Home Together
One year ago, on New Year’s Day of 2018, God did what I never thought He would have to do. He told me to be quiet. For the past ten years or so, His command to me has been to speak – loudly and boldly, in writing and onstage – about the transformative power of His love and how He has worked miracles in my life. Too often I have
Last spring my family had the chance to travel to the mountains of West Virginia to visit my husband’s extended family. The highlight of the trip, for me, was visiting the farm where my mother-in-law grew up: deep in the Shenandoah Valley, nestled between the rolling hills and a hilly mile’s walk from the nearest road – which wasn’t paved. (And the nearest road wasn’t a big one, either.) The
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
Ten minutes after I should have left, I pulled the carefully-placed bobby pins from my hair and tossed them onto the bathroom counter. “I should be there by now,” I told Him. “And this doesn’t make any sense…” Once my hair was somewhat-satisfactorily in a ponytail, I kicked my brown flats back into the recesses of my closet and grabbed my Converse from their spot by my bed. Lacing them
I’d seen her at church for awhile – how long, I’m not sure, because I was in my own self-imposed solitary confinement and wasn’t fully aware of anything going on outside of myself. But I had seen her, and based on what I saw, I had my assumptions. She was in *that* community group, so she was obviously one of the popular kids. (Seriously. This is how I think.
My husband and I aren’t big watchers of (current) TV shows. If we’re going to watch anything on TV, our default is “Friends” reruns on Netflix. We’ve seen the entire series way too many times because honestly, there’s just not much on the few channels we get that we’re interested in watching. (Also, as a side note, we’re now incapable of having an entire conversation without a reference to the
Hey there, mama. You’re sending your little one off for their first day of school, huh? It might actually be their first day of school – their first steps into the world of kindergarten – or this might be one of their last first days. Mine? She’s in third grade now, so I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. We haven’t been at this thing too long, but I’ve learned
She sat on the crinkly exam room paper, her eight-year-old body tiny on the table meant for adults more than twice her size. Her paper gown the nurse had given her was bunched around her neck, her shoulders were hunched, and her big, brown eyes were round with anxiety. “Here we go,” the nurse said, and my little girl grabbed my hand. What followed was what seemed like a forever-long
It’s that time of year again, and some days it’s almost enough to make me log off social media for good. Sometimes it’s just not great for my soul. I tap open Instagram to see what’s going on, and there it is. Every day, it’s the same thing – a different person, yes, but the same thing. A picture of a deck overlooking a mountain vista, a coffee cup in
