Pursuing the whole story

October 5, 2015.Reading time 5 minutes.

I wrote about losing Princess Peach this weekend. It was excruciating. A friend told me recently that she’s been pondering the word “debridement” (the scouring exfoliation done to patients who’ve been severely burned), and afterwords I realized that this is exactly what it felt like: Taking a rough brush to the places I’d been burned. […]

Life After a Big Fail

October 2, 2015.Reading time 7 minutes.

Cherub #2 looks a lot like Serena Williams. I suspect it will be a viable Halloween costume for her for years to come. For that and a whole bunch of other reasons (the primary one being that Serena’s tennis is awesome), both Cherubs cheer for her now that they’ve discovered that I’m obsessed with the […]

Praying

October 1, 2015.Reading time 5 minutes.

The other night a friend & I had a long conversation about prayer, and how weird it is when the challenge of your faith shifts: When it’s less about the fear that you’ll disappoint God, and more fear that God might disappoint you. I’m not in that season right now. But I’ve been there. And […]

On Being Gangster

September 29, 2015.Reading time 7 minutes.

“I believe that enjoying your work with all your heart is the only truly subversive position left to take as a creative person these days. It’s such a gangster move, because hardly anybody ever dares to speak of creative enjoyment aloud, for fear of not being taken seriously as an artist. So be the weirdo […]

Busted

September 28, 2015.Reading time 6 minutes.

This weekend, The Cherubs learned that their New Mom knows nothing about grammar. Even though she’s a writer. They are horrified. #1 Cherub came home with a worksheet on homophones. “What’s a homophone?” I asked. I thought it might be a project for his tech-ed class. He stared at me, wide eyed. “You don’t know?” […]

Shalom Shattered

September 24, 2015.Reading time 12 minutes.

Last night I was going through documents on my computer, trying to bring order to the chaos. I found notes from a talk I gave a couple of years ago at a women’s retreat in Maryland, called “Shalom Shattered.” It stuck with me, especially after reading Sarah Bessey’s blog yesterday about how reluctant we are to […]

Three Books & What They Mean to Me This Week

September 23, 2015.Reading time 10 minutes.

It has been a fabulous reading week for me. I’ll tell you about three books I’ve loved, and then a bit about what I’m trying to do with what they’ve taught me. Consider it part of Project Stretch & Grow. (Which is not actually a project, but makes me smile when I think of it […]

My attempts at Effortful Growth

September 22, 2015.Reading time 4 minutes.

I’m listening to a series of talks right now on “Effortful Growth.” It’s by my friend Jordan, and he’s arguing (in a nutshell) that we need to put some elbow grease into life if we want to be fruitful. Healthy things grow, as the saying goes, so we should want to do that. I’m in […]

The struggle to write about how I still have faith

September 18, 2015.Reading time 7 minutes.

Sometimes people ask me how I still have my faith after all that we’ve been through. I never know what to say. The truth is, I’ve been trying to figure that out for the better part of two years now. Memoir #3 is hopelessly bogged down in this quagmire, my narrative arc looking like a […]

A Family Picture (sort of)

September 15, 2015.Reading time 3 minutes.

Some of you have asked when I’ll post pictures of The Cherubs. I’d love to! Once you see them you’ll fall in love. But that’s a ways down the road, for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is that we’re not allowed. Our status right now is that we’re The Cherubs’ foster/pre-adoptive parents until […]