A few instances in the past week left me feeling especially vulnerable: Disclosing some hard things to a friend, receiving pained words from a child, a new unknown surfacing in our future. Enough of these in a short period have me paying attention to how I respond to...
A tree doesn’t survive the winter without healthy roots. Neither do we. I remember that bleak February morning when my husband and I loaded up our car and drove through the stripped-bare forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains to move into my parents’ basement. Everything...
At sixteen it all seemed so obvious. You either had a cross around your neck and a Bible in your locker, or a drink in your hand on the weekends. Back then, it was follow Jesus or party. My best friend and I slid each other Bible verses on scraps of paper in between...
My sister was on homecoming court two years in a row. For many, that means nothing, but when you grow up in middle America (where the best of life happens under the Friday night lights), homecoming court makes celebrities out of seventeen year-olds. I was in the...
Sometimes you need to live a moment three, or four … or seven times, before you see that it’s purposed. We were 23 minutes late for the party that was only planned to last for two hours. I know, because I counted each minute that passed and had eyes only...