Ok, God. I’m ready. I’ve been in the tomb for a while now and, FYI, as I lie here, struck down by chronic illness, unable to get out of bed for hour after hour, day after day, week after week . . . year after year . . . I am MORE than ready to […]
Emergence and Resurrection
Waiting in the Graveyard
In the first half of 2017, I was restless. I’d left my job as a teacher the previous year to write full time and though I’d written countless words, nothing seemed to be going anywhere. My blog was still a regular thing, but the book I thought I had in me wasn’t taking shape. There […]
“You Can Try to Bury Power, but it Won’t Stay There.”
This year’s Lenten season held special meaning for me, as I experienced it as the beginning of personal resurrection. I Had Become Completely Undone. I was as close to complete destruction as I have ever been. It was the final step in a death march of a journey, as I employed every method known to […]
Why Bad Self-Care Is a Kind of Sin
“This author really pissed me off,” I told my husband the other day. I brandished a book called Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination, by Andrew Santella. My anger surprised my husband. He enjoys a heated debate while I tend to shy away from black-and-white argument. But this book? I ranted about it for fifteen […]
The Night Jesus Played a Bass and Rocked an Afro
She bought my ticket months ago when she saw the hair standing high, like a full sunrise shining and the name Esperanza in the same line of Ode Joy. I had said yes to the invitation but had totally forgotten about the plans we had made. You see, my Big Sis Doreen is a planner […]
Accepting the Process
It’s a pattern that’s been there since the beginning, but it’s taken me most of my adult life to see it. I am an achievement-oriented person. I love to check things off lists and accomplish goals. In a society like the United States, it’s a pretty common way of interacting with the world. It is […]
What I Learned From an Everyday Wednesday
Emily Freeman taught me to listen to my Tuesdays. Mine showed up a day late. It was an everyday Wednesday. I stood, feet askew, stirring the carnitas in my red dutch oven for our friends coming over for lunch that day, like they do every week. There was a pause as my husband passed by, […]
The Places We Are Pierced
“Wondering what it means to follow a God who points to his scars as a sign of resurrection.” – Antonia Terrazzas It is the Thomas part that they always harped on in Sunday school. Thomas, the guy who was doubting, the guy who didn’t believe. It was not the Jesus part, and it certainly wasn’t […]
Dead Stone Come to Life
When I think of resurrection, I think of a stone on my kitchen counter. I picked it up at the beach last year. It’s smooth and gray, like most of the rocks on the beach, with one difference: The holes. One hole pierces its middle. Two opened seashells lodge in another empty space like baby […]