Blog

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 for the...

“He said He loves me, Mommy,” my daughter Hope told me as I tucked her in, her words whispered with her hand to her mouth and cupped around my ear. Apparently, it was a secret. And I remembered her first dance recital, not long after we’d adopted her. She had...

My diploma was still in an unopened manilla envelope on my apartment desk when I stood in front of a crowd of 300 sets of smiling eyes to tell them about what I'd committed to doing for the rest of my life. Though I didn't say it in so many words, at twenty-two I knew...

When I heard from Dee Brestin that she was writing a book about His love for us as demonstrated in the Song of Songs I thought: "I have to get my hands on this book." And it did not disappoint. Several times as I read the pages of her book it was as if He was near...

I had a circle of 9 friends in high school and lived with about the same number of friends all throughout college -- I always had a "group" ... I thought, then, isn't that just supposed to be how friendship works? It mysteriously comes together and is always available...

There's one kind of woman that still makes me cry. She stretches big bows around pink wrapping paper and makes casseroles when the mama is still hobbling the stairs and bleeding after-birth and she might as well start a pinterest account just for one year-old birthday...

It's Sunday night, and the only light in our foyer is from the moon, stretching its arm-beams across our lawn and bringing the outdoors inside with its reach. The house is at rest. Finally. It's as if we all sighed -- the walls, the keyboard, the well-loved doormats...