It looks like one of my kids is going to follow in my footsteps as a foodie. A couple of months ago, I walked my twelve-year-old through the process of making a simple pasta dish. He is terrified of cutting his finger with a knife or burning his hand on the stove—things he’s seen me…
Bible Study
The Measure of a Year
As of this month, I will have spent an entire year in the book of Matthew with my Tuesday Bible study group. I have loved digging deep and going slowly through Matthew’s gospel. A whole year drinking down the life and ministry of the Savior while He walked the earth. The more I look at…
4 Questions for Your Bible Reading in 2020
Every year, in the days following Christmas, I make promises to myself. Weary of traveling for most of the holidays, sleeping little, and eating one Christmas dinner after another, I spend the last days of December mapping out a healthier life plan for the new year that includes more vegetables, earlier bed times, and less screen…
Rhythms of Remembering
My alarm clock was pretty rude this morning. Five-thirty is pitch dark. The remains of an all-night thunderstorm hung about the air, making my bed the obvious first choice. As my feet hit the floor, as I hunted for my slippers and shrugged on a long cardigan, as I headed to the coffee pot in…
Are You a Flaky Christian?
During my first few months as a pastor’s wife, I signed up to make and take dinner to a family who had lost a grandparent to a prolonged illness. I wasn’t a great cook at the time. Twenty-four years old and married barely two years, I was still regularly burning chicken and under-cooking eggs. I…
4 Questions for Your Bible Reading in 2019
Every year, in the days following Christmas, I make promises to myself. Weary of traveling for most of the holidays, sleeping little, and eating one Christmas dinner after another, I spend the last days of December mapping out a healthier eating plan for the new year that includes more vegetables, earlier bed times, and less…
God Loves You in Your Longing
The scene is burned into my memory. It’s been fifteen years, but I remember the day I began to doubt God’s love for me. It was a Sunday. It was that window of fellowship after church just before people start heading home for lunch and naps. I stood in a circle of women, listening to…
Legalism or Laziness?
(the following is an adaptation of a talk I gave recently at a women’s retreat) I grew up in the church culture of the southern part of the U.S. in the 80’s and 90’s. I like to joke that I lived in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Though I was raised in a church…
Gather Around the Word
It was awkward at first. A good kind of awkward, but still. We felt the oddness of forced intimacy while the four of us sat at our local small-town coffee shop, carefully offering thoughts on the passage of Scripture we’d studied throughout the week and aggressively sipping our coffee when the gaps of silence got…
Women, Don’t Be Weak-Minded: A Call for Discernment
I was a junior in college when I realized she was a universalist. My favorite author, whose lyrical style and captivating storytelling filled my bookshelves, had finally shown her cards in one of her non-fiction works. I had to read the paragraph three times to realize that she had departed from the gospel of Jesus…