reframing femininity
I heard the tires on the gravel driveway and called Dan to hurry! We rushed out the door and we greeted four year-old Grace and I swiftly rushed to the other side of the car and unbuckled five-week old Parker Anne for the first time! I gently held her in my arms and helped Grace…
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There is a war that rages in my heart between life and death, right and wrong, sorrow and joy, good and bad, faith and fear. I have learned, through prayer and meditation, to love and honor both sides of the war and to rest in the middle ground, where peace is always awaiting my return.…
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I will never forget the based-on-a-true-story movie, The Impossible, about a family who, while vacationing in a paradise resort in Thailand, was hit by the 2004 tsunami. The scene that grips me most is when Naomi Watts is reading on a lounge chair and suddenly sensing something is not right. That something terribly powerful is…
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“Aren’t you afraid they’ll expose you to the virus?” “Are you crazy?” The phone calls from friends and family were kind and filled with concern for our wellbeing. My answers at the time? “Sometimes,” and “No.” Riding in the waves of news of the pandemic, I felt assured in my decision to offer two young…
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I am crumpled up on my kitchen floor, head in hands, hiding beneath a soundtrack of Fernando Ortega and Bifrost Arts, hoping my kids don’t notice I am weeping, It’s holy ground, but it feels like falling apart.
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I had run out of ideas of how to get through the chaos that was building so that we could help the children learn. I wanted to quit and felt like a complete failure. My principal, though, was wise and kind. She listened intently, saw both my despair and my goodness, and simply responded,
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I am done proving me. My life is not one prolonged job interview, a permanent Olympic trial, an ongoing all-state music audition. I am not a college application for admissions officials to peruse, an employee scrutinized for business acumen or her annual performance review, an associate striving to make partner. I refuse to be
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I have shared pieces of this story before. The version where I am not the central character. The parts where I have yet to name the ways it sent me spiraling. How it upended my purposed life. It is the story I keep returning to. The one that becomes more clear as time passes.
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“While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death.” Hebrews 5:7 (NLT) Truth: I avoid the news these days. My desire for justice often leaves me with gut problems; stomach aches over the inaction of men, women, silence of…
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Panic attacks, high anxiety, and digestive issues were the symptoms that encamped my body anytime I went to church as I began to process part of the sexual harm that marked my young personhood. I told the story nearly eight years after my childhood pastor was arrested for exploiting children and women through the means…
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