Let It Be
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 – not for them, not for me. It’s been a hard couple of years. There are more fresh graves on that hillside than seems right, and that’s just the upturned soil we can see. Almost all of us are working a little harder this year to fill our raw lungs, and there aren’t many of us that aren’t asking why. Why are there seasons like this? What’s the point of grief and cancer and heartache and aging and broken relationships and dreams that disappear like smoke in the wind? A...
Read MoreThe Light at the Bend
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 a really dark season, and only now are we slowing down enough to realize the full weight of it. Much of what happened in PNG is something we can’t share, but like most real stories it’s littered with shards of broken people. It’s a hard, messy story, and we can’t pretend that away. A few months ago, a dear friend said to me, “You’ve had an awful lot of ashes this year, but I want to hear about the beauty.” She’s right. The ashes are undeniably real, and there’s no getting back some of the precious...
Read MoreWelcome Home
The immigration officer with the stamp in his hand had a strong Long Island accent. We’d been up for nearly 24 hours, and our kids were melting down waiting in the first of many lines at JFK, while more English than we’d heard in a long time swirled around us. We handed over our passports, and he asked us questions about where we’d been and for how long. Then he handed them back with two words. “Welcome home.” I didn’t expect the lump in my throat. And a few hours later when we landed into a brilliant orange sunset in Charlotte, I couldn’t hold the tears back. Home. I grew up rootless – some life in the Philippines, some in Ohio, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina… Fifty houses and twelve schools in the first eighteen years of my life. And now I’m doing something...
Read MoreAn Open Letter to the Folks We’ll See on Furlough
I’ll go ahead and say sorry. I’m sorry in advance for the things we’ll do and say on furlough. We’ve only been away from the States for a year and a half, but we’ve already forgotten a lot about how to live there. When we show up to speak at your church and neither of my children can find their shoes, it’s not because we’re neglectful or disrespectful. It’s simply that shoes have become an accessory, not a necessity, and why in the world would you wear shoes when there are puddles to splash through and soft grass and warm stones on the dirt road? And, yes, I realize their toenails and the bottoms of their feet look like they need a good scrub. About the time the stains fade and their feet look respectable again, it will be time to return to the land of unfettered...
Read MoreIt’s That Simple
My five-year-old daughter leaned against my pillow, a rainbow of gel pens spread out on the bed around her. Her face was all concentration as she added vibrant life to the black and white outlines of a flower. “Mom?” “Yeah, babe?” I folded another dress and added it to the box that will store my clothes while we’re on furlough. “God makes beautiful things.” “Yes. He does.” “Then Satan breaks things. But God makes them beautiful again.” And there it was – the uncomplicated Gospel from the mouth of a child who hasn’t even been to kindergarten yet. To be honest, life over the past year has been anything but uncomplicated. I’ve witnessed more brokenness during our short first term here than I could have imagined I would. I’ve seen how evil can lean in hard and heavy...
Read MoreWhere Words Fail
I write like I breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Pull thoughts into the core of me, let them saturate, then push them out as words. It’s less a pastime and more a necessary function of life. Sometimes, though, the thoughts and emotions flow wild and the framework of words doesn’t hold them. They pour out like water, bursting through the cracks and splashing over the sides, and I sit drenched and wide awake in the stream. Some experiences are too big to be tied to time and space. They overlap into eternity, and if we pay attention, we can catch glimpses through the veil. These moments are big enough that they vibrate the air around them, they resonate like music in the bones. They leave us gasping, pulling for air like a fresh born baby before its first cry. Three weeks...
Read MoreLetting It Go: The Road Back to Joy
I freeze people. Not as dramatically as a singing snow queen, but I do. I freeze them in my mind. I remember who they used to be, what they were like before, the words they’ve said, the hurtful things they’ve done. And I keep them there in my head like little shrines to unforgiveness. I forget that they are living, growing, changing human beings. I forget that I’m not who I was yesterday. Or the day before. Or the day before that. Or the string of months before that. In fact, I’ve changed pretty drastically since this time last year. The other day I remembered a piece of myself. I was at Zumba (yes, we missionaries sometimes do Zumba), and I couldn’t get my directionally challenged self to figure out the steps, so I turned to the also-very-lost woman next...
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