Eucharistic Living
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moreWhen You Sort of Feel Like You’re Drowning
On Thursday, May 23 rd, 2013It came after a week of rain. After she driven home through the rain, watched the rain come across fields. It’d ponded between rows. It had sheeted and ponded and thrummed the hood of the pick-up like the drumming of everything thrown at her, everything coming down that never stopped, and all the fiel...
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moreHow to Live Through the Really Hard Storms
On Monday, May 20 th, 2013{because my heart is with all the folks living through all kinds of bad storms this spring…} ‘If God really works in everything — then why don’t we thank Him for everything?” She asks me this straight out. My daughter, Hope, and I, we sit in the truck on the field’s hem, waiting to give the Farmer his lunch. The Farmer’s planting bean seeds into ea...
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moreSimply 3 Words For Every Day
On Wednesday, May 15 th, 2013He’d set the alarm for 1 AM on a Monday morning because sometimes a man has to do what he has to do. He’d slept the rest of a Farmer on the Lord’s Day. Then hauled to the fields in the pitch dark just as soon as Monday feebly birthed. Before that sun finally dragged up, he had a whole field worked up and half a ton of dirt ground into his jeans. ...
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moreWhen You Feel like Everyone is Bigger, Better, Smarter… { or ‘How to be a Star’}
On Monday, May 13 th, 2013When the fog meandered in lost on a spring evening in May, she hung her apron up in the back mudroom. She wandered down the back lane too. Down in the woods, she could hear them, the frogs singing, an invisible symphony. She knotted the one side of her skirt up to step over a pothole. She tried to make her way. In a world of reaching, how do you rest? In a cul...
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moreThe Ultimate Girlfriend Gift
On Wednesday, May 08 th, 2013We threw stones first. I mean — after we’ve all been bloodied by stones, why not just start there? Effie Bryce sat near Nan Marlin. And Greta Vanderhoef and Darlene Finch, and 75 year-old Mrs. Margaret van Veen who led me to Jesus when I was a kid and the elderly Mrs. King who lives on the farm ...
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more40 Things You Need to Know Before You’re 40 . . . . Letters to a Woman Mid-Way
On Tuesday, April 30 th, 2013Dear Self, Look, you have only got so many days till your midway. Till you’ve heard almost half the morning doves you ever will. Felt the sun on your face half as many chances as you’ll have, laughed half as many times as you’ll ever know — and who knows, maybe most of your God-blessed moments are already passed? So for the holy sake of sanity get off th...
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moreWhen You’re Struggling through Holy Week (Thursday)
On Thursday, March 28 th, 2013There’s snow in the middle of Holy Week. A dusting, a sugar snow, an Easter snow. As if the whole smashed world is intent on freezing. Doing whatever it takes, over and over again, to stay numbed to the burn of the pain. Because somebody’s beloved kid had a womb scraped out to get rid ...
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moreWhy You need an Island of Quiet right now
On Wednesday, March 27 th, 2013Sunday, there’d been the crowning, the waving of the palms. Monday, then the cleansing, the cursing of the fig. Tuesday, the conflict, the plotting of the Pharisee. Then come Thursday — there would be the communion, the breaking of the bread. And Friday, the crucifixion, the hanging of the impossible dead. And at no point could anyone have imag...
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moreHow To Get Through Cancer, Dark Times, & Suffering {…and an interview @Desiring God}
On Monday, March 25 th, 2013So this Palm Sunday weekend found me gathering with the women from Perimeter Church. Where songwriter Laura Story, and her soul beautiful friend,Tiffany both attend…. and I pray their God stories in the midst of suffering forever change me: {Consider muting Mr. Nevue’s music ...
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moreDaring Greatly to Live Fully — Right Where You Are
On Monday, March 18 th, 2013When Monday gets caught in your teeth like a piece of spinach, the crazy thing is you could dare to laugh — it gets things unstuck. You know how it goes — Laugh or die. A joyful heart is good medicine, not just a good platitude. You could &...
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moreThe 1 Thing Radical Really Definitely Has to Look Like — Right Where We Are
On Friday, March 15 th, 2013No one just straight up tells you that the things you’ve seen — become what you see. That you’ll close your eyes a thousand nights from now and it will all be real again — where you were and what they wore, that one look, that one moment, that one frame. That you’ll see the world through what you’ve seen of the world and there’s no goi...
