It was 11 PM and pitch dark as I crept up Signal Mountain for the first time. My best friend had warned me that the path to her new Tennessee home was lined with hairpin turns. Although I heeded this warning, I also shrugged it off due to my decent amount of experience driving […]
“Terrible” was her response to the question, “How was your afternoon?” “Oh, no, what happened?” I asked my friend, expecting to learn of an argument with her teenager or a run in with a crazy neighbor. But it wasn't either of these things. It wasn't even an actual thing that had happened. (Not in […]
Dig Deeper into Sunday’s Gospel: Read Mat thew 25:31–46 Have you ever wanted to crawl out of the confessional? I have, just a few weeks ago, when loving words of correction on the other side of the screen were interpreted as, “You idiot, don’t you know anything?” Caught off guard, I debated dropping to […]
[…] to find my head spinning as I try to figure out what He was saying. One story has left me perplexed for years. It comes from Mat thew 8: Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe came up and said to […]
[…] gets excited when they have another baby (they are seriously the cutest bunch of kids ever) and this time was no exception. So when I heard the news that their six-week-old son (baptized just four days earlier) had joined the saints in heaven, my heart ached for each of them. This is a level […]
Dig Deeper into Sunday’s Gospel: Read Mat thew 26:14–27:66 One of my favorite things about being a woman is the way in which our universal experience of both heartache and joy can connect our hearts even when we don’t know each other well. I just had that kind of an experience with a woman […]
[…] is not uncommon for well-meaning friends to assure me that, “This too shall pass.” But I have to wonder...will it? I think we say this out of the goodness of our hearts. No one enjoys seeing a loved one suffer. It is good to offer encouragement to a weary soul. However, it is important […]
[…] bit peevish. Disclaimer #2: I also realize that sarcasm is a very low level of humor, and can be offensive to some. If you dislike sarcasm, skip the bits that are italicized. Otherwise you might not like me anymore, and that would make me very sad. You can skip over the italicized words, and […]
What does it mean to live the good life? How can I be happy? What choices will get me there? How we answer these questions has everything to do with the voices we choose to listen to. A life is formed through many small, seemingly insignificant decisions. Bit by bit, we become the result […]
Dig Deeper into Sunday’s Gospel: Read Mat thew 25:1–13 I remember the first time I heard the phrase, “Lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.” It seemed to me the wise sort of thing someone says who has very good boundaries. Within that same week, it’s likely I made a late-night run […]
