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In honor of this new skin on the old blog, I'm throwing an open house. For the month of July and into the first days of August I am going to introduce you to some others in my life who have their real stories of how He has used the seemingly "bitter"  to create new...

In honor of this new skin on the old blog, I'm throwing an open house. For the month of July and into the first days of August I am going to introduce you to some others in my life who have their real stories of how He has used the seemingly "bitter"  to create new...

We'd waited for children for years and here we were -- bags packed. We walked the streets of our favorite neighborhood at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains the night before our plane flight to Ethiopia to go get them. I'd finally given myself permission to be full...

I walked across a dust-filled field between the slums and the road where we'd parked our car and hugged a woman who'd fought with the strength of her life for a child that would now be mine. She'd heard the infant screams that broke the silence of nine-plus months of...

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...

The yards between Katie Wernert's and mine all bled together like one collective playground. We innocently took tomatoes from her neighbor's garden and sold them on the street. There were no boundary lines for little girls who were discovering the world. Between her...

Hey you, Pulling the covers up higher on this Mother's Day, thinking of ways to get around town today without spotting round bellies and minivans and mamas pushing strollers. This note is for you. Who is it that knows (like you) how spotting a women across the pew...

Mother's Day was for hiding. Some years it was behind my apron, fixing up a feast at home for my mother-in-law while Nate attended church, and other years it was underneath my covers, seeing this thin sheath between me and the world (which had what I wanted) as my...

I prayed that prayer in an incubator of sorts. My white-walled life with clean lines and a linear path made me think I could learn prayer right there, just like a smarty. He'd teach and I'd take notes and develop a plan. Prayer would be birthed at my desk, pencil in...

I knew how it would end when I heard the direction it was headed from the other room. One (half her age) was shouting his math facts at the prompting of eager parents. Two plus two was nothing for him. Five plus nine and twenty-three plus seven and sixteen plus three,...