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Hevi. One word in Tok Pisin, the main trade language of Papua New Guinea, expresses a feeling no English word can quite capture. A hevi is a situation with shades of stress and anxiety, conflict and anger, trouble and heartache and grief. I don’t often struggle to find words to wrap around my thoughts, but at the end of this strange summer, hevi is the only word that feels right. A global pandemic, racial tension, political chaos in so many countries … This year has set the stage for humanity’s brokenness to be on full display. But I think the heaviest hevi is the brokenness in the Church. Here we are in a season that desperately needs Jesus, but we’re so busy shouting each other down, elevating our own rights, and fighting for our own agendas that we’ve...
Read MoreStill
I mowed the lawn with a vengeance this morning. I mean an actual vengeance. Like, “How dare you sit there so smug and tall and defiantly bushy?!” I needed to have dominion over nature in some way, and the grass was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because here we are in a spot few of us could have foreseen at the hopeful beginning of this year: the whole world held hostage by a few runaway bits of RNA. And, just like that, no more school or church or ballet classes or prayer group. No more travel, no visits with our parents, no concerts or field trips or coffee with friends. Only an indefinite stretch of cloistered days that just might have this extrovert chewing holes in the wall and hugging random trees in our yard before it’s all over. My husband and...
Read MoreThe Bible Makes Me Uncomfortable (And That’s a Good Thing)
I jumped off a cliff the summer I was 16. It seemed like a good idea at the time… until I was hurtling toward the water below. Let me tell you, water isn’t always a great cushion. Flailing like Wiley E. Coyote trying to run on thin air, I tilted back just enough that the force of impact dislocated my right shoulder. I didn’t know what was wrong. I just knew I couldn’t move my arm. Without my bones, muscles, and nerves laying where they were designed to, I had no feeling or function at all, not even in my fingers. As I struggled to hoist myself up onto the rocky bank, my shoulder snapped back into place. It hurt. A lot. And it took several weeks of rest, ice, and careful exercise for the ache to fade and my strength to return. There wasn’t a pain-free way to...
Read MoreThe Gravy Promise
We didn’t need words. We had chicken, fresh off the grill and perfectly juicy. We had corn on the cob, roasted garlic zucchini, and deep amber honey dripping off buttery biscuits. We had some gentle quiet at the end of a week of sweet chaos, with their family and ours all under one roof. And we had memories of meals shared on the other side of the Pacific, where a steady thread of holidays and birthdays, weekday dinners and afternoon iced coffees had first woven us together. As the food disappeared, the words came like a slow tide. We stayed long at the table and talked about graduating kids and losing parents and about how grief feels anything but natural. The next day our friends got on a plane and flew back to where God has them for this season, and we stayed...
Read MoreAgain and Again
We’re in a season of some pretty big change in our house. Our oldest is leaping from childhood into the strange new world of college classes, car insurance, and grown-up decisions and responsibilities. And for the first time in his ministry career, my husband is serving primarily adults instead of teens. He’s upgraded his goatee to a full beard and his office décor from a plunger in a vase (seriously) to coordinating wall art and real, live potted plants. I love my new role with Wycliffe Women of the Word – like really, really LOVE it – but after years of homeschool and coffee dates and leading Bible studies and writing mostly whenever the whim hit, it feels weird to have deadlines and an editor and a swanky new podcast on the horizon. (I told my unendingly...
Read MoreToast and Fish Sticks
The bigness of life has surprised me. When I was young I expected life to become simpler as I grew older. I thought my days would get easier because I would be more equipped to handle the things that would come along. What I didn’t understand then was the sheer size and complexity of the mess left by that choice in Eden. Recently my husband and I have been asked — both personally and professionally — to speak truth into some pretty profound darkness, and it can feel overwhelming at times. I spent a good part of last week preparing for a couple significant projects on the horizon, and I have to be honest that it’s easy to feel unqualified to add my voice to such important conversations. The other day I texted my sister about some of what I’ve been asked to do and...
Read MoreRemembering Reality When Evil Smiles
It’s been a couple months since I’ve written anything here. I’ve been busy writing for my day job, but I’ve also just been choosing to use the time I have to be present with family and friends, some of whom are going through really difficult things. Nothing is harder than watching the sharp edges of a broken world slice deep into tender souls. There’s so much — so much — to grieve over in this place. From smirking politicians signing away our tiniest citizens’ right to life, to nauseating abuse that’s ignored and excused, to shattered families crushed under the debris of devastating sin, evil seems to be gloating in victory far too often. I get it, friend — how the weight of all that isn’t right can squeeze the air from your chest. How it can drain the fight and...
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