These are slow summer days, stretching long at the ends from first light to last. We drink them in deep swallows, savoring the absence of hurried schedules. We sleep later than normal and wear pajamas longer than we should. The hours unspool without our notice or care. It seems a luxury. I’ve not had such…
Catch and Release: Taking Personal Criticism to the Word
I could feel the blood draining from my face. The plastic fork in my hand nearly snapped in two under the pressure of my clenched fist. Trying not to reply too hastily, I bit my lip so hard it bled. I thought it was a dinner invitation, but it felt like an ambush. As my…
Story of the Song: Meaningless
I remember how we argued, standing awkwardly next to the table. My attempt at a joke to lighten the mood fell flat, and I’m pretty sure you stepped on my forced levity with your foot and ground it into the linoleum for good measure. I deserved it. I hadn’t meant to bait you; I just…
Story of the Song: “Hear Me” (on marriage and the art of listening)
The Story I was sitting in a coffee shop, my cup empty and hers still full. Cold, though, probably because she hadn’t taken the first sip. Tears stood in her eyes while she explained the way her husband didn’t listen to her. “He doesn’t know what I’m thinking or how I feel about anything. He…
Be Faithful with Small
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…
Story of the Song: I’ll Never Let You Go
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…
The Story of the Song: “Hold Me Fast” (on faith and chronic pain)
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…
The Story of the Song: “Every Sky”
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 New Album: Hold Me Fast
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…
The Goodness of God in a Closed Womb
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…