Blog
When God says “no”
When I was 27, and God said “no” through an empty womb, I had more life ahead of me than behind me—more dreams on the horizon than stories lived in grit (where dreams meet the road). Everything felt like possibility — every new friendship, every neighbor that moved...
That they may be one . . . not same
I still remember where we were sitting on our olive green Craig’s-List-purchased couch (remember Craig’s List?) when she said to me, “I want a friend that is just like me. None of my friends are like me.” She was eight, so I poked and discovered that “just like me”...
Consolation Prizes from God {something to resist …. or to receive?}
Just as I have difficulty eating peaches in January or squash in June, I wish I could put these posts into categories so you can decide if it's your right season to consume it. If I could, this one would be in the “for those walking through a hard and unrelenting...
The surprising connection between failure and wonder
"So tell us about a time when you experienced failure and how you handled it." I was 21 and interviewing for my first job out of college. It was a multi-day interview, and this question came over lunch with two local ministry directors for whom I wanted to work. Like...
How to have a new beginning when something hard in your life isn’t ending
Nate says he fell in love with me the night he saw me ugly cry, in grief, over a young friend I'd mentored who had died tragically. The grief was of the stage in which it came like a summer storm, surprise-darkening my thinking that had just minutes before been clear....
Reading the Book Instead of Writing the Book
Mrs. Van Horn’s second-grade class was the right place to dream. I felt safe in her classroom, even though Craig Assenmacher, who sat behind me, told me it looked like I had a bird’s nest on my head after I got a risky haircut. (I received a bob and discovered I was...
“You just don’t get it”
I let a friend down. Or, I should say: I let *another friend* down. I can tell she’s mad, not yet hurt. Just mad. I receive her frustration with me, and my mind instinctively flashes to that old friend of a phrase: you just don’t get it. … I’m late. I ran a red light,...
Is it time to bury the dream?
(This might be an email to earmark and tuck away for the future, as this isn’t for everyone. Some of you are in the dream-forming years … as you need to be.) Is it time to bury the dream? Ouch. Nearly every set of eyes reading this sentence is connected to a heart...
“New year, new day” and other unhelpful advice as we cross the threshold into 2023
I love (almost) everything about the turning of a calendar. Whether a new school year in August or a new calendar year in January, I drool at the thought of new pens and journals and other (both unnecessary and necessary) paper products. Last week I cleaned my desk...
Rather than press through and push harder, what if you …
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...