I’ve long appreciated Carly Gelsinger’s honesty about spiritual abuse and recovering from try-hard, never-enough Christianity. She wrote a memoir about her experience with radical faith, called Once You Go In, and I was eager to interview her. With so many revelations about abusive leaders coming out, I think it’s important we talk honestly about the appeal toxic […]
Fear
Your Fear Will Make You Strong…a Lesson in Faith and Trust (or first feeling broken and then redeemed)
For God is not the author of confusion but of peace … 1 Corinthians 14:33 (NKJV) My Beloved lets me sleep late some mornings. It is one of the many gifts he gives me…rest. I tried committing to resting my temple this weekend, I promised the people who love me that I would, and have mostly […]
Fear and Faith in the Desert Places
I love Robert Frost’s poem “Desert Places.” Typical of Frost, the speaker in this poem describes a natural environment of forests, fields, and snow. But this isn’t a beautiful or peaceful place. Quite the opposite: it’s a place of darkness, cold, and isolation–it’s a menacing and threatening place. For me, the genius of the poem […]
Dear Portia: The Spiraling Journey of Forgiveness
How Do We Know When We’re Done Forgiving? Dear Portia, What does forgiveness look like when you work through the process and do your best, but either the offender never acknowledges their sin or they continue to offend? Not asking about boundaries, that’s pretty clear to me, but how do we know when we’re done? […]
A Good Like That
I love to re-read books. Familiar stories refresh my tired soul like a cool stream. So when I picked up C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra once again, I expected comfort. I hoped the book would distract my mind from the knifelike pains that endometriosis has been delivering to my pelvis since January. Instead, Perelandra bowled me […]
Defining Warrior Faith from Bey to Z
Before I was a warrior, I differentiated between the secular person I was and the spiritual person I became weekly on Sundays. Sabbaths were for study, praise and worship, and a time to set those things aside in favor of regular life. That was before; I’m a big girl now. That was my first evolution, […]
Restoration After Exile
“This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! […]
The Hope & Fear Cycle of Chronic Illness
I’m a healthy-looking person with a chronic health problem. It sprung up as a result of some very traumatic and stressful years in overseas ministry. I’m trying really hard to help my body right itself, but I have a condition that is generally considered by Western medicine to be incurable. This is distressing, mostly grueling. […]
We Light Our Candles in the Darkness
I am fearless and fiercely protective of those I love: Just try coming for one of mine. As I wrote in my personal manifesto #GentlyAngry, “I aspire to live in peace, but I ain’t no punk.” “I encourage you never to mistake my quiet or my cool for anything, please. Draw conclusions at your peril. […]
When God Talks to Me at the Pool
God talks to me at the pool. During seasons when I think He’s stopped trying to speak to me, it is in the middle of splashing water and the scent of chlorine while the sun beats down on my skin hot, warming me from the inside out that I catch my breath, wondering if that […]
Prayer Requests Make Me Anxious
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 […]
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 […]