My husband and I have lived in a rural part of Missouri for just about twelve years now. Since that sweltering summer day in 2005 when we unloaded the moving truck, we’ve been ministering at the same church in the same small town for all this time. We’ve both left our 20’s and nearly our […]
I am a chronic worrier. I worry about the past. I worry about the present. And of course, I worry about the future. Mostly, I worry about what might happen. When I was a kid, I took it upon myself to constantly remind my little sister to stay close when we were in stores or restaurants or […]
For five years, I lived with an unnamed illness that split my body wide open with pain every single night. I’d seen doctors and had multiple tests and scans but always walked away with a clean bill of health. Except that I wasn’t healthy. I’d been stooped over with debilitating back pain that never […]
It was night. I stood on the sandy shore of a beach in Georgia listening to waves I couldn’t see crash on to one another in an effort to aid the rising tide. There was no moon that night, no sliver of reflective light to separate sky from water. I was standing in a dark […]
My album, “Hold Me Fast,” released this morning, and I couldn’t be more excited to share it with you! I have a lot of weird, mixed emotions about releasing an album at almost-36 years old. I even wrote an article over at Seeking the Still about what it feels like to put my music into the hands of […]
Her words were a sledge hammer to my future. “It is unlikely that you will ever conceive.” The doctor patted me on the shoulder awkwardly. Just like that, the future I had assumed and imagined ended in an explosion of grief. Raining down on me for the next decade were shards of dreams, double-edged fissures […]
In Lucy Maud Montgomery’s book, “Anne of Green Gables,” Anne Shirley bemoans her task of constant care for small children with the confession that “twins seem to be my lot in life.” That phrase has bubbled up to the surface of memories throughout my adult life because for me, waiting seems to be my lot […]
It was an aneurysm that sent my strong, active grandfather to death’s door. In a matter of hours after the angry vessel in his brain burst, he died with his family around him. Minutes before he left us, I sang“It is Well” into the antiseptic hospital air, bolstering—I hoped—my grandfather’s willingness to step into real life. […]
Dishes are stacked high in both sinks, spilling over on to the counter tops. Of course, there are also the stock pots on the stove, waiting to be scrubbed down. Trails of bread crumbs meander through the house, evidence of children who found the table to be too crowded with adult conversation. Hardened, dried spaghetti […]
It was nearly 8 o’clock–that part of the morning when you’re scrambling to find shoes and fill lunchboxes. My husband was pouring an extra cup of coffee before driving our third grader to school. “How was the gym this morning?” I asked him while I cleaned the baby from a breakfast he decided was beneath him. “It’s mid-March,” […]
