This Kind of Faith
This week I’ve talked with two friends whose stories rock me to the core. These friends of mine, Amber and Lyn, have not had an easy road. Lyn’s beautiful fifteen-year-old, Bethany, died two years ago of an aggressive brain cancer, and Amber’s sweet Sadie was just seventeen months old when leukemia ended her life last December. The thought of losing one of my children, just brushing the bare edge of the thought, leaves me weak-kneed. How do you keep doing life after watching your child lose the ability to walk and talk and even eat? How do you push past the nightmare that continues when you open your eyes in the morning and realize that your baby really is gone? I would be destroyed. And both of my friends have been. But in their destruction, something...
Read MoreFreedom
“I’m going to take some pictures of the kids. They’re being such free spirits!” My friend Stacie grabbed her camera and ran out the door into the front yard, where our kids, hers and mine, were tearing around in wild circles, yelling loud, and throwing leaves into the wind. It was a chilly day, but only one of the kids had a jacket. Two of them were barefoot and blue-toed. Stacie didn’t take the time to send her boys inside for shoes. She was more intent on capturing the beautiful freedom. There she stood, jacketless herself, hair whipping crazy in the cold wind, soaking in the joy of moments that will be outgrown too soon. It made me smile. And it made me think. How often do I stop freedom in its tracks because it isn’t what is expected? The...
Read MoreThe Parallel Tracks
It’s been all over the news. Images of towns leveled, parents screaming grief for lost children, rancid flood waters slowly receding. My friends have been talking about it on social media, reminding each other to pray and give. But for me it’s personal. Because it’s the Philippines, the place where I spent a large part of my childhood. I have friends there. I’ve sung their songs, eaten their food, watched the sun set on their mountains, and claimed it all as my own. The images of terror and heartbreak don’t fade easily. The only people who really understand how this has shaken me are people who have been there themselves. There’s something about having lived side-by-side, having been eyeball-to-eyeball with people that changes the way we perceive them. It’s...
Read MoreRestless
Something about this time of year makes me restless. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but every autumn it’s there. This sense of not quite fitting into my skin. Maybe it’s the foreshadowing of winter months ahead, since I’ve never done well with cold and grey. Or maybe it’s just the reminder that things don’t stay the same, that seasons come and go even if we’re not quite ready. It’s not that I don’t enjoy autumn. I love it, actually. Sweaters and candles, cinnamon and trees like flame… I just find that my thoughts scatter easily, like dry leaves in the wind, and I feel deep things I can’t define. When I was pregnant, my girls would roll and stretch, pushing hard against the deepest parts of me. I remember thinking how uncomfortable and alien and...
Read MoreThe Roundabout Road
I just got back from an event in Nashville, where I spent a couple of days in the presence of some truly great people, many of them musicians, songwriters, and artists. These folks have built careers on their ability to dig deep and measure life honestly, and as I heard them tell their stories, some themes emerged. Hard journeys. Grief. Poor choices. Wounding and being wounded. But, most of all, grace. The roads they have traveled have been anything but straight, with sudden turns twisting like knotted thread. But never once were they lost. It may have felt like it in certain seasons, when nothing about their lives looked the way they expected. But when something is lost, the one who is searching does not know where it is. And the Searcher knew all along....
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