blog.

“The Real Work” (Wendell Berry)  It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is…

Scripture: Luke 24:13-35   Vision is often considered as an exercise in looking ahead, toward something. But vision is also knowing when it’s time to walk away.  When the cracks have grown to deep. When the money has run out. When the relationship is beyond repair.  For some of the disciples, that moment arrived as…

We are the house on the block that is the kid hub. Summer months are a steady flow of children on and off our front porch. Our driveway perpetually littered with broken pieces of sidewalk chalk and muddy footprints. We’re also the house that always has band-aids, which are in high demand whenever there are…

Scripture: Luke 16:10 My junior year of high school I was part of a coalition of students who banded together to push the leaders of our homeschool co-op to allow dancing at our annual Junior-Senior Banquet.   We met with sympathetic parents, pulled Bible verses about dancing out of context, and built our case. Dancing…

Scripture: Proverbs 29:18 When I was in college I used to decoupage the covers of my journals. I would cut out pictures from magazines and print out inspirational quotes and craft the perfect cover for whatever season of life I was in. Like a vision board, but I could write in it.   I would…

Scripture: John 10:10   After my daughter was born in 2012 I went through a major faith deconstruction. (You can read all about that here.) I was so angry, so very angry at all the ways I felt like I had been lied to growing up. I raged in conversations and on the internet. “SMASH…

Scripture: John 13:1-20   Communion is my favorite liturgy; it has been since I was a child. When I was young, one of the women who lived down the road would bake the communion bread fresh each month for our congregation’s communion table. When the bread was served during worship, I would rip off as…

Scripture: Matthew 5:44-46 At the heart of my struggles with gratitude is my reflexive belief that I have to prove I am worthy. Worthy of acceptance. Worthy of your time. Worthy of a place. Heck, if I am really good perhaps I can manage to prove I am worthy of belonging. I’m not even sure where…

Scripture: Philippians 4:6-7 While I was pregnant with my daughter our house was broken into three separate times. On no occasion did the person intruding take anything of great value. Some change we’d left sitting on a counter for bus fare. An X-Box. But it was still wildly unnerving.  I remember standing in my kitchen,…

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-21 I went shopping with my daughter the other day, she had birthday money to spend and given that she’s only eight, someone has to supervise such things. Despite my own stint as a certifiable mall rat during my teenage years, I was not prepared to spend an hour in a store…