A warm June rain soaks the world outside my window. We’ve had a few of those wild, humid summer storms that send us to the basement listening for the tornado sirens. But not today. Today, it’s just a good, gentle soaking. While I sit at my dining room table tapping away on my laptop, everything…
the Church
Maybe We Knock on the Door
I pulled a loaf of sourdough bread from the oven and popped it onto the cooling rack before getting out a blank greeting card and pondering what to write in it. I didn’t know my new neighbors’ names, so after jotting down our names and phone numbers on the inside of the card, I simply…
The Gift of Tangled Roots
On a trip to the California coast with my sister, I had the opportunity to explore Muir Woods National Monument, a redwood forest. As we walked through the woods, my sister and I noted how the massive redwood trees grew in groves. The national park signs throughout Muir Woods didn’t call them groves or circles…
Missives
As fast as I could send them, they came back to me. Every day, nearly, there’s a letter in the mailbox. I thought I was the only one doing something old, something with scripted words that flow from a pen and hand cramps and premeditated thought rather than a screen with keys and clicking and…
I Didn’t Know I Loved You Like This
I didn’t know I loved you like this. A lot of mornings, I grumbled before I saw you. It was a lot of work to get myself together, to get the rest of us together, to put things in order just to get to you. And when I saw you, I took you for granted,…
Of Love, Sacrifice, and Toilet Paper
I didn’t buy toilet paper. I bought six pounds of rice and seven pounds of dried beans. I bought bouillon cubes and a couple extra sacks of flour. I stood at the grocery store and surveyed what was in the carts of other shoppers as I contemplated how far I could make ten cans of…
Loving 1 in 8
(This is National Infertility Awareness Week. Statistics show that 1 in 8 couples are affected by infertility. After fifteen years of ongoing infertility, I want to share one story of how I was loved as 1 in 8.) I met Ranelle when I was twenty-one years old. I was newly engaged to my now-husband and…
On Sundays, We Eat
“It will never work,” I told him. My husband kept talking, pointing out all the ways a weekly meal after church on Sundays would benefit our efforts at building community. After corporate worship, he wanted the church to gather for a meal together before splitting into groups to discuss the sermon. Every week. “Even if…
The Church Beyond Your City Limits
I live in a small town in rural Missouri. Farmland surrounds the town, creeping inward in places. The local kindergarten building sits across the street from a corn field, and our little church is flanked on two sides by cotton fields. My husband and I moved here nearly fourteen years ago for my husband to…
Church, You Must Do Better.
I had the privilege of speaking to a group of over one hundred pastors’ wives this week at a conference. In the weeks preceding the event, I had prayed much about what to share with this group of women. I’ve been a ministry wife for over fifteen years, specifically a pastor’s wife for more than…