Sometimes I can forget. How long I fought for him. How much grief I endured. This morning I held my son against my chest and breathed in his blonde hair, as if trying to inhale him into my body. He’s 17 months now, he’s a toddler tottering around on beach paths and mouthing words, throwing fits …
A life interrupted. That’s what this feels like. Re-entry is close to my heart because mine was so unsettling. When I left Uganda in 2013, I’d followed a plan. I had the goodbye celebration, like so many global workers right now haven’t. I got to hug my people and cry. I got to revel in the victories. Still, leaving …
Missionary Self-Care Guide to Coronavirus Re-entry Read More »
I want so badly to do this perfectly. It’s like somewhere inside I believe if I do all the “right things” I can keep the bad things at bay. I hold tightly to this belief like a child gripping a flashlight to chase away the monsters under the bed. Almost 8 months pregnant, I plan …
When you’re in the middle of deep suffering sometimes all you can do is exhale anguished prayers between sobs. Those prayers sound more like “Help” and “Please” than they do anything intelligible. All you can manage is to play worship music over yourself and let the words believe for you when you can’t utter the sounds. …
Suffering, The Uninvited Companion: A Scott Shaum Interview 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 »
This year is six years, six years since we lost our first baby, six years since the toilet clotted blood. Last week was National Infertility Awareness Week and it pulls me back to the memories like my eyes to the scene of a car crash. I can see myself on the floor. Praying. Begging. Being willing …
“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. …
Ode to My Uterus Hey old girl, I don’t know why I feel like calling you that. Maybe because in my mind you’re older, a more mature Whoopi Goldberg version of me that somehow holds the world’s wisdom. We’ve been through a lot together. We’ve been poked at and prodded, ballooned, and bruised. And all manner of …
I want to stay in bed in the Bible black pre dawn. I want to slip under the grey sheets in waves of dreams and forget that I know the news. Even before I wake, I know the sadness is coming, chasing me like a shadow. “This world will try and break you,” she says. …
I never used to think about how Mother’s Day affected some women, that it could be the hardest day of the year for them. Until I became one of them. It never occurred to me that on that special Sunday in church, the red roses handed out, that I would be one of the ones …
When I hold the baby and realize that it isn’t mine and I am not sure I will ever clasp feet that tiny in my hands, there is a small part of me that wants to walk to a building’s edge and simply step off and feel the fluttering of air before nothing else. It …
When Grieving is the Only Way Through Infertility Read More »
