(This is National Infertility Awareness Week. Statistics show that 1 in 8 couples are affected by infertility. After fifteen years of ongoing infertility, I want to share one story of how I was loved as 1 in 8.) I met Ranelle when I was twenty-one years old. I was newly engaged to my now-husband and…
Church
On Sundays, We Eat
“It will never work,” I told him. My husband kept talking, pointing out all the ways a weekly meal after church on Sundays would benefit our efforts at building community. After corporate worship, he wanted the church to gather for a meal together before splitting into groups to discuss the sermon. Every week. “Even if…
The Church Beyond Your City Limits
I live in a small town in rural Missouri. Farmland surrounds the town, creeping inward in places. The local kindergarten building sits across the street from a corn field, and our little church is flanked on two sides by cotton fields. My husband and I moved here nearly fourteen years ago for my husband to…
I Love You in Iambic Pentameter
for William The first time he wrote a sonnet for me, I was finishing my senior year of college and struggling through a Shakespeare class. This was after he bought a book of the bard’s sonnets and tore a page from it every time he wanted to tell me he loved me. Sonnet 116 was…
Church, You Must Do Better.
I had the privilege of speaking to a group of over one hundred pastors’ wives this week at a conference. In the weeks preceding the event, I had prayed much about what to share with this group of women. I’ve been a ministry wife for over fifteen years, specifically a pastor’s wife for more than…
When You Feel Too Unworthy to Serve
I remember the first time I stood up in front of a group of women to teach the Bible. My shirt was damp with sweat, and my voice wobbled into the microphone. My knees might actually have knocked together in fear. But it wasn’t fear of failure or of public speaking. It was fear that…
Yes, You Do Need the Church
I was sitting with my back to them, the two young women sipping iced coffees and talking loudly in the quiet coffee shop. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could hear nearly every word of their discussion. Anyone in the shop could hear their discussion. I tried to absorb myself with my open laptop…
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…
I Have Spiritual Amnesia, and So Do You.
Something strange happens in the nighttime hours. Every night, when I go to bed, I know who I am in Christ and what I believe about the gospel. It’s a hard fight, and by the end of the day it’s likely a worn-down version of what’s real. But, I’ve fought all day to believe it,…
She is Broken, and She is Beautiful.
A week ago, the phone rang before dawn. There’s never a good reason for calls so early, and my heart immediately began pounding when I answered the phone. A dear church member was on the other end, her voice thick with tears and panic. Her husband had died unexpectedly in the early morning hours. It…