fear
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moreWhen you’re wondering: How God Feels About Storms?
On Tuesday, May 21 st, 2013When the guy on the screen says that he could hear the cries of children underneath the rubble, his voice starts to crack and how in the world does anything stand in a world like this? How do you just put a jug of milk out on the table on a Tuesday and stand there watching your kids eat breakfast, light in their hair, the sky hanging outside the window like a ...
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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 Life Burns… What We Could Do for Each Other
On Wednesday, April 10 th, 2013When that chimney started on fire, right up the center of the house, right up through center of my bedroom, I heard my Dad holler. Heard the roar, heard that fire roaring just behind the yellow bricks there in my room. That yellow brick road that you could follow straight up to the sky. I cu...
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moreIn the face of Unknowns: Electing to Trust
On Tuesday, November 06 th, 2012On the eve of all the unknowing, when sitting and looking back over everything, you could see it – Somehow all of life’s failings are a failure to somehow trust God. Light caught in the trees. The trees stood in light. Stood in this quiet willingness to grow into the unknown. And there, it comes in the stillness, comes like a light warming the wo...
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moreThe Truth about Really Having it All
On Friday, September 21 st, 2012I t was after the waves. After the waves of contractions, after the waves of blow out diapers and wet nursing pads that leaked through the let downs and the damp spit blankets that piled high at the bedroom door. Long after the waves of colic at 3 am and the 4:30 am crying, both the swaddl...
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moreWhat Women Need to Say to Each Other… because it’s what every woman needs to hear
On Friday, September 14 th, 2012IIt’s when you came up behind me and put your arms around me in the kitchen last night while I was making food for your Dad. The way you laid your head on my shoulder and you held me, mama in the daughter arms after all these thirteen years. I reached up and laid my hand on your cheek, and it only takes a moment and mother and a daughter aren’t far apart anymore. Yo...
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moreWhen You’re Broken & Don’t Know Where to Go:
On Thursday, August 30 th, 2012When she was standing there in the spring, under the blaze of the blooming trees, I could remember 13. I could remember the burn of the unfurl, and how the becoming sears, and how does a mother help a daughter light? How does a woman be a light? We had walked down to the water’s edge. ...
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moreDay 1 of things afoot on the farm
On Wednesday, June 27 th, 2012{Please pray? After our family Bible reading last night, little Shalom bowed her head and murmured from behind her falling veil of curls, and we heard it around the table, “Thank you, God, for giving Mom courage — that she doesn’t just say NO to everything. But at least she says Yes to somethings for You.” And I smiled and nodded —...
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morewhen you are feeling overwhelmed…
On Friday, June 15 th, 2012When a sparrow gets caught behind the couch, it’s the light at the other end, behind the poor thing, that we keep trying to turn that one pounding heart towards. Because the thing is and don’t I know it: If you’re turned the wrong way, you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. So I’m kneeled on the floor in front of a poun...
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moreWhy You Really May Need to be Done with Safe: Being a Dangerous Disciple of the Unsafe God
On Thursday, June 07 th, 2012My Gran, she’s taking slow walks outside the hospital now. Her heart’s growing stronger, beating certain. I wash down the cupboards in the kitchen. I pray for Gran’s heart attack recovery, for each step she keeps taking, ninety-one and frail-boned and Irish-determined. Life’s a risk and maybe she’s stronger than I am, accepting each heart beat, ea...
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moreBecause this is the Truth about the real “Mother’s Day Card Mothers”
On Wednesday, May 09 th, 2012I became a mother on the eve of Mother’s Day. And when they placed that vernix-covered, wrinkled babe into my 21-year old arms that muggy Saturday evening in May, no wave of relief, or ecstasy washed over me. Being the first to caress another human being’s cheek, I only felt raw, unadulterated, strangling terror. If I could have ran? I would have. ...
