Archives
A selection of my previously published work
Because I always was. Because the Church is a discomforting comfort, a familiarity I know, a nostalgia I miss. I spent my decades learning to fit in and how (mostly) not to stand out. But in all that time, I neglected to know who I am.
I am not a Christian. Or maybe I am. I am a . . . (Read more)
The strength of a storyteller is not in the story itself, but the power to connect their creative word images to the lives of those who are taking in these stories for the first time. A master storyteller creates connection in such a way that their readers or listeners can see . . . (Read more)
Me, Myself, and Madonna Wearing Hats
I have a million thoughts all racing circles around each other to be the first one out. Imagine sheepdogs herding their charges through a narrow gate. Now picture the scene without the dogs doing their thing. That’s what the inside of my mind looks like every moment I’m awake . . . (Read more)
“Mom,” asks one of my brood, dozing on the living room couch at 4:00 a.m., “Why are you cleaning the kitchen in the middle of the night?”
Because, Child, that is what moms sometimes do when confronted with undeniable evidence that we do not have the power to make the world into . . . (Read more)
The words of the Bible, I once believed, could be extrapolated to create an exhaustive list covering all that was pleasing to God. Anything that wasn’t on that list must therefore not be pleasing to God, and was thus sinful. Christians, I understood, were supposed to do . . . (Read more)
Why do we tell our stories? Who deserves to know hidden truths? What is the purpose of sharing the heartbreaking, stomach-churning parts of our intimate realities? Do we do it for show? Are we looking for accolades? Is there some inner restless diva bursting to get out?
No, to . . . (Read more)
“Are you sure?”
I don’t remember whether those were the exact words he used. I don’t actually remember a whole lot of details about the event at all. Those I do recall, I no longer know how accurate they are. The feelings have always been clear, though: the wishing to be together . . . (Read more)
I have always been fat, ever since I was a little girl. As other kids were outgrowing their baby fat, I was adding to mine. I was teased about it. I was shamed for it. I can’t even count how many people over the years have said I have “such a pretty face.”
This is a backhanded compliment . . . (Read more)
Today I am crying. I’m crying for every one of us who went all in to get it right and still got it wrong. For the ones who loved as much as we could, to the very limit of ourselves, but didn’t have such love reflected back. The abused. The neglected. The overlooked. The scorned. (Read more)
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote in my journal, “How safe is it to be really me?” Rereading that line this morning, I was reminded of the description in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Aslan is not safe, but good. That got me thinking, what if truly being myself is similar? (Read more)
Confidence and arrogance are not the same thing. Sometimes they look the same from the outside. It can be hard to tell one from the other, at least sometimes, at least for me. I want to be confident in who I am, confident that I am loved, confident in the hope that I will never . . . (Read more)
People are dying! Don’t you care?
I hear a distant murmur, “Not my people”
We are all our people!
Your problem is supposed to be mine
We are meant to help carry the burdens of others
To weep with those who weep
To mourn with those who mourn
To dance with those who dance
As Christians we . . . (Read more)
I was not raised in a traditionally liturgical church. We did not do much by way of sacraments or seasons, and ritual prayers were viewed with much suspicion. I have one vague memory of visiting a liturgical church at about age 12. After the service, my father commented that he . . . (Read more)
“A year ago today” seems to begin a lot of sentences in my life right now. Today’s year-ago remembrance is hearing the oncologist’s recommendation that it was time for Adam to begin hospice care.
In some ways, the recollection comes easily. It was a short conversation in a small . . . (Read more)
Today marks the last month before we start counting in years. I feel utterly unprepared for such a milestone. I’m struggling with the fuzzy line between open, honest vulnerability and performance grief.
Perhaps the determining factor is motivation. Do I share because I want people . . . (Read more)
July 4th marks Independence Day in the United States. I find it difficult to celebrate my country today. I don’t know how to honor men who wrote about all having been created equal at a time when many of them owned the bodies of other humans. I’m not sure how to be proud of a . . . (Read more)
Seasonally inappropriate thought it may be, my mind settled on Advent today. On the liturgical calendar, Advent is a traditional time of preparation and waiting. I’ve never been very good at waiting. Instead, I tend to come down rather more on the impatient and impulsive side of . . . (Read more)
I’d added the Morning Prayer online event to my calendar several days ago. I figured I wouldn’t make it, especially after I signed up for the midnight-1:00 a.m. slot of The Watch, from Maundy Thursday evening to Good Friday Morning.
Yet, I woke up just before 7:30 this morning. I . . . (Read more)
I’ve had something of an adversarial relationship to poetry most of my life. I recognize the irony. Even as someone who creates poetry, I’ve often felt as though I don’t really much like the genre.
Recently, I was sharing with a friend my hesitation to refer to myself as a poet. (Read more)
Do you ever read things and find one word or sentence or passage just lights up, leaping off the page and waving its arms in your face? (No? Just me?) I was reading an email today when this started shouting at me in bright yellow.
It is so difficult to know our true selves. To see . . . (Read more)
I am not perfect. (It’s okay, I know you’re not surprised.)
Actually, I don’t think it’s possible for an individual to be perfect. Not just in the sense of all having sinned and falling short of God’s glory (see Romans 3), but because it may be undefined, like dividing by zero.
In , , , (Read more)
I woke up about an hour before my alarm was set to go off and spent the time reading a novel. The book was terribly funny and one conversation between two main characters had me laughing so much I was afraid I’d wake up my kids in the next room. I took a breath and suddenly found . . . (Read more)
The language we speak impacts the way we think. I’m not talking about various world languages today. No, today I want to dive into the trouble of learning, of knowing what we don’t have words to describe.
When my oldest was an infant, I experienced significant postpartum . . . (Read more)
Wandering forward, I looked up to find I have entered a new and wholly unexpected season of grief. As I approach the half-year mark, no longer am I simply aghast at this deeply, achingly empty space where Adam used to be. I am not just grieving the loss of him, but the loss of us. (Read more)
The word appeared fully formed in my brain as I sought an adequate description for this sense of emotional paralysis. Winter. I rolled it around on my tongue, playing free-association word solitaire.
Winter is cold. Winter is dark. Winter might be beautiful, but it’s dangerous. (Read more)
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so
Little ones to him belong; they are weak but he is strong
I sat on the rug in the church basement with all the other preschoolers, singing our little hearts out for Jesus. I don’t remember ever learning the words to the song. (Read more)
One year ago, I got up about 4:30 in the morning to take Adam to the St. Marys Campus of Mayo Clinic for brain surgery. I remember standing in line to register and filling out forms and waiting. My brother, John, arrived and we all met with a chaplain who prayed for Adam. John . . . (Read more)
The sting of chlorine caused my eyes to tear and made my nose feel like I was already underwater. Nobody used the word “tween” so many years ago, but that was what we all were. No longer little kids, not quite teenagers, our sixth-grade selves bounced into the Bolingbrook Park . . . (Read more)
I am moving slowly through troubled waters, yet I know the waves will not overtake me. The rocks will not crush me. Though I am beaten and bruised, I will heal. I will live. I will love and be loved and know joy in the midst of inexpressible sadness.
I don’t like that.
Why does . . . (Read more)
Church Is Hard, but God Is Good
A friend posed an interesting question recently.
Where is this thing headed and how do we get out in front of the wave instead of being swept under it?
The “thing” is North American Christian congregations. The “wave” is the massive cultural shift of even serious “Jesus & Bible . . . (Read more)
Though I hesitate to even write this down, much less post it in a public space, I believe there is something important in this meandering mess of soft-focus snapshots my brain is trying to express. While I may be coming at these ideas from a different perspective than most, I . . . (Read more)
How do you start talking about something people don’t talk about? Whether it’s feeling uncomfortable with church traditions or the changes a woman’s body goes through as she ages, there are certain subjects our society has deemed inappropriate for polite society.
I call bullshit. (Read more)
About a year ago, I sat on my bed one night and started writing out things I believed about myself and about God and about life. It was a big leap of faith for me to let out some deeply held ideologies, to explore them and examine what might be worth keeping and what might not. (Read more)
Have you ever played with a top? Most of us have. It’s a simple, common toy, yet brilliantly complex. How is it that a pointy-ended item which falls over at a standstill balances so gracefully in motion?
I wondered that this morning and a quick search led me to this fascinating . . . (Read more)
As a child at my mother’s knee, I learned to cook. Not well, nor completely. My mom was big into canned and frozen and pre-prepped foods. I knew she knew how to make bread from scratch, but mostly we stuck frozen dough in loaf pans and baked bread that way. I knew it was possible . . . (Read more)
Nonplussed
A first-person narrative fiction piece exploring the strange rituals we encounter as we grieve the loss of a loved one. Written in 2008 and presented virtually on April 12, 2020.