The Bible Makes Me Uncomfortable (And That’s a Good Thing)
I jumped off a cliff the summer I was 16. It seemed like a good idea at the time… until I was hurtling toward the water below. Let me tell you, water isn’t always a great cushion. Flailing like Wiley E. Coyote trying to run on thin air, I tilted back just enough that the force of impact dislocated my right shoulder. I didn’t know what was wrong. I just knew I couldn’t move my arm. Without my bones, muscles, and nerves laying where they were designed to, I had no feeling or function at all, not even in my fingers. As I struggled to hoist myself up onto the rocky bank, my shoulder snapped back into place. It hurt. A lot. And it took several weeks of rest, ice, and careful exercise for the ache to fade and my strength to return. There wasn’t a pain-free way to...
Read MoreAgain and Again
We’re in a season of some pretty big change in our house. Our oldest is leaping from childhood into the strange new world of college classes, car insurance, and grown-up decisions and responsibilities. And for the first time in his ministry career, my husband is serving primarily adults instead of teens. He’s upgraded his goatee to a full beard and his office décor from a plunger in a vase (seriously) to coordinating wall art and real, live potted plants. I love my new role with Wycliffe Women of the Word – like really, really LOVE it – but after years of homeschool and coffee dates and leading Bible studies and writing mostly whenever the whim hit, it feels weird to have deadlines and an editor and a swanky new podcast on the horizon. (I told my unendingly...
Read MoreRemembering Reality When Evil Smiles
It’s been a couple months since I’ve written anything here. I’ve been busy writing for my day job, but I’ve also just been choosing to use the time I have to be present with family and friends, some of whom are going through really difficult things. Nothing is harder than watching the sharp edges of a broken world slice deep into tender souls. There’s so much — so much — to grieve over in this place. From smirking politicians signing away our tiniest citizens’ right to life, to nauseating abuse that’s ignored and excused, to shattered families crushed under the debris of devastating sin, evil seems to be gloating in victory far too often. I get it, friend — how the weight of all that isn’t right can squeeze the air from your chest. How it can drain the fight and...
Read MoreThe Quietest Glory
We have this little porcelain nativity scene. I’m not sure where we got it, but it’s been part of our Christmases forever. A few years ago someone gave us two angels that dwarf the other figurines, but my youngest always puts them right behind Mary and Joseph. Those towering angels make me think of the imagery in Psalm 18 of God Himself soaring in to rescue on the back of a cherub — not exactly the classic Raphael picture of fluffy little winged babies. Scripture consistently depicts angels as powerful warriors, sometimes terrifying and enormous (see Isaiah 6:1-4, Ezekiel 1:11-13, and Revelation 7:1). When the hosts of heaven appeared to the shepherds the night Jesus was born, they probably didn’t look like an ephemeral floating choir. Can you imagine? The sky...
Read MoreThe Both-ness of the Holidays
I’ve got these red jar-style drinking glasses in my cupboard. I found them scattered on a dusty shelf in a chain store in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. They’re cheaply made, and the red flakes off if they’re anything but gently hand washed, but we love using them for holiday dinners. The harder clean-up is worth it to my family. I’m coming to realize that the holidays may be sweet as we move forward, but they may never be easy again. I wrote these words to a friend this week, the same friend whose family sat with us around our table in the tropics, pretending that the roast chicken was turkey and laughing as my youngest held her red glass high in ridiculous toasts to everything. The same friend who spent part of her Christmas break two years ago carefully...
Read MoreThe Same Ache
I was halfway through sweeping up the crumbled edges of leaves carried in by my kids’ feet when it hit me that gratitude can feel a lot like sadness. These are grateful days, with the light slanting golden and rust through changing trees and our hours full of the things that matter most. The grace of it presses and aches in my chest the way grief did before in the unexpected leaving of home and community and ministry. And I remember again the abundance in letting go. The winding weight of those long months carved a canyon to welcome this rush of beauty now. Somewhere along the way the bitter ache bled slowly into the sweet, and I couldn’t tell you where one ended and the other began. Grief and gratitude aren’t separate. They’re one continuum, one story. They both...
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