My Little Rebellions

I am a rule follower. I see others, light hearted and fancy free, seemingly moving about as wispy air, and I envy them. Deeply. Because if you cut others in line, I’m there to remind you of the people behind you. If you bypass the process, I’m going to side-eye you from across the room.…

Read More

The Calling Question

I can feel myself slowing down as the end of the year approaches. I feel like a ball running out of steam, making its last few rotations before coming full stop. I have one last trip coming up before December waves goodbye. There are bits of tape and scraps of wrapping paper stuck to my…

Read More

For Natasha

This is not a eulogy. This is a wild ce-le-bra-tion. Lived out in staccato, fast breaths and clapped hands. This is a reverie of light that actively stomped the darkness. She was a determined, defiant dance. This is ce-le-bra-tion. She was coffee and cocoa-bean, sugar cane and deep earth. Caribbean and cradle of civilization. She was…

Read More

A Pinch of Salt

Since quarantine, I have done a ton of baking. It’s a craft that tidily fits into all the buckets that connect with my soul: practical, part art, part science, that is done when it is done. It is artistic efficiency. Yet as I measure out my thoughts in ounces and teaspoons, I am in my…

Read More

For the Outsiders

This one is for the outsiders. The ones who walk into a room and wonder if they’re going to find a friend. If people are going to see them, welcome them. “Will I be overdressed? Underdressed? Will I say the right thing? Will they think my jokes are funny?” This is for the ones who,…

Read More

The Wounded Hunter

At the end of 2020, I was scrolling through my Instagram account, hunting for last-minute Christmas baking ideas, when I caught my breath. Along with the myriad of travel, baking and religious writers I follow, I also follow a few accounts focused on the Enneagram. What I saw in late December stopped me in my…

Read More

The Wisest Woman I Know

2021 had one job.  And it was to not be 2020. In retrospect, I don’t know how we could have anticipated a different outcome. I will own my own sense of eternal optimism, or at least belief in my own grit. So here we are. 2021 squeezing me to the point of emotional and spiritual…

Read More

The Haunting

Like much of America, we got a Coronatide puppy, long-legged and rambunctious. It is my job to walk him first thing in the morning so he doesn’t chew the table legs while I’m conference-calling. It’s a work-from-home season, and he doesn’t understand I have four more Zoom meetings to go.

Read More

Jab, Cross, Hook

The smell of dust and sweat and leather fills the room. Punching bags hang in precise rows, immovable in the presence of industrial fans and re-mixed 90s hip hop. “I’m gonna knock you out; Momma said knock you out!” I slowly wrap my hands and wrists, weaving the fabric between each finger, stabilizing each moving part…

Read More

Watching Out the Window

These days I spend a lot of time staring out of the window. As I’ve aged, I’ve become more of an internal processor. I balance all of the competing priorities in my life: person, wife, mother, daughter, doctoral student, executive, friend, minister. So, while sitting in front of the window, I entertain a carousel of…

Read More