My house is staring at me. A betrayed kind of look that says, “Seriously. What have you done?” At least that’s how it feels after our family’s week-long bout with a horrible flu, followed immediately by an unexpected mid-March snow day. Muddy foot and paw tracks in the foyer and kitchen, pillows and blankets and […]
I’ve been going through career counseling recently as we try to make a decision about our next missions assignment, and after all the tests to figure out what jobs would best suit my personality and strengths, we’ve made a discovery: I’m an odd duck. (Friends and family, you may all now say in unison, “Well,
Dear Friend, First I want to just sit with you for a minute. I may not know what’s happened for you, but I know the ache. I am sorry you’re in this place. So, so sorry. It’s ok to feel breathless. Life just knocked you onto your back. And it’s right to grieve. You’ve lost
I just turned forty, and it feels like a deep sigh. There’s something about beginning a new decade that hits a reset button. My thirties were a time of gathering – living new experiences, picking up pieces here and there to build a life and make a home for my family, taking hold of my
We drove home from Ohio the other night. The air smelled like winter, and strings of lights hung like halos around picture perfect houses, but there was something not right hanging low on the western horizon. Smoke. There are these places burning in the Appalachians. Memories and plans burning to the ground, and the hungry
Dear Man of Mine, A couple of months ago when we were at a friend’s wedding, I stood in the fellowship hall before the ceremony wrapping the stem of the bride’s bouquet with a white ribbon, silk over thorns, and I thought. I thought about the day sixteen years ago when we stood, bare toes
A few weeks ago I went through some testing for several autoimmune disorders. The tests eventually came back normal, but while I was waiting for the results, I started hearing story after story from people who were living with everything from lupus to rheumatoid arthritis. When a body starts to attack itself, it’s not a
My friend Trudie just got a huge double stroller. Like the kind that might take up the majority of an elevator. Which is exactly what happened a couple weeks ago at a local science museum. My husband and two girls got in first, followed by Trudie’s three-year-old, and then Trudie with her baby and stroller.
Some things don’t settle in until you see it in somebody else’s eyes. Especially when they’ve known you forever and they can see the change. I stood on a hillside graveyard in Kentucky last weekend, bare toes in deep moss, and looked sixty or so of my family in the eyes. There was no pretending
Our road just bent in a way we didn’t expect and didn’t want. We will not be returning to our home and ministry in Papua New Guinea. This seems sudden, I know. And in a lot of ways it is. But in other ways it’s been coming for a year. Friends, we’ve just walked through