I don’t think I have a normal reaction to prayer requests. Rather than making me want to go pray, they tend to edge me towards hyperventilation. Take the other day in my small group. There were some doozy requests. People suffering from the death of a spouse, cancer, job loss, financial holes, a risky and […]
Fear
The Cost of Being a Transracial Adoptee
It did not rub off. The “dirty” skin I was teased for just a few steps away from my favorite spot on the monkey bars, this dark skin felt permanent. Frustrated and glaring at skin and soul both, my childhood heart detached from part of my identity. I did not return to recover it again […]
Four From The Night, Four From Anywhere
1. Traffic Light When I slow to a stop at the traffic light, I notice a police car flashing blue into the darkness. A few feet away, a man stuffs his hands in his pockets and leans back against a dented trunk. I stare at this man with skin like mine. This man in a […]
Bellows
For National Poetry Month we’re reposting this amazing poem by Anita Scott. #poetrylife Be the bellows of my soul. Be the bellows in my soul. Be the push and the blow that reconciles gaining with letting go, releasing while receiving. Be the reason that hope lives in tears. Be the One who […]
An Open Adoption: Becoming a Hardacker
“All my problems started the day I became a Hardacker,” our daughter told our counselor. We laughed when we heard the comment. Our daughter is adopted and we have an open adoption with her birth-parents. We met them prior to her birth through an adoption agency and hit it off right away. They said we […]
The Day I Avoided Foster Ministry
I really wanted to get excited with Martha. But instead, I felt panicky. At the playground with our kids, she was telling me about a powerful sermon she heard with her husband. “The preacher pointed out that if every Christian family in the US were to adopt, there would be no children in the foster […]
Abortion: Unwanted Reality
I had two abortions. They weren’t “crisis pregnancies.” They weren’t “unplanned pregnancies.” They were simply unwanted. I was a teenaged girl living with her boyfriend, playing house. Our “unplanned pregnancies” were nothing more than “not planning ahead and being responsible pregnancies.” I didn’t use birth control. So abortion became my birth control. 1987 was the […]
When Mommy Culture Turns on Itself
It was four o’clock in the morning and already my second time awake. My son nursed contently, so in hopes of staying lucid, I decided to hop on Facebook and click on my local mom’s group page. The first post on the group’s page wass a question to all the moms on the site—hundreds of […]
Disagreeing with Myself and the lies we tell
I talk to myself a lot. It’s the joy of being an introvert. When I stop to think about it though more than talking to myself I disagree with myself. I talk down to myself and I question my actions almost on a daily level. I disagree, I second guess and I never come out […]