During my first few months as a pastor’s wife, I signed up to make and take dinner to a family who had lost a grandparent to a prolonged illness. I wasn’t a great cook at the time. Twenty-four years old and married barely two years, I was still regularly burning chicken and under-cooking eggs. I…
following Christ
When Discouragement Rolls In
Every day this week, rain has soaked our corner of the earth. All the blooming things of last week are trodden down, beat low to the ground beneath the weight of these regular downpours. The blooms we celebrated and took pictures of last week (because, “who can remember such a beautiful spring?”) are now scattered…
Home When You Cannot Find It
I was twenty-four when we packed up the U-haul truck on a blistering hot day in July. Sweat trickled down my back as we hefted the last of the cardboard boxes into the truck. We locked the front door of the white, 1920’s bungalow we’d bought two years prior. The for-sale sign still stood in…
Jesus is Not a Helpful Addition to Your Life
Our house was built in 1940. It’s got a large front living area, three small bedrooms, four tiny closets, hardwood floors, high ceilings, and wide trim—all hallmarks of little craftsman houses built in that era. It’s also got perpetual heating and cooling issues, plumbing problems, a roof that leaked, a kitchen desperate for renovation, and…
Your Limping Matters
Fall has finally arrived here in rural Missouri where I live. The temperatures are dipping down near freezing at night, the leaves are beginning to blush with red and orange, and the sky is full of that autumnal blue that hurts your eyes with its clarity. The cotton fields behind our church building are ready…
Living as One Who Belongs
When my husband and I first married, we had to work through that adjustment period of learning to live as one family unit instead of two adults independent of one another. With a vow and a ceremony, a white dress and a black tux, with a signature on a license and a lifelong promise, suddenly…
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…
When Circumstances Lie, Look for What is True
The first time a doctor spoke the word infertility to me, one of my closest friends had just had twins. Another close friend was pregnant, and then another and another until I tasted the bitterness of desperately wanting what you cannot have. Years later, in my husband’s new pastorate, we sustained loss after loss in…
A Long, Short Walk
Ordinarily I wouldn’t take a walk in the heat of July through the neighborhood with my two-year-old. But yesterday that’s what I did as we practiced hand-holding no matter what and not running into the street. What began as a short three-block walk to donate books to the Little Free Library was in actuality a…
Women, Don’t Be Weak-Minded: A Call for Discernment
I was a junior in college when I realized she was a universalist. My favorite author, whose lyrical style and captivating storytelling filled my bookshelves, had finally shown her cards in one of her non-fiction works. I had to read the paragraph three times to realize that she had departed from the gospel of Jesus…