To hear Nicole read her piece, click below: Trust in the slow work of God… Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.-Pierre Teilhard de […]
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Freeing Myself {Part 1: Awakening}
Click here to listen to Nicole read her piece: “For my entire life, it seemed that people had been shouting at me—telling me what to believe and how to act…’There is a new voice,’ Mary Oliver wrote of the journey of awakening, ‘which you slowly recognize as your own.’ Until my mid-thirties, I did not […]
Looking for the Perfect Fit
No matter what anyone says, no matter what I even believe about myself—Jesus’s furious longing for me will not change. I haven’t quite found it yet—that custom-made place he created for me in the Body of Christ. Maybe you haven’t either. Maybe you still feel like a kid playing dress up or like you’re still trying to squeeze into last winter’s jeans.
Together Around the Table
I held the plastic cup of juice in one hand, a tiny square cracker in the other. In my chair, I tried to focus my thoughts on God and let all else fall away. This symbolic act of taking communion was designed to bring me closer to the Lord. Head bowed, it was just me […]
Shame on Me
I think I’ve been brainwashed. The unexpected thought pierced my sleepy fog. Although after midnight, we girls were dragged from our sleeping bags for a special lecture. Clumped together on a couple of couches, we yawned and tried to listen. I was sadly aware that my alarm was going off in less than six hours. […]
When You’re Afraid of the Church
We were church shopping again. I tried to steady my breathing as we stepped into the building. I gripped my husband’s hand as we chose our seats. He asked me if we were going to fill out the connection card to which I shook my head. I showed up. That was brave enough for today. […]
Church When I’m Not Feeling It
I grew up going to church three times a week. The habit is still entrenched in me to arrive when the doors open. It helps that I love my church. But there are times when coming even once a week is a struggle. On Sunday mornings, I’m often running later than planned, no matter how […]
Women Owning Their Leadership in the Church
I have discovered that lots of pastors and church leaders frequent my favorite coffee shop. All of us patrons in the coffee shop are in close quarters. And so, if one speaks at a normal decibel level or even a bit loudly, the next table over and the one on the other side, will hear […]
Fighting for Community (or Fading Away)
I know what it must feel like to be a ghost. I am haunting the life I used to live but haven’t moved on yet, hanging out on the fringes of what I once called mine. I watch everyone around me go about their days as they always have but I am on the outside […]
A Reflection on Finding Community in the Church
“It’s hard to find community,” they say. I sit across from them at Starbucks or at my dining table and listen to them share about the difficulty of finding people they connect to, people with whom they can build a solid friendship and grow together in faith. “They” have been college students, single young adults, […]
5 Things Your Pastor Wishes You Knew
I wear a lot of hats: mom to 4, author and speaker, academic, and pastor’s wife to a church planter. Most days my life looks small: walk kids to school, get in some writing, go to the grocery store, build relationships with neighbors, work towards growing our church plant. It can be a lonely, isolating […]
When We Don’t Want Others To Belong
I’m looking for spaces that are a homecoming. I’m realizing it’s not easy to find places of true belonging and it’s even harder to be a person who offers it. I don’t know a single person who doesn’t want to belong, but I know many who want to disconnect, to distance, to separate and […]
Choosing to Belong
We hadn’t been going to any church regularly for a couple of years, yet we felt the yearning to belong to a local part of the body, to be connected. We had a few friends at a church who had invited us along, so we made a decision: we would go for an entire school […]
Does Your Church Smell?
I had read two books on Orthodox Christianity. That’s it. So obviously, I had no idea what to expect when I visited St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church for its Sixth Hour Prayer service. What I did know was that for some time now, I’d felt a deep desire to silence myself before the Lord, and […]
Is Masturbation Okay? . . . and Other Thorny Questions
The Mudroom is excited to be joining the likes of The Rumpus, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post. We’re starting our very own advice column, “Dear Portia.” Every month, we’ll cover questions related to our monthly theme. First up is sex, sexuality, and singleness. Do you have questions about your sex life, about singleness, […]
Benediction For Unity
Benediction for Unity It is hard to admit this because we are kind people but we wouldn’t know unity from contempt we wouldn’t know togetherness from war we wouldn’t be able to say that the church body is whole we are too mixed up with who is for us and who is against us we […]
The Comfort of Luminous Lights
“He is my God though dark my road He holds me, I shall not fall Whatever my God ordains as right To him I leave it all. Sweet comfort, sweet comfort Yet shall fill my heart” –Sandra McCracken, Sweet Comfort The past few years have been the most difficult of my life. I’ve been […]
Sometimes I Leave the Room
I can’t take it. I walk outside and text my husband to see when he would be back to pick me up. “Leaving now,” he writes. Soon, then. Thankfully. I don’t want to feel this way, like I have to leave a room when good, well-meaning people talk about people in poverty. I don’t want […]