I was a fearful child. One of my earliest memories is from a night I spent at my grandmother’s house. I was awakened by crashing thunder and streaks of lightning just outside the guest bedroom window. The tornado sirens blared, and I could hear my grandmother’s television on in the living room. I reckoned that…
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The Goodness Grid
One of my favorite things about the book of Psalms is the room given for biblical complaint. In our modern sensibilities, we waffle between respectfully questioning God for His mysterious ways and raising our fists in anguish and frustration. We know that anger feels wrong, so we fight it. But immediate acceptance seems completely out…
Tornadoes, Trees, and the Family of God
I was on a plane when the tornado hit our town last Sunday. My phone buzzed with notifications while I stood in line to board my connecting flight to California. My husband, sister, brother-in-law, and I had been planning our trip to the West Coast for six months, and I stood with indecision before boarding…
When God Takes His Time
I started praying for healing about fourteen years ago. I started praying for a baby twenty years ago. Of all the things I have prayed for in this life, those two things have topped my prayer list the longest. With an autoimmune disease that has only fairly recently been tamed, I’ve spent many agonizing nights…
Borrowing a Death
When I was fourteen, I attended the funeral of an acquaintance who had died in a car accident. She was just sixteen, and it was the first funeral I’d ever attended for someone close to my age. I remember how much I cried, how wrong it felt to bury a teenage girl, how unfair it…
Who Am I Without My Thorn?
“Who am I without my thorn?” I asked myself. The needle on the spring-loaded pen was much smaller than I expected. I pinched my skin together and injected my third dose of TNF-blockers into my stomach. For six weeks, I’d been giving myself shots prescribed by my rheumatologist, and I’d watched—incredulous—as my pain levels gradually…
Will the Real Moses Please Stand Up?
When I was in grade school, the curriculum in my small Christian school required third graders to memorize Hebrews 11. While I missed the point of the assignment as a nine-year old (my only goal was to earn the Twizzlers promised to those with perfect recitation), Hebrews 11 presents us with a beautiful lineage of…
Wherever He Leads, He’ll Go
In the Baptist church of my childhood, every Sunday service ended with an altar call. My pastor stood at the front of the church in case anyone needed prayer or wanted to make a profession of faith in Jesus. During that time, the music minister would lead the church in a hymn from the Baptist…
So, You Failed Your Bible Reading Plan
It wasn’t that long ago that you made your New Year’s resolutions. Remember the one about reading the Bible more? Maybe you resolved to “read the Bible every day.” This was going to be the year you were faithful, you were certain. And now that we’re nearing the end of January, you’ve already gotten behind…
Spoons
The steam from the industrial dishwasher plumed into the air in the back part of the kitchen. My shift had ended an hour ago, but the rules were straightforward: every member of the wait staff had to roll fifty silverware bundles before leaving. Rolling silverware was mindless work, a nice reprieve after several hectic hours…