Day three into the new year and I’m already failing. At least those are the thoughts I woke up with. There’s nothing like New Year’s resolutions to send you into a shame spiral, where you start hand fisting Oreos while trying to fit everything on your calendar. I’m not unfamiliar with failure. I spent New …
My first year on the mission field I experienced spiritual abuse, discouragement from others, debilitating sickness, isolation, culture shock, lies, theft, betrayal, setbacks, harassment, vicarious trauma, depression, and fatigue. As a single woman then, I went through most of this alone. And yet, somewhere within myself, I found the courage to continue on in my purpose …
It was July of 2006 in Mbale, Uganda. I was 25, single, and about to free fall down the side of a 320 ft waterfall. In the beginning abseiling sounded like a good idea, a way to prove to myself that I could get over any of my fears. But once I realized there was just a skinny, African …
I came home after a long day in the IDP camps, tired and sweaty with barely enough energy to make myself a sad bowl of pasta (for one) before I curled under the covers. I was journaling when I looked up and saw the largest spider I’d ever seen crawling across the ceiling. I unsuccessfully tried to kill it …
The Single Missionary, What the Church Should Know Read More »
We stumbled upon the circled labyrinth in the dark. We were in nowhere Gardnerville, Nevada on a road trip hoping to soothe the sting out of disappointing news. It sparked joy inside me. Remembrance of other times in Colorado I’d traced the paths that led me Home to God and myself. Stone cuts against sand. …
Unexpected: How to Hold On When God Shuts a Door Read More »
I haven’t been writing much lately. Life happened. I’d wanted to fall into summer’s sandy shores and slowed time with abandon. But mostly I got anxiety and tumult. I’m not a busyness lover, I’m a stillness lover. I always know I’m not doing well when the ink from my pen dries up. I hit a deep soul weariness …
What to do with all this longing? All of us are longing for something. We’re longing for a husband, we’re aching to have children, we’re aching for the ones we lost, we’re longing to be seen and known by our friends, to feel successful, we’re longing to feel like we’ve finally “made it.” (Whatever that means.) …
I still remember crying on my way home as I drove my gray Toyota Hilux truck through the red dirt streets of Gulu, Uganda dodging cows, and children, and potholes. I sobbed my way through the whole story on the truck bed of our grassy compound while my husband listened. The sunflowers wilting in the late …
“Why are we afraid of broken things? What if the abundance of communion is only found there in the brokenness of suffering–because suffering is where God lives? Suffering is where God gives the most healing intimacy.” -Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way- Sunset in Cape Town is like a world set on fire. The pinks and …
The Broken Way: What I Learned from an African Mental Hospital-I Read More »
Trauma and loss happen to us all. Suffering is a part of life. But sometimes things occur and we don’t know or recognize it as trauma, or as something to be grieved. So we go on living, and eventually these traumas pile high inside us like dirty laundry and the burden begins to take its toll. …
Recently, I went back home to visit my family in Virginia. There’s nothing quite like your family to bring out all your crazy. They know I love them to pieces, but for some reason when I’m around them I go into “fixing mode” nitpicking and criticizing about different behaviors and commenting on things that could …
This is part II of Why God Doesn’t Need Missionaries to be Martyrs. In the first part I talked about how God is not the author of our suffering. This doesn’t mean I believe suffering doesn’t have a role to play in our lives. I’ve written about how desperately we need a theology of suffering. But …
Why God Doesn’t Need Missionaries to be Martyrs Part II Read More »
