I am learning about perspective in my oil painting class. Usually I rush into a painting, excited to get it started. But in this particular photograph of a tree near the side of road, my teacher encouraged me to keep proper perspective in the underpainting. To project accurate perspective, the elements must line up correctly […]
Hope and Healing
#Wait(ing) in Expectation-Broken I Came to the Cross
“I accept that for now, my life is to be lived in the crucible, a hard but beautiful place where He leads me away from the world in order to draw me near to Him.”
Do You See Me?
Do you see me Lord? I feel alone and forgotten at times. Misunderstood. Invisible. The world continues its rotation spinning, spinning even faster these days. A whirling top that will surely tumble. Am I just a speck on this twirling planet? Do you really see me from above? Your word […]
Waiting Without
I am bad at waiting. There is no getting around it. I wish I could tell you differently. I wish I had learned by now the grace of quietness, of stillness, of patience, but alas those marks of my growth in godliness come in fits and starts, sluggish to take deep root. They are the […]
Hope and Healing for the Sexually Broken
A heads up: this post is about pornography, lust, masturbation, and sexual orientation, but more importantly it’s about a woman calling out to God in her desperate need and God answering her with Himself. Before you read it, please remember something that normally goes without saying: people have the right to share their lived experiences, […]
Mom, I’m Pregnant
On my way to a doctor’s appointment this morning, I grabbed Starbucks and then delivered a frappuccino to my daughter. As soon as my hands were empty, I picked up my grandson and smothered him with snuggles. We smiled at each other and laughed. I talked gibberish to him and I am pretty sure he […]
Hope is Too Heavy Sometimes
At 26 I was miraculously healed, but at 13 I started asking for healing. Sometimes people wonder why more people aren’t experiencing miracles, and I wonder sometimes if it is because we don’t understand how expensive hope is. I spent most of my teen years believing I would be healed. I went to every healing […]
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 […]
Preach Hope to Me: I’m Afraid That My Inner Jackass Is My Real Me
I heard an analysis of a sermon recently. One commentator said to another, “I shouldn’t leave and walk out feeling good about myself.” Really? I’ve been in churches like that—where as one of my friends said, you’re just crap on a plate, covered with a veneer of Jesus. When I was clinically depressed for a […]
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 […]
New Healing for Old Wounds
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. – Psalm 147:3 How did I not see this before? I stared at what I had just written and it was like a neon sign was flashing the answer to a question I didn’t even realize I had been asking. I was sitting in a training for cross-cultural […]
Finger Pointing and Neighboring
Like so many others, I am following the developments in Dallas, Minneapolis, Baton Rouge, Kansas City and Florida, And I know that there will be fingers pointed. I could point my finger at the police, who disproportionately kill unarmed black men, who are seven times as likely as white men to die at the hands of police. […]
When Your Offering Feels Too Small, Too Unseen
When I begin to get overwhelmed with the state of the world, my first impulse is to pull my soft, fluffy white duvet around me and settle in with a good book. I want to hide. The only problem is I have four small children that need things like food, shelter and clothing, and a […]
Hope and Healing for the Sexually Broken
A heads up: this post is about pornography, lust, masturbation, and sexual orientation, but more importantly it’s about a woman calling out to God in her desperate need and God answering her with Himself. Before you read it, please remember something that normally goes without saying: people have the right to share their lived experiences, […]
Roller Coasters, Hope and Making Choices
My kids appreciate a good roller coaster. So much so, our summer vacations have transformed into season passes to our nearby amusement park. You can find us in line almost every weekend with our bottomless Sprite and bucket of popcorn, ready for whatever is coming next. My girls are in love with the thrill of […]
Painting is My Sanity
Up until yesterday afternoon, I hadn’t painted anything since June. Three months; no painting. Perhaps that doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but when paint is your Savior, blood, and breath, being without it is like slowly losing oxygen. When you go without what sustains you for an extended period of time you shrink […]
Mothering with Lingering Leftovers
The little lines appeared on the stick in January. I think hers did too, just twenty years prior. :: She, my first daughter, was born in September. A week to the day before my twenty-first birthday. A week to the day before the twenty-one year anniversary of the day I met the woman who birthed […]
Hope in My Broken Heart
I was fifteen the day my heart broke. I was sitting in the nook off the kitchen inside my grandparents’ house, turning a tiny glass heart over and over in the palm of my hand, inspecting it as the light above us bounced off the trinket’s harsh edges, revealing a multitude of trapped rainbows. […]