I once spent a whole night worrying about a bug bite. Well, eight of them, to be precise. My son had been playing outside that afternoon and came in with a strange assortment of bites across his shoulder that didn’t look like anything I’d seen before. They weren’t your average Southeast Missouri mosquito bites, but […]
Read MorePrayer and Mental Margin
I took a walk this morning, my first since getting over Covid. It was brutally cold, but I couldn’t resist layering on some warm clothes to take a stroll through my neighborhood. Being cooped up for the last several weeks, I’d forgotten how much I enjoy the quiet of a morning walk. While shivering through […]
Read MoreGrow Like a Houseplant
I must confess, I was a bit of a pandemic cliché. Two years ago, I looked for some at-home hobbies to while away the time during lockdown. Like a lot of people, I baked loaf after loaf of sourdough bread, read numerous novels, and bought about a dozen houseplants. On one of my first weekly […]
Read More4 Questions for Your Bible Reading in 2022
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 bedtimes, and less screen […]
Read MoreThere Will Be No Burden-Bearing if There Is No Burden-Sharing
I was having trouble walking that Saturday morning. Exhausted, fatigued, and discouraged, I had told my husband I couldn’t participate in the church leaf-raking service project we were doing for our widows and shut-ins. I felt embarrassed when my family left the house clad in boots and gloves and armed with rakes and leaf-blowers to […]
Read MoreWhat We Pray in the Dark
It was 1:30 a.m. Pain seared through my lower back, wrapping itself around my S. I. joints and radiating into the deepest part of my hips. I moved from bed to couch and back, rearranging the pillows a dozen times, applying ice and heat wherever I could. There was no relief. None. Tears dripped down […]
Read MoreUntil You Pray
There’s an old Puritan expression, “Pray until you pray.” I first stumbled across it when I read Tim Keller’s book on prayer a few years ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Pray until you pray. This little four-word exhortation captures what I often think about prayer but am hesitant to say aloud—that prayer […]
Read MoreDaylight Savings & Spiritual Disciplines
I’ve long used January 1st as the day I’m going to get my life together. New diet? Clean slate starts January 1st. Exercise plan? I’ll begin on the first of the year. Keep the Tupperware cabinet from throwing plastic containers at me every time I open it? Organization will commence on the first day of the […]
Read MoreFuneral Pants
I think I bought the pants before the pandemic began. I can’t remember, to be honest. But we’d had a series of deaths in our small congregation, and being a work-from-home mom, I didn’t own anything quite right for a funeral since I hadn’t attended one in a while. I found myself standing at a […]
Read MoreMore Than This Life Only
I checked the final item off my long to-do list the other day and felt a bit of euphoria when my pen made a straight, black line through the words “answer emails.” It had been a day full of work at my desk (which is really just the dining room table between meals), work in […]
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