When Fear Squeezes
Tonight it was the chocolate sheet cake, the one with the thick fudgy frosting Andrew’s mom taught me step by step. It’s THE “birthday cake” around here because no one can imagine desiring anything but a large rectangle of this…
Day 34, Finishing Well: Maundy Thursday
Candles flickered on the Passover table, sending long shadows bouncing around the room. Scattered across the table the unleavened bread crumbs, bitter herbs, figs piled high wine in goblets half-drunk, salt water, eggs and the lamb. God’s faithfulness remembered and retold,…
Day 16: Confession
We in the church have got something to confess. And it’s pretty ugly. But ugly things have to come into the light in order to be transformed. Evangelism has been used by some to be an answer to…
Day 4: Pruning so Good News Blooms
Pruning, though painful, causes growth. We’ve got obstacles that need to be removed and this is where the life-long work of pruning comes in, removing the sin, scooping out the suffocating fear, redirecting the anger, having our minds renovated by…
When our Love Gets Suffocated
I hear a call in the quiet of the early morning: “Deepen,” He whispers. God is using the specific vocabulary of a Madeleine L’Engle lover. I was shaken Saturday. Triggered, that is. They were dressed straight off the cover of a JCrew catalog and I shrunk…
Healing our Lies with Scripture
I use and reuse this gem of a story from LeAnne Payne about what happens when we peel back the layers of our negative self-talk and allow the light of Scriptural truth in. The story comes from Restoring the Christian…
The Practice of the Presence of People: Day 11
These last three days, I have been listening to their stories down the four steps from the sidewalk into our Prayer Clinic. Beautiful stories of the treachery of growing up on planet earth. It has been a privilege…
Growing Up
This is it. That sweet anniversary. My baby’s 3rd birthday and that anniversary of when You were here, so Present. As Present as the red velvet couch I sit on. As pervasive as the yummy bacon smell from the California…
Stephanie and Matt’s Engagement Story
Squeals burst in the front door: my sister, golden hair bouncing, her left hand held out for all to admire the sparkle. She was wearing love. Matt, her new fiancé, tumbled in just behind, radiant. The family had gathered to…
The Gift of Vulnerability – The leper and my story entertwine
“All of us are old. And all of us are frail. All of us, indeed, are handicapped. It’s just that some of us can pretend better than others.” John Kavanagh Mark 1:40-45 All around the Galilee region the wind…